“Aisla?” Niall pressed, stepping closer, until she could smell the salty sweat on his skin.
“I’m fine,” she said, and gently dislodging the pleasing weight of his arm from her waist, Aisla reached for her horse.
She mounted, fast, determined to keep her eyes bright and clear, and free of the stinging tears threatening to show themselves. Niall stared at her with a somewhat wary, though warm, gaze. And suddenly, all of it—the mines he’d built, the revelation that he no longer drank, the pride evident in his stance—it overwhelmed her.
“I’ll let you return to your work,” she finished, and with a slap of the reins, rode away.
First the dance at the feast, and now this. Twice Niall had set her back on her heels, surprising her. If she wasn’t careful, she might well hand him the wager he had with Ronan.
Chapter Eleven
Niall’s study at Tarben Castle had been polished and cleaned to within an inch of its life, much like everything else in the keep. The massive mahogany desk gleamed with beeswax, the carpets had been beaten, and the furniture rearranged in a way that suited the space. A vase of fresh-cut flowers graced the burnished mantel, sitting beside freshly laundered drapes that had been purloined from Maclaren, he was sure, to replace the heavy velvet ones that had been there before. Light poured into the room. Two deep armchairs upholstered in warm brown and gold brocade now sat in front of the hearth invitingly.
Niall wanted to kick them.
He didn’t want his study warm and welcoming, damn it. He wanted the old, dusty carpets, mismatched furniture, and ugly drapes. He wanted everything the way it’d been, dark and dismal, before she’d come and disarranged it all. His wife was a dangerous tempest, determined to leave havoc in her wake. He sighed, leaning back in his chair. Though it seemed she hadn’t brought her usual obscene flair to his study. There were no pastel flounces, no portraits of dogs, no lewd artistry. In fact, if he were in a more congenial frame of mind, he’d agree that the tasteful decor suited him.
Niall’s gaze lifted to the Rubens that hung over the fireplace. The gruesome painting of the chained Titan, Prometheus, being devoured by an eagle, was one of the artist’s more violent works. Though clearly in untold agony, the Titan held the eagle’s stare boldly. A savage, proud grin caught Niall’s lips. No matter what she thought of him or their marriage, this composition hinted at how she saw him. It was how he saw himself, after all, as a man who had faced his demons and faced them still.
He stared down at the worn brown leather that encased the stump of his left arm. He’d learned to live with the pain and the ignominy of not having a hand, but he’d never let that defeat him. No, he’d trained as brutally as any other soldier, worked as hard as any other man. He pulled at the metal fastenings, loosening the leather, and opened a nearby drawer. A variety of accoutrements lay there, inventions of his own design like the lance, ones made to help him perform various tasks. The hook and lance were the most useful, but there were others that served as weapons, levers, pincers, and even a wooden carving shaped like a hand…whose only purpose was vanity.
Niall drew his fingertip down the sculpted thumb made of oak, and growled low in his throat before grabbing the pincers and slamming the drawer shut. He attached the device, refastened the leather hooks, and scowled at his neatly ordered desk. With a petulant swipe, he upended the stack of ledgers and books. There, that was better. Wasn’t it?
Now he felt like a child throwing a tantrum.
The faintest scent of honeysuckle blossoms wafted into the air as the papers fluttered to the floor. Her scent. The maddening thing was everywhere, in his chamber, in the corridors, in every blasted room. He closed his eyes and exhaled. Days before, when she’d visited him at the mines and nearly tumbled, he’d unthinkingly caught her around the waist. Even through the layers of her clothing, her skin had been imprinted on his. Every part of her was imprinted on him. This physical memory of her was the strangest thing. He’d been assaulted with images of her, long and lithe and lissome, in bed, in the bath, in his arms. It had taken everything inside of him not to draw her fully into his embrace then and there.
She’d seemed surprised to learn of the mines and his success. Though why wouldn’t she have been? All he’d done during the short course of their marriage had been to brawl with Hamish and drink himself into a stupor. Niall stared at his hand…the loss of it had consumed him so much that he’d lost the entirety of who he was. It was only when Aisla had left him that he’d had the courage to find himself. In that one sense, he couldn’t regret her leaving him. If she hadn’t, he doubted he would be the man he was now.
It was a conundrum. In truth, he owed her far more than he’d given her credit for. The man he’d been and the man he’d become were two different people. Everything he had done, every success he’d achieved, had been to prove Aisla wrong. To prove to her and to himself that he wasn’t a useless drunk. But in doing so over the past six years, he’d come to realize that maybe she’d been right to leave in the first place.
“Laird,” a voice said with a knock at the door.
He drew a hard breath, suddenly grateful for the distraction from his disturbing thoughts. He didn’t want to owe her a damn thing. “Enter.”
The foul look on Fenella’s face should have been a warning, but Niall welcomed it. Anything to offset the feeling of guilt that suddenly swam in his veins.
“A word?” she asked.
They’d been friends for a long time. Niall knew that Fenella would have welcomed more, but he’d never acted on the invitation. She was a handsome woman, certainly, but he’d been too focused on bringing Tarbendale—and himself—back from the dead to have time for the demands of a woman. Over the years, she’d become a fixture in his keep, if not his life.
“As ye wish,” he said, indicating the empty chair on the other side of the desk.
She sat, her hands folded in her lap, the sour expression on her face not abating in the least. “She goes, or I go.”
Niall froze, his slitted gaze snapping to hers. “Ye ken I dunnae like ultimatums, Fenella.”
Her mouth flattened, but something like anxiety flickered in her eyes. She was overstepping and she knew it. The bonds of friendship would allow her certain freedoms, but he was laird here. And Aisla was still his wife, for a few weeks more at least.
“The servants are talking,” Fenella hissed, ignoring the clear warning. “Wagering whether yer lady wife”—she spat the last two words—“will be staying on at Tarbendale…”
“What if she does?”
She went on without pausing, “…with her lover.”
The three words hit their intended mark. He flinched. Cold satisfaction shone in her eyes, and Niall felt a muscle begin to tick in his jaw, though he kept his expression bland. He’d known Fenella was a stubborn, hard woman with a proud streak, and that she was protective as well. After he lost his hand, she’d glare daggers at anyone who looked at his stump a hair too long, or made disparaging comments, usually regarding his certain inability to become a Maclaren warrior one day.
He’d known she was fierce, but he hadn’t expected her to be so vicious. It was a side of her he’d never seen. He exhaled. Or had he? Years ago, she’d been the one to whisper about Aisla’s first love sniffing around her skirts. Had she done that out of loyalty for Niall? Or out of spite for his wife? For a moment, Niall wondered how many times Aisla had been victim to this vengeful version of Fenella.
He blinked, drawn back into a memory of yet another argument in their bedchamber.
“Fenella hates me,” Aisla had wept. “They all hate me, yer clanspeople.”
He’d scowled, dismissing her fears. “They dunnae ken ye, Aisla. How can they hate ye? And Fenella is my friend. She doesnae want me to be hurt.”
“She told me ye would never love an outsider, much less a grasping t…trollop who…spreads her legs for anyone who happens by.”
Stupefied, he had laughed at her and scoffed, “Fenella would never say
such a thing.”
Now, watching the unsmiling woman sitting across from him, he wasn’t so sure. Had Fenella treated Aisla differently all those years ago? When no one was looking? Or listening? Then again, in a drunken haze, he’d been the one to call his own wife terrible names. He’d been hurt and jealous, but that was no excuse.
“Explain yerself.”
Fenella had known him long enough to be wary of such a tone, but she squared her shoulders, her mouth tightening to a bloodless line. A furious, ugly emotion glinted in her dark eyes, and Niall almost recoiled from the force of it. He’d never seen Fenella look thus. Or perhaps he’d been too foxed to notice.
“Will ye allow yerself to be cuckolded so openly, laird?” she said, her blunt words shocking him into immobility. “Will ye allow her to shame yer clanspeople, even while ye welcome this woman into yer home? A woman who fully intends to marry another once she is free of ye?”
“I ken what she plans to do, Fenella. Ye dunnae need to remind me,” he said with clear warning.
Fenella’s voice gentled. “Niall, I dunnae say this to hurt ye, but ye have to open yer eyes. Ye’ve been blind. While ye’re working in the mines all day, she’s off gallivanting with that Frenchman of hers. Alone.”
Niall sank back into his chair, the tongue-lashing he’d been about to give forgotten. “Ye’ve seen this?”
Fenella nodded. “Aye.”
He welcomed the sudden brutal lance of pain. Christ, he was a sodding fool. He had been blind. “Where has she gone,” he bit out, “with him?”
He did not miss the curl of triumph on Fenella’s lips, but he was too angry to care. “They’ve ridden to the ruins of the old keep, to the loch, to the village inn…”
Rage throttled any sanity he possessed. “The inn?”
“For hours,” she said, plunging the knife in deeper. She stood, bracing her palms on his desk. “They are lovers, Niall. She doesnae deserve ye. She never belonged here and she doesnae now.”
“Leave me.”
After he heard the door close, he reached blindly for the bottom drawer where he kept a bottle of whisky, for no other reason other than to keep old demons close. With a shaking hand, he poured a glass and stared at the amber liquid. The pungent fumes reached his nostrils and he inhaled deeply before taking a mouthful and spitting it back into the glass. Thanks to Ronan’s intervention, he hadn’t touched a drink in years. Six years to be precise. But hell, whisky had been wonderful at dulling the sharp edges of pain. Of making one forget how to feel.
Niall glanced up at the Rubens, watching the eagle gouge out the bloody liver of Prometheus.
He was no stranger to pain.
Hurling the glass and its contents into the fireplace, he stood. He wouldn’t think of his wife riding along the loch, the wind whipping her fair curls as she smiled at another. He wouldn’t think of her limbs tangled with her lover’s while she played mistress of Tarbendale. He wouldn’t think of her caught in the throes of passion, lips parted and eyes glazed in pleasure. Or walking down the aisle with another man. With a ragged oath, he flung the entire bottle into the smoldering hearth, the stench of whisky saturating the air. The Rubens taunted him.
He was Prometheus, and she the eagle, eating his liver. His suffering, his torture.
Niall quit the room.
“Where is my wife?” he demanded of a passing maid walking by with an armful of linens that smelled indecently of honeysuckle.
“I believe her ladyship is in her chamber, laird,” she said, bobbing and paling at the black look on his face.
He took the stairs three at a time, not bothering to knock on Aisla’s door before shoving it open and stalling mid-step. His wife was in the bath. Two faces turned to him, one fighting for composure and the other carefully blank.
“Out,” he told the maid.
“I am in the bath, Laird Tarbendale,” Aisla said calmly, nothing in her tone mirroring her unrest or indicating what she thought of his intrusion. “Stay, Pauline.”
“I see that. I require a private word.”
“Can’t it wait?”
“Nae, it cannae.” He glared at the maid. “Leave us.”
Aisla’s lady’s maid stared at him with no expression on her pinched face, before turning questioningly to her mistress, who nodded. Niall felt an irrational spurt of rage for all things French as she bobbed a graceful curtsy before leaving the room. He kicked the door shut behind her and prowled toward the large copper tub in which his wife was immersed. Her dark gold hair was piled high on her head and secured with pins, and the skin of her face and throat was flushed pink with the heat.
Niall paced away before his eyes could drop past her collarbone to the translucent surface of the water. He inhaled a strangled breath, only to be assaulted by her honeysuckle scent again. He wanted to lick it from that lustrous, damp skin. He inched backward two more steps.
“Nae roses?” he asked with a sardonic twist of his lips.
She cleared her throat. “You didn’t come here to talk about soap, did you?”
“Nae.” He dragged one of the sitting room chairs closer and sat.
Aisla clenched her jaw, the only sign that she wasn’t indifferent to his presence. “Might I finish my bath in private, and then we will speak?”
“I am yer husband,” he said, “and husbands have every right to be in the bedchambers of their wives. I also have the right to tell ye that the Frenchman is no’ welcome at Tarbendale. Or to be alone in yer company at any time.”
“You cannot make such a demand,” she said, sitting up and sloshing the bathwater. His eyes fastened to the wet slopes of her breasts that had become visible for an instant, before she blushed and sank back down. Niall could not tear the seductive image from his brain, however, nor the urge to peruse the rest of the womanly curves that lay beneath the steam. Her scent and her proximity were as potent as the whisky fumes in his study. He wanted to drink her up. Consume her.
“I can, and I have.”
Her brows slammed together. “How dare you?”
“I won’t have ye cuckolding me in front of my clan, ye ken?” he said, sitting back and folding his arms across his chest as if they could hold him back from lurching forward and snatching her from the bath.
Her eyes widened. “Cuckolding you? Julien is my friend, and has not made one improper advance since we’ve been here. He is a gentleman.”
Niall bristled at her loyal defense and the insinuation that he was the opposite. “Fenella said ye’d been riding with the nob, that ye’d been seen at the inn together. Alone.”
“Fenella.” The odd note in Aisla’s voice threw him, but then she started to laugh, and for a moment, he was mesmerized at the display of her long elegant throat, thrown back in mirth. She lifted a wet palm to wipe tears from her eyes before she met his gaze once more. “Of course, it had to be her,” she murmured. “I’ve the strangest sense of history repeating itself.”
“What do ye mean?”
“Two words: Dougal Buchanan.”
He half rose out of his seat, a rush anger making him shake. “Do no’ say that bloody name to me.”
“Why?” She smiled, though like her laugh, it was humorless. “Because Fenella told you I was flirting with him? Because you listened to her lies so many times instead of trusting me, your own wife?”
Fury and jealousy ignited within him. He’d seen her flirting first hand when he’d crept to Paris like a dog, desperate to win her back. Leclerc wasn’t the first and he wouldn’t be the last. “Didnae ye?”
“You always believed what you wanted to believe, Niall,” she said. “It never mattered what I said, did it?”
“It wasnae just Fenella,” he bit out. “Buchanan himself spoke of the birthmark on yer lower back. How else would he have seen such a thing?”
Her eyes widened with surprise. “Perhaps when he spied on me bathing at the loch at Montgomery. My brothers, Callan and Patrick, thrashed him to within an inch of his life when they caught him.�
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“And I suppose he conveniently remembered such an intimate detail years later.”
She shook her head. “Why would he even mention that to you?”
“Why wouldn’t he?” Niall laughed, rage and pain making him ruthless. “Will ye be true to him, then? Yer Frenchman, when all this is said and done?”
Her mouth opened and shut, her beautiful face glowering with outrage. “Will I…how dare ye? Ye were the one who I found drunk as a wheelbarrow in Fenella’s cottage.”
“Yer brogue is back,” he taunted with no small amount of gratification.
“You can go straight to hell.” She glared at him, resting her arms along the copper edge of the tub. “Turn around so I can get out.”
“Nae.”
He leaned back in his chair, reveling in her discomfort. He’d stay there all day if he had to. No doubt she would as well, as stubborn as she was, but he’d be damned if he gave in first. However, it seemed that Niall had underestimated her once again. Her mouth twisted and those eyes glittered with defiant purpose as she held his gaze—and rose. He lost his breath, and all his good sense, as she surfaced like a naiad from the waves, water sluicing down her flushed, naked body.
Hell.
She was Venus in the flesh.
Anger forgotten, Niall gorged on the sight. Her breasts were round and firm, her waist small. Her legs were as long and trim as he remembered, though the luscious curve of her bottom and the womanly flare of her hips were both new. The damp tuft of gold at the juncture of her thighs sent a wave of heat and desire surging through his body, weakening him in places and hardening him painfully in others. Aisla had always been a beautiful girl, but now, the woman left him utterly speechless. Mindless with want.
Still boldly holding his stare, though a deepening pink flush now crested her cheeks, she reached for a length of toweling and lifted one svelte limb over the side of the tub. It was followed by the other in a graceful arc that hinted briefly at the shadowed treasure lying between them. Niall gulped. He was as hard as stone, any other emotion forgotten but lust. It coursed through him like a current, erasing everything in the wake of his driving, blistering need. His fingers gripped the armrest of the chair so hard that the wood nearly splintered beneath them. An inarticulate sound escaped his throat—a growl of a predator—and Aisla stilled, watching him.
Sweet Home Highlander_Tartans and Titans Page 14
