Page 91 of Sweet Home Highlander
A pair of pale eyes found hers. “Yes, of course.” Though he hadn’t hesitated to respond in the affirmative, she sensed a reticence. “Is that what you wish? I seem to recall you saying something else quite recently.” He forced a jaunty smile. “Surely, it’s not only because you hope to become a marchioness?”
“I’m with child, Jules.” He was at her side before she could blink, but now that the admission was out, she felt somewhat faint. Her knees wobbled. “It seems I must take you up on your offer, after all.” Her temper rose as she recalled his last statement. She punched him in the shoulder. “And no, how could you possibly think I’d care about a bloody title?”
He hadn’t been serious with the barb, of course, but Aisla had also heard a bitterness that wasn’t usually part of his usual humor.
Julien led her back to the sofa, his face horrified. “Forgive me, Aisla. That was rather beyond the pale, wasn’t it?”
Mollified, she accepted his apology with a laugh. “About as much as it was to ask you to be a father to another man’s child, I suppose.”
“I do not wish for children of my own, so yours will do quite well,” he said with a grin, a hint of the old Julien returning. “And I do not wish to marry for love or ever be the victim of such horror. My feelings have not changed.” He paused, sitting beside her to hold her freezing hands in his. “Are you sure this is whatyouwant? Honestly, deep down, I suspect it may not be.”
She swallowed, looking at the man who’d been her best friend for as long as she could remember. No other would be as generous as he to accept another man’s baby as his own. They could be happy, she knew. Content. But Aisla didn’t want contentment. She wanted rapture and passion, and brilliant joy, and everything that made love so ungovernable.
Sadly, she shook her head. “Oh, Jules, you know me far too well.”
“What do you want, Aisla?” he asked gently. “If you could have anything without any consequences whatsoever, what would you choose?”
The answer was all too easy, all too clear. And yet it was still such a mess.
“Him.”
“Then make it so.”
She sucked in a breath, holding back a flood of tears that threatened to erupt. “It’s not that simple. He let me go. I can’t waltz back in there and—”
“Why not?” Julien interrupted. “He came to find you in Paris, didn’t he? Perhaps it’s your turn now. Grand gestures are not just the domain of the men, you know.”
Happiness leaped in her heart like a flame and spread through the rest of her limbs, centering at the place where their child grew. But she shook her head, her palms resting on her flat stomach. “But what if he doesn’t want me?”
Julien laughed, his old warmth coming back into his eyes for an instant.
“Are you blind?” he asked. “Trust me when I say that that man has wanted you from the day you set foot back in Scotland, and I’d wager long before that as well.” He smiled, taking her hand. “Sometimes,chérie, you have to fight for what it is you want even if it frightens the hell out of you.”
Aisla narrowed her eyes at him. He seemed entirely comfortable and resolute on shirking the title his grandfather wished to bestow upon him. “And what is it that you want, Jules? What would you fight for?”
“We’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you, and the father of the child you carry. I do happen to know, however, that I would make an excellent uncle.” He took her cheeks in his palms and kissed them both. “You love him, Aisla. You know you do.”
She laughed through her tears. “You say you don’t believe in love, but look at you, such a hopeless romantic.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t believe in love. I said it’s not for me.”
“One day, Lord Leclerc, you will not be as immune as you are at this moment, and I will laugh myself silly at your expense.” Aisla stood, still feeling unsteady with nerves. “But until then, if he does take me back, will you stand up with me at the wedding?”
“I would not miss it for the world.”
Julien was right. She had to fight, just as she’d fought to live in the abandoned mine, and in the days that followed. She loved her baby’s father to distraction, and it would be up to her to win him back—for the both of them.
She sent a footman to fetch Pauline and to gather all her belongings. Julien stopped at the bottom of the staircase, looking up to the east wing where his grandfather was being tended. His face was unreadable, but his fists opened and clenched at his side.
“Will you ever forgive him?” Aisla asked quietly.
A breath hissed from his lips. “It will be a cold day in hell before I ever need anything from that man, so no, it’s unlikely.”
He signaled to the silent butler, who for a moment, wore a pained expression Aisla would have missed had she not been looking right at him at that moment. “Yes, my lord?”
“Have my coach brought around, Higgins,” Julien said. “And inform the marquess of my departure.”
“Of course, my lord,” the older man said, then hesitated. “And might I say what an honor it has been to see you at Bramble Park, my lord.” He paused, his voice dropping softly as if he couldn’t help himself. “Forgive my impertinence, my lord, but you remind me so much of her. Of Lady Eleanor.”
