Marguerite Kaye - The Highlander's Return

She remembered them on the tiller that day. She remembered the way she’d pressed one of them to her cheek. He’d smelled of salt and sweat. Now he smelled of soap and expensive cloth and clean linen. And Alasdhair. Something she couldn’t describe, but it was him.

‘There.’

He looked down at her and there it was again, for a split second. Recognition. A calling of like to like. And a yearning. She couldn’t breathe. He licked his lips, as if he was about to speak. He moved towards her just a fraction. Then he pulled away, shifted so that there was a defined space between them.

‘Your finger’s bleeding.’

‘It’s nothing.’ Without thinking, she put it in her mouth, sucking on the tiny cut.

Alasdhair stared, fascinated. He forced himself to look away. ‘Why are you crying then, if not out of pity?’ he asked roughly.

‘You’ll understand when you hear my side of the story. Oh, Alasdhair, you will understand only too well, as I do now.’ Ailsa blinked back another tear and took a deep breath. ‘You remember my mother saw us from the drawing-room window that day on our way back from the island? When I went in she was furious. Said she’d been watching how we behaved together and she was becoming very concerned.’

‘Concerned about what?’

‘My honour.’ Ailsa laced her fingers together nervously, fidgeted with her gloves, pulling at the fingers of the soft leather, stretching them irretrievably out of shape. ‘“He’s making cat’s eyes at you.” You should have heard the way she said it—she made you sound like some predatory seducer. I told her you would never do anything to harm me.’

‘What did she say to that?’

‘She laughed at me. She said I would learn soon enough that all men were the same. She told me I needed to keep away from you for my own good. I’m sorry, but you said you wanted the truth.’

‘It’s all right. I’ve never been under any illusions about Lady Munro’s opinion of me.’

‘I’m sorry, all the same. I understood my father’s attitude, for you were never one to toe the line, and he was always one to expect it, from you especially for some reason, but my mother—to this day, I don’t know what it was about you that made her hate you so.’

‘My existence,’ Alasdhair said with a flippancy he was far from feeling. There was a part of him that didn’t want to hear any more, but there was another part of him that needed the whole unvarnished truth, no matter how unpalatable. ‘We have wandered from the subject.’

‘When my mother told me you’d been banished, I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know you’d gone to my father to ask permission to court me—why would I when you’d said not a word to me? She told me you’d argued because you were set on leaving. She said you’d been banished because you’d defied him, that you’d thrown the offer of the factor’s post in his face. I didn’t know the real reason and had no reason at all to suspect it.’

‘But, Ailsa, you knew how I felt about you—how could you have thought I’d leave without even discussing it?’

She sniffed and looked down at the ground. ‘You never said what you felt in so many words.’

Alasdhair jumped to his feet. ‘Because I thought we didn’t need words to express what we felt for each other. For heaven’s sake, Ailsa, I thought you understood that. I thought you knew me. I thought you of all people would know that I would never, ever, do anything to hurt you, never mind dishonour you. I thought you believed in me.’

She couldn’t look him in the eye. Though her mother’s lies were the catalyst for their separation, she felt she was more to blame. What Alasdhair said was true, she had lacked faith and was too easily persuaded. ‘She laughed at me when I said you loved me. What did I know of such things, she said, and you know what she was like, Alasdhair. She made me feel like an idiot. It is not you I didn’t believe in,’ Ailsa whispered, ‘it was myself.’ That it was all too late, she knew. There was nothing she could do, but, oh, how much she wished there was. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Alasdhair. Please don’t look at me like that, for I can’t bear it.’

He knew from bitter experience how very practised Lady Munro was in the art of belittlement, how she twisted and turned everything into a deformed version of itself. With both her parents assailing her, poor Ailsa would have stood little chance. If she had only believed … but in his heart, he knew he had not believed enough, either. It had been too much to wish for. Too much to deserve. ‘You’ve no more need to be sorry than I. I don’t blame you for not coming. I can see how it must have looked.’

‘But I did come.’

‘What!’

‘My mother told me she had arranged for us to meet to say goodbye. Despite her better judgement, she said, she thought it better that I hear from you direct. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing, the chance to see you just one more time. I was there at midnight as agreed. I waited and waited, but you didn’t come. I thought you couldn’t face me. You didn’t love me, but you cared enough about me not to be able to tell me that to my face. I thought my mother was right. I thought—but I was wrong. I was wrong. I was so wrong.’ Ailsa shuddered as sobs racked her body.

Alasdhair ran his hand distractedly through his hair. ‘I don’t understand. I stood here, under this very tree—our tree—the whole time. Where were you?’

Ailsa’s covered her face with her hands. ‘An Rionnag,’ she whispered.

Alasdhair cursed, long and low in the Gaelic, words he thought forgotten, then he stooped down to pull Ailsa to her feet, wrapping his arms around her, unable to resist the habit of comforting her any longer. ‘My God, but they made sure of separating us, your parents. Your father thought he had solved the problem by banishing me, but your mother knew different, so she set us up to think each betrayed by the other. And it worked. Between them they destroyed any chance we had of happiness.’

He stroked her hair, the way he had always done before to soothe her, but despite the familiar gesture, he felt like a stranger. She was acutely aware of him, not as the person he’d been, but of the man he had become. A man she didn’t know any more. It disconcerted, this not knowing, but having known. She had no idea how to behave.

Ailsa pushed herself back from his embrace and wiped her eyes, attempting a watery smile. ‘Sorry, it’s not like me to cry.’

Alasdhair shook his head and returned her smile with a crooked one of his own. ‘God knows, we both have reason enough.’

The wind ruffled his hair. As he shook it back from his face she noticed it, the faint white line above his left brow, made more visible by his tan. Ailsa reached up to trace the shape of it. ‘The oar, do you remember?’

‘Of course I remember, you nearly had me drowned.’

They had been swimming, and he was climbing back into the boat. Ailsa, struggling to slot one of the heavy oars into its lock, had slipped and the blade had gashed his brow. ‘I was trying to rescue you,’ she retorted. ‘I thought we’d never get it to stop bleeding. You’re lucky it’s such a tiny scar.’

‘I didn’t feel lucky at the time, my head ached for days.’ Her nearness was disconcerting. The memory of the girl he had once loved was retreating like a shadow at noon, fading in the bright light of the woman standing next to him. She was more different than the same. The years had not left her untouched.

He felt the softness of her curves pressing into him. Regret and wanting swamped him. It was a potent mix that overrode everything else. He pulled her to him. She did not resist. He slipped his arm around her waist, tilting her face up with his finger. She was trembling. She wanted him, too. In that moment, only for that moment, but it was enough. Without any thought of resisting, Alasdhair leaned into her. Their lips met.