‘So you are having second thoughts! Ailsa, you cannot seriously be thinking of abandoning such an advantageous match,’ Lady Munro persisted. ‘It was the dearest wish of the laird …’
‘My father’s dearest wish was that I had been a boy.’
‘He was very much in favour of this alliance.’
‘And the hand that gives is the hand that gets, isn’t it? Even from his grave he hasn’t loosened his hold on you. You know, I was half-expecting you to hurl yourself on to his funeral pyre. I’m sure if he’d asked you, you would have.’
‘He was my husband.’
‘Whom you loved to the detriment of all others.’
‘That is not true.’
‘No?’ Ailsa jumped to her feet. ‘No, you’re right, it isn’t true, for you don’t know how to love, do you, Mother?’ Her eyes were smarting, but she kept the tears from falling by an act of sheer will. The strength of her reaction dismayed her.
‘Listen to yourself, you sound like a spoilt child,’ Lady Munro said, getting to her feet and handing Ailsa one of her own delicately embroidered handkerchiefs. ‘Ailsa, it was not just the laird’s wish, it is mine too. Just think, if you were to be wed to Donald and settled, then we would be neighbours. We could visit and, in due course, when you had children we could—’
‘Play at happy families?’ Ailsa said witheringly. ‘It’s a bit late for that.’ Lady Munro’s handkerchiefs were works of art, the petit point was exquisite, though Ailsa doubted the flimsy lace had ever absorbed a tear. She made a show of folding it into her lap without using it. ‘I want you to write to Donald.
Tell him the time is not convenient. I have no wish to see him at present, until my mind is clearer.’
‘His presence will clarify your mind far better than his absence. I trust by the time he arrives that you will have recovered your temper and your common sense.’
Ailsa gazed at her mother helplessly. ‘Does not my happiness mean anything to you?’ she asked, wishing the words unspoken almost before they were out, yet still unable to stop herself from hoping for an affirmative.
‘I happen to think your happiness is best served by doing your duty. When you reflect upon that, I feel confident you will agree with me. You are, after all, my daughter.’
Ailsa stood up. Lady Munro’s handkerchief fluttered unnoticed on to the floor at her feet. ‘I may be your daughter, but I am of age, and I have a mind of my own. If I decide I don’t want to marry Donald, I won’t do so.’
‘Ailsa,’ Lady Munro said urgently, ‘please stay away from Alasdhair. I don’t want him to come between us again. Ailsa!’ she cried more urgently as her daughter made for the door. ‘There are things—he is not the man you think he is.’ But her words fell on deaf ears. The door closed.
Lady Munro picked up the discarded handkerchief. She pressed the lace to her eyes. They stung, but they remained obstinately dry. Only let Donald McNair answer her summons swiftly. Let McNair be the instrument of her child’s deliverance from that bastard. She was beginning to wonder if Alasdhair Ross had been sent by his father’s command from the grave expressly to haunt her.
Sitting at dinner—a meal that, thank God, the Widow Munro took in her own room—trying to make polite conversation, Alasdhair was wishing he had kept his vow never to return to Errin Mhor again. He longed for the tranquillity of his plantation where he could be alone. His own land, his own house, where he had found contentment. Except, of course, if he had really been contented he wouldn’t have come here. And coming here had forced him to realise just how unfulfilled his life actually was.
As if things were not difficult enough, Madeleine had placed him next to Ailsa at the table. Her hand brushed his when she passed him a serving dish and they both drew back as if scalded. He caught her watching him, her eyes troubled, and knew he looked at her the same way. In her evening gown of green velvet she was exquisite, though she brushed off Madeleine’s compliments with an embarrassed shrug. She was not comfortable with her looks, though most women would kill for them. As would most men, to be near her.
He should not have kissed her. God help him, he wished he had not, for he could not stop thinking of it. In the old days, when he felt this edgy, Alasdhair would have vented his spleen by picking a fight with Calumn, or he would have sought out Hamish for a bout with the claymore. Or gone for a sail. Of course! ‘What happened to An Rionnag?’
Calumn looked up in surprise, for Alasdhair had been silent these past twenty minutes. ‘The Star? Alasdhair’s boat in the old days,’ he explained to Madeleine. ‘I have no idea what happened to her.’
‘She’s at Errin Bheag,’ Ailsa volunteered quietly. ‘One of the fishermen there keeps her watertight for me; his boy takes her out from time to time.’
‘I thought your father would have had her scuppered,’ Alasdhair said.
Ailsa met his eyes for the first time that evening. ‘He thought she was.’
He smiled. ‘You saved her.’ She blushed. ‘It just seemed wrong to allow such a beautiful thing to be destroyed out of spite.’
‘I couldn’t agree more.’
‘I didn’t know you sailed, Ailsa,’ Madeleine said, intrigued by the undercurrents simmering between her sister-in-law and Calumn’s forbidding friend.
‘I don’t, not any more. Alasdhair and I used to go sailing all the time, but my mother doesn’t approve of me going out on my own.’
‘Ah, oui, je comprends,’ Madeleine said in the tone of voice she reserved exclusively for her mother-in-law, whom she secretly called the dragon lady.
‘That’s easily solved,’ Alasdhair said. ‘Why don’t I take you out in An Rionnag tomorrow?’
Ailsa looked at him in surprise. ‘But surely there isn’t time for that? You’re travelling south with Calumn and Maddie tomorrow, remember?’
‘Actually, I’ve changed my mind, I’ve decided to stay on for a few more days. What do you say? For old times’ sake?’
Ailsa looked anxiously at her brother.
‘I think it’s an excellent idea,’ Calumn said. ‘I can’t understand why you’re so anxious to get away from Errin Mhor anyway, Alasdhair, having made such a long and arduous journey to get here. Stay for as long as you want, my home is yours. Anyway, I’m sure Ailsa will be glad of the company while we’re gone.’
Madeleine clapped her hands together. ‘Excellent! It will do you good, Ailsa, to get away from all the upset of the funeral. Have a little fun.’
A glance sideways at Alasdhair told Ailsa that he was thinking the same as she was. She longed to sail with him just once more, and maybe put an end once and for all to the fantasy of the past. Perhaps in this ending there could be a new beginning with Donald—though frankly, she doubted it. More likely it would be two endings. What she didn’t doubt was that her mother would be outraged by her wilful defiance of her instructions, but after today’s confrontation that thought gave Ailsa an almost childish pleasure. ‘I could—I would like to, if you wanted …’
Did he? Did he really want to subject himself to such poignant memories? But would not such a thing be the perfect antidote to the attraction which was in danger of proving a distraction? To recreate that day with the real Ailsa would surely eradicate the dream one? To replace illusion with reality, was surely the perfect solution? ‘Aye. Yes. I’d like that.’
Sitting beside him, Ailsa’s hand was clenched tight around the stem of her claret glass. That she was just as edgy as he made him feel just a tiny bit better.
Helping herself to a bowl of porridge and sprinkling salt over it the next morning, Ailsa took her place at the table just as Alasdhair entered the room, having waved Calumn and Madeleine off on their journey to Edinburgh. He brought with him the scent of fresh air and soap. His hair glistened, slicked back on his head where he had thrown water over it, and he was freshly shaven. He was clad in his breeches and boots, shirt and waistcoat, but without either coat or neckcloth, he looked much younger. Much less forbidding. Much more attractive. Ailsa fe
lt a little skip of her heart and realised she was staring. ‘Help yourself to breakfast,’ she said.
Alasdhair loaded his plate from the hot dishes before sitting down opposite her. ‘Are you sure about today?’
‘Are you?’
He laughed. ‘If I say yes, will you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does your mother know?’
‘Not yet, but you can be sure she will find out.’
Alasdhair poured himself a cup of coffee as Ailsa stirred her breakfast with a bone porridge spoon. ‘Your clothes aren’t ideal for sailing. I could find you a plaid, if you preferred,’ she said.
‘I thought the wearing of it was banned.’
‘Aye, like they’ve tried to ban the Gaelic, but you’ll not notice too many speaking English up here,’ Ailsa said scornfully. ‘No one heeds it, unless they go south of Oban. There’s even a howff on the Isle of Seil known now as the Tigh an Truish where the men change into trews before visiting the mainland.’
‘The House of Trousers. Most apt.’ Alasdhair’s smile faded. ‘Calumn told me how it was for him and his brother during the Rebellion.’
‘And for many others. We have been through some hard times. It’s a shame Rory couldn’t tarry, you’d like him. Now, do you want a plaid or not?’
‘Have you a plan to turn me back into a Highlander, Ailsa?’
‘It’s what you are, at heart. Don’t tell me that you think of yourself as an American?’
‘Not when I’m here. Fetch me a plaid, Miss Munro, and I will endeavour to transform myself.’
Ailsa hummed softly as she dressed. Discarding her morning gown, she pulled on a striped petticoat and a calf-length woollen skirt in her favourite peacock blue—only widows on Errin Mhor were obliged to wear black. A dark blue waistcoat was fastened over her sark and her stays, and a woollen arisaidh was belted at her waist over it all, held at her breast with a pretty pewter pin. Her hair she brushed loose so that it lay down her back in long waves, tied back in a simple knot with a length of ribbon. Sturdy boots over her stockings, and she was ready. ‘You’ll do,’ she said to her reflection with a satisfied nod.
Alasdhair was waiting in the great hall, standing with his back to her. Ailsa paused on the landing, taking the opportunity to look at him unobserved. He was certainly worth looking at. In his black clothes he had been striking. Dressed as a Highlander he was breathtaking.
The filleadh beg, fashioned from the length of plaid she had found for him, was held in place by a wide belt. The plaid fell in neat pleats that hugged the slight curve of his buttocks stopping just above his knee, giving her a tantalising glimpse of muscled leg above his hose, that were tightly tied around equally muscled calves. He did not wear the filleadh mòr, the large plaid that was the male version of her own arisaidh, but instead had on a long leather waistcoat, over his shirt, from which he had removed the ruffles. The whole ensemble somehow emphasised Alasdhair’s height and the well-defined planes of his body—broad shoulders, muscled chest, flat abdomen, long legs. But there was something about Alasdhair himself that had changed, too. The fine-looking man at the peak of physical perfection had indeed transformed himself into a noble-looking Highlander with subtle undertones of the savage. Gone was the veneer of sophistication, and in its place was something more primitive. He looked much more like the pioneer she knew him to be. It was blood-stirring.
Ailsa gave herself a shake. Enough of this, he is just a man in a plaid. You see his like every day.
It was almost true. She almost believed it.
Perhaps sensing her scrutiny, Alasdhair turned round, and Ailsa made her way hurriedly down the stairs to join him. ‘Well, do I pass muster?’ he asked her, holding his hands wide.
‘I’ve seen you in a plaid before, Alasdhair Ross,’ she replied, thankful that her private preview allowed her to sound satisfyingly dismissive. Refusing to indulge her intemperate thoughts any further, she tried to focus on practicalities and not on the large buckle of Alasdhair’s belt, or on the vee of his shirt where she could see the tan of his throat, or on his sinewy forearms, or on the swing of his plaid when he walked.
She led the way through a door in the panelling at the end of the great hall. ‘Calumn had An Rionnag brought round this morning; she’s moored at our own jetty now, we’ll go out through the front gardens.’ The door led, via a spiralled stone staircase, down to the kitchens and stillrooms. They went out through a side door into the kitchen gardens, then down a pathway that wended its way under a canopy of Caledonian pines to the shoreline.
It was one of those spring days when all four seasons seem to contend for supremacy at once. The morning had started bright and blustery, but now there were heavy grey clouds rolling down from the north. A couple of months previously they would have brought snow, but in April they heralded either sleet or hail. Behind them, however, and directly in front to the west, the sky was a benign blue and the sea, though choppy, was showing no signs of the ominous kind of heaving that portended rough weather.
‘What do you think?’ Ailsa asked, anxiously eyeing the sky.
‘I think we should take our chances.’
‘With the weather, you mean?’
Alasdhair looked at her enigmatically. ‘What else?’
They emerged from the pines at the top of a small cliff. A set of stairs had been roughly hewn into the rock face, with a rope attached to heavy iron links forming a rail. The beach below shelved steeply down to the water’s edge where a small stone jetty had been cleverly fashioned from an existing formation of rocks. There were three boats moored there. An Rionnag was the smallest, no more than a skiff with a set of oars and one sail. Beside her was another boat similar in style, but slightly bigger and obviously new, with the name, Madeleine, picked out in gold. At the far end in the deepest of water was Lord Munro’s bulky official craft.
The tide was high. The boats bobbed and bumped on the waves that crested on to the beach, making boarding a business that required excellent balance. Alasdhair sprang lithely from the jetty into An Rionnag, his plaid swinging out behind him. The glimpse of thigh Ailsa caught was covered in a smattering of hair, underneath that was some more nicely defined muscle, but the skin was pale. She wondered where his tan stopped.
‘Ailsa?’
Alasdhair was holding out his hand, smiling up at her in a way that made her stomach lurch. He had tied his hair back with a piece of leather, but it was escaping, tendrils black as a raven’s wing whipping over his face. Ailsa perched on the edge of the pier, trying to synchronise the short jump into the boat with the waves that tossed it about, ignoring Alasdhair’s offer of help. She had leapt times without number into the boat without even thinking about it, yet now she hovered and hesitated, so inevitably, when she finally jumped, she stumbled. Alasdhair was waiting to catch her, as he always used to. She found she liked that he caught her, and it had naught to do with the old days, but was something more primal, the sensation of being soft and female caught in a pair of strong male arms.
Ailsa stood five foot eight in her stocking soles, yet beside Alasdhair she felt as petite as either of her sisters-in-law. He held her effortlessly. Another wave rolled under the bow of the boat, but Alasdhair merely braced himself, pulling her a little more securely against him.
The wind tugged playfully at his hair. A long strand escaped the leather thong that tied it back, falling into his eyes. Without thinking, Ailsa reached up to smooth it away. It was silky soft, tangled in lashes that were equally soft, thick and jet black. Her palm brushed across his cheek. He turned his head so that his lips brushed the skin on the pad of her thumb. A kiss, warm and soft. A frozen moment when she could have jerked away, but did not. A sharp intake of breath that must have been hers, though she didn’t think she was actually breathing. Then a sigh—also hers—as she turned in his arms. Her hand trailed over the line of his jaw and her other arm went around his neck to steady herself against him.
Alasdhair shifted his feet further apart on the r
ocking boards of the boat as Ailsa sheltered in the lee of his arms. Her body was all soft curves, moulding itself to his in the most arousing way. She smelled delightful. He could feel her heart beating, fast like his own, yet still he hesitated. There was spray on his face. The taste of salt. The rise and fall of the boat, the rise and fall of his chest. The beat, beat, flutter, beat of her heart. A wave, bigger than the others, tilted the boat. An Rionnag rocked and the spell was broken.
‘We should make sail or we’ll miss the tide,’ he said, releasing his hold on her reluctantly. Desire, hot and heady, had him in its clutch. If he was honest, he wanted to do a lot more than kiss her. Perhaps this was a mistake? What he felt here was no ghostly memory, but something vital and very much of the present. He wanted her, as he had never wanted a woman before.
All too aware of his eyes upon her, Ailsa fumbled with the knot that held An Rionnag to the jetty while Alasdhair secured the sail and took the tiller. Was this a foolish mistake? She used an oar to push them away from the pier, then she retreated to the space in the prow, sitting among the lobster creels and the fishing lines, as Alasdhair guided the little boat out into the choppy sea. The same stretch of water where she had first noticed him as a man.
Looking at him now, handling the tiller with the ease of one as at home on the sea as the land, she tried to conjure up the spirit of that day, reminding herself that this was what she had come for, to exorcise the ghosts. But the Alasdhair opposite her refused to be replaced by his youthful self. Unfortunately for her peace of mind, this Alasdhair, the real Alasdhair, was likely to prove more persistent still. Though she hadn’t known it until yesterday, she recognised the desire that knotted her stomach as she looked at him. Desire that made her mouth dry and her skin shivery. She wanted him.
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