Page 7 of Sweet Home Highlander
“Do you remember the Buchanan betrothal I mentioned earlier?”
“The clan with whom your father wanted to form an alliance?”
“Yes, well, Dougal Buchanan visited me at Maclaren out of the blue one day. His father had sent him to meet with a neighboring clan of the Maclarens, the Campbells, and he decided to stop in. He had no ill feelings about the broken engagement years before, and it was good to see a friendly face. I’d been so lonely, you see. But even that was misconstrued. One of the women put a maggot into Niall’s ear that I’d been intimate with Dougal.”
“And he listened to her?” Julien asked incredulously.
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“Because you were his wife and pregnant with his child.”
“Nonetheless, he believed her lies. His drunken fog helped with that.” She shrugged, barely able to breathe but forcing the rest out. “Anyway, the tragic end of the story is that things fell apart from there, and I lost the baby. We were both drowning in grief, and instead of coming together for comfort, we drew further away from each other. In the end, Niall told me to leave and go back to Montgomery.”
She tried to keep her voice light, but it still cracked. For six years, she hadn’t been able to think of that moment, when her husband had thrown her away, without the sensation of a stone lodging in her throat.
“Mon Dieu, Aisla, I am so sorry.”
She drew a deep, cleansing breath. “That part of my life is over and finished. Now you understand why I kept my past such a secret, and now that you have heard it all, you can decide whether you still desire a life with me or not.”
Julien turned to face her, his pale eyes full of warmth and compassion. “I do, and I haven’t been entirely honest with you, either.” He paused with a wry smile. “It’s not in my nature to be so open, but in the interests of reciprocation here, you also deserve the truth of why I asked you to marry me.”
Aisla peered at him, alarmed and curious, especially when his usual wry grin flattened into a somber line. “My mother is dying.”
She sat back. “Oh, Julien. I’m so sorry.”
“She’s everything to me, and her only wish is to see me wed.” He took her hands in his and raised her knuckles to his lips. “I can’t think of a better daughter-in-law for her—or a better wife for me—than you. If you’ll have me.” He grinned. “After, of course, I thrash the living hell out of your estranged bean-brained Scot.”
She stared at him, incredulous. “You’ll come to Scotland?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
…
Tarbendale, Scotland, July 1828
Two months later
Niall consulted with William, the head foreman of one of his largest cairngorm mines to the west of his property at Tarbendale. There’d been frantic reports of a collapsed section in one of the tunnels, but thankfully, none of the workers had been hurt. He took the safety of his clansmen seriously, and for more than just the simple reason that he wanted to send them home to their families in one piece. They were all working toward the same common goal—to make Tarbendale as profitable as possible. It had been Niall’s solitary objective for the past five years, and he still had a long way to go.
He rubbed a filthy hand across his brow, accepting a cup from one of the women who brought fresh water to the mine workers. He turned back to the foreman, who was surveying the dust-covered men leaving the quarry. It would cost them a pretty penny to re-dig the section that had fallen, but they’d discovered a new vein that looked promising. He wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. They would just have to be more careful.
“Tell Duncan to take care when he goes back into that tunnel on the morrow. I dunnae want to risk the lives of anyone if more of it caves in.”
“Aye, m’laird.” William shifted restlessly as if he had something else to say, and Niall raised his brow. “Ye should ken that the retaining boards had just been checked a day or two ago, and there wasnae a loose one.”
Niall frowned. The boards, put into place to stop the walls and ceilings from caving in, were checked on a regular basis. The ground shifted now and again, and the boards would loosen over time. If William said they were all tight a day ago, he believed him. There would be no reason for them to be loose so soon unless someone had deliberately tampered with them, or removed a handful altogether. “Ye suspect foul play?”
“Mayhap. Those boards didnae loosen themselves, m’laird.”
Niall’s frown deepened. Lately, the feud with the Campbells had been escalating, but apart from missing sheep and cattle, and a few bloody border skirmishes where their lands intersected, it hadn’t been too bad. This kind of subversion, however, was new. And dangerous. Innocent workers could have been killed.
Things had been tense between the Maclarens and Campbells ever since Ronan had refused to wed one of the Campbells’ unmarried daughters. And rightly so. When her father had suggested the alliance to Ronan last year at a clan festival, Ronan had dismissed the proposal, along with the next two propositions by Laird Campbell. Ronan’s continued refusal to marry for a one-sided alliance had only made things more fraught between the two clans.
“Post a few watchmen,” Niall said with a dark scowl. “At least until we get to the bottom of it. If it is the bloody Campbells, they’ll have me to answer to.”
“Aye, m’laird.”
“What’s this about the Campbells?” a deep voice asked.
