The Highlander's Return. Marguerite Kaye

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ