The Highlander's Return

Alasdhair. His name—the name she hadn’t allowed herself to think, never mind say, for fear of the pain it caused—shimmered into her mind.

Her Alasdhair, he’d been once. Fleetingly.

Somehow, Ailsa found the courage to step through the gate and into his presence. It were better they get this over now, with no one else around. It had to be done. The pain would ease after this, as it did when a wound was lanced.

‘Alasdhair?’

Pain, pure and bright as the sharpest needle, pierced him.

Ailsa.

She sounded different. Her voice was older, of course, and lower—husky rather than musical—but he’d recognise her anywhere.

‘Ailsa.’ Her name felt rusty with disuse. His voice sounded hoarse.

They stared silently at each other. Six long years. They stood as if set in amber, drinking in the changes the years had wrought …

AUTHOR NOTE

Highland Scots have a long and successful history of emigration to North America. Jacobites on the run, impoverished lairds and dispossessed crofters alike sought fame and fortune in the New World in their droves during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in a bid to escape persecution or poverty. Some failed, some returned home, but many, like Alasdhair my hero, carved out a very successful life for themselves.

At the same time entrepreneurial Glaswegian merchants were taking advantage of the favourable Trade Winds to cross the Atlantic quicker than their English counterparts. Their clippers laden with consumer goods difficult to obtain in the New World, these canny Scots willingly granted the plantation owners credit with which to buy their goods—something their English counterparts were reluctant to do. Returning with a cargo of tobacco (and, sadly, in many cases slaves), the Tobacco Lords, as they came to be known, became rich on the proceeds, and by the middle of the eighteenth century completely dominated the trade. It was a logical step for plantation owners such as Alasdhair to enter into a business deal with these distributors, ensuring the best price for his own produce. It was actually the research I did for an article about Glasgow’s Merchant City, home of the Tobacco Lords, which planted the seed for Alasdhair’s story.

As a historian and writer of historical romances, authenticity matters a lot to me. As a Scot, evoking the true ambience of the Highlands is also something I’m passionate about. Though Errin Mhor, where this story is set, doesn’t actually exist, I know exactly where it is: on the west coast, near Oban. All the surrounding places mentioned in Alasdhair and Ailsa’s story are real places in my native Argyll. The Tigh an Truish, a drovers’ inn on the Isle of Seil, so called because it was where Highlanders going any further south swapped their plaids for trews, is still there today, as are many of the little ferry and drovers’ inns which would have provided my hero and heroine with shelter on their journey. They visit Inverary at the time the present-day castle was being built. In order to secure the view, the Duke of Argyll really did have the original fishing village ‘moved’ a few hundred yards along the banks of Loch Fyne, where the town, with its Palladian frontage, remains to this day.

If you visit Argyll you won’t find Errin Mhor, but I hope that you’ll discover for yourself the essence of it, which is far more beautiful than anything I could ever describe.

About the Author

Born and educated in Scotland, MARGUERITE KAYE originally qualified as a lawyer but chose not to practise—a decision which was a relief both to her and to the Scottish legal establishment. While carving out a successful career in IT, she occupied herself with her twin passions of studying history and reading, picking up first-class honours and a Masters degree along the way.

The course of her life changed dramatically when she found her soul mate. After an idyllic year out, spent travelling round the Mediterranean, Marguerite decided to take the plunge and pursue her life-long ambition to write for a living.

Marguerite has published history and travel articles, as well as short stories, but romances are her passion. Marguerite describes Georgette Heyer and Doris Day as her biggest early influences, and her partner as her inspiration.

Marguerite would love to hear from you. You can contact her at: Marguerite_Kaye@hotmail.co.uk

Previous novels by the same author:

THE WICKED LORD RASENBY

THE RAKE AND THE HEIRESS

INNOCENT IN THE SHEIKH’S HAREM

(part of Summer Sheikhs anthology)

THE GOVERNESS AND THE SHEIKH

THE HIGHLANDER’S REDEMPTION*

*Highland Brides

and in Mills & Boon^® Historical Undone! eBooks:

THE CAPTAIN’S WICKED WAGER

THE HIGHLANDER AND THE SEA SIREN

BITTEN BY DESIRE

TEMPTATION IS THE NIGHT

CLAIMED BY THE WOLF PRINCE BOUND TO THE WOLF PRINCE

THE HIGHLANDER AND THE WOLF PRINCESS

THE SHEIKH’S IMPETUOUS LOVE-SLAVE

The Highlander’s

Return

Marguerite Kaye

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For J, my own Highland hero! Again. And again.

And always. Just love.

Prologue

The Highlands, Scotland—Summer 1742

The sun was just beginning to set as they made sail for home and Errin Mhor. They had spent an idyllic day on the largest of the scattered string of islands known locally as the Necklace. The Highland sky was streaked with pink and burnished gold, slowly turning to crimson as the sun made its stately journey towards the horizon. The little skiff, An Rionnag, bobbed her way across the silver-tipped waves towards shore, her single sail catching the faint breeze that had risen with the turning of the tide.

Alasdhair sat in the stern, one hand keeping a loose hold on the tiller, the other arm resting along the side of the boat. They’d made this trip so many times he could probably navigate it blindfolded. He was sitting with his usual casual grace, bare-footed and bare-legged, wearing only his plaid and an old shirt, open at the neck. Facing him, from her seat in the prow, Ailsa smiled contentedly. It was her sixteenth birthday, which meant, Alasdhair had reminded her this morning, according to tradition that she was an adult now, free to do anything she wanted. All she had ever wanted was to escape, to get away from the oppressive atmosphere of the castle, released from the autocratic iron rule of her father and the cold indifference of her mother. But Ailsa knew that it wasn’t as simple as that. As a laird’s daughter, her life wasn’t hers to dictate. The clan and duty took precedence over personal desires. But on a day like this, what better place to escape to, albeit temporarily, than the island. Their island. On board The Star. With Alasdhair.

Her skin felt tight from the salty sea-spray and the heat of the sun. Her hair had escaped its braid as usual, curling wildly down her back, reaching almost to her waist. She felt pleasantly tired; the kind of contented lethargy that comes from a day spent laughing and lazing with no one but themselves to please.

A perfect day. As ever, she and Alasdhair had been in total accord. Despite the five-year gap that separated them, they had always been close. Closer still since Ailsa’s older brother Calumn, Alasdhair’s boyhood friend, had left Errin Mhor to join the Redcoat army. Now that it was just the two of them at the castle, they spent even more of their free time in each other’s company. The laird’s much-neglected daughter and his rebellious ward, kindred spirits united by adversity—for neither of them felt wanted, neither was loved.

She had known him all her life, the young man seated opposite her, his dark brown eyes closed as he tilted his face back to catch the last of the sun’s rays. His hair, the blue-black of a raven’s wing, tangled and unkempt, grew almost to his shoulders—shoulders that strained at the seams of the old shirt he wore. She’d noticed earlier, as they sat fishing from the rocks, how much he seemed to have filled out of late. What had been skin and bone was now sculpted with muscle and sinew. He was no longer all sharp angles, but quite definitely contoured. A sprinkling of silky black hair grew over his chest, his forearms and his muscular legs, that had lost their stork-like appearance. Alasdhair wasn’t a laddie any more, but a man. And, Ailsa realised of a sudden, as if looking at him for the first time, an extremely attractive one at that.

Her heart did a funny little skipping movement, a hop and a jump, giving her a fluttery feeling in her stomach, as if there were a shoal of herrings—silver darlings—swimming about in there. When had all these changes happened? Why hadn’t she noticed until now?

Alasdhair opened his eyes, pushing his hair back from his high brow, and smiled lazily at her. His mouth always curved readily into a smile. It was made for smiling, despite the fact that life had given him little to smile about. Ailsa smiled back.

Her smile was dazzling, Alasdhair thought. There was something about Ailsa, a natural exuberance, that always made him feel as if nothing was quite as bad as it seemed. Despite her mother’s indifference and her father’s tyranny, Ailsa had a love of life that was infectious. Alasdhair held out his hand. ‘Come and sit up here with me and watch the sunset,’ he said, making room for her on the narrow bench.

He watched as Ailsa picked her way daintily towards him. Her skirt and petticoat were old, a faded grey that was once the same vibrant blue as her eyes. Her arisaidh lay discarded at her feet. She had no jacket or waistcoat, only her sark, the ties at the neck loose. The wide sleeves of the shift billowed out over her arms, that were tanned a light biscuity colour. Her fair hair, streaked almost white in places by the sun, trailed in a cloud down her back, wispy curls haloing her forehead. He saw it then, so clearly he couldn’t understand why he hadn’t realised it before. She was beautiful.

As she sat down beside him, her skirts brushing his plaid, awareness shot through him. He could feel her thigh, warm and soft through the fabric of her skirts. Her forearm touched his, slim and elegant, the wrist delicate, so tiny he could circle it with his fingers. She smelled of sea and sand and pure Scots air.

Ailsa, the feisty wee lassie he had taught to ride and to fish, and to sail, and even, at her urging, how to use a dirk. It was with that wee Ailsa he had spent the day, but it was a different one who was in the boat now, her scent making it impossible for him not to notice her. This Ailsa, the enticing creature sitting next to him, her arm resting on his, her hair tickling his face, the contours of her breasts outlined by the breeze pressing against her sark, was someone quite different from the girl he’d sailed out with only this morning. This Ailsa was a sensual creature, with distracting curves and a tantalising presence.

Desire lurched at him, sending the blood surging to his groin. Embarrassed, Alasdhair shifted in his seat. Under the pretence of tightening the sail, he looked at her and wondered if he had been blind. The long neck. The tender hollow of her throat. The soft swell of her bosom. The indent of her waist. The elegant line of her calves. Her ankles, the slender high-arched feet that rested on a lobster creel that lay on the bottom of the boat, so delicately beautiful he had an overwhelming urge to press his lips to them.

How had he failed to notice this remarkable transformation?

He swung An Rionnag round to catch the wind. The tiller jerked violently as the sail filled and instinctively Ailsa reached out to help try to control it. Her hand met Alasdhair’s on the worn wood. Something sparked at the contact, a crackle in the air like the drop in pressure that presages a tide turning or a storm coming. Blue eyes, almost purple, met smoky brown. They looked at each other as if seeing for the first time. As if being for the first time.

Alasdhair’s breath caught in his throat. His stomach tightened. ‘Ailsa?’

She felt as if she had been waiting for this moment all her life. As if everything in the world, the stars, the sun and moon, had been waiting too for this time and this place and this man. As if they were about to emerge from their chrysalises, transformed, readied for their real purpose. This moment. This perfect, perfect moment.

‘Alasdhair.’ Even his name seemed different.

He hardly dared touch her, but he was hardly able not to. He tenderly stroked the wisps of curls away from her forehead. He kissed the fair brows. She closed her eyes, tilting her face towards him. He kissed the sunburnt tip of her nose. It was lightly scattered with freckles. She sighed. He put his arm around her. She nestled closer. Her bare foot brushed his. It was the most erotic thing that had ever happened to him. The arch of her sole. The tickle of her toes, curling delightfully on his.

Then his lips found hers and he kissed her, and in that second where their lips met, that awkward moment of his inexperience and her untouched lips, he knew. And he knew, from the crackling of the air around them, the stillness of sea, the suspension of The Star’s rocking, he knew that she knew, too—how could she not? For their kiss had changed the world for ever.

His kiss was gentle, too gentle to be sufficient, already more than he had ever dreamed of. He was afraid to frighten her with the depths of passion even this almost innocent caress aroused in him. He was horribly conscious of the five-year gap in experience that lay between them, astounded, astonished at the way her untutored, naïve touch set him afire.

It had always been he who protected her when she courted danger. It was always he who came to her rescue when she came to grief—and she often did, for she was fearless. It was always he who was there to pick her up and dust her down and dry her tears and promise not to tell. He who kept her safe.

He did so now, forcing himself to end their embrace, to put her from him, though his body sang and pleaded and begged him not to and Ailsa, too, murmured a soft, breathy protest in a voice he’d never heard before. A voice that whispered over his senses like a siren. He had never felt such a whirlwind of emotions storming through him, yet he had enough, just enough, control left. He would not take advantage. Despite her mother’s poor opinion of him, he was an honourable man.

Ailsa struggled for breath. She touched her lips with her fingertips. So that was what it was like to be kissed! Heady, as if she’d had too much wine or too much sun. Frothy like the waves. Exciting like a sudden summer storm. That was a kiss.

‘Ailsa, I didn’t mean—I should not have—you know I would never take advantage.’

‘Don’t be daft, of course I know that.’ She smiled at him, daringly taking his hand and pressing it to her cheek. It was a nice hand, though it was callused from the endless menial jobs her father doled out, his way of trying to bring Alasdhair’s rebellious spirit under control—teaching him his proper place in the scheme of things. Her father would have a long wait, she thought.

‘Are you sure I didn’t frighten you?’ Alasdhair asked.

She shook her head.

‘I don’t know what came over me. I felt as if I was seeing you properly for the first time.’

‘That’s exactly how I felt.’ They laughed. Then they kissed again, and this time their kiss was more confident. It had the tantalising sweetness of a promise not yet bloomed to full ripeness. Tentative, like all new-born things, and heady, like all things strange and illicit.

The tilt of the boat on the crest of a wave, the scrape of her keel on the first of the rocks that bordered the shore, finally brought them to their senses. They laughed in unison when they realised how far they had travelled without noticing. With the ease of familiarity and long practice, they set about bringing An Rionnag into the castle’s little private jetty where the laird’s own boat, embossed with the Munro coat of arms and with places for sixteen oarsmen, took pride of place. Leaping on to shore, Alasdhair eyed it with a mixture of disdain and trepidation. Dread God, was the Munro motto. He doubted the laird did. Lord Munro bowed to no one. He alone owned his world, his fiefdom and all the people in it. A feudal laird in every sense, even his wife and children were there to do his bidding. Looking up, Alasdhair saw the shadow of a figure at the long windows that overlooked the castle’s gardens.

‘Mother,’ Ailsa said anxiously, following his gaze. ‘I didn’t tell her where I was going.’

‘Do you think she’ll have had plans?’

‘For my birthday?’ Ailsa laughed scornfully. ‘I doubt she’ll even have remembered it’s today.’

‘Do you want me to come in with you?’

‘You’ll only make her worse if she’s in one of her moods.’ The brightness of the day was fading with the sun, that had almost set. Her mother was waiting for her, she could sense her brooding presence. ‘I’d better go to her, get whatever it is out of the way.’

‘Ailsa?’

‘Aye?’

‘Today. It was special.’

Ailsa smiled. ‘Yes it was, Alasdhair, the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me.’

‘And me.’ He wanted to kiss her again. He hated it ending like this, under Lady Munro’s watchful gaze. In the gloaming, they should be nothing but shadows, but Alasdhair wasn’t convinced she couldn’t see in the dark, like some malevolent wildcat. ‘One day,’ he said, satisfying himself with pressing Ailsa’s hand, ‘we’ll be together for always and then every day will be special like today.’

‘One day, and for always,’ she agreed.

It was a promise. A solemn vow they both intended to keep.

Chapter One

Spring 1748

The drums had been beating out their grim message for over a week now. Highlanders had gathered from near and far on this most sombre day for the burial of Lord Munro, Laird of Errin Mhor. In the great hall of Errin Mhor castle, the coffin stood on its bier, draped in a black velvet mort-cloth embroidered in gold thread with the Munro motto, Dread God. It was the same cloth that had adorned the coffin of Lord Munro’s father, and his father before him.

Ailsa Munro leaned precariously out of the tiny window of the small turret room that she had claimed for her own parlour, the better to survey the gathering mourners. Tall as she was, the window was built high into the wall, requiring her to stand on tiptoe. Had any one of the mourners chosen to look up, they’d have caught a charming glimpse of the laird’s daughter, her distinctive golden hair piled precariously high on her head, her vibrant blue eyes alight with interest, looking rather more like a princess from a fairy story waiting to be rescued than a grieving daughter about to join a funeral procession.

The mourners, however, were too intent on passing the time of day with each other and speculating upon the likely changes the laird’s passing would entail, to bother with looking up. Auld enemies and allies alike mingled in the weak spring sunshine. Kith and kin, and a few—a very few—friends. For it took fortitude and a thick skin not to become for ever estranged from such a dour man, as Lord Munro had been. Downstairs, where Ailsa should be by now, the men of highest status loitered, ready to be granted the honour of bearing her father’s colours, his standards, claymore, dirk and targe. Clan chiefs and neighbouring lairds, the cream of the Highland aristocracy, all had come to pay their respects. Even those who had been for the Pretender during the late Rebellion had, with the passing of Lord Munro, a staunch and vociferous supporter of the crown, come to mend fences with his son, Ailsa’s brother Calumn.

The funeral of a laird. Such an occasion as this should be filled with lamentation, but for Ailsa, as for the majority of people present, the day was much more about marking the end of an era and looking to the future than mourning an old man’s passing. In these fast-changing times, with the Jacobite cause defeated, Bonnie Prince Charlie fled for France, and the Government set on turning the law of the land into the weapon that would destroy the rebellious Highland clans, Lord Munro had become an anachronism, an old-fashioned feudal laird intent on keeping with tradition at any cost. He’d retained the loyalty of his people, if not their respect, but he never knew their love.

Ailsa sighed as she closed the window. Her own relationship with her father had been like the Scottish winter, she thought as she made her way, via the back stairs, to her bedchamber—cold and driech with occasional storms, when her own not inconsiderable will clashed with Lord Munro’s consistently unyielding disposition. Fortunately, since the laird had been largely indifferent to his daughter’s existence, and on the whole she had been at pains not to remind him of it, these confrontations had been memorable but infrequent.

Images from that worst confrontation of them all crept into her mind like spectres. Six years had passed, long enough for it to be water under the bridge. Cold, dark and icy water. Ailsa shivered and tried to banish the haunting memories from her mind.

There were enough ghosts at large today already; no need to conjure up any more from the past.

She stuck a few more precautionary pins into her thick golden hair, in what she already knew was a vain effort to prevent it escaping the constraints of its bun. ‘Thrawn old bugger as he was, he was still my sire,’ she said aloud to her reflection. ‘It would be nice if I could come up with one happy memory on the day we bury him.’

But she couldn’t, though it was not for the want of trying. For old Lord Munro had been a long time dying, grimly clinging on to the thread of his existence long after his wife, his children and his doctor had given him up for gone. As in life, so in his exit from it, Lord Munro had been determined not to depart his mortal coil until he was good and ready. ‘So we can’t really be blamed for being more relieved than sad,’ Ailsa said, continuing to speak out loud to herself, a habit developed as a child, when she had invented several friends to keep her company. Being the laird’s daughter, she had not been allowed to mix with the village children. ‘At least he’ll have a grand send off, for this must be the most long-awaited and best-planned funeral there has been in the Highlands for many a year.’

She fixed a pretty gold brooch intricately worked with an ancient Celtic design to her dress, and surveyed her appearance in the long mirror with a critical eye. Almost without exception, everyone acquainted with Lady Munro, an acknowledged beauty, commented on the strong resemblance between mother and daughter, but Ailsa found the comparison wearisome. Frankly, the last thing she wanted to be told was that she was like her mother, but there was no getting away from it. In the last few years her hair had lost its girlish fairness, taking on the same burnished gold shade as her mother and both her brothers. Like herself though, it seemed to have rather too much of a mind of its own, and was never tamed for long. And as to her eyes—yes, they were the same striking colour as her mother’s too, though not, as one swain had claimed, royal purple. They reminded Ailsa more of the purpley-blue colour of a bruise. Her face was a nice oval, and her features on the whole seemed to please people, though in her own opinion her mouth was a little too large. Did that amount to beauty? She didn’t know. What she did know was that unfortunately there was no escaping the mirror’s evidence—she was her mother’s daughter.

Ailsa pulled a face. In her opinion, her mother had more reason than most to be relieved by Lord Munro’s death, for it had by no means been a happy marriage. How could it have been, with the laird expecting unquestioning obedience, and his lady forced to forsake all others for him? Even her own children. If his death was a welcome relief, Lady Munro was doing her celebrating in private. ‘Whatever it is she’s feeling, she’s keeping to herself as usual,’ Ailsa muttered to her reflection. ‘I swear it is ice and not blood which runs through Mother’s veins.’

She gave the neckline of her dress a final twitch. Like all her clothes, it was an expensive garment, something her mother had insisted on since she had turned sixteen.

‘I’m going to have to take you in hand, Ailsa,’ Lady Munro had said firmly. ‘You’re not a child any more. It’s time you started dressing, and behaving as befits your position as a Highland laird’s daughter.’

Lady Munro had insisted on stays and lacings and stockings and all the other trappings of wealth and status, too. Not that Ailsa had anything against pretty clothes, but she felt constrained in them. Sometimes she yearned for the feel of her bare foot on sand, the sun on her neck, the freedom from corsets and lacing without having to face the recriminations that inevitably followed such minor aberrations.

Today’s toilette was an open robe made of silk woven in the Munro colours over a dark blue petticoat. As was the fashion, the bodice was tightly laced, showing off the curve of her bosom and the contrasting tiny span of her waist. Voluptuous, is how most men would describe her, but in this one respect Ailsa would have preferred to resemble her mother’s slimmer, less curvaceous figure. She was rather self-conscious about her body and despised the way it drew men’s attentions. The arisaidh, a traditional plaid shawl of blue-striped silk, which today she wore belted and pinned, went some way to disguise it.

Her indifference to the fulsome compliments she attracted and her rejection of all attempts to make love to her seemed, perplexingly, to encourage her admirers to try all the harder. Intimacy of that sort left Ailsa cold. Her handsome dowry and position as the rich laird’s only daughter ensured she had no lack of suitors, but despite the sheer volume of them, none had ever come close to touching her heart. Not in the way that …

Automatically, Ailsa put a sharp brake on that strain of thought. What was the saying? Once bitten, twice shy. She was in no need of a second lesson. Not that love entered into the equation, in any case. She existed for the sole purpose of making a good match—her father had made that abundantly clear six years ago.

The slow tolling of the bell in the castle tower began, rousing Ailsa from her reverie, its low peal reverberating out across the flat fertile Munro lands, bouncing off the mountains that bordered Errin Mhor to echo eerily in the still of the morning. The bell warded off the evil spirits that everyone knew lurked at a wake, ready to take advantage when people’s defences where down. It also marked the beginnings of the funeral rites.

It was time. Pulling her arisaidh up to cover her hair, Ailsa quit her chamber and made her way quickly down the stairs.

In the great hall her brother Calumn, cutting an imposing figure in full ceremonial Highland dress, readied the chief mourners for his father’s last journey. The low drone of the bagpipes being inflated was the signal for all to assemble in good order. The new Laird of Errin Mhor kissed his wife lingeringly on the lips. Madeleine, who was expecting their first child, would stay behind to be Lady Munro’s chief comforter—not that the newly-made widow would accept comfort from anyone, but it was the custom. As it was the custom that Ailsa, too, should remain with her mother while others formed the funeral procession, but in this Ailsa had been adamant. She would pay her last respects with the men, not sit meekly at home with Lady Munro’s chosen group of gentry women.

The dead laird’s piper struck up the mournful lament of the pibroch. Ailsa took the black cushion bearing her father’s gauntlets and hat from Calumn and made her way outside. The dead man’s champion, Hamish Sinclair, waited, astride a horse with a black-velvet cover, to lead the procession. Lord Munro’s own horse, similarly draped in black, was pawing nervously at the ground. Saddle-less, it was a stark symbol of the laird’s absence.

Four long poles were inserted under the coffin. By tradition, the first eight bearers were the deceased’s closest kin. Calumn and his half-brother Rory Macleod took the lead, a decision that had caused some controversy since Rory was not a blood relation of the dead laird, being the product of Lady Munro’s first marriage. Lord Munro had insisted his wife surrender her first born upon their own marriage. Lady Munro and Rory had been estranged ever since, but Calumn had insisted that his brother have his place at the funeral regardless.

The coffin was hoisted up from the bier. The pipes wailed. The bearers walked slowly down the front steps of the castle, keeping their eyes firmly focused ahead and concentrating on the task at hand, for it was a precarious job, balancing the heavy coffin on four thin poles.

Ailsa stood at the head of the mourners. Behind her, the long winding line of men and women fell in, ranked in order from the clan chiefs and their women to the castle servants, the laird’s tenants and serfs, crofters and cotters, drovers and fishermen. She knew most of them, if not personally then by reputation. Almost without exception the men wore the two plaids, the filleadh beg and the filleadh mòr, in defiance of the law that banned Highland dress for any but the aristocracy. Most of the women wore their best Sabbath blacks. Expressions were suitably sombre. The two horses, one mounted, one riderless, led the way.

The procession wended down the castle’s imposing driveway, through the heavy wrought-iron gates emblazoned with the Munro coat of arms, to the village of Errin Mhor where the first change of bearers took place. ‘Twas customary for this to happen while the procession continued, so the new bearers stood ahead in formation, two lines of four men performing the transfer of weight in pairs. Since dropping a pole was believed to signify the death of the bearer, each was very careful to effect a perfect handover. Villagers, bairns and even dogs stood silent, heads bowed respectfully as the procession passed on its way. The Munro siblings remained at the front of the mourners, a striking threesome with their golden hair and tall figures, that drew the eye of every onlooker and raised a sigh in the breasts of several.

‘Twas also tradition that refreshment in the form of uisge beathe, the water of life, otherwise known as whisky, was meted out in generous drams en route, for following a wake was thirsty work. Neither of the Munro brothers partook, but many others did. So much so that two hours later when they finally reached the lonely graveyard in a remote corner of the Munro land that was the traditional burial place of the lairds, the uisge beathe, combined with the steepness of the incline, the narrowness of the coffin track, and the suppressed anticipation of a long-awaited event finally coming to pass, a weariness had set in on the procession. The ordered train had become ragged. Red faces, sweaty brows and a general air of relief replaced the solemn expressions with which they had started the journey. The old laird was no lightweight.

Ailsa stepped aside at the gate, the eulogy and interment being strictly a male province. Not even she was brave enough to break that rule. She was joined by the other women. Tired and dusty, glad to have the long hike over without mishap, they stood around in little groups, by and large ignoring the ceremony at the graveside, occupying themselves with a little light gossip and a little idle speculation, murmuring together in the low, musical lilt of the Gaelic that they continued to favour over the use of English decreed by the new law.

Ailsa roamed from one clique to another, accepting the politely offered platitudes and condolences from those ladies she knew her mother would insist be given precedence, before joining a huddle of Errin Mhor tenants, the wives and daughters of local villagers. At the centre of the group was Shona MacBrayne, the fey wife, with whom Ailsa spent some of her days, gathering herbs and mixing potions, assisting her in tending to the sick and helping out at the occasional birth.

‘I’ll no insult you by saying I’m sorry, Ailsa,’ Shona said in a voice too low for the others to hear. ‘Your father had his time and plenty more besides. I can only pray that the journey he is taking now is up the way, and not down.’

‘Whichever direction it is, you can be in no doubt that it is of my father’s choosing,’ Ailsa said irreverently. Like everyone else, she was beginning to feel the light-headed relief that so often occurs in the aftermath of a funeral.

Shona chuckled. ‘Aye, well, at least now he’s out of the way that brother of yours can finally get his hands on the Munro lands. They’re in bad heart, no getting away from the fact that the old laird didnae gie them the attention they need.’

‘Poor Calumn, he’s been champing at the bit to make changes since he returned last year,’ Ailsa agreed with a smile.

‘Aye, and change is bound to put your mother’s nose out of joint. However carefully he goes about things, there’s going to be a stramash,’ Shona said astutely. ‘You’d be better off out of it. Anyways, ‘tis time you were settled in a home of your own. Your father was a long time dying; I’d no be surprised if the McNair was getting impatient to put his ring on your finger.’

Ailsa fiddled with the fastening of her brooch. ‘Why should he be? My father settled things between us a while ago. The contracts are signed—what’s the rush?’

Shona’s brow furrowed. ‘It is a good match for the clan, Ailsa. Donald McNair is a rich man, the marriage will secure us a good ally. Don’t tell me you’re thinking of throwing him o’er?’

‘Of course not. I’m perfectly well aware of how good a match it is. My father would not have made it otherwise.’

‘And you, lass. What do you think of it all?’

‘What does it matter what I think?’ Ailsa said dismissively. Seeing the shocked look on old Shona’s face, she realised she had been indiscreet. One thing to think such things, quite another to share them with her father’s—brother’s—tenants. She touched the old woman’s arm. ‘I like him well enough. As well as he likes me, any road. Donald and I have an understanding, Shona.’ Ailsa stooped to give her a quick hug. ‘Don’t fash yourself over me, for there’s no need. I can take care of myself.’

‘Aye, that’s true enough,’ Shona agreed sadly. ‘Your mother—’

But at this point they were interrupted by the blacksmith’s wife wanting Shona’s opinion on the best way to treat her husband’s aching joints. Ailsa wandered off, staring abstractedly down at the winding coffin track. Shona was right, it was high time she was wed. She had agreed to the betrothal eventually. Donald, her father’s choice, was handsome enough, in a stern way. Why not? she’d thought at the time. What other fate was there in store for her save spinsterhood and dependence? At least this way she would have a home of her own.

Yet, once the papers were signed, she had found herself curiously reluctant to act. She had procrastinated and pleaded the mitigating circumstances of her father’s illness. Now his death meant she had run out of excuses and her fate loomed dishearteningly ahead of her. She’d persuaded herself that her father’s death would be liberating, but instead of feeling free she felt even more trapped and constrained.

She’d also hoped that his death would be the catalyst for the thawing in her relationship with her mother, but Lady Munro had, if anything, retreated even further behind the invisible barrier that separated her from her daughter. Ailsa had thought herself too inured to her mother’s coldness to be hurt by it. She discovered that she was not.

What she needed was a different sort of change, though she had no idea what that could possibly be. Marriage to Donald McNair did not feel like the answer, though deep in her heart she knew it was her fate. There was no avoiding duty, another hard-learned lesson. The carefree lass she had once been was long gone. Her future, which for a few magical hours six years ago had seemed such a glittering place, now loomed, lacking lustre and faintly intimidating.

Ailsa wandered over to the cemetery gate. Calumn was still speaking, the attention of all the men fixed firmly on him. Turning back to rejoin Shona, she was startled by a tall, black-clad figure.

He seemed to appear from nowhere. One minute the coffin track was empty, the next minute there he was. Ailsa jumped out of his way, but he barely seemed to notice her, so intent was he on reaching the ceremony at the graveside. She had an impression of a strikingly handsome face, a fall of black hair, and then he was through the gate, standing at the back of the male mourners with his hat in his hand.

Her curiosity well and truly roused, Ailsa leaned over the crumbling dry-stone dyke that formed the graveyard’s boundary. Something about the man’s stance seemed familiar. Something about the way he held his head, the way he stood, his hands, holding his hat and gloves, clasped behind his back. He was a tall man, taller even than Calumn. His curtain of hair, which she saw now was not black, but the blue-black of a raven’s wing, brushed a pair of exceedingly broad shoulders.

Her heart began to thump heavily. It could not be! A passing resemblance merely, that was all.

The stranger wore riding boots, highly polished under the dust of travel. Black breeches clung to his long legs. A black coat of expensive cut with full skirts and heavy cuffs accentuated his well-built frame. White lace ruffles on his shirtsleeves covered tanned hands. In comparison to the other men, he had an air of sophistication, of foreignness even, yet he stood there for all the world as if he belonged. The agility with which he had climbed the hill was impressive, too. His dress might proclaim him the wealthy city gentleman, but his body was that of a Highlander.

It could not possibly be him, yet part of her was absolutely certain it could be no one else.

But Alasdhair Ross was banished!

Six years ago he had left and not a word since. It could not be him, it made no sense. Why would he come back after all this time? And though he looked like him, this stranger was far too self-assured and far too sophisticated to be Alasdhair. If it was him, he had not just changed, he had been transformed.

It could not be him, Ailsa told herself. It couldn’t be.

She had just about persuaded herself when he moved, turning fractionally to the side so that she could see his profile. Her heart, encased in ice since the day he left, gave a sickening lurch, like an animal woken too soon from hibernation, and in that instant she knew.

Just a fleeting glance she caught before he turned away again, but it was enough. He was clean shaven. A strong jaw, with a mouth held in an austere line, but it was the same mouth that always used to quirk up in a half-smile. Fine lines around his eyes, grooves running from mouth to nose, his face deeply tanned. But they were the same eyes, dark brown, peat-smoked, under brows heavy and black, almost meeting in the middle. A forbiddingly handsome face, harder and more defined than the good-looking young man she remembered, who had not had this mature man’s air of authority. But it was still the same face.

Though she had never in her life fainted, Ailsa thought she was about to do just that. Her vision swam. Her head pounded. Her mouth was dry. She clutched at the mossy top of the cemetery wall, closed her eyes and breathed deeply.

‘Tell me my old eyes are deceiving me.’

Ailsa looked up, startled.

‘It is him, isn’t it?’ Shona said, nodding at the man in black. ‘Alasdhair Ross, a ghost from the past, come to join all the others in the graveyard.’ She chuckled. ‘He was banished for challenging the laird’s authority, but your father never did say why.’

‘No,’ Ailsa replied shortly. ‘The laird was never one to explain himself.’

‘You had aye time for him, did you not?’ Shona probed. ‘I mind now, you used to follow Ross about like a wee puppy.’

‘It was a long time ago. I was very young.’ Ailsa tried desperately to hold back a tear she could feel welling up. ‘But, yes, I was …’ She paused. ‘I was very fond of him.’

‘I can’t blame you,’ Shona said. ‘He was always good looking in his own wild way, but he’s turned into a right handsome devil. Made something of himself, too, judging by those clothes. Who’d have thought that Factor Ross’s son would do so well? Do you think he’s come back to rub our noses in it?’

‘How would I know? What has it to do with me?’ Ailsa said tersely. What was he doing here?

‘Whatever he’s doing, it’s stirring up a few ashes.’ The fey wife’s low laugh was more like the cackle worthy of the witch she was sometimes called by the village bairns. ‘Would you look at him, all in black, hovering over your father’s corpse like Auld Clootie himself. I’m surprised we canna hear the laird spinning in his coffin.’

‘Shush, Shona,’ Ailsa whispered urgently, ‘they’ll hear us.’

Sure enough, some of the men had turned towards the disturbance, and in turning they began to take notice of the stranger. Ailsa watched as they shuffled away from Alasdhair, as if his very presence would contaminate them. She saw some of the shock she herself was feeling reflected in Calumn’s face when he recognised his friend. Her heart felt as if it were being squeezed through a wringer. Her emotions were a maelstrom of anger and hurt and regret and bitterness, so that she could only clutch the stone dyke for support and watch as the man whom she had so foolishly thought the love of her life stood impassively over her father’s grave.

When Alasdhair Ross left Errin Mhor six years ago, he swore never to return to the Highlands. He had dreamed of leaving since he was a wee boy, almost from that first time he’d seen the globe Lord Munro kept in his library. He couldn’t get over how tiny Scotland looked, or how big the New World was in comparison. His ambition to travel to the other side of the world and make his fortune grew stronger with every passing year, weaving itself into a warm blanket that protected him through the long cold nights after his mother abandoned him and his father departed this mortal coil very shortly afterwards. It protected him, too, from the scorn and derision that his aspirations elicited from the laird, who had taken him in and become his guardian.

‘Dinnae be so soft, you and your fanciful notions,’ Lord Munro told him contemptuously. ‘Your place is here, lad, your bounden duty to serve me. If ye’re lucky and you behave yourself, I might just make you factor one day. That should be the height of ambition for the likes of you.’

But as Alasdhair grew older, his ambition to forge a new life in America became the only light at the end of the dark tunnel of subservience that was his lot as the laird’s ward. The laird’s property. The laird’s serf.

America had been everything Alasdhair had ever dreamed of. Hard work, sound judgement and a bit of luck had paid off in spectacular fashion. Having eventually found employment in the Virginian plantation of a fellow Scot, he had, through diligence and determination, worked himself into the position of manager and trusted right-hand man before setting up his own business. It had been a tough life, but it had been worth it. Alasdhair was a very rich man, a respected plantation owner and merchant, known to be fair and honest, two qualities sometimes in shorter supply than they should be in the tobacco business. But Alasdhair’s integrity meant more to him even than his wealth. He answered to no one but his own conscience. He relied on no one but himself. His life had turned out just as he’d always dreamed it would. He had proved them wrong, all of them, succeeding on his own terms, without having to pay dues to his laird. He was his own man, in his own place, and no one cared who his kin were or even where he’d come from.

Except, lately, Alasdhair had found that he cared, and cared deeply. Now that he had what he had always wanted, he found it was not enough. The past, which he had been too busy and too tired to even think about, was beginning to haunt him. The story of his mother’s absconding with another man made less sense, the more he thought about it. Why had she left no word, nor ever tried to contact him? And his father’s death. Alasdhair refused to believe that it had been anything but an accident, but he did wonder if Alec Ross had had cause to encourage the tragic fate that left Alasdhair orphaned and uprooted from his family home to become the object of Lady Munro’s unrelenting hostility. Despite this, and his guardian’s determination to bend his ward to his will, Alasdhair regretted the terms on which they had parted. Though his life was in Virginia now, he wanted the right to return to the home of his heart, even if he did not intend to exercise that right often, or ever.

And then there was Ailsa.

Why? The question buzzed around his head like an angry hornet. And like a hornet, the more he swatted at it, the more persistent it got.

Why? Eventually, he realised he’d have no peace until he found out, and to do that, he must return to Scotland. A clean sheet. A blank page. That is what he wanted to return to Virginia with. Then he could write whatever future he willed on to it.

Circumstances colluded with him. An opportunity to form a new partnership with a merchant in Glasgow arose, and at the same time, one of Alasdhair’s own ships was about to depart for that very port.

He had arrived in Glasgow two weeks ago. Travelling north, he had reached Argyll when the tolling of the bells had alerted him to a death. Hearing it was Lord Munro, a long-awaited event after a protracted illness, he had been taken aback by the strength of the feelings that shook him. Regret that he was too late, and sorrow, of course. But anger, too, for the old man must have known his end was coming, yet he had made no attempt at amends nor to lift Alasdhair’s banishment.

He was just in time to pay his last respects, having arrived at Errin Mhor on horseback only this morning. Around him, familiar faces anxious to avoid his eye. Across from him, Calumn, the new laird. He had not changed much. Broader, face etched with a few lines, but in essence his childhood friend looked exactly as he had the last time Alasdhair had seen him, setting off to join the King’s army. More than ten years past now.

Memories flitted through his head as he listened to Calumn pay tribute to his father. Sharply sweet memories, piercingly painful, and the darker ones, creeping out of the recesses of his mind like whipped curs or, more appropriately, spectres at a wake. Up here, they said that opening the ground to receive fresh bones released the spirits of the old ones. Today, he could believe it.

Rousing himself from these melancholy thoughts, Alasdhair saw that Calumn was finishing the closing prayer. Standing at the head of the grave, the new Lord Munro was now receiving the formal condolences of the other men. They shuffled forwards, each shaking his hand, some pausing to mutter a prayer of their own over the gaping hole. He watched them nudging and whispering amongst themselves as they left the graveyard, casting surreptitious glances, their expressions ranging from astonishment and embarrassment to downright hostility. A few turned their backs upon him.

Alasdhair’s temper simmered. What difference did it make to them, these crofters and fishermen? What did they even know of the circumstances of his leaving? Not the truth, he’d be willing to bet. It made him furious, that the corpse that lay in the damp soil could still wield the decrepit hand of influence. He did not merit such treatment. He would force them to see that.

The occasion obliged him to bide his time for the moment, but Alasdhair refused to be intimidated, holding himself rigidly upright, his hands clasped behind his back, as the men filed slowly out. At the gate they were reunited with their womenfolk, and the whispers became an excited buzz. Surveying them scornfully, ruthlessly despatching the shadowy figure on his shoulder, the unloved outcast boy he had once been, Alasdhair saw his old friend coming slowly towards him.

‘Alasdhair! It really is you.’

‘Calumn!’

The two men clasped each other in a bear hug of an embrace.

‘It’s so good to see you, old friend,’ Calumn said warmly. ‘I’ve thought of you often these past years.’

Alasdhair nodded. ‘As I have you. I just wish the circumstances of our reunion were different.’

‘Aye, but you’re here, and that’s the main thing. We have much to catch up on, but I need to get back to the castle and my guests for now, you understand, don’t you? We’ll talk properly tomorrow.’

‘Aye, I would like that,’ Alasdhair replied.

‘Good. You’ll come to the wake?’ Calumn asked, but when Alasdhair shook his head he was not surprised. ‘Till tomorrow, then.’ With that, the new laird made for the gate, where the old laird’s horse had been left for him.

Hidden from view by the crowd, Ailsa watched the solitary figure left in the cemetery.

Alasdhair. His name, the name she hadn’t allowed herself to think, never mind say, for fear of the pain it caused, shimmered into her mind.

Alasdhair. A bitter name, acrid with regrets and betrayal, yet it used to be the sweetest of names. Her Alasdhair, he’d been once. Fleetingly.

Around her, the mourners were laughing and talking animatedly with all the gaiety that often follows a sombre farewell to the departed. Life was reasserting itself over death, but she hardly noticed them. They’d be making their way back to Errin Mhor castle for the funeral wake soon. The roast meats, the conspicuous consumption of wine, the regular toasts with whisky glasses raised, and the reminiscing, which would continue well into the night, and culminate with the funeral pyre of the laird’s bedding and clothes that would be lit by his widow. She would join them. But not yet.

Not yet.

Somehow, Ailsa found the courage to step through the gate and into his presence. It were better they get this over now, with no one else around. It had to be done. The pain would ease after this, as it did when a wound was lanced.

‘Alasdhair?’

Pain, pure and bright as the sharpest needle, pierced him.

Ailsa.

She sounded different; her voice was older, of course, and lower, husky rather than musical, but he’d recognise her anywhere. He had assumed she would be back at the castle, with her mother. He wasn’t sure he was ready for this.

‘Ailsa.’ Her name felt rusty with disuse. His voice sounded hoarse.

They stared silently at each other. Six long years. They stood, as if set in amber, drinking in the changes the years had wrought.

Chapter Two

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.

Chapter Three

Errin Mhor castle was built on a promontory. There had been a fortified building of some sort on the site since ancient times. Indeed, the dungeons, now used as cellars for the famed Errin Mhor whisky, were reputed to date from the age when the Norsemen held sway over large tracts of the Highlands. The current castle consisted of a three-storey square tower complete with battlements built in the mid-sixteenth century, a later wing extending from the south of the tower built in baronial style, which included the great hall, and a smaller round tower complete with a laird’s lug, the listening room, that had been the whim of the late Lord Munro. The massive oak-beamed portico with the look of a drawbridge that framed the main entrance was also the last Lord Munro’s work. Stables, a dairy and the home farm, along with a few tied cottages and the larger house customarily inhabited by the factor, which had been Alasdhair’s home until his father died, were situated at the north-eastern end of the grounds. The grey granite used for the majority of the buildings gave the castle a forbidding air, but the view to the west, which faced out to sea, was more mellow, for creepers had been permitted to grow up the square tower. Tall French-style windows from the drawing room at the centre of the main building opened out on to the terraced garden that sloped down to the beach.

As they passed through the gates and headed up the long driveway to the main door of the castle, Alasdhair’s mood darkened.

‘I won’t come in.’

‘You haven’t got anywhere else to stay.’

‘Your mother …’

‘Calumn is laird now. He would never forgive me if I let you sleep anywhere save under his roof.’

‘I’ve already told him I won’t be attending the wake. I won’t stay in the castle until the banishment is formally lifted.’

She could tell by the stubborn tilt of his chin that he meant it. She recognised it of old, and knew it was pointless arguing. When Alasdhair thought he was in the right there was no convincing him otherwise. But if he went, she feared he would leave without her seeing him again. She was too raw to be at peace with him, but she wanted to be. ‘If you leave now, my mother will have won again.’

‘I’m not going anywhere yet, you needn’t worry. I have other business to attend to.’

‘I see.’ She waited, but he showed no signs of confiding in her.

‘Will Calumn be holding a Rescinding tomorrow?’

It was an old traditional rite, the forgiving and forgetting of wrongs by a new laird. ‘Yes. He was talking about it yesterday, telling Madeleine, his wife, to make sure there was plenty of food, for the queue was like to be long. My father was not slow to take offence, as you know, and he was quick to bear a grudge. It’s likely most of Errin Mhor will be there, wanting something or other rescinded.’

‘All the better, for then the whole of Errin Mhor can witness the end of my banishment.’

‘Alasdhair, you’re not planning on confronting my mother, are you? She won’t apologise for what she did, but she will be forced to welcome you to the castle—is that not enough?’

‘No, it’s not. Why are you defending her, Ailsa? Don’t you at least want her to admit she lied? Or maybe things have changed since I left. Maybe Lady Munro has learned how to play the role of a loving mother and you’re afraid of hurting her.’

Ailsa looked scornful. ‘Hardly. I have come to the conclusion my mother is incapable of love. Even Calumn she disowned for a while. She only mended those fences when my father became too ill to manage and she needed him back here. I thought then that perhaps she would try to do the same with me, but she did not. And after what I have learned today about her role in our parting, I think the damage between us is beyond any mending.’

‘Then surely you have as much cause as I to wish to see her grovel.’

‘Don’t you see, Alasdhair, by showing her she matters, you’re handing her power? Best to do as I do and pretend indifference. Please.’ She put her hand on the sleeve of her coat. ‘Trust me on this, she will give you no satisfaction.’

Alasdhair frowned. ‘I’ll think about it.’ Through the open door of the castle, muted sounds of laughter and the scraping sound of fiddles being tuned could be heard. ‘You’d better go in.’

‘I don’t know if I can face it.’

She looked exhausted, fragile. Despite her curves, she was very slim. He caught himself wondering about her life in the last six years. For the first time her lack of a husband struck him as odd. She was twenty-two. In the Highlands, that was well past the usual age for one of her kind to marry. Why had she delayed? Was she happy? She didn’t look it.

But Ailsa’s life and Ailsa’s feelings were none of his business. ‘They’ll be expecting you,’ he said brusquely. With a curt nod, he turned his back on her and strode off down the path. He didn’t look back, though she lingered for quite a while to see if he would.

From the window of the laird’s bedchamber, where she had been supervising the removal of the last of his personal belongings to the funeral pyre, Lady Munro looked down at her daughter and Alasdhair Ross. She hardly recognised him in his fine clothes, but that cocky tilt of the head and the stubborn chin, said it was him all right.

Alasdhair Ross. For years she’d put up with the brat, the spit of his mother, taking the place in the castle that rightfully belonged to another. For years she’d put up with the way her lord favoured him, too. Though outsiders might think Lord Munro dealt harshly with his ward, Lady Munro knew different. It was the only way the Munro knew how to show affection, with a stick or the back of a hand. She knew that better than most.

When Alec Ross died only a short while after his wife Morna had left, Lady Munro had felt a little guilty—for a little while. It had passed quickly enough though, subsumed by the resentment that made her loathe his so-called son’s upstart presence in the castle. The relief of finally being rid of Alasdhair Ross had been immense, especially when it had become obvious how things were between him and Ailsa. Fortunately, the fool had played into her hands. As if she would ever allow her daughter to go off to the other side of the world with a man of such bastard origins! No, she had made sure that wouldn’t happen. Ever, she had thought. Though now, here was Ross, back again like a bad penny, and with uncannily inconvenient timing.

For years Lady Munro had sacrificed her own happiness and her relationship with her children to do her laird’s bidding. It had cost her, more than even she was prepared to admit, but with the Munro finally gone the path was clear for her to start to make amends. Beginning with Ailsa.

Lady Munro looked down at her daughter, her heart tight with the love she had never been able to express. She had waited a long time for this chance. Too long. She wasn’t going to let anyone get in the way now. Especially not Alasdhair Ross.

Below her, on the steps of the castle, Ailsa watched Alasdhair striding off into the distance before she straightened her shoulders and adjusted her arisaidh. Looking up, she saw her mother at the window. For long seconds, two pairs of violet-blue eyes gazed at each other. Then Ailsa turned away and made for the great hall to join in her father’s wake.

After a night spent in one of his old childhood haunts, a secret hiding place where he had often slept under the stars, Alasdhair reluctantly concluded that Ailsa was right. Lady Munro would not apologise, any more than she would admit to a wrong. It would be a pointless and humiliating exercise to try, and he had more important things to confront her with. Like the mystery of his mother’s absconding, and her own determined antipathy towards himself. He would confront her in private.

Having resolved to do so as soon as convenient, Alasdhair found his mind returning once again to Ailsa. It was a pointless and frustrating exercise, but he could not prevent himself from replaying their story over and over in his mind. No matter how many different permutations of the truth he construed, though, it changed nothing, a fact that he tried very hard to be glad of and assured himself he would be, just as soon as he had accepted it. Ailsa had loved him with girlish intensity, as he had loved her with the fierce heat of a first passion, but she cared for him no more than he cared for her now. She was betrothed to McNair. She was of age, too, and did not have to wed, so it was obviously her own choice, arranged or no. And he had his own life, too. A life carved from the virgin lands of the New World, a life that he was determined not to share with any other human being, a harmonious, ordered life that he would not allow to be disrupted by the capricious vagaries of love. A missed opportunity it might have been, but more than likely that was for the best. They were clearly not meant to be. Except.

Except there was the passion that had flared between them yesterday. But it was an old flame, merely, fuelled by loss and memory. Ailsa was a beautiful woman. Of course he desired her. Any man would.

It signified nothing. Nothing at all. So Alasdhair reminded himself as he strode out towards Errin Mhor castle on that dull grey morning to attend the Rescinding.

The ceremony was to take place in the great hall, a huge room, stone-flagged, with a hammer-beam ceiling and a massive stairway at the far end that ran up towards a gallery. The long table, set in front of the fireplace that took up most of one wall, was piled high with food and drink. As he took in the scene, Alasdhair felt slightly nauseous. It was not just the memory of that last confrontation with the laird, but the memories of all the other times. He could see the ghosts of himself, the lost boy, the rebellious one, the callow youth, and the angry young man, all of them hauntingly present, tauntingly real. The ghosts he’d come to exorcise. He hadn’t realised there were so many of them.

Calumn was sitting on the high carved chair that was only used for formal occasions. Beside him, on the right, and much more comfortably seated, banked by cushions, was a petite blonde female, heavily pregnant and with the exotic look of a sea nymph. This must be Madeleine, his wife and, judging by the way she was looking at his friend, clearly very much in love with him. Lady Munro stood at Calumn’s left-hand side. Ailsa presided over the table. She stood as he entered the room, made as if to come forwards to greet him, caught her brother’s eye and sat back down again.

Various tenants formed a line in front of Calumn. Alasdhair recognised some, including Hamish Sinclair, the smiddy and the old laird’s champion. It had been Hamish who had been forced to see him off the lands. Poor Hamish, it was a duty he would rather not have been forced to carry out, especially when Alasdhair had insisted they wait until the last possible moment in the vain hope that Ailsa might still show up.

‘Please Alasdhair, we must go, lad,’ Hamish had entreated him not once, but several times. ‘The laird will have my guts for garters if we tarry any more.’

‘Just five minutes more, Hamish,’ Alasdhair remembered replying each time, little knowing that five years more wouldn’t have made any difference.

Proceedings for the Rescinding had not yet begun. As the villagers took note of Alasdhair’s tall form standing like an avenging angel on the edge of the room, the low hum of conversation ceased, silence fell and all eyes turned towards him. There was not a soul who did not know his identity, for his presence at the graveyard the day before had been much discussed in his subsequent absence from the wake. As he strode across the room, the villagers fell back from the laird’s chair to give him precedence.

‘My Lord Munro.’ Alasdhair took off his hat and made a low, elegant bow.

Calumn, in a mark of respect, rose from the chair to return the bow. ‘Mr Ross.’

‘I am come to demand the lifting of my banishment.’

A shocked murmur came from the onlookers. Tradition for the Rescinding was for the petitioner to beg forgiveness and the laird to grant absolution, but Alasdhair, now standing straight and proud, meeting the new laird’s eyes boldly, showed no signs at all of penitence.

Calumn pushed his hair from his brow, and approached his friend, looking slightly discomfited. ‘Alasdhair, there is a form to this,’ he said quietly. ‘You must apologise first before I can perform the act of rescinding.’

‘It was your father who gave offence,’ Alasdhair replied. ‘Your father and one other,’ he said, eyeing Lady Munro balefully.

Calumn sighed heavily. ‘If you would say a few token words, you don’t have to mean them, then maybe …’

Alasdhair shook his head stubbornly. ‘I don’t want your forgiveness. The only thing I want from you is a formal lifting of my banishment and an acknowledgement that it was a mistake.’

‘Alasdhair, you must realise I need to uphold tradition. I must be seen to respect the ancient ways.’

‘Calumn, we were friends once, good friends. Do you trust me?’

‘You know I do.’

‘I did defy your father, I admit it, but the punishment far outweighed the crime. I give you my word of honour that it was completely undeserved.’

‘You don’t make it easy for me, you know. You’re as stubborn as you ever were.’ Calumn ran his fingers through his hair, frowning hard, but eventually he nodded. ‘Very well, we’ll do it your way. I hope you mean to stay with us for a few days—you owe me that much for making me break all the rules on this, my first day as laird.’

Alasdhair grinned. ‘It’s the least I can do.’

Calumn put his arm round Alasdhair’s shoulder and turned to face the audience. He raised his hand for silence, but he had no need. The two made a striking pair, the one so dark, the other so fair. ‘Yesterday we mourned the passing of my father. He is buried now, and with him, as is the custom, all of his past grievances. As most of you are aware, this is Alasdhair Ross, son of Alec, who has been wrongly exiled, unjustly banished, and from whom, on behalf of my family, I beg pardon.’

Hearing his friend’s words, the generous terms of his acceptance and the whole-hearted acceptance of his integrity, only then did Alasdhair realise how much it meant to him. A weight he hadn’t realised he’d been carrying rolled off his shoulders. He bowed before Calumn and, as was the custom, kissed the ring that bore the Munro seal. ‘Thank you. With all my heart, I accept your apology, Laird.’

‘Alasdhair Ross, I now proclaim your exile at an end. Welcome back to Errin Mhor.’

There was a spontaneous burst of applause from the onlookers. In the months since his return, Calumn had made an excellent impression on his people and his neighbours. If the new laird wished to break tradition, they were only too happy to concur.

As Calumn made his way back to the laird’s chair to resume the formal Rescinding, Alasdhair was surrounded. The welcome was repeated and questions were flung at Alasdhair from all sides, most concerning his absence and obvious success, some—which he ignored—more persistent about the circumstances of his departure. Astonishment and admiration, envy and respect, pleasure and a little skepticism—all were expressed. That the son of a factor from Errin Mhor could now be a rich merchant, with land that outstripped the laird’s and his own fleet of ships, too—no one could really believe it. And though some, such as Hamish Sinclair, claimed they had always believed Alasdhair would go far, and others minded well that he was never shy of hard work, still it was difficult to believe that this sophisticated man of the world in his velvet suit and polished boots and feathered hat was Alasdhair Ross, son of Factor Ross and his runaway wife. Not that anyone dared remind Alasdhair of that. Not to his face, at any road.

In the centre of it all, Alasdhair felt strangely detached. It was a good feeling, right enough, to be vindicated. It meant something, but not as much as he’d thought it would. Though he continued to nod and smile and talk and joke, what he really wanted was to escape.

As soon as the Rescinding was over, Calumn pushed his way through the crowd. ‘Alasdhair, if you’ve had enough of catching up for the moment, I’d like to introduce you to my wife.’ He led the way over to the table, where the pretty blond woman was now seated. ‘This is Madeleine, who has given up her native Brittany in the name of cementing the auld alliance we Scots have with the French,’ Calumn said with a tender smile at his wife.

Unexpectedly touched by his friend’s obvious love for the charming Frenchwoman, Alasdhair bowed with a flourish of his hat. ‘Enchanté, madame. Calumn is a lucky man.’

Madeleine beamed, showing a pair of dimples. ‘Bienvenue, Monsieur Ross, it is a pleasure to meet such an old friend of my husband’s. He tells me you are one of the few men as able as he with a broadsword.’

‘I think your husband has been misleading you,’ Alasdhair replied, raising a quizzical eyebrow at his friend, ‘I don’t recall a single occasion when Calumn bested me in a challenge with the claymore.’

Madeleine cast her husband an impish look. ‘You must forgive him, Monsieur Ross, it is in the nature of a husband to boast to his wife.’

‘Aye, and it’s supposed to be in the nature of a wife to accept what he says without question,’ Calumn said with a grin.

‘Oh, but I do, mon chère, only it would be rude to say to our guest that I don’t believe him,’ Madeleine replied contritely, making both men laugh.

Seeing them together, Alasdhair had no difficulty at all understanding why Calumn was so contented. A starker contrast between Lady Munro’s austere beauty and the frankly sensual bundle who was her successor could not be found. At the head of the table, having taken over from Ailsa to preside regally over the meats and cheeses, bread and wine, the new dowager sat with a face set in an expression of frozen disapproval.

‘Where is your brother, Rory?’ Alasdhair asked Calumn, ‘I saw him at the graveside yesterday, I think. I assume it was him since I almost took him for you, the resemblance was so striking. I am anxious to finally make his acquaintance.’

‘He left immediately after the funeral to return to Heronsay.’

‘He and your mother are not reconciled, then?’

‘When he’s here she can hardly bring herself to look at him. I sometimes wonder if it is guilt that makes her so.’

‘In order to feel guilt she would need to have a conscience and a heart. I have seen little evidence of either.’

‘Nor are you like to, I’m afraid. Come, we might as well get the formalities over.’

Lady Munro’s expression seemed to gain an extra layer of ice as she watched her son ushering his guest towards her chair.

‘Mother, you remember Alasdhair Ross.’

‘I do, though I would rather not.’ Lady Munro did not rise.

‘Mother, you will be hospitable and welcome him into our home.’

‘I will not,’ Lady Munro said in a low voice. ‘Your father banished him. Alasdhair Ross is dead to me.’

‘No, Mother,’ Calumn continued implacably, his arm on hers, forcing her to her feet, ‘it is my father who is dead. You will do well to remember that I am the laird now. It is I who dictate who is, and who is not, welcome in my home or upon my lands.’

Calumn’s mother cast him a bitter look, but after a tense moment she deigned to give Alasdhair a nod. ‘Mr Ross.’ As if her contempt was not clear enough, Lady Munro made no curtsy.

Alasdhair, on the other hand, swept the widow a deep bow. ‘Lady Munro. As warm and welcoming as ever, I see.’

Lady Munro looked through him. Her very determined indifference made him furious, equally determined to raise some sort of reaction from her, but even as the taunt formed in his mind, he caught Ailsa’s frowning look and remembered her warning. She was right. Much as it went against the grain, she was right. He would not afford Lady Munro another opportunity to anger him again, nor would he allow her to see he was angered. ‘A toast is in order, I think,’ he said, turning to Calumn.

‘One of Errin Mhor’s finest vintages.’ Calumn filled the glasses from a dusty whisky bottle that had obviously lain many years in the dungeons.

‘To old friendships and new,’ Alasdhair said to Calumn and Madeleine, ‘and to old enemies, too,’ he said, turning to Lady Munro, ‘may they find a suitable resting place.’

‘To the return of the prodigal,’ Calumn said with a smile.

‘The return of the prodigal,’ they all said in unison, raising their glasses. With the exception of Lady Munro, that is, who said nothing. Her hands remained clasped tight together on her lap. The pain from her nails, digging into her palms, was a sweet relief.

Later that day, in search of solitude after the drama of the morning, Alasdhair made his way to the churchyard, where his father was buried in the small cemetery that adjoined the kirk. Kneeling on the ground, he traced the fading name on the large stone with his fingertips and lost himself in the meagre memories of the gentle man whom loss had destroyed.

‘I thought I’d find you here.’

He had been kneeling there for so long his knees were stiff, so deep in thought that he hadn’t noticed Ailsa approaching. Alasdhair got to his feet, brushing the dirt from his breeches. ‘I was paying my respects.’

‘Am I interrupting?’

‘No, I was done.’

‘You were very young when he died.’

‘Old enough to know he’d gone.’

‘Only a few weeks after your mother—left,’ Ailsa said awkwardly, ‘you must have felt as if they’d abandoned you.’

‘She did.’

‘And he?’ she asked after some hesitation, for she had heard the rumours.

‘I don’t believe he took his own life, if that’s what you mean,’ Alasdhair said harshly. ‘It would be more accurate to say he died of a broken heart, for that is what happened. It was my mother’s fault—if anyone’s to blame for his death, it is she. Her, and the man she ran off with.’

‘Who was he?’

Alasdhair shrugged. ‘No one seems to know. She kept her sordid little affair secret.’

‘Do you ever wonder about what became of her?’

‘Why do you ask? You never have before.’

‘I don’t know. Thinking about my own mother after what you told me yesterday, I suppose. Why did she lie to me like that? I can’t think of any reason except that she must really hate me.’

‘I felt my mother must hate me too, the way she just disappeared. Not one word to anyone, not even to Mhairi Sinclair, Hamish’s wife, and they were old friends. I asked her, several times, but she always claimed to be as much in the dark as me.’

‘Are you thinking of trying to trace her? Is that why you’ve come home?’

‘No, I’ve no wish to see her. She made her choice and has never made any attempt to contact me, so, no, I have no wish to see her, she is not part of my life now.’

‘But?’

Alasdhair laughed bitterly. ‘Like you, I want to know why.’ He shook out his coat skirts and started to make his way back to the cemetery gate. ‘What are you doing here, anyway?’

‘I came looking for you. I couldn’t get near you this morning, with everyone so keen to hear all about your life across the sea.’

‘The return of the prodigal,’ Alasdhair said with a wry smile. ‘I hope Calumn knows there’s no need to slay the fatted calf. I’m glad you’re here. Will you walk with me and we can catch up properly? We might not get the chance again.’

‘Yes,’ Ailsa said gratefully, ‘that’s exactly what I’d like.’

Errin Mhor village was a cluster of whitewashed thatched cottages facing out to the long strand of golden sands that bordered the sea, each with a strip of cultivated land at the back, reaching towards the hills. The kirk where they stood was at one end, at the other the inn, the smiddy and the harbour that formed a secure arm in which a number of little fishing boats lolled drunkenly on their sides, for it was low tide. They made their way across the tough grass that formed the border with the beach and walked along the hard sands at the water’s edge.

‘Tell me about Virginia,’ Ailsa said.

‘You must have heard more than enough from the interrogation I was subjected to this morning.’

She laughed. ‘Enough to know that you’re as rich as the king and have three, twenty, a hundred times more land than Calumn, depending on who you talk to. I want to know what it’s like, not what you own. I want to be able to picture you there. Tell me what’s different about it from Errin Mhor.’

‘Well, in the summer the light is often hazy. It’s hot, but it’s damp, as if the sun is raining, and everything looks as if the colour is bleeding out of it. The earth smells rich, a sweet smell, like a clootie dumpling, and it gets sweeter as the tobacco ripens.’

‘What does Virginia look like?’

He described it to her, and when she pressed him for more information he gave her that too, allowing her enthusiasm, and the wry sense of humour she’d always had, to lead him into talking far more about himself than he ever usually did. Eventually, he turned the conversation to the recent Rebellion.

Ailsa cared not for the cause, but having had a brother on each side, felt its effects deeply. ‘I think our life here is going to change for ever because of Charles Edward,’ she said sadly. From what she had not said, Alasdhair was forced to agree.

They walked on. They talked, they laughed, then grew sombre, then laughed again, at ease in one another’s company for the most part, as they had always been. At times they grew silent: tense, awkward moments when they threw each other sideways glances. As she walked at his side, Ailsa’s skirts brushed against Alasdhair’s legs. Their hands touched. Awareness flickered like the stars in the dusk, there and then gone, then there again.

Eventually, they sat down in the dunes, taking shelter from the wind. In front of them the sea glittered turquoise and green. Above, the sun glinted, peeking in and out of the puffy clouds. The air was cold and fresh, sharp with the snow which held to the peaks higher up, smelling of peat smoke and mud, of salt and pine. The breeze whipped the waves on to the shore with a soothing slap, slap, slap. A cormorant dived for a fish, emerging triumphantly an impossibly long time later, a flash of silver in its beak signalling success.

Ailsa dug her hands into the sand, allowing the grains to trickle through her fingers. ‘Why did you approach my father without even consulting me?’ she asked abruptly.

‘I’ve asked myself that a thousand times. I suppose it was partly out of a sense of honour—I didn’t want to do anything behind your father’s back, but also because I didn’t want to wait a second longer than necessary before we could be together. But I bitterly regret going about it so impulsively. It was a stupid thing to do.’

‘Yes, it was a stupid thing to do. If you hadn’t, things might have turned out differently.’

‘Come, Ailsa—you don’t really believe that, do you? Neither of us was thinking straight. We were too wrapped up in the excitement of our feelings for each other to think properly about the future at all, or any of the problems we’d have to manage. You were only sixteen, I had nothing but a vague dream to cling to.’

‘I know,’ Ailsa said regretfully, ‘looking back now I can’t believe how unrealistic we were. One kiss and we just assumed everything would fall into place. I could not have come to the New World with you straight away. I would have been a burden to you until you had established yourself. That could have taken years.’

‘Would you have agreed to come out and join me later, if I had asked you?’

‘Would you have not gone in the first place, if I had said no?’

The question hung between them like a vast chasm, deep and unknowable.

‘Your parents were right about one thing. We were naïve, hopelessly naïve,’ Alasdhair said sadly. ‘It was our innocence that was our real undoing. Much as I’m sure we’d both like to lay all the blame at your parents’ door, we were the architects of our own downfall, for we thought love would change everything, but in the real world it changes nothing.’

Out at sea, the cormorant emerged with another fish, tipping back its elegant neck and swallowing it down in one long gulp.

‘I know you’re right,’ Ailsa said, ‘but I just wish …’

Alasdhair got to his feet and shook the sand from his clothes. ‘You know what they say. If wishes were horses …’

‘… then beggars would ride,’ Ailsa finished. ‘You mean it’s pointless.’

He held out his hand. ‘What’s done is done. Come on, we should get back. It’s getting cold.’

She allowed him to help her to her feet, stumbling as her boot caught in the sand into which she had burrowed it. She fell against Alasdhair’s chest and, in trying to right herself, braced herself with her hands. The connection was instant, as was the sudden surge of longing.

They stared at each other unmoving, barely breathing. Smoky brown eyes filled with the promise of something she hadn’t known she wanted until then met hers.

Yesterday had been tantalising. She had tried to put if from her mind, tried not to think of what would have happened if the kiss had gone on, tried not to think of how it would feel, tried not to think about the way that it had made her feel. She had tried. But standing so close to him, her senses filled with the feel and smell and almost-taste of him, she knew she had failed. She wanted him to kiss her. She couldn’t bear it if he didn’t.

Alasdhair’s fingers curled into her hair. He had been unable to forget it. The honey-sweetness of her mouth on his. The perfect fit of her lips. The touch of her tongue. He knew he should not, but he also knew if he did not he would regret it. He had had enough of ‘what ifs’. Yesterday’s kiss had been too tentative a goodbye. She had been his before she was promised to anyone else. It was wrong to have this still between them.

His lips touched hers. The tiniest, faintest touch. She was still his until it was over. This was the only way to make it be over. His tongue licked its way into her mouth. She tasted intoxicating. He pulled her closer, wrapping his arms around her slender back, wrapping a long tress of her hair around his hand. Ailsa gave a soft sigh and her tongue touched his.

One minute they were suspended in time, the next they were lost in it. Their kiss had none of the uncertainty of the previous one, nor any trace of wistfulness. It was a sensual kiss, lips scraping lips, and as it deepened, it became a raw kiss, the kiss of a man and a woman who desire each other. Their mouths tasted, then drank thirstily. Their hands clutched and tugged and pulled, closer and closer and closer, until their bodies were pressed tight, Alasdhair’s hardness against Ailsa’s softness. Their mouths hungrily sought each other, more and more and more, as if to make up for all they had lost, and all they would never have, the seeking igniting a hot searing passion that took them both by surprise.

Ailsa had no idea how it happened. She had no idea of what was happening to her, for nothing, nothing she had ever known, had prepared her for the raw sensuality, the shivering excitement, the rising crescendo of feeling caused by lip on lip, mouth on mouth, tongue on tongue. Alasdhair’s hands stroked her arms, her waist, her back. Her breasts were crushed against his chest, her nipples aching, though she didn’t think it was pain, and all the time he was kissing her in a way she had not known it was possible to kiss. She felt urgent, as if she was seeking something, or had lost something, and only he could help her find it. She felt dizzy and restless and heavy and slumberous. She reached up to stroke his hair, the blue-black of a raven’s wing. Silky soft. She could feel his heart hammering against her, just like hers, so maybe it was hers after all.

Reluctantly, Alasdhair ended it. Ailsa put a finger tentatively to her lips. They felt swollen.

‘A proper goodbye kiss, this time,’ he said, for both of them. ‘Before I leave to go south with Calumn tomorrow.’ Though he felt so unlike saying goodbye that it frightened him.

‘Yes,’ Ailsa said. Leaving? He was leaving? But it didn’t feel like goodbye. Weren’t goodbyes supposed to be endings? This felt like a beginning.

‘Yes,’ Alasdhair affirmed. If he said it out loud, it would make it true.

And it was true. He intended seeing Lady Munro today. Armed with the answers he was certain she would give him, he had arranged to leave Errin Mhor tomorrow, taking part of the journey with Calumn and his wife, who were journeying to Edinburgh on some urgent business to do with the settling of the old laird’s will. But the kiss had made his certainty drain away. He could tell no one else had ever kissed her in that way. It thrilled him and yet disturbed him. He should not have kissed her. How could he leave with this—this—this whatever it was, hanging over him? There had to be a way of ending it.

Chapter Four

‘A clean slate,’ he muttered, staring down at the lovely face that had the dazed look of a sleeper just awake.

‘A clean slate?’ Ailsa frowned. ‘Do you mean a fresh start?’ She was trying to tidy her hair, just for the sake of having something to do. Was it passion she’d just experienced—or something else? Was he as surprised by it as she was? Slanting a look up at him, she thought he probably was. She wished he hadn’t kissed her. She wished he hadn’t stopped. She felt as if she’d been trusted with half a secret she’d rather have remained ignorant of. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said despairingly, not meaning to say the words out loud.

Her words drew a reluctant laugh from Alasdhair.

‘Nor do I.’

‘What are we to do?’

Violet eyes, pleading with him, and he had no answer. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, his homecoming. Answers, not questions, were what he sought. Other people’s soul baring, not his own. ‘Nothing.’

‘Pretend it never happened?’

‘We can’t do that, but we can make sure it never happens again. Why are you not married, Ailsa?’

She blinked at what felt like a sudden change of subject. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘How long have you actually been betrothed to McNair?’

‘A year or so. Maybe nearer two.’

‘So why aren’t you married?’

‘My father has been ill.’

‘All the more reason, I’d have thought, to have you safely wed.’

‘Calumn’s wedding took precedence.’

‘Judging from the condition of your sister-in-law, that must have been a good few months ago now. You’re a beautiful woman. You’ve a good dowry and kin whose connections are a huge advantage to McNair. I’d have thought he’d be eager to take you to his bed.’

Ailsa flushed. ‘Stop it. It is none of your business.’

‘I thought you were married. For the past six years I’ve had to live with the knowledge that you were another man’s wife. And now it turns out you’ve been single all along.’ And it’s too late now!

She had been hanging on to her self-control by a thread. Now it broke. ‘Why are you bringing this up now? You’re the one that just said it was pointless to speculate. You’re being completely unfair, Alasdhair. It’s not my fault, this mess; it’s not my fault any more than it’s yours. I’m sorry things haven’t turned out as you wished. I’m sorry to disappoint you by being unwed, and I’m sorry my being unwed made you kiss me again. I’m sorry you enjoyed kissing me so much. I’m sorry I enjoyed it, too—believe me, I’d rather not have. In fact, I’m sorry you came back, because I was just about getting accustomed to my life and now you’ve turned it all on its head.’ Ailsa covered her face with her hands. She was shaking. She never lost her temper like this, but it felt as if she’d been holding it in for years, and it would not now be easily contained. ‘Just go away, Alasdhair, go back to Virginia and leave me alone.’

‘Oh God, Ailsa, I didn’t mean to—here, come here.’

Strong arms engulfed her. As he held her close, making inarticulate shushing noises and stroking her hair, Ailsa released a torrent of pent-up tears that left her limp and feeling hollow, empty. She must look a fright. She had soaked his shirt. She had no idea what he thought of her, and right now, she didn’t care.

As her sobs gave way to hiccups, Ailsa pushed herself away. ‘Better?’

At least he wasn’t angry any more. More likely he was appalled. Ailsa nodded. She tried to wipe her face with the ends of her arisaidh.

‘Here. Let me.’ Alasdhair tilted her face up, mopping it with his large kerchief, carefully untangling her hair from her lashes and cheeks, where it had become plastered down with her tears. ‘You’re right, I was being completely unfair,’ he said softly, tucking her hair behind her ear and straightening her arisaidh. ‘It’s not your fault, it’s just that I’ve grown so accustomed to thinking that it was easy to blame you. I shouldn’t have kissed you. Maybe it’s to do with wanting what we never had. Maybe it’s just that you’re a very beautiful woman and for a moment there I forgot that you are spoken for. I don’t know. I really don’t have an excuse or a proper explanation, and that made me angry, too—with myself. I am not accustomed to acting recklessly. Forgive me.’

She managed a watery smile. ‘If you will forgive me.’

‘There’s nothing to forgive. What you said was true.’

They began to make their way slowly back along the beach to the castle. ‘Are you really set on marrying McNair?’ Alasdhair asked.

Ailsa shrugged. ‘It’s a good match. There’s no getting away from that.’

‘For your family and for Errin Mhor, but what about you?’

‘What is good for my family and Errin Mhor is good for me.’

‘Why marry at all if it is not what you wish?’

‘It is my duty—anyway, what else would I do? You have wealth and independence, I have neither. I will be a burden if I do not marry. At twenty-two I am still an asset to the clan, a prime piece to barter, but I will not have so much value at twenty-five, and almost none at thirty.’

‘That’s a horrible way to talk about yourself.’

‘Horrible, but realistic. It’s how things are.’

‘So speaks Lady Munro. You sound as if you are set upon following in her footsteps.’

Ailsa flinched. ‘On the contrary, I am quite determined not to. The circumstances are quite different.’

They had reached the main entrance to the castle. ‘Are you sure about that?’

He did not wait for an answer. Alasdhair strode off down the corridor in search of Calumn. Raking over old times and catching up on new with the simple, uncomplicated camaraderie of two old friends would be a welcome diversion.

She could not put it off any longer. Ailsa knew that she owed it to herself to at least attempt to find out why Lady Munro had felt it so necessary to destroy her first love. She was, however, far from confident that she would succeed.

As she knocked on the door of her mother’s parlour, her fingers were trembling. Even after all these years, Lady Munro’s hold over her could not be ignored. Try as she might to pretend indifference, Ailsa knew in her heart of hearts that what she wanted was some sign—any sign—that her mother felt something for her. Love was too much to hope for. Lady Munro was incapable of such an emotion, and in any case, Ailsa had decided she was unlovable. Well, didn’t all the evidence point to that? No, her relationship with her mother would never be a loving one, but approbation would have been nice, perhaps an occasional seeking out of her company for its own sake.

She thought herself inured to the situation, but since her father’s death, and the little flicker of hope that things would be different had been quashed, she had been forced to accept that she was not. The forthcoming interview was bound to turn up yet more unpleasant truths, but how could she face the future mapped out for her, with all those questions hanging unanswered over her head? In that respect she and Alasdhair were similar, she realised. She could appreciate what drove him. The need to know.

Her mother’s voice bid her enter. The resemblance between Lady Munro and her daughter was striking. Both women had the same colour of hair, the same violet-blue eyes, and perfectly symmetrical features, though on Ailsa the mouth was softer, the expression warmer. Ailsa’s beauty was vibrant, where her mother’s was that of a marble statue. In their carriage, too, they differed, for Ailsa’s step was quick and graceful, her mother’s was more measured.

They eyed each other across the parlour, a room that had been furnished back in the days when furniture was made for durability rather than comfort. The heavy chairs, made of solid black oak, were about as welcoming as a tombstone and less comfortable. Lady Munro sat by the fire and fixed her daughter with one of her piercing stares.

Ailsa willed herself to meet her gaze. ‘Mother, I am come to ask you—’

‘I know what you are come to ask, I have been expecting you. You will oblige me, Ailsa, by curbing your enthusiasm for that man’s company,’ Lady Munro said firmly. ‘It has not escaped my notice that your childish penchant for him has not entirely burned itself out.’

‘If by that man you mean Alasdhair, then you must know that I have ample reason to seek him out and it has been a most enlightening experience. Oh, Mother, how could you? How could you tell us both so many lies?’

If Ailsa had been expecting an admission of guilt, she was to be disappointed. Lady Munro pursed her lips. ‘I had my reasons.’

‘What reasons?’

‘I have no doubt that you and he have swapped stories and concluded that you were star-crossed lovers. I have no intention of explaining myself or justifying my actions. It should be enough for you that I thought—and continue to think—them justifiable.’

‘You lied to me!’

Lady Munro’s lip curled. ‘I think you’ll find, Ailsa, that you lied to yourself. Do you honestly think you would have been happy, living with that son of a whore among a bunch of savages halfway across the world?’

‘We’ll never know, will we? You didn’t give me the choice.’

‘I stopped you making an appalling choice. I did what I thought best, and time has confirmed the wisdom of that. I wish he had never come back here.’

‘Alasdhair has made an enormous success of his life.’

‘He may have money, I’ll grant him that, but it doesn’t compensate for a lack of breeding. Underneath that veneer of wealth Alasdhair Ross is still a peasant with ideas above his station.’

Ailsa looked at her mother in despair. There seemed to be no way of breaking through the barrier of her certainty. ‘Why do you hate him so much? I don’t understand—what has he ever done to deserve your enmity, for it goes back way beyond his daring to court me?’

Way back before Ailsa was even born, truth be told. Lady Munro pulled the shutter over the flash of pain to which the memory gave rise. ‘What I cannot understand,’ she said slowly, ‘is what he has ever done to merit your rather childish adoration?’

‘You would not understand that, Mother, would you,’ Ailsa replied swiftly, ‘never having made any attempt to earn it for yourself.’ If she had not known better, she would have believed her mother hurt. But she did know better.

‘Ailsa, what is the point in us digging over the past like this? It is far better that we concentrate on the future.’

Ailsa wandered over to the window. It was dark outside. She turned back into the room, where her mother was lighting a branch of candles with a spill. She was as intractable as ever. Pushing her for reasons would only make her further entrenched. And really, what did it matter now, why she had done it? The point was that it was done and could not be undone.

Her mother was once again seated by the fire, her implacable gaze fixed on Ailsa’s face. ‘I have written to Donald,’ Lady Munro said carefully, ‘and asked him to call here at his earliest convenience.’

‘Why?’

Lady Munro raised a delicate brow. ‘Your nuptials have been too long postponed.’

‘My father is not yet cold in his grave.’

‘His passing allows for new beginnings at Errin Mhor. A wedding will be an excellent start.’

‘It wouldn’t be seemly.’

‘I do most sincerely trust you are not having second thoughts because of that barbarian’s most untimely arrival,’ Lady Munro said, throwing her daughter an assessing look.

Ailsa looked at her feet. There were times when she felt as if her mother could read her mind as easily as flicking through the pages of a book, and this was one of them. She could feel Lady Munro’s sharp gaze sinking into her thoughts as easily as a dirk into butter. She didn’t even know her own thoughts, and whatever they were, she didn’t want her mother having access to them first. ‘Alasdhair’s arrival has nothing to do with it.’

‘So you are having second thoughts! Ailsa, you cannot seriously be thinking of abandoning such an advantageous match,’ Lady Munro persisted. ‘It was the dearest wish of the laird …’

‘My father’s dearest wish was that I had been a boy.’

‘He was very much in favour of this alliance.’

‘And the hand that gives is the hand that gets, isn’t it? Even from his grave he hasn’t loosened his hold on you. You know, I was half-expecting you to hurl yourself on to his funeral pyre. I’m sure if he’d asked you, you would have.’

‘He was my husband.’

‘Whom you loved to the detriment of all others.’

‘That is not true.’

‘No?’ Ailsa jumped to her feet. ‘No, you’re right, it isn’t true, for you don’t know how to love, do you, Mother?’ Her eyes were smarting, but she kept the tears from falling by an act of sheer will. The strength of her reaction dismayed her.

‘Listen to yourself, you sound like a spoilt child,’ Lady Munro said, getting to her feet and handing Ailsa one of her own delicately embroidered handkerchiefs. ‘Ailsa, it was not just the laird’s wish, it is mine too. Just think, if you were to be wed to Donald and settled, then we would be neighbours. We could visit and, in due course, when you had children we could—’

‘Play at happy families?’ Ailsa said witheringly. ‘It’s a bit late for that.’ Lady Munro’s handkerchiefs were works of art, the petit point was exquisite, though Ailsa doubted the flimsy lace had ever absorbed a tear. She made a show of folding it into her lap without using it. ‘I want you to write to Donald.

Tell him the time is not convenient. I have no wish to see him at present, until my mind is clearer.’

‘His presence will clarify your mind far better than his absence. I trust by the time he arrives that you will have recovered your temper and your common sense.’

Ailsa gazed at her mother helplessly. ‘Does not my happiness mean anything to you?’ she asked, wishing the words unspoken almost before they were out, yet still unable to stop herself from hoping for an affirmative.

‘I happen to think your happiness is best served by doing your duty. When you reflect upon that, I feel confident you will agree with me. You are, after all, my daughter.’

Ailsa stood up. Lady Munro’s handkerchief fluttered unnoticed on to the floor at her feet. ‘I may be your daughter, but I am of age, and I have a mind of my own. If I decide I don’t want to marry Donald, I won’t do so.’

‘Ailsa,’ Lady Munro said urgently, ‘please stay away from Alasdhair. I don’t want him to come between us again. Ailsa!’ she cried more urgently as her daughter made for the door. ‘There are things—he is not the man you think he is.’ But her words fell on deaf ears. The door closed.

Lady Munro picked up the discarded handkerchief. She pressed the lace to her eyes. They stung, but they remained obstinately dry. Only let Donald McNair answer her summons swiftly. Let McNair be the instrument of her child’s deliverance from that bastard. She was beginning to wonder if Alasdhair Ross had been sent by his father’s command from the grave expressly to haunt her.

Sitting at dinner—a meal that, thank God, the Widow Munro took in her own room—trying to make polite conversation, Alasdhair was wishing he had kept his vow never to return to Errin Mhor again. He longed for the tranquillity of his plantation where he could be alone. His own land, his own house, where he had found contentment. Except, of course, if he had really been contented he wouldn’t have come here. And coming here had forced him to realise just how unfulfilled his life actually was.

As if things were not difficult enough, Madeleine had placed him next to Ailsa at the table. Her hand brushed his when she passed him a serving dish and they both drew back as if scalded. He caught her watching him, her eyes troubled, and knew he looked at her the same way. In her evening gown of green velvet she was exquisite, though she brushed off Madeleine’s compliments with an embarrassed shrug. She was not comfortable with her looks, though most women would kill for them. As would most men, to be near her.

He should not have kissed her. God help him, he wished he had not, for he could not stop thinking of it. In the old days, when he felt this edgy, Alasdhair would have vented his spleen by picking a fight with Calumn, or he would have sought out Hamish for a bout with the claymore. Or gone for a sail. Of course! ‘What happened to An Rionnag?’

Calumn looked up in surprise, for Alasdhair had been silent these past twenty minutes. ‘The Star? Alasdhair’s boat in the old days,’ he explained to Madeleine. ‘I have no idea what happened to her.’

‘She’s at Errin Bheag,’ Ailsa volunteered quietly. ‘One of the fishermen there keeps her watertight for me; his boy takes her out from time to time.’

‘I thought your father would have had her scuppered,’ Alasdhair said.

Ailsa met his eyes for the first time that evening. ‘He thought she was.’

He smiled. ‘You saved her.’ She blushed. ‘It just seemed wrong to allow such a beautiful thing to be destroyed out of spite.’

‘I couldn’t agree more.’

‘I didn’t know you sailed, Ailsa,’ Madeleine said, intrigued by the undercurrents simmering between her sister-in-law and Calumn’s forbidding friend.

‘I don’t, not any more. Alasdhair and I used to go sailing all the time, but my mother doesn’t approve of me going out on my own.’

‘Ah, oui, je comprends,’ Madeleine said in the tone of voice she reserved exclusively for her mother-in-law, whom she secretly called the dragon lady.

‘That’s easily solved,’ Alasdhair said. ‘Why don’t I take you out in An Rionnag tomorrow?’

Ailsa looked at him in surprise. ‘But surely there isn’t time for that? You’re travelling south with Calumn and Maddie tomorrow, remember?’

‘Actually, I’ve changed my mind, I’ve decided to stay on for a few more days. What do you say? For old times’ sake?’

Ailsa looked anxiously at her brother.

‘I think it’s an excellent idea,’ Calumn said. ‘I can’t understand why you’re so anxious to get away from Errin Mhor anyway, Alasdhair, having made such a long and arduous journey to get here. Stay for as long as you want, my home is yours. Anyway, I’m sure Ailsa will be glad of the company while we’re gone.’

Madeleine clapped her hands together. ‘Excellent! It will do you good, Ailsa, to get away from all the upset of the funeral. Have a little fun.’

A glance sideways at Alasdhair told Ailsa that he was thinking the same as she was. She longed to sail with him just once more, and maybe put an end once and for all to the fantasy of the past. Perhaps in this ending there could be a new beginning with Donald—though frankly, she doubted it. More likely it would be two endings. What she didn’t doubt was that her mother would be outraged by her wilful defiance of her instructions, but after today’s confrontation that thought gave Ailsa an almost childish pleasure. ‘I could—I would like to, if you wanted …’

Did he? Did he really want to subject himself to such poignant memories? But would not such a thing be the perfect antidote to the attraction which was in danger of proving a distraction? To recreate that day with the real Ailsa would surely eradicate the dream one? To replace illusion with reality, was surely the perfect solution? ‘Aye. Yes. I’d like that.’

Sitting beside him, Ailsa’s hand was clenched tight around the stem of her claret glass. That she was just as edgy as he made him feel just a tiny bit better.

Helping herself to a bowl of porridge and sprinkling salt over it the next morning, Ailsa took her place at the table just as Alasdhair entered the room, having waved Calumn and Madeleine off on their journey to Edinburgh. He brought with him the scent of fresh air and soap. His hair glistened, slicked back on his head where he had thrown water over it, and he was freshly shaven. He was clad in his breeches and boots, shirt and waistcoat, but without either coat or neckcloth, he looked much younger. Much less forbidding. Much more attractive. Ailsa felt a little skip of her heart and realised she was staring. ‘Help yourself to breakfast,’ she said.

Alasdhair loaded his plate from the hot dishes before sitting down opposite her. ‘Are you sure about today?’

‘Are you?’

He laughed. ‘If I say yes, will you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does your mother know?’

‘Not yet, but you can be sure she will find out.’

Alasdhair poured himself a cup of coffee as Ailsa stirred her breakfast with a bone porridge spoon. ‘Your clothes aren’t ideal for sailing. I could find you a plaid, if you preferred,’ she said.

‘I thought the wearing of it was banned.’

‘Aye, like they’ve tried to ban the Gaelic, but you’ll not notice too many speaking English up here,’ Ailsa said scornfully. ‘No one heeds it, unless they go south of Oban. There’s even a howff on the Isle of Seil known now as the Tigh an Truish where the men change into trews before visiting the mainland.’

‘The House of Trousers. Most apt.’ Alasdhair’s smile faded. ‘Calumn told me how it was for him and his brother during the Rebellion.’

‘And for many others. We have been through some hard times. It’s a shame Rory couldn’t tarry, you’d like him. Now, do you want a plaid or not?’

‘Have you a plan to turn me back into a Highlander, Ailsa?’

‘It’s what you are, at heart. Don’t tell me that you think of yourself as an American?’

‘Not when I’m here. Fetch me a plaid, Miss Munro, and I will endeavour to transform myself.’

Ailsa hummed softly as she dressed. Discarding her morning gown, she pulled on a striped petticoat and a calf-length woollen skirt in her favourite peacock blue—only widows on Errin Mhor were obliged to wear black. A dark blue waistcoat was fastened over her sark and her stays, and a woollen arisaidh was belted at her waist over it all, held at her breast with a pretty pewter pin. Her hair she brushed loose so that it lay down her back in long waves, tied back in a simple knot with a length of ribbon. Sturdy boots over her stockings, and she was ready. ‘You’ll do,’ she said to her reflection with a satisfied nod.

Alasdhair was waiting in the great hall, standing with his back to her. Ailsa paused on the landing, taking the opportunity to look at him unobserved. He was certainly worth looking at. In his black clothes he had been striking. Dressed as a Highlander he was breathtaking.

The filleadh beg, fashioned from the length of plaid she had found for him, was held in place by a wide belt. The plaid fell in neat pleats that hugged the slight curve of his buttocks stopping just above his knee, giving her a tantalising glimpse of muscled leg above his hose, that were tightly tied around equally muscled calves. He did not wear the filleadh mòr, the large plaid that was the male version of her own arisaidh, but instead had on a long leather waistcoat, over his shirt, from which he had removed the ruffles. The whole ensemble somehow emphasised Alasdhair’s height and the well-defined planes of his body—broad shoulders, muscled chest, flat abdomen, long legs. But there was something about Alasdhair himself that had changed, too. The fine-looking man at the peak of physical perfection had indeed transformed himself into a noble-looking Highlander with subtle undertones of the savage. Gone was the veneer of sophistication, and in its place was something more primitive. He looked much more like the pioneer she knew him to be. It was blood-stirring.

Ailsa gave herself a shake. Enough of this, he is just a man in a plaid. You see his like every day.

It was almost true. She almost believed it.

Perhaps sensing her scrutiny, Alasdhair turned round, and Ailsa made her way hurriedly down the stairs to join him. ‘Well, do I pass muster?’ he asked her, holding his hands wide.

‘I’ve seen you in a plaid before, Alasdhair Ross,’ she replied, thankful that her private preview allowed her to sound satisfyingly dismissive. Refusing to indulge her intemperate thoughts any further, she tried to focus on practicalities and not on the large buckle of Alasdhair’s belt, or on the vee of his shirt where she could see the tan of his throat, or on his sinewy forearms, or on the swing of his plaid when he walked.

She led the way through a door in the panelling at the end of the great hall. ‘Calumn had An Rionnag brought round this morning; she’s moored at our own jetty now, we’ll go out through the front gardens.’ The door led, via a spiralled stone staircase, down to the kitchens and stillrooms. They went out through a side door into the kitchen gardens, then down a pathway that wended its way under a canopy of Caledonian pines to the shoreline.

It was one of those spring days when all four seasons seem to contend for supremacy at once. The morning had started bright and blustery, but now there were heavy grey clouds rolling down from the north. A couple of months previously they would have brought snow, but in April they heralded either sleet or hail. Behind them, however, and directly in front to the west, the sky was a benign blue and the sea, though choppy, was showing no signs of the ominous kind of heaving that portended rough weather.

‘What do you think?’ Ailsa asked, anxiously eyeing the sky.

‘I think we should take our chances.’

‘With the weather, you mean?’

Alasdhair looked at her enigmatically. ‘What else?’

They emerged from the pines at the top of a small cliff. A set of stairs had been roughly hewn into the rock face, with a rope attached to heavy iron links forming a rail. The beach below shelved steeply down to the water’s edge where a small stone jetty had been cleverly fashioned from an existing formation of rocks. There were three boats moored there. An Rionnag was the smallest, no more than a skiff with a set of oars and one sail. Beside her was another boat similar in style, but slightly bigger and obviously new, with the name, Madeleine, picked out in gold. At the far end in the deepest of water was Lord Munro’s bulky official craft.

The tide was high. The boats bobbed and bumped on the waves that crested on to the beach, making boarding a business that required excellent balance. Alasdhair sprang lithely from the jetty into An Rionnag, his plaid swinging out behind him. The glimpse of thigh Ailsa caught was covered in a smattering of hair, underneath that was some more nicely defined muscle, but the skin was pale. She wondered where his tan stopped.

‘Ailsa?’

Alasdhair was holding out his hand, smiling up at her in a way that made her stomach lurch. He had tied his hair back with a piece of leather, but it was escaping, tendrils black as a raven’s wing whipping over his face. Ailsa perched on the edge of the pier, trying to synchronise the short jump into the boat with the waves that tossed it about, ignoring Alasdhair’s offer of help. She had leapt times without number into the boat without even thinking about it, yet now she hovered and hesitated, so inevitably, when she finally jumped, she stumbled. Alasdhair was waiting to catch her, as he always used to. She found she liked that he caught her, and it had naught to do with the old days, but was something more primal, the sensation of being soft and female caught in a pair of strong male arms.

Ailsa stood five foot eight in her stocking soles, yet beside Alasdhair she felt as petite as either of her sisters-in-law. He held her effortlessly. Another wave rolled under the bow of the boat, but Alasdhair merely braced himself, pulling her a little more securely against him.

The wind tugged playfully at his hair. A long strand escaped the leather thong that tied it back, falling into his eyes. Without thinking, Ailsa reached up to smooth it away. It was silky soft, tangled in lashes that were equally soft, thick and jet black. Her palm brushed across his cheek. He turned his head so that his lips brushed the skin on the pad of her thumb. A kiss, warm and soft. A frozen moment when she could have jerked away, but did not. A sharp intake of breath that must have been hers, though she didn’t think she was actually breathing. Then a sigh—also hers—as she turned in his arms. Her hand trailed over the line of his jaw and her other arm went around his neck to steady herself against him.

Alasdhair shifted his feet further apart on the rocking boards of the boat as Ailsa sheltered in the lee of his arms. Her body was all soft curves, moulding itself to his in the most arousing way. She smelled delightful. He could feel her heart beating, fast like his own, yet still he hesitated. There was spray on his face. The taste of salt. The rise and fall of the boat, the rise and fall of his chest. The beat, beat, flutter, beat of her heart. A wave, bigger than the others, tilted the boat. An Rionnag rocked and the spell was broken.

‘We should make sail or we’ll miss the tide,’ he said, releasing his hold on her reluctantly. Desire, hot and heady, had him in its clutch. If he was honest, he wanted to do a lot more than kiss her. Perhaps this was a mistake? What he felt here was no ghostly memory, but something vital and very much of the present. He wanted her, as he had never wanted a woman before.

All too aware of his eyes upon her, Ailsa fumbled with the knot that held An Rionnag to the jetty while Alasdhair secured the sail and took the tiller. Was this a foolish mistake? She used an oar to push them away from the pier, then she retreated to the space in the prow, sitting among the lobster creels and the fishing lines, as Alasdhair guided the little boat out into the choppy sea. The same stretch of water where she had first noticed him as a man.

Looking at him now, handling the tiller with the ease of one as at home on the sea as the land, she tried to conjure up the spirit of that day, reminding herself that this was what she had come for, to exorcise the ghosts. But the Alasdhair opposite her refused to be replaced by his youthful self. Unfortunately for her peace of mind, this Alasdhair, the real Alasdhair, was likely to prove more persistent still. Though she hadn’t known it until yesterday, she recognised the desire that knotted her stomach as she looked at him. Desire that made her mouth dry and her skin shivery. She wanted him.

Ashamed and at the same time more than a little excited with the realisation that she wasn’t, as she had thought herself, immune to such needs, Ailsa dragged her eyes away, but her thoughts continued to race. She wanted him.

Just him? Did his awakening of such feelings mean that she would want Donald? With the cold crystal clarity of a melting mountain stream, she knew then that she never would. This revelation would have to be dealt with, and dealing with it would be painful, but right now it felt like a release. Ailsa smiled and tipped back her head to the bright rays of the April sunshine. Today anything could happen. Anything. Tomorrow was another day, as Shona MacBrayne was always saying.

Alasdhair sailed An Rionnag around the Necklace, weaving the little boat amongst the islets as if he were making a chain in the waters, enjoying the strain and pull on his muscles as he steered their winding course, taking pleasure in the occasional dexterity required to manipulate both rudder and sail at the same time as the wind direction changed. The tiller felt smooth and worn in his hand. The seat was hard underneath him. Sea and sky needed constant watching, for the weather could change in moments. He enjoyed it all with the relish of a home-comer.

Ailsa sat in the prow like one of those figureheads that adorned the fancier vessels that plied their trade in the bustling harbour back in Jamestown. As the boat dipped in and out of the swell, the spray caught her face and the wind whipped her hair, making her laugh. She looked more carefree than he had seen her in the last two days, as if she had shed her woes into the sea, and like the sea she sparkled.

He wondered what she was thinking. Remembering. It was strange, despite his coming out on the boat today being about exorcising the past, he had barely thought of it. Here she was, sitting where she had sat before, and here he was. But though the past flickered on the edges of his vision, it was ephemeral. It was now that was real. This day. This woman. This heady, harsh desire for her. Was he making a huge mistake? But Alasdhair, having set himself upon a course of action, now clung to it stubbornly. It would work. It had to work, because this was what he had come for. A clean slate. A sloughing off of the old.

The middle of the little chain of islands was also the biggest, almost five hundred yards long and half as wide. It was as if An Rionnag remembered the way, so easily did he manage the tricky manoeuvre that brought her into the natural harbour formed by two craggy outcrops of rock. As the boat reached the shallows, Alasdhair dropped the sail, discarded his shoes and hose, and leapt into the freezing cold of the water to haul the little craft on to the beach.

Ailsa jumped ashore, and of one accord they headed off to the far side of the island, their own special hideaway. Here there were pools filled with enormous crabs and colourful sea anemones. They sat on the flat rocks together, sharing the simple picnic Ailsa had brought. They were at ease and on edge by turns, inhabiting some shadowy land between who they had been and who they were now. After they had eaten, they wandered round the perimeter of the island, and the undercurrent of awareness that had never quite left them began to slowly twine itself around and between them, weaving a seductive insistent magic that threatened to cast them under its hypnotic spell.

Chapter Five

‘Why did you decide to come here with me today?’ Alasdhair asked as they stood in the shelter of the stunted pine trees that fringed the shore, watching a seal diving for fish.

‘Because I wanted to go out on An Rionnag.’

‘And because you knew it would annoy your mother.’

Ailsa laughed. ‘A wee bit.’ She worried at the shale on the beach with the toe of her boot, conscious of his watching her and the answering blush rising on her cheek. ‘You’ll think I’m silly,’ she said looking up at him, ‘but what I really wanted was to lay my—our—ghosts to rest.’

‘I don’t think you’re silly. I came here for the same reason myself.’

‘Is it working?’

‘Not really,’ he surprised them both by saying.

She reached for his hand. ‘I didn’t want to hear it when you said yesterday that it wouldn’t have worked, but it was the truth. We were too young and too unsure of ourselves. You had a future to make, I would have been a distraction.’ She rubbed her cheek on the back of his hand. ‘It’s hard, admitting it, and it’s very sad, but maybe if we both accept it’s the truth, then the ghosts will be laid.’

Her honesty, and the effort it had obviously cost her to say the words, touched him to the core. ‘Another thing that hasn’t changed about you,’ Alasdhair said with a catch in his voice, ‘is that you never lacked courage.’

Ailsa shook her head sadly, thinking that it was precisely this she had lacked over the last few years. It had been eroded, along with her self-confidence, as she surrendered herself to the life her father had decreed for her and her mother had prepared her for.

She was still holding his hand against her cheek. He remembered her doing the same thing all those years ago. He touched the corner of her mouth with his thumb. A tear trembled on the silver tip of her lash. He leaned down to kiss it away before it fell. An aching tenderness filled him, and a regret that was for the first time bereft of anger and hurt. He brushed his fingers through the little halo of curls that clustered on her brow, as if he would free her from the lingering ghosts, free them to float off on the breeze, and in doing so free himself, too.

She smiled up at him shakily and something inside him melted. He took it for the release he had sought, that they both wished for. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to kiss her then, a kiss to free them both. With no thought other than that, he did. He felt her lips trembling on his. He wrapped one arm around her back to draw her just the tiniest bit closer.

Ailsa sighed. The tension that had tightened across her shoulders, around her neck, giving her a permanently lurking headache, eased as she nestled into the shelter of Alasdhair’s body. A letting go, that was what they needed, and this was it. A true farewell, with no regrets nor recriminations. Coming to their island had been right after all. She sighed again as his lips met hers, as he put his arm around her, and he kissed her, softly, regretfully.

Except the kiss did not stop. Alasdhair licked her bottom lip, his tongue seeking out the soft flesh on the inside, and little bubbles of desire began to rise in her blood. She would stop in a minute. Or he would. She did not want the moment to be broken. He licked into her mouth, easing it open, deepening the kiss and she softened for him. The bubbles inside her increased. A different kind of tension began to build, lower down. She stood on tiptoe to put her arms around his neck, to pull his head down towards her, to stroke the silken raven’s-wing hair, and stopped thinking.

How did it happen? Just as before, he had no idea. One minute their kiss was tender, the next desire flared between them and it was something infinitely more dangerous, much more difficult to control. One minute their kiss was a finale, the next it was a prelude, a vital, vibrant prelude, fired hot with a passion that seemed to come crashing down on them from the sky.

He kissed her deeply, plundering like the Norsemen who had taken Errin Mhor from the Highlanders many centuries before. She surrendered willingly, her little moaning cries urging him to take more. They sank together on to the ground, kissing, licking, kissing, touching, stroking. Ailsa was so soft beneath him. Her mouth so sweet. Her kisses set him on fire. Her fluttering hands trailed a tortuous path, her touch so light as to be not enough, yet somehow more than enough, too much. He kissed her mouth, her eyelids, her nose, her cheeks, her chin. Her mouth again. Her lips, pink and full and tender.

Ailsa felt as if she had been lifted clean into the middle of a maelstrom, held helpless, suspended, mindless. He was on top of her now. So solid and big and overwhelmingly male. She did not feel safe, yet she did not feel afraid. She was out of her depth.

She would drown, but it would be a drowning so darkly enticing that she craved it. His mouth on hers incited her. His hands, too, hinted at dark pleasures.

Skin. Hot skin and cold air. Her waistcoat flapping open, her sark undone to expose the mounds of her breasts above her stays. Goosebumps. A stillness and a sharp intake of breath. Not hers. His eyes smoky with the secrets she would have him tell, looking at her in a way that made her feel exposed, raw and vulnerable.

She was hot and then cold, and chilled enough to shiver. Unnerved. Ambivalent. It could not really be her lying here like this. She could feel the weight of his arousal. She thought it must be that. Heavy. She hadn’t expected that.

His kisses slowed. She thought they would end and pulled him to her, but instead they became languorous, lingering on her mouth, then down, tracing over her neck, her throat. The outline of her breasts through her sark. Her nipples hardened against the constraints of her stays. She wanted him to touch them. The brazen wanting shocked her.

Ailsa closed her eyes. If she could not see, this could not be her, this fairy-like creature all sensations and nerve-ends, moaning and writhing and squirming and panting. Behind her lids was a world of new colours. Illicit colours. Pulsing colours of crimson and rose-petal pink, glistening moistly and glittering dangerously. A world of icy heat that made her shiver and tremble, a dangerous country for which she had no guide, where someone forbidding and forbidden demanded things from her she should not give.

Alasdhair opened his eyes. The carefully pleated folds of his filleadh beg fell loosely about him. His erection pressed urgently against Ailsa’s thigh. Beneath him she lay, her eyes fast shut, her face flushed, her hair tangled and spread like a river of gold on the bare earth. Her lips were swollen. Her skirts were rucked up. One of her garters had come undone, her stocking slipped down to show him the sweet curve of her calf. She never used to wear stockings. He had not seen her without them since his return.

It hit him then, with a force that made him flinch, that it really was over. No matter how much things seemed as they had been, they were not. The world had turned and turned and turned, and they were both irrevocably changed by the passage of time. It was over.

‘Ailsa.’ Gently, he kissed her lips one final time, pulling her into his arms, holding her close, tight, stroking her hair as if soothing her after a bad dream.

‘Ailsa.’

She opened her eyes. Such beautiful eyes. She looked dazed. ‘I …’

‘Shush.’ The tenderness was back again, desire fading, though he knew the memory of that would haunt him, a new ghost for him to take back to Virginia.

Did he regret it? No. He would not hurt her. He cared. It would never be anything else, but it was something, something else new. Part of the healing? The thought gave him courage.

Reluctantly, he let her go, setting her down on the ground beside him, pulling down her skirts, straightening her stocking, retying her garter, every movement, such intimate movements, another little ending.

‘Listen to me for a moment, Ailsa.’ Alasdhair shook his hair out of his eyes, rubbing his hand over his brow. ‘I want to explain.’ And he did. He did want to explain, and that surprised him. He wanted her to know, and to understand, and it would be nice, for a change, to have that. No one had ever understood him. ‘You asked me why I came back here, not just to the island, but to Errin Mhor. I came because I wanted answers. At least I thought it was what I wanted.’

‘But?’

‘But, I’ve realised what I really wanted was to be at peace with myself and who I am. I’ve been.’ He searched for the right word, and it came to him with simple clarity. He could admit it now, now that he was well on his way to the solution. ‘I’ve been unhappy,’ he said, surprised at how easy it felt, here on the island with Ailsa, to say it. ‘At least, not really unhappy, but not happy either.’

Ailsa pressed his hand. ‘I know about that.’

‘I know you do. Today has helped a lot. What you said to me has helped a lot; I think the ghosts have been laid to rest after all. So thank you.’

His words should have reassured her, but they made her feel unutterably sad, and she could see by the way he was fidgeting with the pleated folds of his plaid that he had not finished yet.

‘You know I care about you, Ailsa.’

For one tiny fraction of a second, the time it took for a wave from the incoming tide to roll over one of the flat red rocks on the shore, she thought he was about to declare himself. She hadn’t expected it, hadn’t allowed herself even to imagine it, but just for that moment, she did and her heart did a little flip of excitement. Then she saw, from the way he was watching her, anxiously, that she had got it all wrong. Again. She forced her mouth into a smile. ‘But?’

‘But that is all it is. I am not capable of anything else and I’m not looking for it, either.’

‘Don’t you ever get lonely, living such a solitary life with no one to share it with?’

‘You can’t miss what you don’t have. I am accustomed to being alone. It is safer to be so. My independence is hard won. In my time growing up here I gave, or tried to give, my love to three women— my mother, your mother and you. In each case, for different reasons, it brought me nothing but heartbreak. I vowed then never to put myself in that position again.’

She managed a wan smile, fearing he would see the remnants of her foolish hopes in her eyes. ‘You need have no fears, you are safe from me, if that is what you are worried about.’

‘I am worried about you. You deserve more from life than an arranged marriage to a man you are, at best, indifferent to.’

‘I agree with you.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I’ve decided I’m not going to marry Donald. And before you start loading yourself up with guilt, it has nothing to do with you. Well, only a little bit. You were right, about my procrastinating. I was fooling myself, thinking I could go through with it. I hadn’t thought what it would mean to—to—to be his wife—properly, I mean. Until now.’ She could feel the blush staining her cheeks, but forced herself to finish what she had to say. It was not so much the confession to Alasdhair, as to herself, that mattered. Saying it out loud would mean she couldn’t ignore it any more, and hopefully that would give her the courage she needed to say it to her mother. ‘It wouldn’t be fair on Donald, to land him with a wife who found the sharing of his bed an ordeal.’

‘Not fair, but not unusual,’ Alasdhair said.

‘Aye, I don’t have to look too far from home to know that,’ Ailsa said sarcastically, ‘but I refuse to be like my mother, I told you that yesterday. I have not the tendencies towards martyrdom she has.’

‘Nor her cold blood.’

‘No.’ She blushed more fiercely, digging her fingers into the pine needles that carpeted the ground on which they sat. ‘Though I had grown to believe that I had.’

She looked so lovely and so confused and vulnerable that he wanted to take her in his arms again, to soothe away the raw pain of her confession. Though it was none of his business, his relief that she wasn’t marrying McNair was immense. He told himself it was because he wanted her to be happy and he knew that McNair would never make her so. ‘This is quite a turnaround from yesterday.’

‘It was having to defend myself to you yesterday that made me realise what a foolish stance I had been taking. You were right. If I’d really meant to go through with it, I would have done so by now.’

‘What will you do?’

Ailsa shrugged. ‘I haven’t thought that far ahead. I don’t know—maybe being an aunt is not such a bad thing.’

‘A waste. I think you would make an excellent mother.’

‘With my own as a role model?’

‘Rather as a warning.’

‘Don’t you ever want children, Alasdhair?’

‘My own memories of childhood do not tempt me down that track. I am content as I am.’

‘As am I.’ Recognising from his voice that the subject was closed, Ailsa got to her feet and shook out her skirts. While they had been talking, the sun had disappeared; the clouds that had been threatening had now gathered overhead with some purpose. ‘We should go back, before the wind picks up.’

They made their way quickly through the canopy of trees on to the beach where the boat was sitting on the shale. Rain began to fall in a fine mist, the breeze making a froth of the waves like a cream on a pudding. ‘Get in, keep dry, I’ll push her off,’ Alasdhair said, throwing his boots and hose into the boat.

Ailsa did as she was bid. Alasdhair pushed An Rionnag back into the water and jumped in. As she lowered the rudder, he unfurled the sail, but when she went to take up her seat at the prow, he stayed her with his hand on her arm. ‘You do not regret that you came today?’

She shook her head.

‘Sit with me here.’

For the last time. The words hung between them. So she sat with him. Her thigh pressing into his. Her booted foot beside his. Her arm on the tiller beside his. The little boat scudded along, back to Errin Mhor. Behind them on the island that was once their island, the ghosts settled with a mournful sigh into their last resting place.

But there was one ghost that had not been laid. As they made their way from the jetty back up through the gardens of the castle, the shadow of a lone figure could be seen outlined against one of the long windows. Ailsa’s heart sank. ‘Mother. Standing sentinel, just like six years ago.’

Alasdhair halted in front of her, protecting her from Lady Munro’s vision. ‘I’m glad she’s there, for it saves me the bother of seeking her out.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Lady Munro and I need to have a conversation which is long overdue.’

‘I hope you have better luck than I did in getting answers.’

‘It is not a question of luck, but will.’

Ailsa chuckled. ‘In that case, my mother may be about to meet her match, for I would not like to set myself against you, Alasdhair Ross. Do you really think she’ll be able to tell you anything about your mother?’

‘I don’t know why, but I’m sure of it.’ Over Ailsa’s shoulder he could see that the shadow had gone from the window. He would seek her out and get the answers he needed. ‘Go on in now. I am to sup with Hamish and Mhairi Sinclair tonight, but I will see you in the morning.’

‘Before you leave, you mean?’

He didn’t feel ready to leave. ‘It depends on what I get out of your mother,’ he said, relieved—though he wouldn’t admit it—to have that excuse. ‘Go on in, it’s getting cold. I’m going round the long way, it will give me time to marshal my thoughts.’

She left him, winding her way through the gardens to where the long drawing-room window that opened on to the terrace was still partly open. Her mother had no doubt been chastising the gardener for being insufficiently ruthless when pruning the roses, as she did every year. Wearily, Ailsa headed for the sanctuary of her bedchamber. Her skin tingled, tight with salt and sun. It had been a long time since she had spent so much time outdoors like that. It felt good. She resolved not to let such a long time pass again. She would claim An Rionnag for her own, when Alasdhair was gone.

When Alasdhair was gone. If she let herself, it would be easy to fall for him again. Too easy. And too painful. He cared for her. That should be enough. He would not care for another. That should be a comfort. It wasn’t, though the idea of another woman at his side was no comfort either.

‘So contrary,’ she chastised herself in the mirror as she unpinned her arisaidh, ‘you cannot expect to have it all ways.’ Her reflection looked back at her, wind-burnished, her hair in a tangle, the soft line of her lips blurred. She touched her finger to them. Well-kissed lips. The feel of his hands, his mouth, his body hard on hers, was so vivid she closed her eyes, the sudden rush of wanting that flooded her with such a poignancy making her feel as if it were happening again. Any doubts she had about her own sensuality were put to flight. She could desire. She could need. She could feel.

All the more reason for being on guard. Her feelings would not be returned. Much better not to have them exposed. Safer. She knew that. Why then was caution, her watchword, now such an unattractive proposition?

A short while later, Alasdhair entered the castle by the front door, heading through the great hall and up the main staircase two steps at a time. Striding along the complex series of corridors that connected the various parts of the castle, he had no difficulty at all in recalling the way.

The large room on the top floor of the oldest part of Errin Mhor castle commanded a view out over the front of the grounds towards the village. It was Lady Munro’s book room, from whence she was wont to oversee her domain, and in which Alasdhair had on many occasions been on the receiving end of her icy reproaches. Not doubting she would be there, he rapped loudly on the door and went in without awaiting her response.

The room had not changed at all. Shelves of leather-bound household accounts going back decades. The unpadded wooden visitor’s chair placed where the light streamed in from the window into the face of any occupant. The imposing desk, behind which Lady Munro sat, her expression disdainful, her laird’s expression in the portrait that hung behind it equally so. Such unwelcome memories it all brought back. Alasdhair straightened his shoulders and strode in. ‘Lady Munro. What a pleasure it is to return to this cosy nook. It evokes so many happy times.’ He declined to sit, instead leaning his shoulder against the mantel in a pose of studied casualness that he knew would irk her.

Age had left little trace on her countenance, that seemed to have hardened rather than become lined. She looked to him almost exactly as she had always done, the shadows under her eyes the only sign of her recent loss.

‘Mr Ross. I do not recall requesting your company.’

Lady Munro’s tone was positively glacial. Alasdhair managed a smile with some difficulty, surprised to find that he was tense, bracing himself for the onslaught as if by habit. But she could not hurt him. She was nothing to him, not any more. ‘Come, my lady, do you not wish to chat over the old days?’

‘What do you want?’ Lady Munro demanded uncompromisingly.

Abruptly abandoning all pretence of politesse, Alasdhair took the seat in front of the desk, turning the chair around to sit astride it. ‘I want some answers.’

‘I see your manners have not improved. No doubt you find yourself quite at home with the savages in America.’ She said the word in the same tone as she would say Sassenach.

‘None so savage as your tongue, my lady. I see your manners have not changed, either.’

‘You are not welcome here, Mr Ross.’

‘Oh, but I am, Lady Munro. As your son’s guest. Calumn is the laird now, had you forgot, and my name is no longer blackened.’

Her eyes blazed.

‘Your whore of a mother blackened the Ross name long before you got yourself banished by setting your sights on my daughter.’

Alasdhair pushed back his chair so violently that it clattered to the ground. He leaned menacingly over the desk, forcing Lady Munro to shrink back in her chair, though she held his fierce gaze unrepentantly. ‘If my mother was a whore, as you call her, she had you as her example, my lady. Did not you do as she did, abandoning your son for the sake of a man?’

Lady Munro got to her feet. ‘How dare you! How dare you compare my actions to your mother’s? You know nothing of the weight of duty a laird’s wife has to endure, the sacrifices she has to make, the pain she has to bear. All for the sake of her sire and the clan. My motives were honourable, however unpalatable the actions required of me.’

For the first time in his life his blow had pierced her armour and it surprised him. ‘Did that include tormenting me? I was an upstart in your eyes, I know, but I was just a bairn, and an orphaned one, to all intents and purposes. You made my life a misery and I think it was deliberate. I want to know why.’

‘I made your life miserable,’ Lady Munro hissed. ‘You have no idea what suffering is.’

‘Aye, but I do, and it was you who taught me much of it. It would have cost you nothing to be kind to me or even just to let me be, but instead you took pleasure in my pain.’

‘I would have taken greater pleasure still had you never been foisted upon me in the first place.’

‘That was your husband’s decision.’

‘Oh, I know that only too well. He would not have my cuckoo in his nest, but he was perfectly happy to—’ Lady Munro took a quick breath. ‘He came to regret it, though. Aye, I must remember that. He regretted it. You betrayed him. The laird did not forgive you for that, even though—no, he did not forgive you.’

‘I did not betray him!’ Realising he was in danger of allowing her the upper hand simply by losing his temper, Alasdhair stood back from the desk and resumed his seat. ‘Was it Rory?’ he asked in a calmer tone.

‘Rory? What about him?’

‘Your first born. The child of your first marriage. Is it that simple? You resented me, a factor’s son, living here when he could not? It must have been hard, seeing me take his rightful place.’

‘Nothing is that simple. You’re not capable of taking Rory’s place. He is a laird, of noble blood, you are a bastard.’

‘But it must have felt as if I was doing so,’ Alasdhair insisted. ‘I can see that now. All the harder a blow to bear since it was Lord Munro’s decision in both cases. Guilt is a terrible thing too, is it not, my lady? No wonder you can’t look Rory in the eye. No wonder you don’t feel entitled to see your grandchild.’ She had paled, though she still did not speak. He had clearly hit upon the truth. Or part of it. ‘Is that the only reason?’

For long moments, Lady Munro made no reply, gazing off into the space over his shoulder. Indeed, she seemed to have forgotten his presence all together, for her eyes were blank, her thoughts turned inwards, her hands clasped so tight together that the knuckles showed white. It was a chilling sight. The clock on the mantel chimed the hour. Lady Munro glanced behind her at the portrait of her husband. Why not? The shame of it would be worth it, if it rid them all of Ross. Why not? She turned her gaze back to Alasdhair, curling her lip. ‘You’re right, there is another reason, Alasdhair Ross, but I don’t see why I should have the bother of telling you. That honour should go to the root cause of it all.’

‘Who?’

‘Your mother.’

‘My mother!’ Alasdhair’s brows snapped together. ‘She’s still alive, then? You know where she is?’

‘I have always made it my business to know.’ Lady Munro’s eyes narrowed. ‘When you’ve seen her, when you’ve heard what she has to say, there will be nothing to keep you here. You’ll be going back to Virginia?’

‘That is my plan.’

‘Then make sure you stick to it.’ Lady Munro’s mouth curled. ‘When you’ve heard what she has to say, I don’t doubt you will.’

‘What do you mean? What has my mother to do with you? Why—?’

‘Ask her, Alasdhair Ross. Ask her why I hate you. Tell her I gave my permission for it to be the truth.’

‘What are you talking about?’

Lady Munro shook her head. ‘She’s in Inveraray. Ask her. And then get the hell out of Scotland and leave my daughter alone.’

Realising there was no more to be had from her, and determined not to allow her to see how much her hints had stirred his curiosity, Alasdhair got to his feet. He had what he needed. He was anxious to be gone.

‘You need not seek Ailsa out to say your goodbyes,’ Lady Munro said sweetly, ‘she will be otherwise engaged tonight. Her husband-to-be has just arrived.’

‘McNair is here?’

‘She told you about the betrothal?’

‘Of course. Unlike you, Ailsa has no liking for deceit.’

‘I will bid you goodbye then, for I am informed that you plan to spend the night at the smiddy,’ Lady Munro said. ‘An excellent idea. Hamish Sinclair and his wife are much more your sort of company than the more exalted ambiance of the castle.’

It surprised him, how petty her spite sounded. He wondered if it had always been so. ‘You are quite right, Hamish and Mhairi are much more my sort of company, and I hope it is ever so,’ Alasdhair said. ‘There is, however, no need to say your farewell to me just yet. I shall be back in the morning to see Ailsa. I do not intend to leave a second time without saying goodbye to her. Through your duplicity and treachery you succeeded the last time. I do not intend to let you succeed again, so it is merely adieu.’ He bowed. ‘I will take my leave now. I find the air in here too fetid to breathe.’

Pulling the door closed behind him, he leaned against the wall panelling. Thank God he was not obliged to face dinner here. Ailsa would have more than enough to cope with tonight without the additional angst which his presence would cause.

Back in the book room, Lady Munro picked up the letter opener that sat on her blotter. Made of chased silver with an ivory handle, it had belonged to her first husband. Rory’s father, one of the very few things of his she had in her possession, for Lord Munro had preferred to believe that Rory and his father and indeed her first marriage had never existed. Taking a deep breath, she lifted the little knife high above her head and hesitated for a moment before plunging it deep into the oak desk.

Ailsa was dressing for dinner, donning a dark green silk half-robe. It had long sleeves, fitted tight to her elbows, where the lacy ruffles of her clean sark billowed out. She wore it over a cream petticoat patterned with sprigs of yellow flowers. She looped a long strand of milky pearls around her neck, and was fastening her hair up, securing it with a good many painful pins, when Lady Munro let herself into the bedchamber.

‘I am glad to see you looking so well,’ she said, eyeing Ailsa’s toilette with approval. ‘Donald is here.’

The pin Ailsa was holding dropped to the floor. ‘Donald? I thought—I assumed you had postponed his visit, after our last conversation.’

‘After our last conversation, I thought his visit was all the more urgent.’ Dressed in a close-fitting dress of black silk, Lady Munro looked like a beautiful and lethal serpent. There was a brittleness about her, too, that was rather frightening. Ailsa wondered if it was the result of her interview with Alasdhair. Only the knowledge that her mother would tell her nothing, unless it suited her, prevented her from asking.

‘You do not rate my advice, I know,’ Lady Munro said, picking up the fallen hairpin and placing it carefully into Ailsa’s coiffure, ‘but you would do well to heed it, none the less. You would be very foolish indeed to give way to this flight of fancy and end your betrothal.’

‘Which flight of fancy would that be?’

‘Don’t play the innocent with me. It is no coincidence that your sudden change of heart has come hot on the heels of Alasdhair Ross’s return. I have seen the way you look at him, like a besotted schoolgirl.’

Did she? ‘Indeed I do not,’ Ailsa said defiantly.

‘Alasdhair and I are friends. We were always close, until you put an end to it.’

‘Well, I have no need to put an end to it this time,’ Lady Munro said with a glacial smile, ‘he is quite capable of doing that himself.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He is off tomorrow, seeking tears and reconciliation with that mother of his.’

Ailsa swallowed. She had suspected, despite his protestations, that Alasdhair would be unable to resist seeking his mother out once he knew her whereabouts. She had not expected he would discover them so quickly, though. ‘So you knew all along where she was?’

‘Of course I knew. Everything that happens on Errin Mhor is my business.’

Ailsa bit her cheek. This time she would not lose faith. ‘Alasdhair wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye. If you say otherwise, I won’t believe you. You lied the last time, but it won’t work again.’

‘No, you’re right, he wouldn’t. He said as much.’ Lady Munro twisted her jet bracelet round her wrist. ‘He may say his sentimental goodbye if he wishes. That is of no real consequence to me. The important point, daughter of mine, is that he will be gone and gone for ever,’ she said with a triumphant smile.

Chapter Six

Ailsa gazed at her mother in despair. ‘Why do you detest him so? Why are you so desperate to see the back of him?’

‘I know you and I have—there have been—in short, you think I do not care, but …’ Lady Munro faltered under her daughter’s look of disbelief. ‘Now your father is gone, I had hoped we would have a chance to put our relationship on a better footing.’

‘Now my father is gone! My father had been ill for a long time, yet you showed no sign of any such wish. In fact, you have never given me any sign at any time that you care for me. We do not have a relationship to rebuild.’

‘That is not true. I may not have shown you outward affection, but—

‘Please, don’t tell me that you have always cared for me in your heart, for you do not possess one. This has nothing to do with my father dying. You are like a dog with a bone, Mother, only interested in it if someone tries to take it from you. You want me to marry Donald so you can keep me close, under your control. Alasdhair is a threat to that, that is why you are so desperate to see him gone. It is not out of love for me, but to protect your own selfish wishes.’

Lady Munro, who had momentarily seemed to be on the point of some softer emotion, now paled, and stiffened into something more nearly resembling a marble effigy. ‘Listen to me, Ailsa, and listen well. Whatever it is you think you feel for Ross, it is wrong. It cannot be. I won’t—I can’t—it would be wrong.’ She took a quick breath. ‘Ross feels nothing for you. You cannot be so foolish as to end such an advantageous marriage as has been arranged for you for the remnants of an adolescent fancy.’

‘I’m not.’

Lady Munro relaxed a fraction. ‘I knew you would see sense.’

‘I’m not ending my betrothal because I think I’m still in love with Alasdhair. Mother, you must listen to me for a change. Just this once, you must take me seriously.’ Ailsa took a swift turn about the room. ‘I cannot marry Donald. I will not marry Donald. I am sorry if it upsets your plans, but I will not sacrifice myself to duty as you did. Whether you believe me or not, my change of heart has nothing to do with Alasdhair, and everything to do with my finally coming to know my own mind. We would not be suited.’

‘There is no one who would suit you better. If not Ross, then tell me, Ailsa, what is it that has changed your mind so suddenly? It is not as if this betrothal is a new thing, nor, I am sure you do not need me to remind you, has it been undertaken without your consent.’

‘I know that, of course I know that, but I was wrong. I cannot, Mother. I don’t care enough for him.’

‘Care? You will learn to care, once you are wed.’

‘No. I don’t love him.’

‘I wonder where you get these fancies from! A good marriage comes about from shared interests, an investment in the next generation and a common desire to make it work. It takes commitment and unquestioning loyalty and hard work. It has nothing to do with affection.’

‘Yours certainly did not.’

‘My marriage was a success. As yours will be.’

‘I don’t want that kind of success—it comes at too high a cost.’ Ailsa clasped her hands tightly together to stop them shaking. ‘You said you cared for me. Don’t you want me to be happy?’

‘Marriage to Donald will make you happy, if for no other reason than it is what everyone else wants.

There is much to be said for doing one’s duty, Ailsa. I cannot commend it to you highly enough.’

‘Even if it makes me miserable.’

‘You are wilfully misunderstanding me. The doing of one’s duty cannot make one miserable. If I cannot persuade you, perhaps Donald will. I will ensure that you and he have some privacy later.’

‘Mother! Please, I beg of you do not. I don’t want to be left alone with him. I am not going to marry him, you must accept that,’ Ailsa said despairingly.

‘Nonsense. You owe it to him and to me and to the memory of the laird, and to Calumn, too, for that matter, to honour this betrothal.’ Lady Munro nodded with satisfaction, ‘I wonder why I didn’t think of this before. Sometimes the old ways are best.’

‘What do you mean the old ways?’ Ailsa asked suspiciously.

‘In times gone past problems were often solved by taking what you might call a more direct approach. There is a lot to be said for pre-emptive action.’

‘Mother, what on earth are you suggesting?’

‘There is no need to be so dramatic, Ailsa,’ Lady Munro said ruthlessly. ‘I am talking about granting Donald a few liberties as a token of your willingness, that is all. I am hardly suggesting you surrender your maidenhead to him.’

‘I won’t. I can’t. You are under the impression I have taken this decision lightly, but I have not, I assure you. For a while now, since before my father’s death, I have been unhappy about it.’

‘My mistake has been in allowing the betrothal to go on so long. We will remedy that urgently, and when you are married I will prove to you that I can be the loving mother you deserve. You will thank me for this later,’ Lady Munro said implacably. ‘I will leave you to complete your toilette. Dinner is in fifteen minutes, do not be late.’

She closed the door of her daughter’s chamber behind her and leant against it for support, for she was shaken by Ailsa’s strength of will. Shielding her eyes with her hands for just a moment, Lady Munro’s sharp mind sifted through the possibilities. She could not take the chance on Ross’s leaving, even after he heard what Morna had to say. She could not take the chance on Ailsa being here waiting for him. She could not take the chance on her plans, her long-coveted plans, for keeping Ailsa close, for coming out of the laird’s shadow, failing now, at this last moment. She could not take the chance of another of the laird’s shadows hanging over her for ever. Ross must go. Ailsa must marry McNair.

The solution, obvious as it was, was also repugnant. But Ailsa would forgive her. And if she did not—Lady Munro took a shaky breath. The truth about Ross. If needs must, she would tell her. Then she would understand.

Standing up straight, Lady Munro set off down the corridor with a determined step. The truth was a last resort. Donald McNair was a first.

The Laird of Ardkinglass was drinking a glass of claret when Ailsa made her way downstairs to the great hall, but he put it down at once to press a kiss on his betrothed’s hand.

Ailsa had always thought him a tall man, as indeed he was compared to most Highlanders, but tonight he appeared diminished. It was not just that he was shorter and of slighter build than Alasdhair, but he lacked his presence. She had always thought Donald McNair a good-looking man, too. At thirty-two years old, with dark brown hair, a strong nose and a decided chin, he passed for handsome in most company. She could not decide what colour were his eyes—brown or hazel or a sort of grey-green?

‘Here is Donald, come to pay his condolences,’ Lady Munro said. Her smile was that of a witch who has completed a particularly taxing spell.

Ailsa curtsied. ‘I trust you are fully recovered, Laird,’ she said.

‘Aye, I’m well enough. All the better for seeing you.’ Donald patted her arm.

They made their way through to the small dining room for dinner. Lady Munro presided over the dinner table like a death’s head. Donald sat at her right hand, Ailsa at her left, in a state of nervous anticipation bordering on panic. She could not believe her mother really meant what she had said. She could not eat for wondering if she did. She felt sick, and wished fervently that Calumn had not gone to Edinburgh.

The conversation focused largely on the threat of incomers. Lady Munro took little part but sat, sphinxlike and inscrutably threatening, as Ailsa and Donald debated the issue. In the aftermath of the Rebellion, many Jacobite lands had been sequestered by the Crown, and were now being sold off cheaply to farmers from the south of Scotland and the north of England. Intent only on lining their pockets, these men were clearing the land of the crofters and cotters who had lived there for generations, leaving them homeless and starving.

‘Fraser of Straad shipped those of his tenants that wanted to go off to a new life in America before the new landowners arrived,’ Donald said. ‘’Tis a sorry sight, seeing men so proud come to this. Fraser has only his name left to him.’

‘If we are not careful, it will be the same for us all,’ Ailsa replied. Like both of her brothers, she could see the necessity for change. ‘Calumn says the trick is to stay ahead of the pack.’

‘What can a bunch of Sassenachs teach us Highlanders about farming our own land?’ Donald said scornfully. ‘We’ve been working this land the same way for centuries.’

‘Precisely. There is no point in sticking to tradition just for the sake of it.’

‘Your brother is in danger of throwing away his heritage. Lord Munro would be turning in his grave to hear you, Ailsa.’

‘He’s like to be spinning in it by the time Calumn is finished,’ Ailsa said, ignoring her mother’s warning frown. ‘He has no intention of allowing his tenants to follow those of Fraser of Straad across the ocean. If enclosure is what is needed, so be it. The good heart of Munro lands and Munro people is what matters. What use is pride to you, when you have an empty stomach? There is no such thing as a traditional way to starve.’

Donald looked scandalised. ‘I hope you’re not thinking of bringing this radical talk with you to Ardkinglass.’

Lady Munro pushed back her chair abruptly. ‘Ailsa listens too much to her brother’s modern ideas. She likes to tease, Donald, I am sure she has no such intentions.’

‘It is not just Calumn who says these things,’ Ailsa said defensively.

Lady Munro closed her eyes. ‘I am aware, Ailsa, that your other brother is even more revolutionary. You would do well not to heed him.’

‘My brother’s name is Rory, Mother. Can’t you even bring yourself to say it?’

‘Don’t imagine you have the monopoly on feelings, Ailsa,’ Lady Munro snapped.

For a split second her mask slipped. There was pain in her eyes, dark pools of it, but by the time Ailsa had opened her mouth to apologise it was gone and Lady Munro was turning a bright smile on Donald. ‘You will forgive me if I retire early tonight. I have the headache.’

‘I’m sure Ailsa will keep me entertained,’ Donald replied.

The meaningful look they exchanged left Ailsa in no doubt that her mother had made good on her threats. She watched incredulously as Lady Munro made her stately way out of the door without even looking back.