Читать книгу The Highlander's Return - Marguerite Kaye - Страница 10

She was taller, and had become much more statuesque in the intervening period. The soft contours of girlhood were gone; her beauty was more defined, no longer blurred by the immaturity of youth. The hair escaping its pins had darkened slightly from fair to gold. Only the wispy curls that clustered round her brow were the same. And her eyes. That strange purple-blue colour, like a gathering storm, they were exactly the same. Ailsa.

She didn’t look as if she smiled much now. She lacked the exuberance that had once so defined her. ‘I hardly recognised you, you’ve changed so much,’ Alasdhair said.

‘Not as much as you.’

‘That’s certainly true. I’m no Munro serf to be used and abused any longer.’

Ailsa flinched. ‘I never thought of you that way.’

‘Aye, that’s what I used to believe, until you proved me wrong.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Did you think I’d have forgotten? Or forgiven?’

His face was set in forbidding lines. Everything about him was dark and intense. Had Ailsa not been so overwrought, she’d have found time to be intimidated. ‘Forgotten what?’ she demanded. ‘That you broke your promise? One day, and for always, that’s what you said.’

‘And I meant it. Unlike you.’

‘How dare you! I meant it too, I meant every word of it, you must have known that I would not have said it unless I did.’ Ailsa’s voice was trembling on the brink of tears. She bit her cheek, an old trick, to staunch the flow.

‘What I know is that you played me for a fool,’ Alasdhair replied coldly. ‘No surprise, really, with that mother of yours as a teacher.’

‘I am not anything like my mother.’

‘I used to believe that too, but you proved me wrong on that score also.’ Alasdhair’s face was set, his smoky eyes hard-glazed.

Before she could stop them, tears filled Ailsa’s eyes. She brushed them impatiently away. ‘I don’t know why you’re being like this. If anyone has the right to be angry, it is I.’

‘You!’

She tossed her head back, dislodging a cluster of pins. ‘You left without even saying goodbye, without even trying to explain.’

A frown, so fierce his dark brows met, clouded Alasdhair’s brow. He felt as if mists were clouding round the facts, obscuring them. ‘That’s rich coming from you. You’re the one that betrayed me that night.’

‘I don’t understand …’ She could still see him, but he was hazy, as if a haar had come down from the hills. Her knees were shaking. There was a booming in her ears. ‘I’m sorry, I’m feeling a bit—I need to sit down.’ Ailsa staggered over to an ancient gravestone, sinking on to it regardless of the damage the lichen would do to her robe.

‘Ailsa.’ She was white as a sheet. Stricken. Her eyes glazed with shock. Surely she could not be acting? Alasdhair knelt down before her, tried to take her hands between his. Even through her gloves he could feel how cold they were. Then she snatched them back.

‘Please don’t touch me.’

Mortified, Alasdhair got to his feet. Big eyes framed by ridiculously long lashes gazed up at him. Silver-tipped lashes. Eyes glistening with tears. He had to remind himself that he was not the cause of them. Rather it was he who was the victim.

‘I’m sorry.’ Ailsa sniffed and wiped her eyes with her gloves again.

Alasdhair took his handkerchief from his coat pocket and handed it to her. Silence reigned for long, uncomfortable moments. In the background, Lord Munro’s final resting place was being filled in by a sexton who glanced over curiously every now and then at the intriguing scene being played out in front of him. The regular thud of sodden earth hitting the coffin lid beat a tattoo in Alasdhair’s brain. For a split second they met each other’s eyes. Recognition hung between them. Another ghost, almost tangible. The pure bittersweet clarity of the memory twisted his gut, sending him tumbling back to that day. Her birthday. An Rionnag. Their kiss. The simple joy of it. Happiness.

He closed his eyes, but it wouldn’t go away. It wouldn’t ever go away until he exorcised it, though the exorcism would be like ripping out his innards. It was what he had come for, after all. No matter how painful, no matter what it cost him, he would do it. ‘I need to know the truth, but I don’t want to talk here,’ he said. ‘There are more than enough ghosts here as it is.’

‘We could walk to …’

He instinctively knew what she was going to say.

‘The tree. How appropriate.’ His sarcastic tone did not wholly disguise the jagging pain.

The old oak, reputed to be more than two hundred years old, was a favourite spot of theirs in the old days. Its branches gave shelter, its trunk formed a comfortable prop to lean against, and the views out over the bay were spectacular. They made their way towards it in silence, settling down out of a habit as they always had, side by side, Ailsa on the right, Alasdhair the left, careful to keep a gap between them that had never been there before.

Alasdhair pulled off his gloves and hat, tossing the expensive items carelessly on to the ground. In front of them, the little chain of islets could clearly be seen. The Necklace provided a natural barrier, which bore the brunt of the vicious winter storms, creating a warmer, calmer stretch of water that could be fished all year round and where, in the summer, porpoises could be seen. None of the islets were inhabited. Grey seals came to pup on the beaches. Errin Mhor’s fishermen found occasional harbour waiting on the tide, and Errin Mhor’s children played and swam there.

‘Have you ever been back to the island?’ Alasdhair asked.

Ailsa shook her head. ‘No. No, I couldn’t.’ Alasdhair sighed heavily. ‘Why did you not come to me that last night, to say goodbye?’

‘I! It was you who did not come to me.’

‘But then …’ He stopped, looking perplexed. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Any more than I,’ Ailsa replied, ‘but it is beginning to look as if neither of us is in possession of the whole story.’

She looked so forlorn that he automatically reached for her hand, drawing back only at the last moment. ‘I’m not interested in your excuses, Ailsa, not after all this time,’ he said bitterly. ‘I just want to know the truth.’

‘I’m not lying,’ she replied indignantly. ‘I really did think you’d left without a word.’

‘How could you have thought I would treat you like that?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t. I mean—I was—I thought—’ Ailsa broke off and took a couple of deep breaths. ‘Maybe if you could tell me what happened? What you think happened, I mean, then I could tell you what I thought, and.’

‘And out of the two halves we might just get a whole, you mean?’ He wasn’t ready. Ancient history as the tale was, there were parts of it so raw he had barely allowed himself to look too closely at them. But it was what he had come for, wasn’t it—to throw the dust covers off the story?

‘All right. I’ll tell you my truth, but you must swear that you’ll tell me your own in turn. I want no lies, Ailsa.’

‘I swear.’

He stared at her for a long moment, at the big blue eyes that had never lied to him before, the set look on her face, as if she were girding herself for an ordeal, and that was so like how he felt himself that he believed her. ‘Very well.’

Alasdhair closed his eyes, blocking out the beautiful view and the distractingly beautiful face and took a tentative step back into the past, to a time when he was not Alasdhair Ross, the rich and successful tobacco merchant, but Alasdhair Ross, the outcast. He took another step, and another, until he was back where it all began and it all ended, on Ailsa’s sixteenth birthday, six years ago, and the past became the present.

Summer 1742

The world had changed irrevocably with that single kiss. The future burned bright and hopeful, a glittering place they would inhabit together.

How? Well that would have to wait until later. For the moment, Alasdhair’s burning desire to grasp this new world order held sway, such overwhelming sway that immediately after leaving Ailsa at the castle he went in search of Lord Munro. He needed to declare himself, and he needed to do it as soon as possible.

He had not allowed himself to think of failure, so when it came, as it did almost immediately, it was a shock. It should not have been—he knew perfectly well the laird’s views on his position—but love, Alasdhair had naïvely believed, could conquer all. It had given him confidence. Greatly misplaced confidence, as it turned out.

‘How dare you! The de’il take you, boy!’ Lord Munro rapped his walking stick furiously on the flagstones of the great hall.

The steel tip of the stick made a harsh grating sound. The deerhound that had been sleeping at the laird’s feet rose and let loose a low menacing growl. Alasdhair gritted his teeth.

‘Do ye have no sense of your place, boy? No sense of what you owe me? I took ye in when your ain mother abandoned ye and yon weak-willed man you call father upped and died on you as a result. I as good as own ye, and this is how ye repay me?’

Lord Munro got shakily to his feet. He had been a tall man once, but age and gout had taken their toll on his frame—though they could not be blamed for his temper, which had always been foul. Leaning heavily on the stick, he glowered at the upstart in front of him. ‘Obviously staying here in the castle has given ye an inflated idea of your own importance, boy.’

Inflated! Between them, the laird and his lady made sure there was no chance of that. Like the deerhound, Alasdhair’s hackles were up, but he forced himself to uncurl the fists that had formed in his work-calloused hands and to look the old man firmly in the eye. ‘If you mean I’m ambitious, Laird, then you’re in the right of it. You know fine that I’ve no intention of staying here to work as your factor. I’ve always dreamed of going to the New World and I will one day, but first I want your permission to court Ailsa. We have feelings for each other. I want to marry her and take her with me to America as my wife.’

Lord Munro snorted contemptuously. ‘You insolent upstart. Do ye really think I’d allow my daughter to be courted by the likes o’ you? You’re a serf, and what’s more you’re my serf. It’s high time ye remembered that. You’ve as much chance of marrying Ailsa as ye have of realising yon pipe dream of yours of making your fame and fortune abroad. Your place is here and your future mapped out. You’ll be my factor and a good one, I don’t doubt.’

Lord Munro looked at Alasdhair appraisingly. ‘I like you well enough, lad, you know that. You’ve got spirit, but you haven’t got the brains you were born with if you think there’s any point in pursuing this farcical notion. Now away with you, before I lose my temper.’

Alasdhair’s hands formed into two large fists. He had tried to do the honourable thing. He’d asked permission, and he’d asked on all but bended knee.

He deserved better than to be so casually dismissed. ‘What about Ailsa?’

‘What about her?’ Lord Munro snapped. ‘I’m her father. I can do what I want with her, just as I can do what I want with you, Alasdhair Ross.’

‘She loves me.’

‘I’ve no doubt she’s smitten with you,’ he snorted. ‘She’s at that age. But if she’s an itch, it’s most certainly not for you to scratch. I’ve plans for Ailsa, and I’ll no’ have you damaging the goods.’

‘What if Ailsa has other plans of her own?’

‘She’s a Munro born and bred, she kens fine what her duty is and she’ll put it before an impetuous cur like you.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

Lord Munro’s tenuous hold on his temper snapped. ‘You will keep your filthy hands off her, do you hear me?’ he roared. ‘Ailsa is the very last wench you should be thinking about in that way. You’ll keep away from her, do you hear me now? I’m not having Donald McNair accusing me of allowing someone else to plough his furrow.’

‘McNair!’

‘The Laird of Ardkinglass. ‘Tis a fine match,’ Lord Munro said with a satisfied smile.

‘Damn the match, fine or otherwise! Ailsa and I love each other and nobody, not even you, can change that. I am sorry to have to disobey you, but you give me no choice. I will court Ailsa and you cannot stop me.’

Lord Munro’s stick clattered on the flagstones. ‘Am I hearing right? After all I have said to ye, ye still insist on disobeying? Do you think I can’t stop you? You can think again about that, laddie, for I can.’

Alasdhair glared at him defiantly. ‘You can try, but you won’t succeed.’

Lord Munro looked at him in absolute astonishment, then he threw back his head and laughed. It was a deeply unpleasant sound and should have been a warning, but Alasdhair was far too caught up in the heady throes of fighting for his love to notice. ‘You think to defy me, do you? I’d think again, if I were you, Alasdhair Ross. This is your last chance.’

‘I won’t change my mind,’ Alasdhair said mutinously.

The Laird of Errin Mhor’s mouth formed into a thin line. ‘So be it. I see now I’ve given you too much rope. I won’t tolerate defiance, no matter who you are. You will keep away from my daughter, Alasdhair Ross, for now and for ever. And you will keep off all Munro lands, too, until the end of your days.’ Lord Munro leant on his stick and drew himself painfully up to his full height. ‘You are banished. Do you hear me?’ he shouted, pointing a finger straight at Alasdhair. ‘From this moment on you are dead to me and dead to all my clan. Hamish Sinclair will escort you off the Munro lands. I want you gone by midnight, and if I find you’ve made any attempt to see my daughter before then, I’ll have you thrashed. Away to hell with you. Or, better still, away to America. From what I hear of that savage land ye’ll be hard pushed to tell the difference.’

Lord Munro spat contemptuously on to the flagstones. ‘You disappoint me. I thought you had the makings of a man, Alasdhair Ross. I took you in, I indulged your rebellious nature even though it sore tested my patience, but I see now that you are a naïve, romantic fool. It is your own foolishness that has brought this upon your head. Now get out of my sight.’

Alasdhair strode down the corridor from the great hall, his face like thunder, cursing his own stupidity. He should have known better. If only he had thought it through, or bided his time, instead of rushing in with guns blazing like that. He had ruined everything with this one impetuous act.

He had to see Ailsa. He had to explain. He could not take her with him yet, but if she would wait for him—surely she would wait for him? He would go to America and he would make his fortune and he would come back for her and Lord Munro would eat his words and they would be married. It would take him a year or two, but what were a couple of years with so much at stake? She would understand, surely she would understand. Ignoring the laird’s dire warning, Alasdhair strode off in search of her.

‘And where do you think you’re going?’ An icy voice stopped him in his tracks.

‘Lady Munro!’

‘Alasdhair Ross.’ She looked at him with her customary disdain. ‘I do most sincerely hope you have no plans to further inflict your company on my daughter.’

‘What are you talking about?’

A glint like a flame reflected in a frozen pond came into her eye. ‘Your rather inept attempts at lovemaking have frightened her.’

‘You lie! Ailsa said—’

Lady Munro smiled coldly. ‘My daughter, Mr Ross, is too tender-hearted for her own good. She did not wish to hurt you with a rejection.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Ailsa is just sixteen. Much too young to know her own mind, and very much too immature to be the subject of your animal lusts.’

‘I took no liberties with your daughter,’ Alasdhair growled, ‘my intentions were completely honourable. You can check with the laird, if you don’t believe me.’

‘What has my husband to do with this?’ Lady Munro asked sharply.

‘I am just come from asking his permission to court your daughter.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘He said exactly what you would wish him to say,’ Alasdhair informed her bitterly. ‘That I had ideas above my station. But before you start celebrating, you should know that I informed him that it wouldn’t make any difference. I won’t give her up, even though I am banished.’

‘The laird has exiled you?’

‘Aye. And don’t pretend you’re anything other than glad, for you’ve always hated me.’

Lady Munro pursed her lips. ‘So you are finally to leave Errin Mhor. What do you intend to do?’

‘What I’ve always intended. I’m going to make a life for myself in America. Then I’ll come back for Ailsa. She’ll wait for me, I know she will.’

Lady Munro’s eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t think so, Mr Ross. Lord Munro and I have other plans for my daughter.’

‘I know all about your plans, the laird told me. But Ailsa loves me, she won’t let you marry her off to Donald McNair, no matter how good a match it is. She’ll wait for me, and I’ll prove you wrong, all of you. I’ll be every bit as good a match.’

‘No.’ Lady Munro’s voice was like cut glass. ‘No. My daughter’s place is here and she knows it.’

‘I don’t believe you. I don’t have time for this. Let me by, for I must see Ailsa before I go. I must explain to her that—’

‘Would you believe her if she told you herself?’ Lady Munro interrupted him ruthlessly.

‘What?’

‘You cannot talk to her here,’ Lady Munro continued, looking thoughtful now. ‘You have been banished, you should not even be here, and if his lordship finds out—well, we will all suffer, including Ailsa. You would not want that, I am sure.’

‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

‘Hmm.’ Lady Munro considered him for a long moment, then finally smiled a very thin smile. ‘It goes much against my better judgement, but I will speak to Ailsa. If she tells you herself how she feels, will you promise to do her the honour of believing her and leave her alone?’

‘Yes, but—’

Lady Munro raised an imperious hand. ‘You have vastly overestimated the strength of Ailsa’s feelings for you, Mr Ross, but you need not take my word for it. I will arrange a place and time for later tonight, well away from the castle, but I warn you, there is a limit to my influence. If she cannot bring herself to turn up, she will have spoken more eloquently than words ever could and I will hold you to your promise.’

Spring 1748

Alasdhair opened his eyes. ‘I waited for you like a fool, but of course you didn’t turn up. I realised then that your parents were both right. I was a naïve fool to think you loved me, and even if you had cared, why should you take a chance on someone with no firm prospects who wanted to uproot you from your family and home to take you halfway round the world? I left that night and I kept my promise to your mother. I never tried to get in touch with you again.’

Beside him, Ailsa’s face was pale and streaked with tears. ‘Don’t tell me you’re feeling sorry for me,’ Alasdhair said roughly. ‘You’re six years too late for that.’

She shook her head. ‘That’s not why I’m crying.’ The heartache of those days crashed over her like a breaker on to the shore. Ailsa stripped off her gloves and plucked at the brooch that held her arisaidh in place, unfastening the clasp, then trying to fasten it again, but her hands were shaking. The pin pricked her finger and the brooch fell on to the ground.

‘Here, let me.’

Alasdhair picked it up. He leaned towards her, holding the plaid in place with one hand, fastening the pin through the cloth with the other. His coat sleeve brushed her chin. His fingers were warm through the layers of her clothing. The nails were neatly trimmed. The hands immaculately clean. Tanned. Capable hands. Alasdhair’s hands.

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.

Ailsa hesitated. She felt as she did sometimes, wrestling with the boat in a storm or rushing her horse at a high dyke. Exhilarated and afraid in equal measure. Her skin tugged at her, as if it had needs of its own of a sudden, needs it had never expressed. Save once.

Alasdhair felt so solid against her and so warm, the heat from him seeping into her like a dram of whisky. His lips touched hers. She sighed and the warmth spread, like fingers of sunshine on a rock. His hands on the curve of her spine nestled her closer. He angled his head and his lips seemed to mould themselves to hers.

It was breathtakingly intimate. Her heart hammered in her breast. A capricious mixture of wanting and uncertainty swept over her, a yearning for something lost. Her mouth softened under his caress. His tongue licked along the length of her bottom lip. An adult’s kiss. Her first. With a soft sigh she nestled closer, touched the tip of her tongue to his. A shock sparked between them and Alasdhair brought the embrace to an abrupt end.

Taking a hasty step back, he felt a flush striping the sharp planes of his cheekbones. What the devil had he been thinking! ‘Forgive me. I should not have—I don’t know what came over me.’

Colour flooded Ailsa’s face. She stared up at him, wide-eyed with shock.

What did he think he was doing! He had come here to tie up loose ends, not entangle himself further, and especially not with another man’s property—a fact that he had managed to forget all about in the shock of seeing Ailsa again.

‘Where is McNair anyway?’ Alasdhair asked roughly, furious with the man for his absence. If he had been here to take better care of his wife, this would not have occurred. ‘I did not see him at the grave.’

Confused as much by the repressed anger in Alasdhair’s voice, which seemed to have come from nowhere, as by the abrupt change of topic, Ailsa struggled to assemble her thoughts. ‘He’s been ill. A fever of the blood. He has been confined to bed.’

A fever of the blood! Perhaps that is what he had himself. Alasdhair shook his head, as if doing so would clear the mist that had clouded his judgement, that was distracted by the completely irrelevant puzzle of Ailsa’s response to him. If he had not known better, he would have thought she had no more experience of kisses than the last time their lips had met. ‘I should not have kissed you. It is no excuse, but I forgot that you were married, just for the moment.’

Ailsa flushed a deeper red. ‘But I’m not married. Despite what my father told you I was not betrothed to Donald McNair six years ago—or if my father made any promises on my behalf then, it was without my knowledge. I admit, I am betrothed to Donald now, but it is of much more recent standing.’

‘Not married!’ It had not occurred to him that she would still be single. It was a disturbing notion and not one he wanted to think about. ‘Wed or betrothed, long-standing or recent, it makes no difference,’ he said, more to himself than Ailsa. ‘You are spoken for and I should not have taken such a liberty.’

‘Nor I granted it to you,’ Ailsa said unhappily. She had never had any difficulty in refusing such liberties to others. Not even Donald had been permitted such intimacy, but kissing Alasdhair had seemed the most natural thing in the world. And the most delightful. She had forgotten it could be delightful, a kiss. Like a promise. Except this one, like the last one Alasdhair made, would remain for ever unfulfilled. ‘What about you, Alasdhair?’

‘What about me?’

‘Are you married?’

‘Of course not,’ he snapped. ‘Do you think me the sort of man to go about kissing women if I were?

Anyway, I have no need of a wife. I have no need of anyone.’

He wasn’t married. He didn’t want to be married and it was probably her fault that he was set against it. She couldn’t blame him. He wasn’t married. This thought above all buzzed around in her head, as impossible to ignore and as useless as an angry blue bottle, and it was all too much. Far too much. She didn’t want to think any more. She wanted nothing so much as to be safe under the covers of her bed. Weariness assaulted her.

Noticing her pallor, Alasdhair felt a twinge of regret. He, too, felt as if he had been pummelled relentlessly, reeling from the onslaught the day had made on his emotions. ‘Come,’ he said, picking up her gloves from the ground and handing them to her, ‘I should get you back to the castle. You look exhausted.’

Ailsa tried valiantly for a smile. ‘It’s all been a bit—overwhelming.’

‘That’s one way of putting it.’ Alasdhair took her hand. ‘We belonged to each other once, before you were pledged to Donald McNair. We did not get to say our farewells six years ago. We were long overdue that kiss. I won’t feel guilty about it, and nor should you.’

Through the starkly handsome face of the man, the boy peered out. She answered him with the sweet smile of the girl she had been.

He would have kissed her again, seeing that smile he remembered so well. She would not refuse him. It was with immense difficulty that he chose honour over desire. Even as he tucked her hand into his arm, he was regretting it. Ailsa stumbled against him as the path grew rocky. Alasdhair tightened his grip on her arm. He could help her home. That much at least he could do with a clear conscience.