“I havenae heard from the messenger I sent to Edinburgh, but ye’re right. Desertion and adultery are grounds for a divorce, and if ye’re willing to plea as such to the courts in Inverness, I will no’ contest it or ye.”
“I…thank you, Niall. Laird. I know my coming here has—”
“I’m no’ finished.”
Aisla’s parted lips snapped shut. “You’re not?”
“Did ye really think it would be that easy?” he asked. “That I’d be happy to give ye a divorce and let ye waltz off over the horizon with another man?”
Aisla’s coppery eyes watched him closely, unblinking. He had her turned around completely. “I’d hoped you’d see that we are both wasting our time and possibilities.”
“Funny how ye should put it like that. Time and possibility. Time is exactly what I want returned to me.”
A wary twist touched the corner of her mouth, and her gaze narrowed in on him. “What kind of fool statement is that? No one can have time returned to them.”
“I want one week,” he said, the leery sharpness of her gaze growing ever more skeptical.
“One week for what?”
He moved toward her, slowly closing the space between them. He traced her scent of honey blossom and musk—a natural perfume that had intoxicated him when they’d been younger.
“One week for every year ye’ve been gone. That’s six weeks that ye owe me, sweet wife. Six weeks here in Scotland at my side as my wife.” Satisfaction curled low in his abdomen at her stricken expression, the pink hues draining from her cheeks. “And then, I’ll grant ye a divorce.”
Chapter Five
Aisla fought to keep her knees locked and her mind clear of the sudden burn to smack her husband across his smirking cheek. Was the man daft? Or was he so deep into his cups that he’d finally lost any sense of reason? She gave a delicate sniff, but there was no scent of whisky or any other spirits in the air.
But then she remembered, and Aisla bit the inside of her cheek. She knew what this was. It had nothing to do with spirits, and everything to do with the conversation she had overheard between her husband and brother-in-law at the stables after dinner the first night. She had needed some fresh air after the tense dinner, and as she’d passed the stables, had heard Ronan goading Niall on. Betting him to get her to change her mind about him.
As if such a thing were possible!
Aisla had heard Niall laugh, and she’d moved on, laughing herself. She knew her own mind, and Niall Maclaren would never sway it. Money had been mentioned, she recalled; a debt Ronan had been willing to forget if Niall succeeded. She had brushed it off, certain her husband would not be so desperate. But evidently, her addlepated husband had agreed. Otherwise, why else would he demand such an asinine thing as this?
“Six weeks?” she repeated. She’d planned to be gone from Maclaren in another six hours! The sole reason she’d come to Scotland without waiting for Niall’s response to her letter had been for Julien’s sake. His mother’s illness had taken a downward turn, and he wanted to marry before she died. Six weeks was far too much time.
Aisla’s mouth opened to tell him what she’d overheard in the stables and that he could take his ridiculous wager to the devil, but her response was thwarted by a soft scuffing of feet behind Niall. They both turned, and in the entrance to Aisla’s bedchamber stood his mother, the Duchess of Dunrannoch.
She blinked in surprise as if to see her son there, but then smiled brightly, despite the rock-solid tension in the air. “Oh, good. I am glad that you are both here. It saves me from taking a trip to Tarbendale.” She patted her son’s cheek. “Not that I need any excuse to visit you.” She cleared her throat delicately. “The messenger from Edinburgh arrived early this morning.”
Niall frowned. “He was supposed to come to me, at Tarbendale.”
Her mouth opened and closed, cheeks flushing red before she answered. “Don’t be cross, my love. I was out for my morning walk and saw him, so I offered to deliver Mr. Stevenson’s response to you myself.”
“What did he say?”
“A divorce is procurable, however, there is a slight complication. Your marriage records will have to be located in Inverness since he has no record of them. He estimates it will take a few weeks, maybe more.”
Aisla scowled. “A few weeks?”
“At the least. Perhaps even a month or two,” the duchess said. “Mr. Stevenson promises to sort things out, but he’s advised for you to stay in Scotland until the situation is resolved.”
“Why?” Aisla asked, her suspicions riding high. It had to be an unlikely coincidence. The duchess would not have been part of her sons’ wager, would she?
“It will be less complicated if he needs to reach you quickly,” Lady Dunrannoch explained in an oddly strained voice, her eyes shifting away. “And if you are both in one place.”
Niall grinned, the rotter, and Aisla felt a renewed urge to kick him. “She can stay here at Maclaren,” he said.
The duchess shook her head. “Not with the festival. The rooms are being cleaned and aired, and I only have one room left, so Lord Leclerc will have to stay there.” She shot him a sideways look. “Unless, of course, you wish the man to stay with you, at Tarben Castle?”
The irked expression Niall sent his mother right then hinted to Aisla that he had not, in fact, involved the duchess in whatever ploy he and Ronan had cobbled together.
“He is no’ my guest,” he grumbled.
“Or perhaps they could share the room here,” Lady Dunrannoch mused. “Though it would raise a few eyebrows.”
Niall’s expression blackened some more. “I dunnae give a damn where she sleeps.”
“Language, Niall,” Lady Dunnranoch said, her stony expression matching her son’s. “Very well then.”
“I do not have six weeks,” Aisla said, floundering for an excuse, but settling for the truth. “Julien’s mother is ill. He wishes to marry while she is still alive.”
The duchess gave her a sympathetic smile, though Aisla thought she heard Niall growl again. “If a divorce is what you truly want, my dear, then you must stay put as Mr. Stevenson advises.”
“Can this not be done via correspondence?”
“No, I don’t believe so.” The duchess waved a hand, but did not offer anything more. Aisla sat heavily in a chair as Lady Dunrannoch took her leave. “I’ll let the two of you continue your talk.”
Aisla didn’t want to talk. She wanted to rail and scream. She wanted to throw something, preferably at the man crowding the doorway. She had spent the first night back at Maclaren wide awake in that blasted bed, praying Niall would come to his senses and accept the idea of a divorce. She’d also spent much of that same night sinking into the mattress, recalling the first few days of their marriage here at the castle, when Niall had kept her in that same bed, making love to her until they were replete with exhaustion, and making plans for them and the baby growing within her belly.
It had been torture, and the second night, Aisla had eventually thrown off the blankets and dragged them over to the small sofa near the hearth, where she’d spent more time dwelling on the man her husband had become. How callous and unyielding he’d seemed at dinner the other evening, how utterly unperturbed at her arrival. How disturbingly cynical…as though nothing could ever reach him.
He’d made a show of nonchalance when she’d asked for the divorce, but his emotions had leaked out in small ways. The quiver of a frown. The tightening of his eyes. Still, he hadn’t lost his temper. It had given her hope that he would get on with things in a civil manner. But no, he wasn’t civil, and little had she known that opposition, and support for his unreasonable demands, would come from another, more practical source. She hadn’t foreseen a delay like this at all.
“This is impossible,” she said, her eyes lifting to Niall. “It’s much too long. There’s no way I can stay here.”
“Aye, I forgot how much ye hate the land of yer birth. If ye want a divorce so badly, a fe
w weeks is no’ a high price to pay.” Niall’s cold glare met hers from where he still stood, radiating annoyance. “’Tis what is required, bhean.”
“I haven’t been your wife for six years! Ye lost the right to call me that long ago in Gaelic or any other language, ye ken?”
The corner of his full mouth quirked upward, and Aisla cringed, knowing the smirk was from the reappearance of her brogue. She struggled for composure, fisting her hands at her sides, just in case they gave into the inclination of tearing his hair out by the roots. He’d lost his bloody mind. There was no way she could stay this close to him.
“I don’t hate Scotland,” she said in a calmer tone.
“Then why did ye leave?”
She blinked. “You pushed me away, Niall. You told me to leave, if you recall.”
Anger rolled across his features. “I recall suggesting a return to Montgomery. A temporary return, ye ken. But ye decided to go to the Continent instead, and forget yer life here. Ye left me for all of Clan Maclaren to see, for me to become an object of pity once more.”
Her mouth went slack. “Pity?”
“Poor Niall Maclaren,” he scoffed in a derisive tone. “He cannae pleasure his wife with one hand so the lass ran off to find herself another husband with two. ’Tis the truth. I’m surprised the local bards havenae made it into a ditty yet.” His laugh was devoid of humor.
Her gaze fell to the leather-wrapped stump that was Niall’s left hand. She’d never seen him as less of a man because of it, but Niall’s bellicose, defeated attitude toward his injury was something only he could heal for himself. “You know that never mattered to me. I loved you regardless, all of you, flawed or otherwise.”
“Did ye?” he murmured. “Then why did ye turn to another?”
He meant Dougal Buchanan, of course. Aisla tensed with the urge to fling up her hands and scream that she’d never done any such thing. That she’d never lied to him or broken her vows. With Dougal Buchanan or anyone else. Yet he’d never believed her when she’d claimed as much. She could only presume someone else had been telling him she was unfaithful. Someone else he did trust.
“I’m finished trying to convince you of anything,” she said quietly. “It’s clear you only want to believe the lies that have been fed to you.”
Aisla watched him…this proud man she’d exchanged vows with a lifetime ago, and she understood what she hadn’t then in the disaffection of his expression and the flatness of his words. He’d been scarred by pain, too. She hadn’t been the only casualty of their meteoric love. They’d been too young, consumed by the passions of youth and folly. It was a wonder they hadn’t destroyed each other. Though, in a way, they had. She could never love again. And he’d become a hard, irascible man.
He expelled a breath, and with a brief shake of his head, glanced away. “It doesnae matter.”
Aisla reached out an arm toward him. “It does matter. It matters because you have to see that me being here for any length of time is ludicrous. Surely your solicitor can get it done without me being underfoot? This cannot be easy for you, either.”
He eyed her, his gaze raking hers. “What’s that?”
“Having me here after all this time.”
He walked toward the cold hearth, stooping to stir the warm embers. “Nae, it’s no’ convenient. But ’tis a matter of weeks, Aisla. A few weeks for the freedom that ye crave. And if ye recall, before my mother interrupted us ’twas a few weeks I asked of ye in order for me to give ye the divorce. Ye see, wife? ’Tis fate.”
“I don’t believe in fate, husband.”
His gaze fastened to her. “What are ye so worried about? Are ye so afraid that ye’ll succumb to me in such a short time?”
Succumb to him?
“I’m not afraid of that.”
“I think ye are.”
She thought of the wager she’d overheard, knowing it was his motivation, and felt her frustration and anger swell. “And I think you overestimate your charms.”
His chin angled toward her over his shoulder, his sudden smile making her doubt the veracity of her own words. And her will. God, no man should have a smile that sinful and full of decadent promise. She turned and flounced back toward the bed, and instantly regretted her path. The recollection of what they’d done in that bed—tangled sheets, tangled limbs, and utterly sated bodies—tore through her.
She spared him a glance, only to see that his eyes, too, were also locked on the bed. Her thighs felt like jelly, her pulse hammering in her veins.
“I ken my own skill,” he drawled. “Especially where ye’re concerned.”
“Is that so?” she replied, resenting his knowing tone and the subsequent tingle that wound its way down her spine. She cleared her suddenly dry throat and glanced to the room where Pauline slept. “There’s nothing here that I haven’t seen before. Trust me, Niall, I’ve learned that life with you doesn’t stretch beyond the boundaries of heartache and despair.”
“I see yer tongue hasnae lost its sting.”
Niall unfolded his long body after coaxing a small flame to life in the hearth and relaxed himself into a nearby chair. He was dressed in riding clothes, which meant he’d been awake for a while. His boots were dusty and his shirt open at the neck. Aisla didn’t recall his skin at his throat being so bronzed as if he labored outdoors on a regular basis. Idly, she wondered whether the healthy color extended past the indent of his collar.
Niall tented a slow eyebrow, and Aisla dragged her eyes away, a blast of heat scorching her cheeks at being caught staring at him.
“I have a life in Paris,” she snapped, her brain going blank for a second. “I can’t abandon it for weeks on end.”
“I think ye’re lying to yerself.”
“About what?”
He drew two knuckles lazily across the curve of his bottom lip. Warmth prickled in her chest and shot straight to her thighs, but at least it didn’t rush to her face, alerting him of the effect his words had on her. His voice lowered into a growl so seductive that her bare toes dug into the thick pile of the Aubusson rug. “About no’ being afraid.”
“You are wrong. I am not one of your lightskirts, Niall,” she replied, proud her voice remained calm. “Nor do I crave your attentions in that way.”
“Ye used to love my…attentions.”
Niall’s eyes tapered to brilliant blue slits that speared the distance with lethal precision. God, he could slay with those eyes. How could any normal-blooded woman be immune? Though he had not moved an inch from his position in the chair, Aisla felt the press of the bed on the backs of her legs as if he had leaned into her with the full length of his body. Her mouth parted on a gasp, her nipples tautening beneath her night rail and her legs trembling. Her eyes dipped to the noticeable bulge between his hips that was outlined indecently by the soft buckskin, and she swallowed convulsively before wrenching her gaze away.
He’s doing it for a wager, you idiot.
“A lot has changed,” she said. “Let’s not play games. I have no wish to bed you, even if you begged on your knees.”
“Trust me, leannan, if there is to be any bedding between us, ’twill be ye who will be doing the begging.”
The Gaelic word was so steeped in sex, his smirk so full of overconfident deviltry, that her knees turned into traitors. She wanted to throw a shoe at his head. His hot stare raked her body, and she might have well been stripped naked. Gracious, but his presence made her feel sheep-headed.
Aisla slumped weakly against the bed, hoping he would not notice, but she didn’t miss his gleam of triumph. “’Twill be a cold day in hell before that happens, Niall Maclaren, no matter how irresistible you think you are.”
Dimples appeared in his cheeks, making him look like the boy he’d been. “Ye think I’m irresistible?”
“I think you’re irritating.”
“Keep telling yerself that. I ken ye still feel the passion between us.”
Aye, he was right. But she was no longer a naive eighteen-
year-old with stars in her eyes and girlish flights of fancy between her ears. Her cocksure husband was in for a rude awakening. This silly delay was simply a means to an end, and she had to treat it as such. Aisla was also no stranger to seduction or how to use her feminine wiles to get what she wanted. One could not live in Paris, the city of everlasting love, and not become skilled in the push and pull of attraction. She needed to turn the tide, regain advantage.
The wager!
She knew about it, but he didn’t know that. If she had to stay here for the next few weeks, she wasn’t going to be some pawn in whatever game he was playing with Ronan.
Aisla propped her elbows on the bed, certain she’d secured his attention, before licking her lips as if she’d consumed a particularly delicious morsel of cake. His mouth tightened, and she felt a wicked pulse of satisfaction. “Care to make a wager on that?”
“What terms do ye offer?” he said, leaning forward in his chair, his voice husky.
Blast, she hadn’t expected him to capitulate so easily. Then again, he was a man, one who was clearly fond of wagering.
Aisla racked her brains. She had no intention of seducing the cad, especially when she was in the process of betrothing herself to another. It felt too sordid. But if winning the bet meant that she could teach him a lesson, she’d do what she had to.
“If I succeed in seducing you, you’ll admit your fault in what happened to our marriage. Publically, to all of your clanspeople. And you’ll convince the duchess and Mr. Stevenson that it’s better for me to return to Paris until the divorce can be settled.”
He shifted his jaw in contemplation. “And if I seduce ye?” he asked, his voice slathering her senses like heated honey.
There was only one answer she could give that he’d agree to. “Then I will agree to the full six weeks you’ve proposed.” She swallowed. “At your side, as your wife.”
Just the idea made her feel nauseous. She could not lose.
“And Leclerc?” he drawled. “I hate to think what yer current lover would feel over such an arrangement.”
Sweet Home Highlander Page 6