The Highlander's Return

by Marguerite Kaye

  Still his kisses feathered and skimmed, making her feel light as air, floating gently on a breeze that caressed so deliciously she wanted it to go on and on and on. Kisses, kisses, kisses. On her brow, her eyelids, her throat, back to her mouth. She was lost, first in the wonder of it, then in the urgent need for more. She barely even registered the change to something darker and infinitely more delightful.

  Alasdhair eased her down on to the mattress. She lay there, her eyes wide, looking like some fantasy goddess thrown to earth by a generous deity. He wanted to worship her. It was what she deserved, to be adored, venerated, to be shown how beautiful she was, top to toe, outside and in. ‘Beautiful,’ he whispered to her, ‘lovely, lovely Ailsa.’

  It felt like a dream. A perfectly lovely dream. ‘Lovely,’ she repeated, pulling him towards her.

  The strings of her sark seemed to untie themselves. When he took her nipple into his mouth she moaned, such a sweet sound that he felt the blood rush to his groin.

  His touch was making her ripple with pleasure, shiver with delight as he sucked and licked and nipped and stroked. His mouth was on her breast. His tongue on her nipple, first one, then the other, coaxing and tugging sensations from her she had not dreamed were possible. She felt weightless but taut. She felt hot and icy cold. She felt utterly safe, yet at the same time she was being led, tugged, straining towards some edge or precipice.

  Alasdhair’s hand was on her thigh now, stroking the soft flesh there. His mouth on her lips again, kissing, stroking her bottom lip with his tongue, stroking her thigh with his fingers so that everything seemed to meld, his touch, the feelings he conjured, linking and sparking between them so she could no longer tell what he did nor how he did it; did not want to know save to want more, so that she crossed the line between mere pleasure and craving without noticing.

  Alasdhair kissed the valley between her breasts. He stroked the curve of her waist, the soft roundness of her belly through her sark. He shifted, moving down her body to kiss her ankle, her calf, the back of her knee, the inside of her thighs. He reached the soft nest of curls between her legs, kissing his way through to the slick warmth at its centre, kissing and licking, stroking, until he felt the damp heat of her, and felt an answering surge of blood to his already engorged shaft.

  Ailsa was a rosy-pink kernel now, buried deep in the dark earth. Teasing fingers urged her upwards. There were red-hot tips of feeling inside her as his fingers stroked her, unfurling her like fern fronds in the damp heat. Alasdhair’s mouth fed her growth, blushing petals crimsoned inside her as he touched her.

  She felt suspended in mid-air. Jagged. And still Alasdhair fed the flames. She could hear panting and realised vaguely it was coming from her. Her nipples tingled and ached. The flower inside her thrust towards the light. Colours streaked pink and crimson beneath her lids. He licked into her, his hands held her safe, tight, and everything settled suddenly, focusing like a beam of sunlight on a piece of glass. Even the blood in her veins seemed to rush like the tide, draining the heat from the rest of her body. He licked again, and her body arched up of its own accord. Her mind registered shock and pleasure so intense it was almost painful, and release came like a shivering surge of all-encompassing, drenching delight.

  He had never tasted anything so sweet. Never felt such a heady pleasure in giving, never felt such a deep tug of satisfaction. The pulsing and quivering of her climax on his mouth was heavenly. The need to be inside her, burrowed deep in the sweetly welcoming wet of her was a need like nothing he had ever felt. He craved her.

  Alasdhair pressed a lingering kiss to the still-throbbing mound of her sex. Breathing heavily now, heart thumping like the pounding of the drums on the plantations, he kissed the delightful crease at the top of each leg, letting his tongue trace the curve of it. He made himself sit up. His shaft was so hard it was aching.

  She opened her eyes to a hazy, pleasure-drenched world. There was a dark flush on Alasdhair’s cheekbones. His eyes were peat-smoked, his chest rising and falling rapidly, as if he had been running. He leaned over to kiss her brow. He stroked her hair.

  ‘Beautiful.’

  ‘Lovely,’ she murmured.

  Longing replaced desire, a different, more unsettling kind of wanting. It frightened him with its persistence and its intensity, for he had no experience of it, nor any remedy. ‘Go to sleep, Ailsa.’

  ‘Alasdhair.’

  ‘What?’

  A delicious lethargy was creeping over her. She was floating, yet weighted. Anchored down, yet free as a bird. She snuggled into the warm lovely smell of him, as she had done that night in the inn. ‘Goodnight,’ she said. I love you, she thought, twining her arms around him.

  Alasdhair tried to ease away from her, but she murmured a protest and he needed little persuading. This way he could be sure she was safe. This way, if she woke in the night he would be here for her. He pulled the rough wool blankets around them. Ailsa nestled against him. He pulled her closer, his arm around her shoulders, watching her, the halo of golden curls on her forehead, the pout of her lips, puffed with their kisses, as she breathed. Despite his own lack of release, he felt somehow sated.

  He held her like that for a long time, watching the moon track its orbit across the sky. In all his years he had not once spent the night with a woman, not sleeping, any road. Not holding her safe. Not feeling this mixture of tenderness and protectiveness. Not wanting anything from her.

  He slept, but woke early, rested and immediately restless as he came to consciousness and Ailsa immediately took possession of his thoughts, making him hot and hard.

  Last night.

  Oh God, last night.

  Carefully disentangling himself from the delicious bundle beside him, Alasdhair threw on his clothes and made his way outside. The morning mist hung just above Loch Awe, eerily reflected in the still water. The hills that rolled gently down to the banks on the other side were still brown from the long winter, though the snow caps had melted and glimmers of golden gorse could be glimpsed nearer the shore. Breathing in deep, Alasdhair felt the sharp spike of cold, a warning to those who knew that the Highlands were not quite done with winter yet. He’d forgotten how pure the air here was and how sharp compared to the mellowness of Virginia.

  Making his way down to the loch, he picked up a flat flint stone and skimmed it across the waters of the loch. It skipped five, six, seven times before it sank. He hadn’t lost his touch. He and Calumn used to spend hours doing this, when they were lads. Momentarily distracted, Alasdhair skimmed another stone. Ailsa never could get the hang of it. Her stones always sank without trace after one hop.

  Ailsa. Scuffing his way along the sandy shore, it all began finally to take shape in his head. He had come here, to his homeland, to make sense of the past in order to find peace in the future. To rid himself of the ghosts of his calf love. To call Lord and Lady Munro to account, and his mother too. To end his banishment in order to be content in his exile. To find answers.

  He had found answers, but none of them, not a single one, were what he had expected. He sat down on an overturned tree trunk that, judging from its smooth surface, was a popular spot. Part of the problem was that the picture he had hoped to clarify had turned out to be a different landscape completely. His past, which he thought defined him, turned out not to be his past at all. He had hoped to return to Virginia at peace with himself. Instead he would be returning a different person.

  Alasdhair stared, unseeing, out over the loch. It was one thing to recognise how much he had changed, quite another to face up to the consequences of those changes. He was so used to denial, so inured to the protective wall of his isolation, that he feared once breached, it would be irrecoverable. He would be exposed, and such exposure he had always thought weakening. But last night, had not it been the opposite? He had glimpsed something so blazingly bright it was awesome. A different quality of light, a different level of contentment.

  Happiness?

  Love?

  ‘Lo
ve.’ He said the word out loud and it sounded odd. New. Unfamiliar.

  Love. It had been growing since the moment he saw her again. A tiny seed that flourished so vigorously in the sunshine of Ailsa’s presence that he had been determined to weed it out for fear it would take root. But it had taken root all the same. He loved her.

  He loved her. That is what it meant, this voice in his head that shouted mine every time he looked at her. Such an obvious explanation, yet the last one he had expected. And what was astonishing, astounding, was the relief of it; as if he had shed a suit of armour and discovered the war long won. He felt not exposed, but liberated. The shiny future Ailsa had once described to him glittered like a real thing in front of him.

  He loved her and she loved him, too. She must. She must, for it was the only explanation for her giving herself to him last night. She would not have kissed him after that first time, or found the courage to be rid of McNair, or done any of the things he had been too much of a blind fool to see and understand. Surely there could be no other explanation?

  Alasdhair leapt to his feet. He had waited far too long already to claim her; he could not bear to wait any longer. She was his, she could only be his. She must be his. This is what the last six years had been for. This is what the last few days had been for, the growing and reshaping. The timing before had not been right, but now it was. It must be, for without her the world would never make any sense, no matter which way he looked at it.

  In Errin Mhor castle, Lady Munro paced back and forward across the space of her book room. She had not slept, save a few fitful dozes, since Donald had taken Ailsa away. Or, more accurately, since she had allowed her daughter to be abducted. Since Alasdhair Ross had confronted her with the evidence of her abject failure as a mother.

  Donald McNair had arrived back in Ardkinglass, though the journey had taken so much out of him that at first it was feared he would die of his wounds. Even if he lived, the laird would be maimed for life. There were those who thought death was preferable for such a proud, lusty man as McNair. Lady Munro was not among them. She had no reason to care one way or the other. He would not be her son-in-law now.

  She had been furious at first. It had cost her a great deal, knowing how Ailsa had come to feel about the match, to continue to support it, but the balm of saving Ailsa from herself had reconciled her to the necessity of such an action. Until Alasdhair Ross made her see that she was not saving her from herself. She was making her unhappy.

  Alasdhair Ross. How she wished he had never set foot back in Errin Mhor. If it had not been for him, Ailsa would have been safe. Married or not, she would have been here, where she belonged, and they could have made a fresh start. They would have.

  It was not true, what Ailsa said. Alasdhair Ross had not forced her into action. She had been biding her time, merely. Waiting for the right moment. And now it might never come.

  Christina Munro rarely cried. Only three times had she done so in the long duration of her second marriage. The first was when Rory was torn from her on her wedding day. A salutary lesson, her new lord had informed her, for she must love him, and only him. And she had, God help her, she had tried to love him as dutifully as she had promised to, faithful through all his cruelty and his own multitudinous indiscretions—that of course were not indiscretions in his eyes, for he owned everything and everyone within his jurisdiction.

  She had loved him, but it had only the appearance of exclusivity that he demanded. Her love for her children she kept so secret none saw it, least of all them, but it was there. Three stones, weighted in her heart and encased in ice to protect them. Even now that she was widowed, the hard-learned habit of an indifferent front was proving almost impossible to break. But she would have done it, had not Alasdhair Ross come on the scene again. She would have.

  The second time she had cried was when Ailsa was born, and the third time was not so long after that: the day Lord Munro put an end to her hopes of being reunited with her eldest son once and for all.

  It had been the last time she’d allowed herself that indulgence, until now. Now, as she looked back over the arid years of her marriage and peered forwards to the desiccated years that seemed certain to be her future, the tears flowed unchecked.

  Despite all her efforts to prevent it, Ailsa was gone, off with Alasdhair Ross. They would sail for Virginia and never come back to Errin Mhor. Except …

  Christina froze. Except before they went to Virginia, they would go to Inveraray. To Morna. Who would tell them the truth. Or what she thought was the truth. Dear God! Ailsa would think—Oh God, Ailsa would think exactly what she had wished Ross to think. And it was her fault. She had sent him. Sent them there! Oh, dear God!

  ‘What have I done?’ Lady Munro stared in anguish up at the portrait of the laird. ‘You!’ she exclaimed with loathing. ‘This is your fault.’

  Nigh on thirty years, Christina had suffered her husband. Nigh on thirty years of duty and loyalty and this is what she was rewarded with. She had lost the love of Rory, her first born. Calumn, her second son, tolerated her, but was like a stranger to her. And Ailsa, the daughter she had sacrificed so much to have, whom she had done everything possible to keep close, would soon be lost to her for ever. All she had done, especially what she had done with Donald McNair, had been to bind Ailsa to her, and it had taken Alasdhair Ross, of all people, to show her that what she had actually done was drive her away.

  Damn him, Alasdhair Ross, he had been in the right of it! She hadn’t taken any account of what Ailsa wanted, or what would make her daughter happy, blinded as she was by the vision of her own hopes coming to pass after all this time. And Ailsa had been right, too—what point in denying it now? She should have had the strength of mind to build bridges a long time ago, when the laird became too ill and too dependent upon her to hold any sway. She had not, and regretted it bitterly. Rory’s wedding, Calumn’s wedding, her granddaughter Kirsty’s birth, all had come and gone, blighted by her cowardice, for that is what it was. One thing, she discovered, to dream of a time when she could finally play the maternal role, quite another to face the consequences of all the years of having failed to play it. She was afraid of rejection, so she continued to reject.

  Christina’s conscience, an embryonic creature with new-formed loyalties, was proving to have a very sharp bite. Procrastination was no longer an option. If she did not act now to make her peace with Ailsa, she never would. If she did not act now to tell her the real truth, to counter Morna’s flawed version, Ailsa’s life would be forever blighted by the belief that she had committed a terrible sin.

  Lady Munro eyed the laird’s image. He gazed down at her with a malevolent eye. ‘I will go to her,’ she told him defiantly, ‘and I will tell her, and there is nothing you can do to stop me.’ From her desk she took the little Macleod knife. ‘Not even you suspected, did you?’ she said with a vicious smile. ‘Not even you.’

  In one assured stroke, Christina Munro slashed diagonally through the canvas, severing the laird’s head from his body. ‘Goodbye, Iain,’ she said, dropping the knife on to the desk, turning her back on the tattered portrait and heading off in search of her groom.

  Ailsa had slept late, and was still abed when Alasdhair burst into the room after a perfunctory knock on the door. Startled, she sat up, clutching the sheet, her hair in wild disarray. ‘Alasdhair! What’s wrong?’ Even as she spoke, she remembered last night and a flush crept over her cheeks.

  Alasdhair, too, was flushed. There was a look on his face she had not seen before; his eyes glittered, his clothes were in some disarray, as if he had flung them on anyhow. ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘No. I mean yes. I mean …’ Now he was here, he realised he hadn’t thought it through. Never having declared himself before, he had no idea how to go about it. What’s more, in the short space of time it had taken him to get here, some of the certainty about Ailsa’s feelings for him had dissipated. What if she did not love him? Or worse, what if she had been on the verge of lo
ving him again and he had warned her off too effectively? Why had he been so against marriage? So set against love? He couldn’t remember now.

  ‘Ailsa.’ As a youth he had been impulsive, but success had come to him through deliberation and careful planning. Now he stood before her, about to make the most important declaration of his life, completely tongue-tied as what had seemed so simple a few moments ago now seemed impossible to articulate. It was like trying to catch feathers in a maelstrom.

  ‘Ailsa.’

  Her smile was uncertain. ‘What is it?’ Alasdhair took a deep breath. ‘Ailsa. Ailsa. Ailsa, I love you!’

  She stared in astonishment, wholly unable to believe what she’d heard, unwilling to allow herself to believe it. Alasdhair, too, seemed dumbstruck. Then he made a strange sound, like a croaky laugh, realised he was still hovering in the doorway, closed the door and strode over to the bed. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You didn’t mean it?’

  ‘No. Yes. Of course I meant it. I’m just sorry it came out like that.’ He took her hand and rubbed it against his cheek before letting it go again. ‘I’ve never done this before. I don’t know how to.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Asked someone to marry me.’

  ‘Oh.’ Ailsa’s eyes widened in shock. Her hand went to her breast, as if to quell the jumping of her heart.

  Alasdhair took another deep breath and sat down beside her on the bed, capturing her hand and holding it tight between his own. ‘I love you, Ailsa. You must think me a fool, for I think myself a fool for not recognising I loved you earlier. I kept thinking it would pass, whatever it was. I suppose I didn’t want it to be that. I thought it a weakness, you see, falling in love, and I’ve never had any problem avoiding it before. I thought I didn’t need anyone, didn’t want anyone to share my life. I thought I was stronger on my own. Safer. I thought—och, I thought all sorts of nonsense because the one thing I didn’t want to acknowledge was the truth. I love you, pure and simple.’