The Highlander's Return

by Marguerite Kaye

  He laughed, a low bristling growl that made her flesh crawl. ‘Aye, and have you clatter me o’er the head with something. I’ll be seeing it all soon enough, so you may as well drop the modest-maid act.’

  As with all things that were once feral, the laird’s civil veneer peeled away easily under duress. His accent coarsened. Knowing he was not a man to make empty threats, Ailsa pulled a petticoat and a woollen skirt over her nightgown. She did not bother with stays, lacing herself into a heavy woollen waistcoat and belting and pinning her arisaidh over the top. Rummaging in a drawer for stockings, she closed her hand around the jewelled sgian dubh she kept there. It had belonged to her maternal grandmother. She had come across it at Heronsay, and Rory had made her a gift of it, on the promise that she would not actually carry it. The little dagger was no more than six inches from hilt to the tip of the blade, but it was sharp. Under cover of donning her stockings and boots, Ailsa tied the sgian dubh to her calf with her garter. Tying her hair back with a ribbon, she pulled her arisaidh up over her head, and turned back to Donald. Though it cost her dear, she must be all compliance. If he thought her resigned, he would be less careful. At some point in their journey she would stage her attack. She would not let him take her. Rather, she would surrender her life first.

  They made their way down the central staircase, confirming Ailsa in her surmise that Lady Munro was well aware of what was afoot. Donald threw back the heavy bolts of the castle’s front door without a care for the noise they made. At the bottom of the steps, his groom held three horses. Without protest, Ailsa allowed the man to throw her into the saddle. In the fading light of the night, they made their way through the gates and took the track that headed south. Donald led. Ailsa was in the middle. The groom took up the rear, neatly hemming her in. A pine martin scuttled across the path, making Donald’s horse rear up. He cursed.

  The very notion of submitting to Donald’s touch filled her with repugnance. The strength of her will to survive this ordeal unscathed took her aback. She would fight to her last breath to escape. Ailsa sat up straighter in the saddle. As the morning sun began to rise, so, too, did her spirits. The fog of misery that had encompassed her mind cleared. Ailsa began to plan.

  The scent of peat smoke and the tang of salt and the fishy smell of nets drying on washing lines filled the air as Alasdhair left the smiddy in the early morning. Back in the old days, Hamish used to allow him to work off his frustration by taking the hammer to the anvil. Hamish it was who had taught him how to fight with the claymore and how to shoot, too. The smiddy fire was already burning bright when Alasdhair made his farewells. Hamish’s beard was as fiery red as the furnace he tended. His welcoming grin burned even brighter. It had been a good night. Old friends, old stories, simple food and good humour. But now he must return to the castle to say his farewells.

  The night, spent on a straw mattress in the tiny room that was more of a hayloft reached by a rickety ladder from the main chamber of Hamish’s cottage, had brought certainty on one subject. He needed to see his mother, to speak to her face to face, and hear her story from her own lips. It wasn’t just the knowing, it was the understanding. Ailsa had made him see that.

  Ailsa.

  Walking through the wispy morning mist that gave the village a hazy appearance, as if it were on the verge of disappearing, Alasdhair wrestled with the plethora of feelings that one word roused.

  Ailsa. Just a name, but it conjured her up so clearly. It could never belong to any other.

  He was glad she had decided not to marry Donald. He abhorred the idea of her being unhappy and knew for a certainty that is what such a marriage would make her. She deserved affection. She deserved to be cared for. She deserved to be loved. He wouldn’t have entertained such a notion a few days ago. Had it really been such a short time since he arrived on Errin Mhor? A few days? It seemed like weeks, so much had changed.

  It was knowing that Ailsa had not rejected him that made him question his mother’s rejection. Though he had had to force it from her, the insight Lady Munro had given him into her own mind had helped, too. His mother was the final piece of the picture. Once he had that, he could go home, be finally at peace.

  Except there was Ailsa.

  He didn’t want to leave her. He didn’t understand what it was he felt for her. Caring, yes, but he was fooling himself if he thought it was just that, and he was done with fooling himself.

  He wanted her. He wanted to imprint himself on that delectable body, to sink into the delightful, sensual essence of her. He wanted to drown in her, and to drink of her, and to teach her pleasure, and to take pleasure with her. He wanted her with a passion he had never felt before, and he wanted her all the more because he knew she felt it too, and never had before. Not even six years ago. Not like this. As well to compare the cheap spirit made from a ferryman’s illicit still to an aged whisky, the one a poor pale shadow of the other, lacking depth, quick to effect, short of duration.

  Maybe so, but he could choose not to drink the heavenly elixir, Alasdhair reminded himself. He did not need Ailsa Munro, no matter how much he might want her. No fire, however brightly it burned, could flame without fuel. He would not see her again after today. Or maybe after he had seen his mother. She would want to know the outcome of that visit. Since she had been instrumental in persuading him of the need to find his mother, she deserved to know. After that, he would say goodbye. With the distance of the ocean between them, it would be easier not to think of her.

  A pang of homesickness for Virginia washed over him. Coming back to Errin Mhor had not been the simple journey of discovery he had thought. He paused at the fork in the road that led to the castle and closed his eyes, picturing the spreading acres of his vast plantation, conjuring up the earthy smell of the summer heat, the sweet, almost rotten smell of the tobacco plants drying in the outbuildings.

  Home. He did not doubt it now. For that much alone, this journey had been worth it.

  But when he arrived at the castle in search of Ailsa, Alasdhair was informed curtly by Lady Munro that her daughter was not available. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Helping the fey wife with a birth. A difficult one. Twins—she is like to be gone all day.’

  Since Alasdhair had passed Shona MacBrayne at the home farm, he knew this for a lie. A cold premonition gripped him. ‘I don’t believe you. Where is she?’

  ‘If you must have it, she is gone.’

  ‘Gone where?’

  ‘Away from your influence. She is gone to be married to Donald McNair. He came to claim her last night.’

  ‘She has no wish to marry McNair.’

  ‘That may be what she told you.’

  Alasdhair shook his head in disgust. ‘Your tricks don’t work a second time around, my lady. If she is with McNair, it is not of her own free will.’

  Lady Munro paled. ‘She will not be unwilling, not when she realises it is for her own good.’

  ‘Not when she realises… . Dear God, do you mean you had her abducted?’

  ‘No! No, of course not. Donald is her affianced husband, he.’

  ‘So, she packed her bags and went off with him of her own accord?’

  ‘She …’

  ‘No, of course she didn’t,’ Alasdhair thundered. ‘She is your own daughter. Your only daughter. Are you so set on having your own way that you have had her kidnapped?’

  Faced with the large, solid bulk of a furious Highlander, his face drawn tight with anger, Lady Munro quailed. She did not know how it came about that Alasdhair Ross had transformed himself into this forbidding male, who even yesterday had not wholly intimidated her, but he did now. She was afraid.

  ‘I thought that once she saw Donald she would change her mind.’ Lady Munro’s voice said shakily.

  ‘And did she? No, obviously not, or you would not have resorted to abduction.’

  Alasdhair sank on to a chair and dropped his head into his hands. ‘When? When did he take her?’

  ‘This morning. Early. I don
’t know, I …’

  ‘Then it might not be too late.’ Alasdhair jumped to his feet. ‘Where? Do not tell me he was taking her to Ardkinglass, I won’t believe you. He will have Calumn to contend with, and will want to keep her well away from here until enough time has passed to make sure of her shame should her brother try to have her returned. Where? The devil take you, woman, unless you want to see your daughter’s life blighted by marriage to a man with all the makings of the tyrant that her father was, you will tell me where he took her!’

  ‘Donald is not—she would not be …’

  ‘He is a laird of the old school, as your laird was. All the men know that. Why do you think the Munro was so keen on the alliance? Do you really want Ailsa to have the life you’ve had? There’s still time to prevent it, if you tell me now.’

  Lady Munro staggered against the back of a chair.

  ‘South. They have gone south. What will you do if you find them?’

  ‘I have no idea, save that I will not be bringing her back here until I can be assured of her safety.’

  ‘Despite what you think, I did this because I love my daughter.’

  ‘You have a strange way of showing it.’

  As Alasdhair turned to go, Lady Munro clutched at his sleeve. ‘Bring her back. Please don’t take her with you.’

  ‘I have no intentions of taking her to Virginia, if that is what you’re worried about,’ Alasdhair said contemptuously. ‘I have wasted enough time already.’ Shaking himself free, he strode out of the great hall.

  Whey-faced, Lady Munro tottered over to the cabinet and unlocked the decanter that was kept there. Pouring a generous measure of whisky into a single glass, she drank it down in one gulp. Then she collapsed slowly on to the floor, her head in her hands. Despair pierced her heart like a cruel, sharp diamond.

  Alasdhair ran all the way to the smiddy. He ignored the startled blacksmith and strode into the cottage. His black suit was discarded in an instant in favour of the filleadh beg. Into his belt he slotted his unsheathed dirk. His sgian dubh was tucked into the same belt at the back, under his leather waistcoat. The claymore that Hamish had kept meticulously sharpened and polished was lifted carefully from its box.

  It had been a present from Lord Munro on Alasdhair’s sixteenth birthday. The same birthday on which he had made his son the recipient of a similar weapon. The two-handed claymore of the old days had given way to a smaller, lighter weapon, with a blade measuring some three feet, a good eighteen inches shorter than the one that Robert the Bruce had made his own. Alasdhair’s broadsword had a basket hilt made of steel that had been fashioned by Hamish himself. It was worked with the Munro emblems, decorated with semi-precious jewels and lined with velvet. The blade Lord Munro had had specially imported from Germany. Double-edged, it bore the legend Andrea Ferara, the sixteenth-century Italian whose name the Germans used as a mark of quality.

  Alasdhair buckled the sheath to his belt and placed the claymore reverently inside. Only the other day, he and Hamish had had a practice bout. It had been surprising, how easily the moves flowed back through his sword arm, how well he remembered the need to balance on the balls of his feet, to counter the swing of the sword with his outstretched left arm. He had not thought to use the weapon in anger. Now, he had no doubt at all that that was exactly what he was about to do.

  Hamish was waiting worriedly at the stable with Alasdhair’s horse saddled and ready. ‘Do you need me with you, lad?’ he asked.

  Alasdhair was touched. Hamish must be nigh on fifty, but he had no doubt that the blacksmith’s offer was sincere. ‘I must do this for myself, Hamish.’ Nodding a curt farewell, Alasdhair sprang into the saddle and was gone from Errin Mhor, galloping down the road south in a cloud of dust.

  Chapter Seven

  Three horses, making no attempt to cover their trail, so sure was Donald of Lady Munro’s support, were not difficult to follow. With murder in his mind, urged on by a terror of being too late, Alasdhair had ridden hard in pursuit, abandoning his blown horse at an inn and throwing gold coins at the astonished landlord in return for a fresh mount.

  He found them in the late afternoon, on the outskirts of Stronmilchan at the head of Loch Awe where they had stopped to water the horses. Though it was dry now, it had been a showery day. Bringing his horse to a halt out of sight of McNair’s party, Alasdhair leapt out of the saddle and tethered it to a tree. Both he and his mount were spattered with mud. As he moved stealthily through the gorse and bracken that gave him sparse cover, Alasdhair’s plaids became soaked through. Underfoot, the ground was boggy.

  The horses were drinking from the loch. McNair and his henchman were conferring together, standing almost directly in front of Alasdhair. While the laird had his broadsword, his servant was armed only with a dirk. Behind them, Ailsa was sitting on the wet ground. Her hands were bound at the wrists in front of her. A bruise was purpling across her cheek. Bastard!

  Even as he watched, the mists of rage reddening in his brain, Alasdhair saw the glint of metal as Ailsa tugged a sgian dubh from under her skirts and, holding the handle between her knees, began to saw through the leather ties at her wrists. He wondered what the hell she thought she could do with one knife against two men, but he silently applauded her pluck for trying.

  He forced himself to wait, keeping an anxious eye on the men, but they took no notice of her. Crouching back on his heels, Alasdhair carefully unsheathed his claymore and pulled his dirk free from his belt. His heart was beating like a drum. Rage coursed through him, thickening to bloodlust as he eyed Donald McNair. He deserved to die for this day’s work. He would allow no man to treat Ailsa so badly or to harm a hair on her head. Something primal and vicious snarled in his gut. He wanted more than anything to see Donald McNair slain at his feet.

  In the course of the long day, despite her best intentions, Ailsa had several times been unable to stop herself from responding waspishly to Donald’s jibes, making her disgust of him too obvious for him to ignore. As a consequence he had slapped her once on the face, a sharp crack that she thought at first had broken her cheekbone. Her head still thumped with the pain. At the last water stop, she had made a break for it, but they had easily caught her and, as a precaution against further attempts, bound her wrists tightly together, making the simple act of staying in the saddle fraught with difficulty.

  Knowing that this was her last chance before they stopped for the night and knowing full well what ordeal the night would bring, Ailsa was set upon escape. Though with only herself and what was really no more than a fancy toy matched against two grown men, she knew her chances were slim. Donald had made sure to keep them away from villages where she might raise the alarm. She had only herself to rely on. If she could not escape, she could surely wound him enough to make him come to his senses. She did not want to think about what would happen otherwise. She would not surrender if she could avoid it.

  If Donald truly was set upon taking her, she would not make it easy for him.

  Sawing through the leather that bound her wrists was more arduous than she expected, but finally Ailsa was free. She flexed her fingers, which were numb from the ties, and clenched her sgian dubh in her right hand. Then she got to her feet, and, with a scream that seemed to come from the depths of her being, ran at Donald.

  Though she had the advantage of surprise, Ailsa was simply no match for the Laird of Ardkinglass. With a growl that was more annoyance than fear, he dealt her a blow to the stomach that winded her. As she dropped to her knees, Donald grabbed her knife arm and twisted it ruthlessly behind her back. Her vision clouded. She tried desperately to struggle, but Donald’s strength was vastly superior. She was clinging on to consciousness by a thread when a wild warrior, a blur of plaid and flowing hair and muscle and grim-faced fury, launched himself like a fiend from out of the undergrowth.

  Ailsa’s vision cleared as she summoned up the last remnants of her strength. Alasdhair! She had no idea how he had found her, but it was definitely him. He went for
Donald’s servant first. The man barely had time to draw his dirk before Alasdhair was upon him and thrust his own dirk, clean and easily, high into the servant’s right shoulder, severing the muscles and disabling him instantly. The man dropped his knife and howled in pain. Alasdhair dealt him a swift uppercut under the chin with the basket hilt of his broadsword and the servant dropped unconscious to the ground.

  Cursing, Donald threw Ailsa to the ground, drawing his broadsword as Alasdhair advanced upon him, his own broadsword in hand. The two men faced each other across the small clearing, the lethal glint of polished steel separating them. Crawling on hands and knees over to the edge of the makeshift arena where the servant lay comatose, Ailsa fought for breath. Terror froze the blood in her veins.

  The two men circled each other warily. Donald’s face was fiery with rage, his eyes wild with primal lust. In comparison, Alasdhair’s was a grim mask, pale and hard, his eyes glittering like the blades he held in his hands. She could hardly bear to look. Though Alasdhair had been a fine swordsman in his youth, he had not the recent experience of Donald. She could not quite believe he was here. How had he known where to find her? That he had come after her at all astonished her. But then he must have known she would not go willingly with Donald, and he was an honourable man. In Calumn’s absence, Alasdhair would naturally see himself in the role of her champion. And thank God. Thank God, he did.

  Without taking her eyes off the two men, Ailsa scrabbled in the grass for the dirk that Donald’s servant had let fall. Her hands closed around the leather-clad hilt with relief. She held the knife secure, clasped with both hands, and struggled to her feet just as the first clang of steel on steel rang out, echoing over the loch like a bell toll.