The Highlander's Return

The sound of the latch clicking to made Ailsa jump to her feet. ‘I must bid you goodnight, too,’ she said, backing away from the table. ‘I find I am tired.’

Donald drained the contents of his claret glass in one swallow. ‘Has not your mother spoken to you?’

‘Yes, yes she has.’

‘Lady Munro is minded to keep to tradition.’

‘Donald, there has been a misunderstanding. You must know that I have …’

He smiled. ‘There now, you’re nervous. Of course ye are.’ He took her hand between his. He had strong hands, calloused and scarred. The hands of a man who worked hard for a living. The hands of a warrior, too. Donald’s skills with the broadsword were legendary. It was something she had liked about him before.

She tried to pull away, but his grip on her tightened. ‘Donald, you mistake the situation.’

‘There’s nothing to mistake. We are betrothed. It is high time you showed willing.’

She did not like being in the room alone with him in this way. Though the table had not been cleared, she had no doubt that her mother had left instructions with the servants not to disturb them. The room was in the square tower, in the oldest part of the building, where the walls were almost a foot thick. No one would hear her. With Alasdhair away at the smiddy, there was no one to rescue her.

‘I am very tired, Donald, it’s been an exhausting few days,’ Ailsa said a little desperately.

‘Is it wooing ye want? I didnae think you were one for pretty speeches and the like, but if that’s what it takes, you must know that I think you a fine-looking woman.’

‘Donald, I can’t …’

He gave an exasperated sigh. ‘And were you not such a fine-looking woman with such a big dowry, I don’t doubt I’d be looking elsewhere for a wife.’

‘Donald, I’m sorry, but that’s exactly what you are going to have to do. We have made a mistake. I have made a mistake. It is all my fault. I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, but we are not suited.’

‘I wouldn’t say that. I’ve brought more spirited fillies to heel than you. Come now, lass, don’t be shy,’ Donald said with a smile that was meant to be reassuring. ‘A strong hand on the rein and a sure seat in the saddle is what it takes, and I have both.’

‘Donald, you must listen to me. I don’t want to marry you. I can’t marry you.’

‘That is not what your mother tells me.’

‘She is wrong. She doesn’t understand.’

‘I think she understands you very well. What you need is taking in hand.’ He edged her back against the wall. ‘You are to be my wife, Ailsa, best you learn now that I will brook no refusals.’

‘Donald, please don’t do this.’

But the Laird of Ardkinglass was deaf to her protests. ‘Haud your wheesht, ‘tis not words I’m wanting from that mouth of yours.’ He kissed her, his mouth hard and hot on hers. His tongue and his hands were like an invasion. She tried to push him away, but her flailing blows were no match for Donald’s superior strength. He held her easily, though she fought him with all her strength. His hand on her breast was like a vice. Her mouth was suffocated by his. He yanked painfully at her hair to angle her head. She tried to kick his shins, but she was pressed hard against the wall. She managed to free one hand and ripped her nails into his face.

Donald gave a cry of fury and cursed viciously. Touching his finger to his cheek, he stared in astonishment at the blood she had drawn.

Ailsa began to edge away from him, heading for the door. Donald took a step towards her, then stopped. ‘A wild cat. Who’d have thought it, with that frigid mother of yours?’

Ailsa grabbed the door and ran, crying and panting with relief and fright, back to the sanctuary of her bedchamber. In the dining room, Donald mopped his face with a discarded napkin. There would be time enough to tame her, but tame her he would, and soon. It would be a challenge he would enjoy, he thought with relish. With a grim smile, he tossed back a fortifying glass of claret, before ringing the bell.

‘Tell Lady Munro that I am of a mind to do as she suggested,’ Donald told the servant. ‘Tonight.’ Then he headed out to the stables in search of his groom.

Pacing backwards and forwards between the window and the fireplace as the dawn light crept across the ocean, Ailsa watched the fishing fleet make its way out to sea. Her head felt as if Hamish Sinclair was pounding her brain with the smiddy hammer.

Until today, she had not disliked Donald. On the contrary, she had genuinely believed he had all the attributes of a good husband. Seeing him again, she was taken aback at the degree to which her feelings for him had changed. The very idea of being intimate with him appalled her. He looked at her without really seeing her, he heard her conversation without listening. Save for their heritage, they had nothing in common.

Yet it was their heritage that, according to her mother, would guarantee the success of their marriage. That, and Ailsa’s recognising that entering into such a marriage was her duty. She had not realised, until she started to question it, how strongly entrenched her own acceptance of such a rationale had been. She had not realised until tonight just how successful her mother had been in moulding her in her own image, playing on Ailsa’s insecurities in order to do so. How successful, too, in making her subdue her own wants and inclinations—in making her feel guilty for having them in the first place!

Tonight had been a revelation in more ways than one. She was not made like her mother, no matter how much she resembled her. The relief of that was so intense that for sometime it obscured the pain of the consequences. She was not made like her mother; she could not be like her. The reservations she had been unable to express, which had been fluttering on the periphery of her consciousness ever since she had finally agreed to marry Donald, now coalesced into tangible objections.

She did not love him and would not bring children into the world that were the product of a loveless marriage. She would not immolate herself on the altar of duty, either. Respect and loyalty to her kin and to her clan she owed, but without integrity, they were meaningless.

She did not love, but she was capable of it. That was the thing her mother couldn’t understand. She could, if she let herself, and knowing that she could glimpse happiness. And it made the notion of casting the hope of it aside an outrage. She would not sacrifice herself. Her mother could not understand that, but finally, with a clarity that was dazzling, Ailsa did.

Which begged the question. Why?

Ailsa curled up on the window seat, hugging her nightgown around her knees. She knew why. And so, frighteningly, did Lady Munro.

Alasdhair.

Alasdhair, whose kisses she could not help but compare to Donald’s. Whose touch made her want to beg for more, not scream for release. Whose honourable restraint she could not but contrast with Donald’s ignoble compulsion.

Lady Munro had noticed. Had Alasdhair? Was that why he had so tactfully warned her off? He cared, but he would never care enough, that’s what he’d said. He did not want her for a wife. He did not want anyone for a wife. On that point, her mother was right to caution her. She would do well not to build her happiness around a dream that would never become a reality.

But her feelings for Alasdhair had already set her upon the road to happiness—or away from the road to unhappiness, perhaps. His return had forced her to look closely at her life. He it was who had made her realise just how fully she had shut her emotions down. He had roused her from her cocoon. She would not return to it. It was that that she must cling to, to give her the courage to stick to her decision not to marry Donald.

The final lonely star faded from the night sky as the last of the fishing boats turned into a dot on the horizon. Ailsa returned to her bed, curling up under the covers, shivering with the cold. She had been right after all, thinking Alasdhair portended change. The thought made her smile. She had no idea what the future held, but at the moment it was enough to know that a loveless marriage was one of the things it did not.

Tomorrow he would say goodbye and be off in search of his mother. She wouldn’t think of that right now. Too painful. Strange, that her own mother had hinted at reconciliation, too. If she was not careful, she would start to feel sorry for her. It was obvious, despite all her claims, that Lady Munro was a deeply unhappy person. Why had she not seen that either, until now? Perhaps she had been too hard on her mother tonight? Perhaps this time she really meant it. It didn’t matter, after all, what put it in her mind. It was a risk worth taking. Tomorrow—today—Ailsa thought sleepily, she would ask her if she meant it. And she would enlist Calumn’s help in the matter of her betrothal. Calumn would support her.

Tomorrow Alasdhair would be gone. Don’t think about that. Ailsa fell into a troubled sleep.

A short while later, a noise outside in the corridor roused her. Even as she struggled to full consciousness, the door was flung open and Donald stood on the threshold of her chamber. He was dressed for a journey, in trews and a short jacket over which was pinned his filleadh mòr. His dirk, the long thin knife that no Highlander would travel without, was sheathed in his belt, and his broadsword dangled at his side.

Ailsa sat up in bed. ‘What on earth do you want? Don’t you dare come in here or I’ll scream.’

Donald ignored her and marched into the room. Ailsa clutched the bedcovers to her. ‘Get out,’ she said, her voice rising with panic, ‘get out of my bedchamber this instant.’

‘Be quiet and get dressed. We’ve not much time,’ Donald said, standing at the foot of her bed.

In the grey light she could not see his expression clearly, but she did not need to do so to be afraid. ‘Get out,’ she said again. Realising how vulnerable she was, she scrabbled out of her bed and tried to edge towards the bell pull by the fireplace. If she could just summon one of the servants …

Donald cut her off. She shrank away from him. ‘What do you want?’ she asked, backing towards the window.

He smiled. She could see the glint of his teeth. He had very white teeth. ‘Get dressed, Ailsa.’

He made no attempt to touch her. She was backed up against the window seat. Her bedchamber was on the second floor. She would not survive the jump.

‘Why?’

‘Because we’re going on a little journey, you and I.’

‘Now? It’s the middle of the night.’

‘It’s past dawn. The horses are waiting.’

‘Where—where are you taking me?’

‘Questions, questions. I warn you, Ailsa, I expect my wife to be a little more compliant.’

‘Your—I am not going to be your wife, Donald.’ Cold. It was cold. Fear clawed its horny fingers around her heart, squeezing the breath slowly from her.

‘By the time I’m finished with you, you’ll think yourself lucky to call yourself my wife. You think I’m likely to forget the way you behaved last night? I am McNair of Ardkinglass—no one says me nay. I shall have you, Ailsa Munro, and if you please me, I’ll gie you my wedding ring. But if you do not …’ He unsheathed his dirk so quickly she realised what he had done only when the sharp point touched the exposed skin under her chin. ‘So, you would do well to please me, my dear. Now put your clothes on or I will take you as you are.’

She did not doubt for a moment that he would make good his threats. It was obvious now that her mother was intent on a wedding at all costs. That Lady Munro was at the very least aware of Donald’s plan to abduct her daughter, Ailsa did not question. He would have bound and gagged her by now if he was not certain that no one would come to her rescue.

Shaking, Ailsa pushed the dirk away from her throat. The blade was so sharp that it sliced open her finger. Blood dripped on to the polished floorboards. She put her finger in her mouth. The metallic taste of her own life force trickled on to her tongue. She saw Donald watching her. Saw he found her action arousing and hastily withdrew her finger. ‘Turn your back.’

He laughed, a low bristling growl that made her flesh crawl. ‘Aye, and have you clatter me o’er the head with something. I’ll be seeing it all soon enough, so you may as well drop the modest-maid act.’

As with all things that were once feral, the laird’s civil veneer peeled away easily under duress. His accent coarsened. Knowing he was not a man to make empty threats, Ailsa pulled a petticoat and a woollen skirt over her nightgown. She did not bother with stays, lacing herself into a heavy woollen waistcoat and belting and pinning her arisaidh over the top. Rummaging in a drawer for stockings, she closed her hand around the jewelled sgian dubh she kept there. It had belonged to her maternal grandmother. She had come across it at Heronsay, and Rory had made her a gift of it, on the promise that she would not actually carry it. The little dagger was no more than six inches from hilt to the tip of the blade, but it was sharp. Under cover of donning her stockings and boots, Ailsa tied the sgian dubh to her calf with her garter. Tying her hair back with a ribbon, she pulled her arisaidh up over her head, and turned back to Donald. Though it cost her dear, she must be all compliance. If he thought her resigned, he would be less careful. At some point in their journey she would stage her attack. She would not let him take her. Rather, she would surrender her life first.

They made their way down the central staircase, confirming Ailsa in her surmise that Lady Munro was well aware of what was afoot. Donald threw back the heavy bolts of the castle’s front door without a care for the noise they made. At the bottom of the steps, his groom held three horses. Without protest, Ailsa allowed the man to throw her into the saddle. In the fading light of the night, they made their way through the gates and took the track that headed south. Donald led. Ailsa was in the middle. The groom took up the rear, neatly hemming her in. A pine martin scuttled across the path, making Donald’s horse rear up. He cursed.

The very notion of submitting to Donald’s touch filled her with repugnance. The strength of her will to survive this ordeal unscathed took her aback. She would fight to her last breath to escape. Ailsa sat up straighter in the saddle. As the morning sun began to rise, so, too, did her spirits. The fog of misery that had encompassed her mind cleared. Ailsa began to plan.

The scent of peat smoke and the tang of salt and the fishy smell of nets drying on washing lines filled the air as Alasdhair left the smiddy in the early morning. Back in the old days, Hamish used to allow him to work off his frustration by taking the hammer to the anvil. Hamish it was who had taught him how to fight with the claymore and how to shoot, too. The smiddy fire was already burning bright when Alasdhair made his farewells. Hamish’s beard was as fiery red as the furnace he tended. His welcoming grin burned even brighter. It had been a good night. Old friends, old stories, simple food and good humour. But now he must return to the castle to say his farewells.

The night, spent on a straw mattress in the tiny room that was more of a hayloft reached by a rickety ladder from the main chamber of Hamish’s cottage, had brought certainty on one subject. He needed to see his mother, to speak to her face to face, and hear her story from her own lips. It wasn’t just the knowing, it was the understanding. Ailsa had made him see that.

Ailsa.

Walking through the wispy morning mist that gave the village a hazy appearance, as if it were on the verge of disappearing, Alasdhair wrestled with the plethora of feelings that one word roused.

Ailsa. Just a name, but it conjured her up so clearly. It could never belong to any other.

He was glad she had decided not to marry Donald. He abhorred the idea of her being unhappy and knew for a certainty that is what such a marriage would make her. She deserved affection. She deserved to be cared for. She deserved to be loved. He wouldn’t have entertained such a notion a few days ago. Had it really been such a short time since he arrived on Errin Mhor? A few days? It seemed like weeks, so much had changed.

It was knowing that Ailsa had not rejected him that made him question his mother’s rejection. Though he had had to force it from her, the insight Lady Munro had given him into her own mind had helped, too. His mother was the final piece of the picture. Once he had that, he could go home, be finally at peace.

Except there was Ailsa.

He didn’t want to leave her. He didn’t understand what it was he felt for her. Caring, yes, but he was fooling himself if he thought it was just that, and he was done with fooling himself.

He wanted her. He wanted to imprint himself on that delectable body, to sink into the delightful, sensual essence of her. He wanted to drown in her, and to drink of her, and to teach her pleasure, and to take pleasure with her. He wanted her with a passion he had never felt before, and he wanted her all the more because he knew she felt it too, and never had before. Not even six years ago. Not like this. As well to compare the cheap spirit made from a ferryman’s illicit still to an aged whisky, the one a poor pale shadow of the other, lacking depth, quick to effect, short of duration.

Maybe so, but he could choose not to drink the heavenly elixir, Alasdhair reminded himself. He did not need Ailsa Munro, no matter how much he might want her. No fire, however brightly it burned, could flame without fuel. He would not see her again after today. Or maybe after he had seen his mother. She would want to know the outcome of that visit. Since she had been instrumental in persuading him of the need to find his mother, she deserved to know. After that, he would say goodbye. With the distance of the ocean between them, it would be easier not to think of her.

A pang of homesickness for Virginia washed over him. Coming back to Errin Mhor had not been the simple journey of discovery he had thought. He paused at the fork in the road that led to the castle and closed his eyes, picturing the spreading acres of his vast plantation, conjuring up the earthy smell of the summer heat, the sweet, almost rotten smell of the tobacco plants drying in the outbuildings.

Home. He did not doubt it now. For that much alone, this journey had been worth it.

But when he arrived at the castle in search of Ailsa, Alasdhair was informed curtly by Lady Munro that her daughter was not available. ‘Where is she?’

‘Helping the fey wife with a birth. A difficult one. Twins—she is like to be gone all day.’

Since Alasdhair had passed Shona MacBrayne at the home farm, he knew this for a lie. A cold premonition gripped him. ‘I don’t believe you. Where is she?’

‘If you must have it, she is gone.’

‘Gone where?’

‘Away from your influence. She is gone to be married to Donald McNair. He came to claim her last night.’

‘She has no wish to marry McNair.’

‘That may be what she told you.’

Alasdhair shook his head in disgust. ‘Your tricks don’t work a second time around, my lady. If she is with McNair, it is not of her own free will.’

Lady Munro paled. ‘She will not be unwilling, not when she realises it is for her own good.’

‘Not when she realises… . Dear God, do you mean you had her abducted?’

‘No! No, of course not. Donald is her affianced husband, he.’

‘So, she packed her bags and went off with him of her own accord?’

‘She …’

‘No, of course she didn’t,’ Alasdhair thundered. ‘She is your own daughter. Your only daughter. Are you so set on having your own way that you have had her kidnapped?’

Faced with the large, solid bulk of a furious Highlander, his face drawn tight with anger, Lady Munro quailed. She did not know how it came about that Alasdhair Ross had transformed himself into this forbidding male, who even yesterday had not wholly intimidated her, but he did now. She was afraid.

‘I thought that once she saw Donald she would change her mind.’ Lady Munro’s voice said shakily.

‘And did she? No, obviously not, or you would not have resorted to abduction.’

Alasdhair sank on to a chair and dropped his head into his hands. ‘When? When did he take her?’

‘This morning. Early. I don’t know, I …’

‘Then it might not be too late.’ Alasdhair jumped to his feet. ‘Where? Do not tell me he was taking her to Ardkinglass, I won’t believe you. He will have Calumn to contend with, and will want to keep her well away from here until enough time has passed to make sure of her shame should her brother try to have her returned. Where? The devil take you, woman, unless you want to see your daughter’s life blighted by marriage to a man with all the makings of the tyrant that her father was, you will tell me where he took her!’

‘Donald is not—she would not be …’

‘He is a laird of the old school, as your laird was. All the men know that. Why do you think the Munro was so keen on the alliance? Do you really want Ailsa to have the life you’ve had? There’s still time to prevent it, if you tell me now.’

Lady Munro staggered against the back of a chair.

‘South. They have gone south. What will you do if you find them?’

‘I have no idea, save that I will not be bringing her back here until I can be assured of her safety.’

‘Despite what you think, I did this because I love my daughter.’

‘You have a strange way of showing it.’

As Alasdhair turned to go, Lady Munro clutched at his sleeve. ‘Bring her back. Please don’t take her with you.’

‘I have no intentions of taking her to Virginia, if that is what you’re worried about,’ Alasdhair said contemptuously. ‘I have wasted enough time already.’ Shaking himself free, he strode out of the great hall.

Whey-faced, Lady Munro tottered over to the cabinet and unlocked the decanter that was kept there. Pouring a generous measure of whisky into a single glass, she drank it down in one gulp. Then she collapsed slowly on to the floor, her head in her hands. Despair pierced her heart like a cruel, sharp diamond.

Alasdhair ran all the way to the smiddy. He ignored the startled blacksmith and strode into the cottage. His black suit was discarded in an instant in favour of the filleadh beg. Into his belt he slotted his unsheathed dirk. His sgian dubh was tucked into the same belt at the back, under his leather waistcoat. The claymore that Hamish had kept meticulously sharpened and polished was lifted carefully from its box.

It had been a present from Lord Munro on Alasdhair’s sixteenth birthday. The same birthday on which he had made his son the recipient of a similar weapon. The two-handed claymore of the old days had given way to a smaller, lighter weapon, with a blade measuring some three feet, a good eighteen inches shorter than the one that Robert the Bruce had made his own. Alasdhair’s broadsword had a basket hilt made of steel that had been fashioned by Hamish himself. It was worked with the Munro emblems, decorated with semi-precious jewels and lined with velvet. The blade Lord Munro had had specially imported from Germany. Double-edged, it bore the legend Andrea Ferara, the sixteenth-century Italian whose name the Germans used as a mark of quality.

Alasdhair buckled the sheath to his belt and placed the claymore reverently inside. Only the other day, he and Hamish had had a practice bout. It had been surprising, how easily the moves flowed back through his sword arm, how well he remembered the need to balance on the balls of his feet, to counter the swing of the sword with his outstretched left arm. He had not thought to use the weapon in anger. Now, he had no doubt at all that that was exactly what he was about to do.

Hamish was waiting worriedly at the stable with Alasdhair’s horse saddled and ready. ‘Do you need me with you, lad?’ he asked.

Alasdhair was touched. Hamish must be nigh on fifty, but he had no doubt that the blacksmith’s offer was sincere. ‘I must do this for myself, Hamish.’ Nodding a curt farewell, Alasdhair sprang into the saddle and was gone from Errin Mhor, galloping down the road south in a cloud of dust.

Chapter Seven

Three horses, making no attempt to cover their trail, so sure was Donald of Lady Munro’s support, were not difficult to follow. With murder in his mind, urged on by a terror of being too late, Alasdhair had ridden hard in pursuit, abandoning his blown horse at an inn and throwing gold coins at the astonished landlord in return for a fresh mount.

He found them in the late afternoon, on the outskirts of Stronmilchan at the head of Loch Awe where they had stopped to water the horses. Though it was dry now, it had been a showery day. Bringing his horse to a halt out of sight of McNair’s party, Alasdhair leapt out of the saddle and tethered it to a tree. Both he and his mount were spattered with mud. As he moved stealthily through the gorse and bracken that gave him sparse cover, Alasdhair’s plaids became soaked through. Underfoot, the ground was boggy.

The horses were drinking from the loch. McNair and his henchman were conferring together, standing almost directly in front of Alasdhair. While the laird had his broadsword, his servant was armed only with a dirk. Behind them, Ailsa was sitting on the wet ground. Her hands were bound at the wrists in front of her. A bruise was purpling across her cheek. Bastard!

Even as he watched, the mists of rage reddening in his brain, Alasdhair saw the glint of metal as Ailsa tugged a sgian dubh from under her skirts and, holding the handle between her knees, began to saw through the leather ties at her wrists. He wondered what the hell she thought she could do with one knife against two men, but he silently applauded her pluck for trying.

He forced himself to wait, keeping an anxious eye on the men, but they took no notice of her. Crouching back on his heels, Alasdhair carefully unsheathed his claymore and pulled his dirk free from his belt. His heart was beating like a drum. Rage coursed through him, thickening to bloodlust as he eyed Donald McNair. He deserved to die for this day’s work. He would allow no man to treat Ailsa so badly or to harm a hair on her head. Something primal and vicious snarled in his gut. He wanted more than anything to see Donald McNair slain at his feet.

In the course of the long day, despite her best intentions, Ailsa had several times been unable to stop herself from responding waspishly to Donald’s jibes, making her disgust of him too obvious for him to ignore. As a consequence he had slapped her once on the face, a sharp crack that she thought at first had broken her cheekbone. Her head still thumped with the pain. At the last water stop, she had made a break for it, but they had easily caught her and, as a precaution against further attempts, bound her wrists tightly together, making the simple act of staying in the saddle fraught with difficulty.

Knowing that this was her last chance before they stopped for the night and knowing full well what ordeal the night would bring, Ailsa was set upon escape. Though with only herself and what was really no more than a fancy toy matched against two grown men, she knew her chances were slim. Donald had made sure to keep them away from villages where she might raise the alarm. She had only herself to rely on. If she could not escape, she could surely wound him enough to make him come to his senses. She did not want to think about what would happen otherwise. She would not surrender if she could avoid it.

If Donald truly was set upon taking her, she would not make it easy for him.

Sawing through the leather that bound her wrists was more arduous than she expected, but finally Ailsa was free. She flexed her fingers, which were numb from the ties, and clenched her sgian dubh in her right hand. Then she got to her feet, and, with a scream that seemed to come from the depths of her being, ran at Donald.

Though she had the advantage of surprise, Ailsa was simply no match for the Laird of Ardkinglass. With a growl that was more annoyance than fear, he dealt her a blow to the stomach that winded her. As she dropped to her knees, Donald grabbed her knife arm and twisted it ruthlessly behind her back. Her vision clouded. She tried desperately to struggle, but Donald’s strength was vastly superior. She was clinging on to consciousness by a thread when a wild warrior, a blur of plaid and flowing hair and muscle and grim-faced fury, launched himself like a fiend from out of the undergrowth.

Ailsa’s vision cleared as she summoned up the last remnants of her strength. Alasdhair! She had no idea how he had found her, but it was definitely him. He went for Donald’s servant first. The man barely had time to draw his dirk before Alasdhair was upon him and thrust his own dirk, clean and easily, high into the servant’s right shoulder, severing the muscles and disabling him instantly. The man dropped his knife and howled in pain. Alasdhair dealt him a swift uppercut under the chin with the basket hilt of his broadsword and the servant dropped unconscious to the ground.

Cursing, Donald threw Ailsa to the ground, drawing his broadsword as Alasdhair advanced upon him, his own broadsword in hand. The two men faced each other across the small clearing, the lethal glint of polished steel separating them. Crawling on hands and knees over to the edge of the makeshift arena where the servant lay comatose, Ailsa fought for breath. Terror froze the blood in her veins.

The two men circled each other warily. Donald’s face was fiery with rage, his eyes wild with primal lust. In comparison, Alasdhair’s was a grim mask, pale and hard, his eyes glittering like the blades he held in his hands. She could hardly bear to look. Though Alasdhair had been a fine swordsman in his youth, he had not the recent experience of Donald. She could not quite believe he was here. How had he known where to find her? That he had come after her at all astonished her. But then he must have known she would not go willingly with Donald, and he was an honourable man. In Calumn’s absence, Alasdhair would naturally see himself in the role of her champion. And thank God. Thank God, he did.

Without taking her eyes off the two men, Ailsa scrabbled in the grass for the dirk that Donald’s servant had let fall. Her hands closed around the leather-clad hilt with relief. She held the knife secure, clasped with both hands, and struggled to her feet just as the first clang of steel on steel rang out, echoing over the loch like a bell toll.

Ailsa knew that the single-armed claymore was a weapon that requires balance. Though of the sword family, it was not to be mistaken for the épée or the foil, that require the fighter to lunge. Like the sabre, the broadsword, with its double-edged, narrow blade, was designed to cut and to sever. An experienced warrior aims at his opponent’s legs and his head. Donald was a very experienced warrior. His first swipe was low, a wide sweep of his arm aimed at Alasdhair’s thighs. Alasdhair leapt back, countering with a downward swing that caught Donald’s blade, following through with a swipe back in the opposite direction that rent a tear in Donald’s jacket.

The men arced the blades through the air with all the force they could muster. Through his rain-soaked shirt, Ailsa could see Alasdhair’s biceps bulging. His filleadh beg swung out behind him as his sword arm travelled its treacherous path, his upper body following gracefully through, his legs and left arm braced to counter the movement. Forward, sweep, clang. Backward, arch, clang. The sound rang out, echoing back across the loch from the hills on the far shore.

Donald sliced the edge of his blade into Alasdhair’s abdomen, but his thick leather waistcoat saved him. As he leapt back, he lost his footing on the slick grass and slid, righting himself at the last moment, taking Donald by surprise with a rare lunge straight at the heart. If it had struck home, it would have been fatal, but Donald leant back, away from the blade, stumbled and fell. Desperately, he tried to swipe with his own blade while prone on the ground, but he had not the strength. Alasdhair stood over him, the point of his claymore pressed against his heart. Donald’s eyes widened as he confronted death. Then the blade was withdrawn. ‘Bastard,’ Donald cursed under his breath. He knew it was not a reprieve. Alasdhair Ross wanted him maimed, but more importantly he wanted him alive. He wanted him shamed.

Donald fought with renewed ferocity. Both men dripped sweat, their breath forming little clouds of steam in the damp air. The scent of wet plaid and leather and churned-up grass mingled with the unmistakable smell of battle. A hot red smell, raw and visceral.

Alasdhair was exhausted. His sword arm and his shoulder burned. His thighs ached. Sweat seared into his eyes, obscuring his vision, but he clenched his teeth and resolutely closed his mind to everything but the contest. He had wanted to kill, but from the moment their swords met, he had known that death in a fair fight was too honourable an end for Donald McNair. Living with defeat would be far harder for him to bear. Alasdhair shook the sweat from his eyes and concentrated anew.

The end came quickly. Alasdhair slashed high at Donald’s neck. Donald’s blade met his, and forced it downwards. Summoning all his strength, Alasdhair leapt forwards as Donald leapt back, and the blade sliced through Donald’s left thigh to the bone. A crimson flower blossomed instantly through Donald’s trews. He fell with one long scream to the ground, dropping his dirk and his claymore.

Alasdhair threw his broadsword aside and rushed over to Ailsa’s side, his chest heaving from his exertions. ‘Are you hurt? Did he harm you?’ He pulled her to her feet, his eyes searching her face anxiously. ‘Dear God, Ailsa, please tell me I got here in time.’

She nodded, unable to speak, for now it was over, the shock of her ordeal was making her tremble.

‘What is this?’ Alasdhair gently touched the bruise on her cheek.

‘It’s nothing.’

‘The bastard hit you.’

‘He did, but I took no other harm, I promise.’

‘Thank God.’ Alasdhair crushed her against his chest. ‘Thank God. I thought—I kept thinking, the whole time it took me to get here, that I’d be too late, that he’d—thank God you are safe.’

He smelled of sweat and blood. She could feel his heart thumping like a hammer on an anvil inside his chest. ‘Thanks to you,’ Ailsa murmured, closing her eyes just to relish the feeling of being alive and being safe, of being saved from a terrible fate. ‘I thought I was seeing things when you emerged from nowhere like that,’ she said, with a shaky laugh. She reached for his hand and rubbed the back of it against her cheek. ‘I don’t know how you found me, but I am eternally, deeply, truly grateful that you did. Thank you, Alasdhair.’

‘It is thanks enough that I got here in time,’ Alasdhair replied gruffly. Now that he had her safe, the horror of what would have happened had he not found her in time was taking root in his mind. He had not allowed himself to think of anything other than success throughout his frantic race south. Only now that he had succeeded was he beginning to realise how very much it mattered. He could not bear the thought of her coming to harm. Just imagining it was making him nauseous. His arms tightened around her.

Struggling to sit up, Donald McNair let out a low howling moan of agony. ‘I should help him,’ Ailsa said reluctantly, disentangling herself from Alasdhair’s reassuring embrace. ‘I would not like you to have his murder stain your hands.’

‘Let me take a look at him first.’

The Laird of Ardkinglass lay on the muddy grass, silent now, though the bulging of his neck muscles were testament to the effort he was putting into remaining so. When Alasdhair knelt down beside him, Donald made a desperate attempt to push him away, but his wrists were taken in a ruthless grip and held above his head. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, McNair, but I’m not going to allow you to extract your revenge on me by bleeding to death,’ Alasdhair said grimly. ‘Ailsa, come here, take that little dagger of yours and cut his trews as high up as you can, so we can see the wound.’

Ailsa shakily did as she was told. The claymore had cleanly sliced a long diagonal cut across the front of the leg. The bone was not broken. She realised belatedly that Alasdhair must have exercised incredible control not to have done more damage. Blood oozed sluggishly from the wound.

‘The blood does not spurt. You did not sever anything vital,’ she said to Alasdhair, glad for the training at Shona MacBrayne’s side that would allow her to repay a little of what she owed Alasdhair by saving Donald’s life. Much as she wished Donald dead at this moment, she knew it would sit very ill with her conscience later. She had never loved him, but she had intended spending her life with him, and she had given promises to that effect. It was not wholly his fault that he lay here with his lifeblood staining the grass. She forced herself to inspect the wound more closely. ‘We will need bandages, and something to stitch it with.’

Alasdhair was already hurriedly discarding his waistcoat and hauling his shirt over his head, using his dirk and his teeth to rip the cotton into long strips. ‘I’ll take a look in his saddlebag, there might be some whisky there, and he is likely in sore need of it, though he doesn’t deserve it.’

‘If there is whisky, I can find a better use for it than to pour it down his throat.’ Ailsa took the pin that held her arisaidh in place at her breast and fashioned it into a needle, then rose to pluck some horsehair from the tail of Donald’s own steed. ‘Hold him,’ she said tersely to Alasdhair as she took the bottle Alasdhair proffered and returned to Donald’s side, pouring the neat spirit over the wound, causing Donald to scream in agony. Her face set, she then concentrated on the grim task of stitching the two flaps of skin together.

Alasdhair watched her closely, anxious about the toll such a stomach-churning task would take on her already stretched-to-breaking-point nerves. As soon as she was done, he edged her out of the way and competently bound Donald’s leg himself, using the bandages that were once his shirt. At some point in the process the Laird of Ardkinglass lost consciousness.

‘You’ve obviously done this before,’ Ailsa said, watching as Alasdhair tested the tightness of the binding.

He wiped his hand across his brow, leaving a smear of blood. ‘You’re not the only one who has benefited from the knowledge of a fey wife. My first job in the New World was on a plantation where they used slave labour. An old woman there, one of the slaves who had been brought originally from Africa, taught me the basics. Of course, she was mostly employed tending the wounds made by the whip,’ he said bitterly. ‘There, I think that will do.’

As Alasdhair turned his attentions to Donald’s henchman, who was only now getting groggily up from the ground, Ailsa sat back on her heels to watch him. His back glistened with a sheen of sweat. His hair clung to his neck. He was a beautiful shape, broad shoulders tapering down to a narrow waist. Even though he was exhausted, he walked with an animal grace that sent his plaid swinging from side to side. He paused to stretch his arms high above his head, rolling his shoulders to ease his aching muscles. They flexed and rippled under his skin. His back was lightly tanned. Except … Alisa could see long thin stripes of paler flesh snaking across his tan. Only three of them were deep enough to ridge. The scars were very old, or very well healed.

She made her way over to where Alasdhair was kneeling on the grass, cutting the sleeve from the servant’s jacket in order to expose the wound. Alasdhair got to his feet. ‘I’ll need something else for a bandage,’ he said, frowning.

Without demur, Ailsa cut strips of cotton from her sark, allowing Alasdhair to deal efficiently with his second patient. ‘Could you go and fetch my horse for me? It’s tethered in the trees over there. I’ll just check on McNair,’ Alasdhair said. ‘Can you manage?’

She nodded, relieved to be spared any further contact with Donald, picking her way through the bracken as Alasdhair turned his attentions back to his adversary.

Donald was lying on the ground, unable to move and sweating profusely. With luck, Alasdhair thought, he was in for a long and painful recuperation. ‘You will regret this day’s work.’ Alasdhair stood over Donald in a deliberate mockery of the stance of a victorious gladiator. ‘If you ever walk again, the limp you’ll have will remind you of the wrongs you did.’

‘Bastard,’ Donald snarled. ‘You had not the guts to kill me when ye could have.’

Alasdhair swooped down to grab him by the throat, yanking him painfully upwards, so that Donald howled in pain. ‘Killing is too good for the likes of you,’ he said contemptuously. ‘I would not have you on my conscience.’ He leased his hold abruptly. McNair fell back on to the grass with a scream. Alasdhair turned on his heel and walked away. He did not look back.

‘We must stop by the inn at Stronmilchan and organise a cart to come and pick those two up,’ Alasdhair said to Ailsa when she returned. ‘Are you fit to travel? You look all in.’

Ailsa smiled wanly. ‘I am just a bit shaken, it is nothing to what I would have been if you had not rescued me.’

‘Don’t even think of it.’

‘I’m trying not to.’

She was pale, her eyes huge, almost black with fright. She looked barely able to clamber on to the horse, but once there she made a valiant effort to sit straight in the saddle, to smile through her frozen face, and his heart contracted again with the fear of what might have been. Alasdhair rode close to her all the short distance to Stronmilchan where the inn was a basic hostelry consisting of a stillroom where whisky was both distilled and consumed, and a stable yard with an enclosed barn in which passing drovers could sleep. Bidding Ailsa to wait for him, he went inside to make arrangements for a dray to be sent for the two injured men. He returned and glanced up at the sky, noting that dusk was just beginning to fall.

‘The nearest inn with proper accommodation is about ten miles away. I’m assuming you don’t want to stay here?’

Ailsa shuddered and shook her head. ‘I’ll manage,’ she said and turned her horse resolutely on to the road again. Too tired now to do any more than stay upright in the saddle, she followed Alasdhair back out of the village, barely noticing that he headed south rather than north.

The ferry tavern on Loch Awe was somewhat better equipped than the one they had just left. Ailsa was shown to a small bedchamber with a simple pallet bed. As was the custom for ferry inns, the landlord had his own still. As she stood forlornly in the middle of the room, unable to work up enough energy even to sit down, Alasdhair entered the room, carrying a glass containing a generous dram.

‘I don’t drink whisky,’ she demurred.

‘Take a little. It will help with the shock,’ Alasdhair replied, steering her over to sit on the edge of the bed.

‘I’m all right,’ she said, though she plainly was not. She was icy cold, and she couldn’t stop shivering, not just constant trembling, but sudden violent shakes that gripped her whole body. A tiny sip of the spirit made her cough, but it warmed a path down to her stomach. A second sip and she felt the tremors subside slightly. She put the glass aside.

‘Better?’ Alasdhair asked, looking at her anxiously.

‘A bit. Thank you.’

‘The landlady is sending up some hot water for you.’

‘Thank you,’ Ailsa said again. ‘That’s really thoughtful, Alasdhair.’

‘It’s nothing.’

‘It’s not nothing. What you did today, it’s everything.’ Ailsa swallowed the lump in her throat and dashed her hand over her eyes. ‘If you had not come …’

‘But I did.’

‘How? How did you know where I was, what had happened to me?’

Alasdhair frowned. ‘Later, we’ll talk later. You’re too upset just now, you need to rest, calm down.’

‘Because what you have to say will upset me more?’

‘Later, Ailsa,’ Alasdhair said firmly, closing the door behind him before she could object. She would have to be told of the part her mother had played in her abduction. She was clever enough, any road, to work it out for herself, but he did not relish having to confirm it. She had been through enough for one day.

More than enough. If he had not … Alasdhair ran a hand through his hair and rolled his tense shoulders before taking the stairs two at a time, in search of the tap room. Ailsa wasn’t the only one who would benefit from a medicinal dram of the landlord’s whisky.

It was not just a jug of hot water, but a tub almost large enough to constitute a bath that arrived, courtesy of the landlady and two sturdy dairy maids. Gratefully, Ailsa stripped off her clothes and stepped in. She soaped herself all over, rinsed with the aid of a pewter jug, then soaped again, letting the trickle of water soothe away the horrors of the last twenty-four hours.

If ever she had doubted her own mind, Donald’s abduction had set it straight. The very idea of being bedded by him—how could she ever have thought she could bear it? Sinking down into the hot water, it came to her, a simple fact, pure and clear as a mountain stream, sweeping over her with the same piercing clarity. Alasdhair. It was Alasdhair who had changed everything.

She loved him. It seemed so obvious. It felt so right.

She loved him. ‘I am in love with Alasdhair Ross,’ she said cautiously, as if trying the words on for size. They fitted perfectly, like a handmade glove. A glow that had nothing to do with the bath water suffused her body, lighting her from inside. ‘I am in love with Alasdhair Ross.’ Of course she was.

How long? How? When? Had it always been there, lying dormant these last six years? But, no, what she felt now was different. Very different. She felt this love with the essence of her being, as if it were a part of her that could not ever be rooted out. It was elemental, this love. It was here to stay.

She loved him. She was born to love him. She would die loving him. Strange that her mother had recognised it before she did, ironic that it was her mother’s attempt to separate her from Alasdhair that had brought her feelings for him to the fore.

She loved him. She wanted him passionately. She had never desired anything so much in her life as to make love to him; she longed to tend to him and to keep him safe as he had done for her today. He had ridden all this way to rescue her. He cared for her. Her heart grasped at this fact as a starving deer will rush to the first patch of green to emerge from the melting snow, but even as the fresh shoots of hope rose Ailsa saw them wither. He cared, but he would not, could not, love. He had told her that in no uncertain terms. Being an honourable man, he would feel guilty if he knew how she felt. She could not bear that.

Ailsa’s inner glow faded somewhat as the reality of the situation began to dawn, but the newness of her feelings and the scale of them would not permit such melancholy thoughts to dominate. Not yet. She loved him so much. Ailsa closed her eyes, and allowed herself to dream.

When there was a tap on the door sometime later, she was almost asleep. Assuming it was the landlady come to remove the water, Ailsa got to her feet, grabbing the drying cloth that had been placed on the nightstand, and called out for the woman to enter. In the act of stepping out of the tub, she froze. It was not the landlady who stood in the doorway, but Alasdhair.

‘Oh!’ Ailsa lifted her other foot free of the water, but it caught on the edge of the tub.

Somehow Alasdhair made it from the door in time to catch her just before she fell. The drying cloth pooled at her feet. He found himself holding a damp, naked goddess. His arousal was instantaneous.

Hurriedly stooping down to retrieve the cloth from the floor, he attempted to drape it around her without looking. It clung to her skin. Her hair curled in tendrils over her back and her breasts. She glowed from the warmth of the water. He released her immediately, turning his back to the room. ‘There’s a mutton stew for dinner. The landlord assures me it is passable.’ His voice sounded strangled. He tried to clear his throat. ‘If you don’t want to eat down in the tap room, I’ll have them send some up.’

Clutching the cloth around her, flushing wildly, Ailsa grabbed her sark and pulled it over her head. ‘You can turn around now, I’m decent.’

She didn’t look decent, she looked delectable, the more so for being completely unaware of the fact. ‘Do you want some dinner?’ Alasdhair asked, keeping his eyes firmly on her face.

‘I’m not really hungry, to be honest.’ There was a smear of blood on his chest. Donald’s blood. More spots of it on his hands, too. Hands that had fought for her. She wanted to tend to him. She wanted to soothe him. She could feel herself blushing, but hoped he would put it down to her skin being flushed by the hot bath water. ‘I don’t like you having Donald’s blood on you,’ she said. ‘There’s a kettle of hot water on the fire there. You could use my bath.’

Alasdhair hadn’t noticed the blood. He didn’t like having Donald’s blood on him either, but right now it was the least of his worries. He was finding it almost impossible not to look at the way her sark clung to the sweet curves of her body. He was finding the notion of sharing her bath water horribly appealing. His mind was conjuring up distracting images of her standing naked in the tub, with water streaming down her body, the valley between her breasts, the soft mounds of her bottom, droplets clinging to the damp curls between her legs. Under his plaid, his erection hardened.

‘Alasdhair?’

He opened his eyes. She was standing right next to him. Close. Not close enough. Too close. ‘I should …’

She wanted to tell him. The words fought for expression, clogging her throat, tingling on her lips. She wanted to tell him. She was taken aback at how much. She wanted to kiss him. She wanted him to hold her in his arms. He was looking at her so strangely. He must be so weary. She would not tell him, but she could tend to him.

Without giving herself time to think about how bold she was about to be, Ailsa nudged Alasdhair towards the tub. ‘Let me.’ She started to undo the strings of his waistcoat.

‘What are you doing? I can manage fine myself.’

‘It’s in a knot. I have smaller fingers.’ She loosened the fastenings and pulled the heavy leather garment down over Alasdhair’s arms, dropping it to the floor.

Alasdhair clenched his hands rigidly at his sides. If only she would move away, he would be able to regain control of himself. But instead of leaving him, she dropped down to her knees. ‘Ailsa, what on earth …’

‘I want to do something for you, that’s all.’ She undid the laces of his boots, her tongue peeking out between her lips as she concentrated on the task, tugging first one, then the other from his foot. Then she unlaced the ties on his stockings, rolling them carefully down his calves.

Rising to her feet again, she teetered, clutching at Alasdhair for balance. He closed his eyes. He could feel the movement of her hair tickle his chest.

She picked up the huge iron kettle from the hearth and topped up the bath water. ‘Get in,’ she said to Alasdhair, pushing him to the rim of the tub and picking up the flannel.

‘What are you doing?’

He looked dazed. He must be very tired. ‘Get in,’ Ailsa said with renewed determination. ‘Let me wash you. It is my fault that you are in such a state.’

She wanted to wash him. Dear God, he wanted to let her. Alasdhair summoned up his last ounce of resistance. ‘I can manage.’

‘Please.’ She looked up at him, all big violet eyes and pink lips and curling gold hair. ‘Please. There is so little I can do, and you have done so much, let me do this one thing for you.’

Alasdhair took a deep breath. It just required him to take the flannel from her. To tell her to turn her back. He opened his mouth to say the words and instead found himself stepping into the water. It was what she wanted. For some reason, she seemed intent on it. Who was he to deny her? He would endure it. He could endure it. He gritted his teeth as she stooped to fill a cup with water and stood on her tiptoes to empty it over him. Who was he fooling?

He was beautiful, Ailsa thought, as she stooped for another cupful of water. She had not expected to find a man beautiful, but Alasdhair was. His entire upper body was tanned. Naked save for his plaid, he seemed much bigger, broader. A bruise was purpling on his shoulder, another on his ribs. She trickled water down over his shoulders, watching mesmerised as the droplets clung to the hair on his chest, into the hollow of his stomach, dipping into his navel, forging their tantalising way down beneath his belt. She trickled it down his back next, over the strange faint white ridges she had noticed earlier. ‘Where did you get these marks?’ She traced the pale lines with her finger tips.

‘I told you, my first job was on a slave plantation. Let us just say they terminated my employment in a somewhat physical manner.’

Ailsa stared at the scars in horror. ‘Do you mean they whipped you?’ Tears started into her eyes. ‘What did you do to deserve such barbaric punishment?’

‘The overseer was very cruel to the workers, especially the slaves. I stood up to him, so they decided to make an example of me. It made a lasting impression, in more ways than one. Since that day I have always ensured that my workers are treated well and work in the best conditions possible. Here, give me the soap, let me do this.’

She snatched her hand away. ‘No.’

‘Ailsa, I really don’t think …’

‘Don’t think, then. And don’t talk,’ she said, placing a finger over his mouth to shush him.

He ought to think. He ought to get his thoughts straight now, before it was too late, but his thoughts refused to be marshalled. Still reeling from the shock of her abduction, staggered by the fierce wave of protectiveness that engulfed him at the very notion of harm coming to her, Alasdhair was frightened by the strength of his own feelings. He did not know what to do with them, nor what to make of them, for they made everything else seem insignificant in comparison, and he could no longer fool himself into believing they were the remnant of anything from the past. This painful, tugging, wrenching thing inside him, which seemed to say mine with increasing conviction every time he looked at her or thought of her, had nothing to do with anything so insipid as calf love. He had never felt anything like it. He wasn’t sure he wanted to. The only thing he was sure of was that he had to excise it, for it was painful, and he didn’t want to have to endure it any longer.

He ought to think. He really ought to think. But how could he, when there was Ailsa standing so close, smelling so sweet, looking so incredibly lovely and horribly vulnerable and achingly desirable. The voice picked up volume again. Mine, it said, like a fierce growl. Mine.

He had never felt anything so sensual as the slow, sweeping motion of the flannel on his skin, the delicate touch of her fingers as she swept his hair back from his brow, leant against his back, his chest, his shoulders, to steady herself as she worked. Her breasts brushed against him through the damp cotton of her sark. He had never experienced anything so erotic as the rhythm of her stooping and pouring, stooping and pouring. Never known anything like the gentle intimacy of the scene, the scent of her damp skin against his, the sharing of the water, and the flannel.

She washed his hands and his arms. Standing on tiptoe, she worked her way across his chest, his shoulders. Down his arms. He stood perfectly still. The corded sinews on his forearms stood out like ship’s rope. The muscles on his calves, too, braced. As she reached his stomach, he knew he could not resist much longer. The poor lass had just escaped from one seduction; the last thing on her mind was another, he was sure. She was doing this out of kindness and obligation, she had no idea of the effect she was having on him. None. And he would not allow her to see.

‘That’s enough.’ Gently, reluctantly, determinedly, he wrested the flannel and soap from her. ‘Thank you, but I can manage on my own now. You look exhausted. You should go to bed. I’ll leave you in peace in a minute.’

Ailsa nodded and did as she was bid, sitting on top of the bed, a blush stealing over her cheek as wanting warred with belated embarrassment at how bold she had been. Not that she for a moment regretted it. Every inch of him that she had touched was recorded for ever in her mind. It was a worshipping, an adoration, and like to be her only chance to do so. She would never regret it. How could she when she loved him?

She loved him. She loved him. She loved him. The words filled her with delight. She closed her eyes, a smile guarding her precious secret.

Chapter Eight

When she opened them again, Alasdhair was standing before her, his body still damp, his hair sleekly brushed back on his forehead. He wore only his plaid, that was also damp. ‘Alasdhair,’ she said, just for the pleasure of saying his name.

He sat down beside her. He smelled of soap and damp wool. ‘Do you think you will sleep now?’

‘Not yet. I want to know how you found me.’

Alasdhair hesitated. ‘Maybe in the morning, when …’

‘No. I want to know now. It’s all right, I assume my mother had some part in it.’

‘Lady Munro seems very eager for you to marry Donald.’

Ailsa’s mouth trembled. ‘Enough to connive at my abduction. What a care she has for me.’ She rubbed the back of her hand over her eyes. ‘You know, the irony of it is that just before Donald broke into my room I was thinking I had been too hard on her. She said to me last night—I can’t believe it was just last night—she said to me that despite how it looked, she cared for me. I thought, she’s my mother, perhaps she deserves one final last chance. I should have known better. When Donald burst in I knew he would not have dared such a thing without my mother’s knowledge.’

‘Twisted as her logic was, I really do think she believed she was acting in your best interests in trying to speed your marriage to Donald.’

‘How can you say that? She knows—I made it plain—that I do not want to marry him. How can she imagine that making me unhappy is in my best interests?’

‘I’m sorry, Ailsa, I don’t know the answer to that. I do know that she loves you though, for she told me so.’

‘She actually said those words?’

Ailsa’s big violet eyes looked eagerly at him. Such a simple, obvious thing for a mother to say, yet she obviously had not. Ever. ‘Yes.’

‘Do you think she meant it?’

Alasdhair felt as if his heart was being squeezed. He couldn’t bear her to be disappointed, but he couldn’t bear to lie to her, either. In his own mind, Lady Munro had behaved unforgivably towards her daughter. Whatever her motives, she had connived at Ailsa’s kidnap and would have allowed her to be forcibly wed too, knowing full well how Ailsa felt about Donald. It was not just a selfish action, nor even just a thoughtless one, but a cruel one, and he despised her for it. But to say so, to make his feelings plain, would only hurt Ailsa, and she had suffered enough. Lady Munro had shown some contrition, but it was too little and too late; besides, he had pretty much had to force it from her.

‘I think she meant it in her own way,’ he said cautiously.

Ailsa ran her fingers through her hair, pushing the curls back from her face. ‘Aye, perhaps. But those sentiments will be short-lived, once she finds out that she’s been thwarted, thanks to you.’

Alasdhair sighed heavily. ‘I think she’ll just be relieved that you’re safe. Truly, Ailsa, I don’t think she means to make you miserable. It’s more that she’s so set on having her own way that she can’t see beyond it.’

‘It’s good of you, and I know you mean to make me feel better, but honestly, Alasdhair, you’ve no need.’

‘Have you thought of what you will do next?’ he asked.

Ailsa shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it right now, if you don’t mind. Stay with me a minute, tell me your own plans.’ She didn’t really want to know, for the implications were bound to be painful, but if she did not know then she would hope. And that would be even more unbearable. ‘My mother let fall that she has known all along where your own is living. She told me you were heading off in search of her.’

‘I was. I am. I intended to travel to Inveraray, where she is, after saying farewell to you, but when I got to the castle and found you gone I changed my plans.’

‘Inveraray is not so far from here, I haven’t taken you too much out of your way after all. You must have so many things you want to ask her.’

Alasdhair frowned. ‘Maybe. I mean of course, yes, I’ve questions for her. I just don’t know if her answers matter any more.’

‘Why not?’

‘She left my father for another man and abandoned me in the process. She made no attempt to get in touch with me. She must have had her reasons, I’m sure she does, but what difference does it make now?’

Ailsa could not resist taking his hand. ‘Alasdhair, you must not be putting off this business on account of me, if that is what you’re worrying about. You’re worn out and it’s my fault. Tomorrow you will have regained your perspective. I can make my own way back to Errin Mhor quite easily, you know, I would not like—’

‘No! Absolutely not.’

‘I am perfectly capable—’

‘No. You’re not going anywhere on your own.’ Or anywhere without him, until he knew what was going on.

‘You can’t possibly be worrying that my mother would engineer another abduction? Even if she wanted to, Donald is hardly in a fit state to be thinking of matrimony.’

Alasdhair smiled. ‘No, McNair will not be capable of going down on bended knee any time soon, that will come as welcome relief to the womenfolk of Argyll.’

‘You mustn’t worry about me, Alasdhair.’

‘But I do.’

The fire crackled. Alasdhair turned to tend to it, laying two dried peats on top of the embers. How well the plaid suited him, Ailsa thought, watching him. Some men had such spindly legs, but Alasdhair’s were shapely. She hadn’t really noticed before, how well the plaid showed a man’s body—when he had the right body. Not many men looked as well as Alasdhair in Highland dress. None, really, now that she thought about it. She was willing to bet no man looked as good as Alasdhair.

He left the fire and came back to stand before her. ‘I should leave you to get some sleep. Will you be all right?’

‘I’ll be fine.’ But her voice wavered. She didn’t want to be alone. She didn’t want to think about what had so nearly happened to her, but mostly she didn’t want Alasdhair to go.

‘Ailsa, come here.’ Alasdhair stooped to wrap his arms around her, hugging her tight against his chest. ‘You’re safe now, I promise. No harm will ever come to you when you are with me. Please don’t cry. I can’t bear it when you cry.’

‘I’m not crying.’ Her voice was muffled, for her face was pressed against his chest. He smelled so achingly familiar, so painfully perfect that if she could have found a way of bottling it, she would wear it as a perfume.

Alasdhair stroked her hair. She smelled of soap and sunshine. She felt soft and pliant and very disturbingly right nestling there.

Ailsa snuggled into Alasdhair’s bare chest. ‘I’m sorry to have put you to so much trouble,’ she whispered, her voice muffled by his skin.

‘I’d endure anything to keep you safe.’ As he said the words he knew he meant it, meant it with all his heart. Her hair was dry now, tumbling in a river of gold down her back. Alasdhair laced his fingers through it, stroking the curls down the length of her spine, and the atmosphere between them shifted, so suddenly that they both tensed. Awareness.

He let her go. He stood back. ‘I should go.’

‘Don’t.’

‘You should sleep.’ But he made no move. Her bare feet dangled down from the bed. He remembered then, that feeling of them on top of his, on the boat. The most erotic thing he’d ever felt. Before he could stop himself he knelt down to clasp one of them. It was high-arched, the ankles shapely. Her little toes looked unbearably delicate in the palm of his hand. Sadness, piercingly sweet, and longing, achingly painful, gripped him so fiercely that he could scarcely breathe. It was like seeing a picture of a dream he had not known he’d had, so clear, yet even as he looked he knew he would not remember it again, not exactly like this, not so clearly as this.

He kissed the pulse that fluttered above her heel before gently releasing her foot. Then he reached for her, meaning only to kiss her forehead. A consoling kiss, a comforting kiss, a keep-safe-and-goodnight kiss, that was all. But she smiled at him so sweetly, her violet eyes wide with anticipation, her skin softly tinged with the flickering firelight, and he was convinced in that moment that if he kissed her everything would be put right, and he would understand why his mind was in such a turmoil. And she would be healed, too, of all the hurt that had been inflicted on her today. His kiss would take her hurt away and keep her safe, if only he would kiss her.

He took her face gently in his hands, and held her there, gazing into those violet eyes of hers. The way she looked at him, he had the uncanny feeling that she saw right inside him, that she could reach in and show him himself, his real self that only she knew. He had never felt such tenderness, nor such a rush of longing to please, to ease, to pleasure. ‘Ailsa.’ He said her name just for the sake of tasting it. ‘Beautiful Ailsa.’ Then he kissed her.

Her mouth was even sweeter than he remembered, like a delicate flower, dewy and plump with nectar. He kissed her gently, the softest of kisses, running his fingers through her hair, twining its golden coils around his fingers. He kissed his way along the line of her jaw and suckled on the delicate shell of her ear. He felt her shiver and felt an answering shiver in his belly, that pierced like an arrow and connected directly to his groin. With a soft moan, he wrapped his arms around her.

Ailsa made no protest. She could not have; even if she’d thought about it, she would not have. It was right. She knew this with a certainty that would have astonished her former self. In this moment there was no past and no future, no barriers, no whys and wherefores. It was right. She had not the will or the energy to resist, but she would not have, anyway. He needed her. She could feel it in the way he touched her, see it in the way he looked at her. He needed her and she would give him anything, everything he asked, because she loved him unequivocally.

His kisses were soft, caresses rather than kisses, soothing, reassuring kisses that asked, but did not take. Like sinking into the downiest of beds, cushioned in satin, cosseted in silk. She felt as if she were melting, slowly, like the snow from the mountains in spring. His skin heated her. She clung closer, her fingers tangling in his hair, stroking the breadth of his shoulders, exalting in the rippling of sinew beneath her fingertips.

Still his kisses feathered and skimmed, making her feel light as air, floating gently on a breeze that caressed so deliciously she wanted it to go on and on and on. Kisses, kisses, kisses. On her brow, her eyelids, her throat, back to her mouth. She was lost, first in the wonder of it, then in the urgent need for more. She barely even registered the change to something darker and infinitely more delightful.

Alasdhair eased her down on to the mattress. She lay there, her eyes wide, looking like some fantasy goddess thrown to earth by a generous deity. He wanted to worship her. It was what she deserved, to be adored, venerated, to be shown how beautiful she was, top to toe, outside and in. ‘Beautiful,’ he whispered to her, ‘lovely, lovely Ailsa.’

It felt like a dream. A perfectly lovely dream. ‘Lovely,’ she repeated, pulling him towards her.

The strings of her sark seemed to untie themselves. When he took her nipple into his mouth she moaned, such a sweet sound that he felt the blood rush to his groin.

His touch was making her ripple with pleasure, shiver with delight as he sucked and licked and nipped and stroked. His mouth was on her breast. His tongue on her nipple, first one, then the other, coaxing and tugging sensations from her she had not dreamed were possible. She felt weightless but taut. She felt hot and icy cold. She felt utterly safe, yet at the same time she was being led, tugged, straining towards some edge or precipice.

Alasdhair’s hand was on her thigh now, stroking the soft flesh there. His mouth on her lips again, kissing, stroking her bottom lip with his tongue, stroking her thigh with his fingers so that everything seemed to meld, his touch, the feelings he conjured, linking and sparking between them so she could no longer tell what he did nor how he did it; did not want to know save to want more, so that she crossed the line between mere pleasure and craving without noticing.

Alasdhair kissed the valley between her breasts. He stroked the curve of her waist, the soft roundness of her belly through her sark. He shifted, moving down her body to kiss her ankle, her calf, the back of her knee, the inside of her thighs. He reached the soft nest of curls between her legs, kissing his way through to the slick warmth at its centre, kissing and licking, stroking, until he felt the damp heat of her, and felt an answering surge of blood to his already engorged shaft.

Ailsa was a rosy-pink kernel now, buried deep in the dark earth. Teasing fingers urged her upwards. There were red-hot tips of feeling inside her as his fingers stroked her, unfurling her like fern fronds in the damp heat. Alasdhair’s mouth fed her growth, blushing petals crimsoned inside her as he touched her.

She felt suspended in mid-air. Jagged. And still Alasdhair fed the flames. She could hear panting and realised vaguely it was coming from her. Her nipples tingled and ached. The flower inside her thrust towards the light. Colours streaked pink and crimson beneath her lids. He licked into her, his hands held her safe, tight, and everything settled suddenly, focusing like a beam of sunlight on a piece of glass. Even the blood in her veins seemed to rush like the tide, draining the heat from the rest of her body. He licked again, and her body arched up of its own accord. Her mind registered shock and pleasure so intense it was almost painful, and release came like a shivering surge of all-encompassing, drenching delight.

He had never tasted anything so sweet. Never felt such a heady pleasure in giving, never felt such a deep tug of satisfaction. The pulsing and quivering of her climax on his mouth was heavenly. The need to be inside her, burrowed deep in the sweetly welcoming wet of her was a need like nothing he had ever felt. He craved her.

Alasdhair pressed a lingering kiss to the still-throbbing mound of her sex. Breathing heavily now, heart thumping like the pounding of the drums on the plantations, he kissed the delightful crease at the top of each leg, letting his tongue trace the curve of it. He made himself sit up. His shaft was so hard it was aching.

She opened her eyes to a hazy, pleasure-drenched world. There was a dark flush on Alasdhair’s cheekbones. His eyes were peat-smoked, his chest rising and falling rapidly, as if he had been running. He leaned over to kiss her brow. He stroked her hair.

‘Beautiful.’

‘Lovely,’ she murmured.

Longing replaced desire, a different, more unsettling kind of wanting. It frightened him with its persistence and its intensity, for he had no experience of it, nor any remedy. ‘Go to sleep, Ailsa.’

‘Alasdhair.’

‘What?’

A delicious lethargy was creeping over her. She was floating, yet weighted. Anchored down, yet free as a bird. She snuggled into the warm lovely smell of him, as she had done that night in the inn. ‘Goodnight,’ she said. I love you, she thought, twining her arms around him.

Alasdhair tried to ease away from her, but she murmured a protest and he needed little persuading. This way he could be sure she was safe. This way, if she woke in the night he would be here for her. He pulled the rough wool blankets around them. Ailsa nestled against him. He pulled her closer, his arm around her shoulders, watching her, the halo of golden curls on her forehead, the pout of her lips, puffed with their kisses, as she breathed. Despite his own lack of release, he felt somehow sated.

He held her like that for a long time, watching the moon track its orbit across the sky. In all his years he had not once spent the night with a woman, not sleeping, any road. Not holding her safe. Not feeling this mixture of tenderness and protectiveness. Not wanting anything from her.

He slept, but woke early, rested and immediately restless as he came to consciousness and Ailsa immediately took possession of his thoughts, making him hot and hard.

Last night.

Oh God, last night.

Carefully disentangling himself from the delicious bundle beside him, Alasdhair threw on his clothes and made his way outside. The morning mist hung just above Loch Awe, eerily reflected in the still water. The hills that rolled gently down to the banks on the other side were still brown from the long winter, though the snow caps had melted and glimmers of golden gorse could be glimpsed nearer the shore. Breathing in deep, Alasdhair felt the sharp spike of cold, a warning to those who knew that the Highlands were not quite done with winter yet. He’d forgotten how pure the air here was and how sharp compared to the mellowness of Virginia.

Making his way down to the loch, he picked up a flat flint stone and skimmed it across the waters of the loch. It skipped five, six, seven times before it sank. He hadn’t lost his touch. He and Calumn used to spend hours doing this, when they were lads. Momentarily distracted, Alasdhair skimmed another stone. Ailsa never could get the hang of it. Her stones always sank without trace after one hop.

Ailsa. Scuffing his way along the sandy shore, it all began finally to take shape in his head. He had come here, to his homeland, to make sense of the past in order to find peace in the future. To rid himself of the ghosts of his calf love. To call Lord and Lady Munro to account, and his mother too. To end his banishment in order to be content in his exile. To find answers.

He had found answers, but none of them, not a single one, were what he had expected. He sat down on an overturned tree trunk that, judging from its smooth surface, was a popular spot. Part of the problem was that the picture he had hoped to clarify had turned out to be a different landscape completely. His past, which he thought defined him, turned out not to be his past at all. He had hoped to return to Virginia at peace with himself. Instead he would be returning a different person.

Alasdhair stared, unseeing, out over the loch. It was one thing to recognise how much he had changed, quite another to face up to the consequences of those changes. He was so used to denial, so inured to the protective wall of his isolation, that he feared once breached, it would be irrecoverable. He would be exposed, and such exposure he had always thought weakening. But last night, had not it been the opposite? He had glimpsed something so blazingly bright it was awesome. A different quality of light, a different level of contentment.

Happiness?

Love?

‘Love.’ He said the word out loud and it sounded odd. New. Unfamiliar.

Love. It had been growing since the moment he saw her again. A tiny seed that flourished so vigorously in the sunshine of Ailsa’s presence that he had been determined to weed it out for fear it would take root. But it had taken root all the same. He loved her.

He loved her. That is what it meant, this voice in his head that shouted mine every time he looked at her. Such an obvious explanation, yet the last one he had expected. And what was astonishing, astounding, was the relief of it; as if he had shed a suit of armour and discovered the war long won. He felt not exposed, but liberated. The shiny future Ailsa had once described to him glittered like a real thing in front of him.

He loved her and she loved him, too. She must. She must, for it was the only explanation for her giving herself to him last night. She would not have kissed him after that first time, or found the courage to be rid of McNair, or done any of the things he had been too much of a blind fool to see and understand. Surely there could be no other explanation?

Alasdhair leapt to his feet. He had waited far too long already to claim her; he could not bear to wait any longer. She was his, she could only be his. She must be his. This is what the last six years had been for. This is what the last few days had been for, the growing and reshaping. The timing before had not been right, but now it was. It must be, for without her the world would never make any sense, no matter which way he looked at it.

In Errin Mhor castle, Lady Munro paced back and forward across the space of her book room. She had not slept, save a few fitful dozes, since Donald had taken Ailsa away. Or, more accurately, since she had allowed her daughter to be abducted. Since Alasdhair Ross had confronted her with the evidence of her abject failure as a mother.

Donald McNair had arrived back in Ardkinglass, though the journey had taken so much out of him that at first it was feared he would die of his wounds. Even if he lived, the laird would be maimed for life. There were those who thought death was preferable for such a proud, lusty man as McNair. Lady Munro was not among them. She had no reason to care one way or the other. He would not be her son-in-law now.

She had been furious at first. It had cost her a great deal, knowing how Ailsa had come to feel about the match, to continue to support it, but the balm of saving Ailsa from herself had reconciled her to the necessity of such an action. Until Alasdhair Ross made her see that she was not saving her from herself. She was making her unhappy.

Alasdhair Ross. How she wished he had never set foot back in Errin Mhor. If it had not been for him, Ailsa would have been safe. Married or not, she would have been here, where she belonged, and they could have made a fresh start. They would have.

It was not true, what Ailsa said. Alasdhair Ross had not forced her into action. She had been biding her time, merely. Waiting for the right moment. And now it might never come.

Christina Munro rarely cried. Only three times had she done so in the long duration of her second marriage. The first was when Rory was torn from her on her wedding day. A salutary lesson, her new lord had informed her, for she must love him, and only him. And she had, God help her, she had tried to love him as dutifully as she had promised to, faithful through all his cruelty and his own multitudinous indiscretions—that of course were not indiscretions in his eyes, for he owned everything and everyone within his jurisdiction.

She had loved him, but it had only the appearance of exclusivity that he demanded. Her love for her children she kept so secret none saw it, least of all them, but it was there. Three stones, weighted in her heart and encased in ice to protect them. Even now that she was widowed, the hard-learned habit of an indifferent front was proving almost impossible to break. But she would have done it, had not Alasdhair Ross come on the scene again. She would have.

The second time she had cried was when Ailsa was born, and the third time was not so long after that: the day Lord Munro put an end to her hopes of being reunited with her eldest son once and for all.

It had been the last time she’d allowed herself that indulgence, until now. Now, as she looked back over the arid years of her marriage and peered forwards to the desiccated years that seemed certain to be her future, the tears flowed unchecked.

Despite all her efforts to prevent it, Ailsa was gone, off with Alasdhair Ross. They would sail for Virginia and never come back to Errin Mhor. Except …

Christina froze. Except before they went to Virginia, they would go to Inveraray. To Morna. Who would tell them the truth. Or what she thought was the truth. Dear God! Ailsa would think—Oh God, Ailsa would think exactly what she had wished Ross to think. And it was her fault. She had sent him. Sent them there! Oh, dear God!

‘What have I done?’ Lady Munro stared in anguish up at the portrait of the laird. ‘You!’ she exclaimed with loathing. ‘This is your fault.’

Nigh on thirty years, Christina had suffered her husband. Nigh on thirty years of duty and loyalty and this is what she was rewarded with. She had lost the love of Rory, her first born. Calumn, her second son, tolerated her, but was like a stranger to her. And Ailsa, the daughter she had sacrificed so much to have, whom she had done everything possible to keep close, would soon be lost to her for ever. All she had done, especially what she had done with Donald McNair, had been to bind Ailsa to her, and it had taken Alasdhair Ross, of all people, to show her that what she had actually done was drive her away.

Damn him, Alasdhair Ross, he had been in the right of it! She hadn’t taken any account of what Ailsa wanted, or what would make her daughter happy, blinded as she was by the vision of her own hopes coming to pass after all this time. And Ailsa had been right, too—what point in denying it now? She should have had the strength of mind to build bridges a long time ago, when the laird became too ill and too dependent upon her to hold any sway. She had not, and regretted it bitterly. Rory’s wedding, Calumn’s wedding, her granddaughter Kirsty’s birth, all had come and gone, blighted by her cowardice, for that is what it was. One thing, she discovered, to dream of a time when she could finally play the maternal role, quite another to face the consequences of all the years of having failed to play it. She was afraid of rejection, so she continued to reject.

Christina’s conscience, an embryonic creature with new-formed loyalties, was proving to have a very sharp bite. Procrastination was no longer an option. If she did not act now to make her peace with Ailsa, she never would. If she did not act now to tell her the real truth, to counter Morna’s flawed version, Ailsa’s life would be forever blighted by the belief that she had committed a terrible sin.

Lady Munro eyed the laird’s image. He gazed down at her with a malevolent eye. ‘I will go to her,’ she told him defiantly, ‘and I will tell her, and there is nothing you can do to stop me.’ From her desk she took the little Macleod knife. ‘Not even you suspected, did you?’ she said with a vicious smile. ‘Not even you.’

In one assured stroke, Christina Munro slashed diagonally through the canvas, severing the laird’s head from his body. ‘Goodbye, Iain,’ she said, dropping the knife on to the desk, turning her back on the tattered portrait and heading off in search of her groom.

Ailsa had slept late, and was still abed when Alasdhair burst into the room after a perfunctory knock on the door. Startled, she sat up, clutching the sheet, her hair in wild disarray. ‘Alasdhair! What’s wrong?’ Even as she spoke, she remembered last night and a flush crept over her cheeks.

Alasdhair, too, was flushed. There was a look on his face she had not seen before; his eyes glittered, his clothes were in some disarray, as if he had flung them on anyhow. ‘Has something happened?’

‘No. I mean yes. I mean …’ Now he was here, he realised he hadn’t thought it through. Never having declared himself before, he had no idea how to go about it. What’s more, in the short space of time it had taken him to get here, some of the certainty about Ailsa’s feelings for him had dissipated. What if she did not love him? Or worse, what if she had been on the verge of loving him again and he had warned her off too effectively? Why had he been so against marriage? So set against love? He couldn’t remember now.

‘Ailsa.’ As a youth he had been impulsive, but success had come to him through deliberation and careful planning. Now he stood before her, about to make the most important declaration of his life, completely tongue-tied as what had seemed so simple a few moments ago now seemed impossible to articulate. It was like trying to catch feathers in a maelstrom.

‘Ailsa.’

Her smile was uncertain. ‘What is it?’ Alasdhair took a deep breath. ‘Ailsa. Ailsa. Ailsa, I love you!’

She stared in astonishment, wholly unable to believe what she’d heard, unwilling to allow herself to believe it. Alasdhair, too, seemed dumbstruck. Then he made a strange sound, like a croaky laugh, realised he was still hovering in the doorway, closed the door and strode over to the bed. ‘Sorry.’

‘You didn’t mean it?’

‘No. Yes. Of course I meant it. I’m just sorry it came out like that.’ He took her hand and rubbed it against his cheek before letting it go again. ‘I’ve never done this before. I don’t know how to.’

‘Do what?’

‘Asked someone to marry me.’

‘Oh.’ Ailsa’s eyes widened in shock. Her hand went to her breast, as if to quell the jumping of her heart.

Alasdhair took another deep breath and sat down beside her on the bed, capturing her hand and holding it tight between his own. ‘I love you, Ailsa. You must think me a fool, for I think myself a fool for not recognising I loved you earlier. I kept thinking it would pass, whatever it was. I suppose I didn’t want it to be that. I thought it a weakness, you see, falling in love, and I’ve never had any problem avoiding it before. I thought I didn’t need anyone, didn’t want anyone to share my life. I thought I was stronger on my own. Safer. I thought—och, I thought all sorts of nonsense because the one thing I didn’t want to acknowledge was the truth. I love you, pure and simple.’

‘Oh, Alasdhair.’ She could not speak for the emotion clogging her throat. It was the most perfect, wonderful moment of her life, and she could not find any words for it. And then she did, and what is more they sprang unbidden to her lips.

‘Oh, Alasdhair, I love you so much.’

His smile wrapped itself around her heart. ‘Ailsa. Oh God, Ailsa, if you knew how much—’

‘But I do, I do, I do.’ She threw herself into his arms. There was no need for words now, for they spoke with their lips and their hands and their bodies. Feverish kisses, burning kisses, kisses so different from all their other kisses. Passion ignited like a fork of lightning across the sky, its crackling, sparkling edges reaching into their blood so that they really did feel as if they were on fire. They tore feverishly at buttons and fastenings to touch skin, soft skin, heated skin, stretched-too-tight skin, their lips never once parting, fastened so close they could not tell who was kissing whom.

Alasdhair threw his waistcoat on to the floor. The shirt he had begged from the innkeeper quickly joined it. Ailsa sighed her pleasure as the long-pent-up craving to touch him was finally fulfilled: her hands spreading across the ridge of scars on his back, fanning out over the taut muscles of his shoulders, down, round to the crisp spread of hair on his chest, the dip of his ribcage, the flat washboard of his stomach.

Last night she had floated on a cloud of delight towards ecstasy. This morning she was like to ignite with desire, so brightly, fiercely did she burn with need, so desperately did she crave their joining that she would have clawed her way inside his skin if she could.

Her passion was feral. She would not have believed such elemental feeling was possible, never mind that she be capable of it. She wanted to prostrate herself and be taken, to be claimed, to be owned, and to be joined, united. His. She wanted to lick and bite and nip and kiss. She moaned at the constraints of her sark, the only clothing she wore, wanting only to be completely naked, flesh and skin and bone, for him to ravish and mark as his own.

Alasdhair, too, seemed caught in a maelstrom of white-hot desire. He cast off his boots and hose without lifting his lips from hers. He tugged at the lacing that tied her sark, cursing when it became a knot, resorting to brute strength to tear it open enough to free her breasts. He cupped them in his hands, tugging her nipples, making her moan, and when he stopped, it made her moan again. He dipped his head to kiss first one, then the other, rolling his tongue over and round, making her gasp with pleasure.

He pushed her back on the bed and spread her legs. He ran his hands up her thighs, kneading the tender flesh at the top. Her hair was a wild tangle round her face. Flushed cheeks. Frayed, ravaged mouth. Violet eyes heavy-lidded with passion. Breasts heavy and flushed, too, white and pink. Creamy white thighs and pink sex. His manhood pulsed. Blood surged. A tightening in his belly, at the base, made him want to enter her now. Instead he plunged with his tongue. His mouth enveloped her, the soft and wet of her between her legs. Her thighs tightened around him. The essence of her, vanilla and spice and heat and female, went straight to his head. He licked, unerringly finding the swollen bud, waiting for his touch, ready to pulse and burst. He licked and she moaned, and he licked again.

Ailsa’s back arched as the throbbing pulse inside her erupted at his touch without warning. No flickering and floating, none of the slow languor of last night, just a sheet of flame, so hot it was cold, and a deep, elemental clenching inside her. She moaned his name. She clutched at his hair, and pleaded with him, though she didn’t know what for.

Alasdhair loosened the belt on his plaid and dropped his last piece of clothing to the floor. He knelt between her legs, naked, his shaft curving upwards. He wanted her to touch him. He could see her looking, her eyes widening, felt a surge of purely male satisfaction in knowing that he pleased her. He wanted her to touch him, but not now, there would be time enough later. Right now he needed to be inside her. He had waited too long. He could not wait any longer.

Tender now, though the waiting cost him dear, he kissed her, parting her legs further. ‘Ailsa,’ he whispered, tilting her to him, feeling the tip of his shaft touch the hot wet of her sex, his breath thrust out of him as if he were winded. ‘Ailsa,’ he whispered again, then slowly, slowly, began the journey to completion.

She clutched at his shoulders. She watched his face as he entered her, wide-eyed with the wonder of it, the rightness of it, the quivering delight of it. Slowly, he pushed into her, slowly and carefully, she could feel the tension of it in his arms, see it in his eyes, could feel herself opening for him, then a tightness and a pain, brief and ragged, then gone.

‘I’m sorry.’ Alasdhair forced himself to wait, though it was like clinging on to the edge of the world. He kissed her, his tongue plunging and sliding, and he felt her relaxing, opening, and he crossed the threshold into a different reality. It was a place too hot, too dark, too tight and wet and all-encompassing to allow him to do anything but plunge and thrust deeper into it, then to slide out and plunge again.

The pain was like an echo. With each thrust of the silken sword that was Alasdhair inside her, she felt a frisson of shivering, followed by a ragged ripple. Her eyes drifted shut, the more to feel. Behind her lids, in her head, deep inside her, everything ran red. The red of blood and of pleasure. She was like a rock pool, jagged edges catching at the inrush of water, deep centre sucking greedily. Empty. Filled. Empty.

Filled. With every inrush filled deeper. With every outrush the ragged pain receding. Clinging. Jolting under the shock of each thrust. Afraid again, but bolder. Something in the distance that she must reach. Something to make the pain worthwhile. She was afraid she was breaking. He was too big. Too much. But still she wanted more.

The clinging hotness of her was unbearable. The unfolding wetness of her, the mind-blowing perfection of her, too much. He wanted to feel her tight around his engorged shaft so that they could both feel the blood pulsing between them. He thrust hard, felt her jolting response. He wanted to come. He wanted her to come with him. ‘Now,’ he said through clenched teeth, thrusting high, and was rewarded with the indescribable, agonisingly sweet lurch of her muscles that made his own gut-wrenching climax unstoppable.

Ailsa whispered in his ear, just his name, but no one had said his name like that before, and he thrust again urgently, hard and high, kissing her hard on the mouth. His tongue thrust, his shaft thrust, she shuddered, he cried out and came, exploding inside her, and she welcomed him, clutching and crying. They were one, and the world felt as if it were in the right place, the only possible place, for the first time ever.

‘Ailsa,’ he said, with the tenderness of new ownership, stroking the heavy fall of hair from her heated brow. ‘Ailsa Munro. I love you.’

Ailsa clung to him. Tears of release and surrender sparkled on her lashes, and she made no attempt to stop them falling. This is what she was intended for. This man, this joining, something so far beyond pleasure she could not name it. ‘I love you, too,’ she whispered, planting a sated kiss to his lips.

Chapter Nine

‘Much as I would love to stay here all day, I fear we must make a move,’ Alasdhair whispered sometime later.

His breath tickled her ear. She could feel the heavy weight of his erection pressing against her thigh. Heat trickled like warm honey through her blood in response. Ailsa sighed with contentment. ‘Must we?’ she asked, lifting her head from the crook of his shoulder to meet his gaze.

Peat-smoked eyes. A warm smile, but an anxious look that was somehow reassuring. ‘We must.’ His smile had a softness to it that she recognised as tenderness. ‘You don’t regret this, do you, Ailsa?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think there is only one thing that can make me even happier than I am right now.’

‘What is that?’

‘Marry me. Marry me, Ailsa, and I swear there will not be a happier man in this world. Say yes.’

Ailsa’s tears dropped unheeded from her lashes on to her cheeks. ‘Yes.’

‘Say it again.’

She threw her arms around his neck. ‘Yes. Yes, yes, yes.’

Alasdhair kissed her lingeringly. Still kissing her, already hard, he rolled back on to the bed and pulled Ailsa on top of him. She could feel the solid length of his shaft pressing against her and felt the answering thrum of her own arousal kicking in, low in her belly. Alasdhair lifted her by the waist, and lowered her on to his engorged shaft. ‘Mr Ross, I am shocked. If I did not know you better, I would think you insatiable.’

‘Miss Munro,’ he said, his breath fast and shallow, his face flushed with desire, as he settled her carefully and his fingers stroked into her slick heat, ‘I think you will find that when it comes to you I am.’

By the time they dressed, the morning was well advanced. The mist had cleared, making way for a glorious spring day; the pale blue sky was dotted with puffy clouds like new-washed sheep skipping skittishly over the buttermilk sun.

‘I’ve decided it would be best for you to come with me to Inveraray,’ Alasdhair said. ‘Though it doesn’t seem anything like as important as it was before, I do need to see my mother, close that chapter of my life before we write a whole new book of our own.’

‘I’m so glad to hear you say that. If you didn’t go, you’d regret it.’

‘Afterwards, we need to go back to Errin Mhor.’

Ailsa’s smile faded. ‘Must we?’

‘You know we must. We can’t just sail off to Virginia without facing your mother.’

‘Why not, Alasdhair? She’s made her views plain enough—why give her the chance to air them again?’

‘It wouldn’t be right and proper.’

‘Right and proper! Was it right that she lied to us both six years ago? Was it proper that she encouraged Donald McNair to abduct me when she knew I did not want to marry him?’

‘Don’t you want to be married in Errin Mhor castle?’

She gazed up at him, her lips trembling. ‘Of course I want to, but not if it means more battles with my mother. Please, Alasdhair, I don’t want to talk about this right now. I don’t even want to think about it.’

Alasdhair’s mouth firmed. ‘Errin Mhor is your home and it is still my homeland, too. I have only just ended my banishment, I won’t have your mother’s presence preventing us from going there if we choose.’

‘Virginia will be our home.’

‘Our home, but never our homeland. Trust me on this, Ailsa, I know.’

‘Alasdhair, I really don’t want to talk about this now.’

‘Very well, but I know I’m right. You’ll regret it, Ailsa. I don’t want you having regrets when you’re too far away to do anything about them.’

‘I won’t.’

‘I want you to think very carefully about that. We’ll talk about it later.’

They crossed Loch Awe on the little ferry with their mounts swimming behind them and rode south along the well-established drover’s track towards Inveraray, lingering for the sake of lingering together, sharing moments of laughter and do you remember interspersed with silences in which they simply gazed at each other, then kissed and murmured their I love you’s over and over.

In the late afternoon, they came across a boatman who offered to take them, for a small fee, to a famous local beauty spot on a little islet on the loch. ‘What do you think?’ Alasdhair asked. Ailsa nodded her eager approval. Laughing, he tossed the boatman a few coins. ‘There’s no need to take us. We can manage fine ourselves. We’ll bring your boat back safe, don’t worry.’

Ailsa was sitting in the prow, her hair glinting in the sunshine. Looking at her, Alasdhair felt an ache in his heart, so painful was this love he felt for her, he could not believe it had taken him so long to recognise it.

Though he was loathe to spoil the mood, he forced himself to raise the subject of her mother again. ‘You know I want you to be happy, Ailsa, more than anything?’

Alerted by the serious note in his voice, she sat up. ‘What is it?’

‘Whether we like it or not, our parents are the lifeblood we are formed from. No matter what she has done, Lady Munro is still your mother. No matter how much you deny it, I know that what she thinks matters to you. If you want to, we’ll find a way of mending your fences with her.’

‘I can’t imagine how.’

‘It doesn’t matter how. If you want to, we’ll find a way. Your happiness means everything to me.’

‘I couldn’t be happier, Alasdhair.’ Balancing carefully so as not to rock the boat, she joined him on the plank that served for a seat across the middle and snuggled into his side. ‘Don’t let us talk about it now.’

Alasdhair kissed her brow. ‘You can’t keep putting it off. Virginia is a long way away, you might not see her again for some years—would you really be happy leaving here without even saying goodbye? Come, Ailsa, you’re forgetting that I’ve been there myself. I know how these things can eat away at you.’

She was concentrating on nuzzling the delightful bit of Alasdhair’s chest exposed at the opening of his shirt. He tasted salty. His throat was tanned.

‘Ailsa.’ His fingers forced her chin upwards. ‘Stop avoiding the issue. You’re worried she’ll manage to taint what we have together, but you’re wrong. What we have together is perfect. We are unshakeable, there is nothing she can do to harm us. I love you. You love me. Your mother cannot change that, can she?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘So what harm can it do to try to make your peace? Why have the fact that you didn’t at least try hanging over you? We are headed for a new life, a fresh start—is it not worth making the effort to wipe the slate clean before we go?’

‘What a long road you’ve travelled in such a short distance, Alasdhair Ross.’

‘It’s because I have done so that I know I’m right.’

Ailsa sighed. ‘I know you’re right too, but that doesn’t mean I have to look forward to it.’

‘Look forward to what will follow, then. Our wedding.’

‘Our wedding.’ Ailsa smiled hazily.

‘So that’s settled. We’ll return to Errin Mhor and see Lady Munro after I’ve tracked down my own mother. We can then discuss preparations for our wedding with Calumn. Do you think he’ll be surprised?’

‘He’ll be astonished! Somehow I don’t think Maddie will be, though.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You wouldn’t understand. Call it female intuition.’

‘I may have to leave you for a week or so before the wedding. I have important matters to attend to in Glasgow that are vital to my business. I can’t neglect them any longer. There is a merchant there named Cunninghame whom I am eager to negotiate a partnership with.’

‘Cunninghame? That is Jessica’s name. My brother Rory’s wife. Her family are merchants. They disowned her when she married Rory, so I have not met any of them, but I think her father’s name is George. Do you think it can be the same family?’

‘It sounds very much like it. George Cunninghame is one of Glasgow’s biggest tobacco merchants, they have warehouses all along Chesapeake—that’s the main bay where Virginia and Maryland have their ports.’

‘I didn’t realise. Jessica rarely talks of them. You’re going into business with her father?’

‘Perhaps. If the terms are right. He’s also one of the few merchants who doesn’t employ slaves to work the farms attached to his warehouses in America.’

‘I’m looking forward to learning all about it.’ Alasdhair laughed. ‘I’m glad to hear it, but you may not find it as exciting as you imagine.’

‘I mean it. I don’t want to be one of those wives who know nothing of their husband’s business.’

‘And I don’t want to be one of those husbands who spends all his time on business and has no time for his wife. In fact, I suspect I’m going to be one of those husbands who is so besotted with his wife that he has no time for business at all.’

He kissed her then. His lips were salty. He kissed her slowly, lingeringly, savouring the sweetness of her mouth, relishing the way she melded into him, how her lips moulded themselves into the perfect shape for his and her tongue tangled with his, tantalisingly teasing. And relishing the way that passion ignited them at the same time, so that they clutched each other, as if afraid it would hurl them into another universe.

The boat rocked as they moved on the narrow seat, trying to get closer, their bodies eager for skin on skin, for heat on heat, matching touch for touch, kiss for kiss, need for need, as if they had always been like this, achingly familiar, because only this person and this body and these hands and this mouth would do.

Ailsa sighed with pleasure as Alasdhair stroked her breasts through her clothes, the ache of her nipples as they strained at her clothing adding a little frisson of frustrated pleasure. She tugged his shirt out of his belt to run her hands up his sides, over his ribs, into the dip of his belly, relishing the clenching of the muscles, the little moan he made, the way she could feel his breathing fast and shallow, feel his heart pounding in his chest, her own excitement heightened by the knowledge that she had caused this.

The boat rocked more violently. Ailsa giggled. ‘We’ll sink, if we’re not careful. The boatman would take a very dim view of that. I don’t think we can …’

‘Oh, I think you’ll find we can,’ Alasdhair said, slipping his hand under her petticoats, making her gasp as he stroked her sex, at the same time as he thrust his tongue into her mouth in a deep kiss that made her head spin.

‘Please don’t stop,’ she said frantically when he lifted his mouth from hers, and his finger stilled its rhythmic caress.

‘I don’t intend to,’ he muttered, his voice hoarse, his chest heaving. He dropped to his knees on to the bottom of the boat and pulled her with him, tilting her forward on to the narrow wooden seat before easing into her from behind with one slow, long, delicious thrust. They rocked back and forth in perfect, intoxicating harmony, at one with the movement of the boat. The pulsing sensation built within her, each pulse making her tighter, making him harder, swelling, until finally he heard that sweet little cry of hers and he thrust once, hard and high inside her and he spent himself, saying her name over and over and over as the little boat rocked and bobbed on the silent waters of the loch; the only sound audible was the gentle slap of the waves on the hull and the far-off cry of an osprey as it soared and circled overhead.

As they covered the last few miles to Inveraray the next day, Alasdhair grew increasingly silent and withdrawn. He drew his horse to a halt as the village came into view. He was nervous. It did not mean as much as he had thought, but it still mattered. Ailsa had been right. She had a way of always being right when it came to him.

Nigh on twenty years since he had seen his mother. Twenty years in which he had grown from boy to man, abandoned by one parent, deprived by circumstances of the other. Unwanted and unloved. He thought he had grown accustomed to that, and indifferent too, settled in his new life across the sea. Coming back to his homeland, he had been forced to face up to the fact that he was very far from accustomed to it. He didn’t like it, any more than Ailsa liked to acknowledge Lady Munro’s continued ability to hurt her. They had both practised self-delusion, he and Ailsa.

Laying his ghosts was proving an emotional experience. He had not expected to be so altered by it. The barriers he had erected around himself, that he had thought as impenetrable as the fortifications of the Duke of Argyll’s original castle, a sturdy stone edifice just visible up ahead, hidden behind the excavations for the new castle being built to replace it, were eroded. He cared about this meeting. He cared about what his mother would say and cared about what she felt for him. The knots of his past were all but unravelled. He had not thought their unravelling would be so rewarding, had not dreamed he would be returning to Virginia with Ailsa by his side. His love for her made him confident he could deal with whatever version of his past his mother was about to disclose to him, but it was that same love that meant that he was exposed, raw to whatever emotions the truth would rouse in him.

He had a momentary impulse to turn around and head away from this place. He was happy now. Blissfully happy for the first time ever. Nothing could puncture or taint that, but maybe he should not tempt fate by testing it?

Beside him, Ailsa was pushing a long strand of her golden hair back from her cheek. As usual it had escaped its pins. The long days in the open air had given her face a rosy glow and a scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. The vitality that had been her essence, which he had thought lost forever, had returned in these last two days, though at this precise moment she was frowning.

‘Are you sure you’re ready for this?’ she asked.

‘As I’ll ever be.’

‘If you’re having second thoughts, Alasdhair, it is only natural. Even after all this time, she is still your mother. What she says matters, no matter how much you tell yourself it does not.’

‘Spoken from the heart,’ Alasdhair said, reaching over to squeeze her hand. ‘You are right, it matters. Matters more than she deserves, perhaps.’

The little fishing village of Inveraray was perched on the shores of Loch Fyne. The large sea loch sparkled as the noon sun played on its waters. The village was a mixture of longhouses, where the animals shared their living quarters with the occupants, and smaller cottages, some with separate barns, all with thatched roofs. Every house had its own kale yard. A few fishing boats lay above the water line on the narrow strip of sand that formed the shore. The small kirk stood on a high point at the far end of the settlement, with the howf, whose purpose was obvious from its lack of windows, at the opposite end.

Behind the village, on a small rise, the foundations of the Duke of Argyll’s new castle were being laid out. Already it had a chequered history, for the design had first been made nearly thirty years earlier for the previous duke by Mr Vanbrugh, who had been responsible for the magnificent palaces of Castle Howard and Blenheim. It was Mr Adam who now had charge, though all that could be seen were the deep gouges in the landscape marking the site of the four towers, the new tracks formed from the banks of the loch to the building site for the transporting of the materials, and the bustling activity of the stonemasons and carpenters, most of them incomers brought in by the architect.

Two women were standing together on the shoreline. They were both knitting, the wool hidden in the panniers formed by the folds of their arisaidhs, but though their fingers flew, their eyes remained fixed firmly on the loch, where they were obviously awaiting the safe return of a fishing boat. A cow lowed from a byre built on to the side of a cotter’s cottage. In a kale yard, some scrawny chookies could be seen scratching the bare earth. On the front step of a newly thatched longhouse a middle-aged woman was sitting with a piece of sewing, the dog at her feet enjoying the afternoon sunshine. She looked up at the sound of the horses and her sewing dropped unheeded to the ground. Ailsa looked at Alasdhair. The expression on his face told her all she needed to know.

‘My mother,’ he said, his voice stripped of emotion.

Morna Ross had black hair. The blue-black of raven’s wings, with barely a trace of grey, though she was older than Lady Munro by five years. Brown eyes the colour of bitter chocolate. Strong features. The resemblance was remarkable, Ailsa thought, as she hitched her horse’s reins to a post, her hands shaking. She was nervous, not for herself, but for Alasdhair. She could sense by the way he held himself how tense he was. She wanted to take his hand. She wanted to run up to Morna Ross and beg her to have a care for him. If there was a way of enduring this ordeal for him, Ailsa would have gladly taken it. But there was not a way and she knew how proud he was. He would hate her drawing attention to his nerves. Her own nervousness increased. She felt almost sick with anticipation.

Morna Ross was standing still as a statue. She was a striking woman and had obviously been quite beautiful in her youth. For a long moment, mother and son stood facing one another. ‘Alasdhair?’ Her voice was so faint it would have been lost on the breeze if there had been one. ‘Alasdhair, can it really be you?’ She took a step towards him. A faltering step. She held out her hands, as if in supplication. ‘Alasdhair?’ Her voice cracked.

‘Mother.’

‘It is you.’ Morna Ross shook her head, as if she could not believe what she was seeing. ‘Twenty years, but I would know you anywhere.’

‘And I you.’ His voice was harsh. Now that he was finally face to face with her, he could think of nothing to say. He felt nothing either, only cold indifference.

‘They told me you were gone.’ Morna was looking at him as if he were an apparition. ‘They told me you’d run off. To America, is what I heard.’

‘Virginia.’

‘Virginia.’ The word sounded so strange on her tongue. Morna shook her head. ‘And has it treated you well?’

‘Well enough.’

‘Aye. You look well. I …’ Morna shook her head again, and dashed her hand across her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t expect—the shock. It’s the shock. I didn’t think to see you again. Ever. I can’t believe—after all this time, I can’t believe …’ Her voice wavered, and she tottered back towards the step.

Alasdhair took her arm. ‘Don’t go fainting on me.’

‘No. Just give me a second.’ Morna took a couple of deep breaths. ‘I’ll be all right. Here, let me get a proper look at you.’ Trying desperately to compose herself, she wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron and took a step back to gaze up at Alasdhair’s handsome countenance. ‘How tall you are, and so dark—you get your colouring from me.’ She made as if to touch his hair, but Alasdhair flinched and Morna shrank back. ‘Why have you come here after all this time, Alasdhair? Why now?’

‘I need to know the truth.’

‘The truth,’ Morna exclaimed. ‘I doubt there is such a thing any more. What is the point in raking over old ashes? I have done it often enough myself, and it does no good, believe me. Look at you, you’ve grown into a fine man; and you’ve made a life for yourself far away. It has done my heart more good than I deserve to see you. It’s all I ever wanted, Alasdhair, to know that you are well. There is nothing to be gained by harping back to the past. Please, don’t let us talk of it.’

‘It is to talk of it that I came here,’ Alasdhair said impatiently.

‘What you don’t understand, Alasdhair, is that there are many versions of the truth, and none of them anything other than shameful. Please.’

‘I want to know.’

Morna sighed heavily. ‘Very well. If you must have it, then I must tell you. You’d better come in.’

She stood aside to usher him to the door of the cottage. Alasdhair beckoned to Ailsa, who had been standing to one side, partially hidden by the horses. ‘Mother, this is …’

Morna, who was already pale, now turned a greyish shade, and put her hands to her breast. ‘Merciful God.’

‘What on earth is the matter?’ Alasdhair asked.

‘What’s she doing here?’

‘This is Ailsa Munro, Mother.’

Ailsa took a step forwards and dropped a light curtsy. Morna peered at her, her face rigid with horror.

‘Merciful God,’ Morna said again. ‘It must have been you she was expecting.’

‘Who?’

‘Your mother. At least, I assume it was your mother. Lady Munro. You’re the living spit of her,’ Morna said. ‘What are you doing here?’

Ailsa looked helplessly at Alasdhair. ‘I think maybe it would be best if I let the two of you talk. I’ll take the horses to the stables at the howf.’

Alasdhair shook his head. ‘No, you’ll stay here with me. I want you to hear what she has to say.’ He turned back to his mother. ‘Ailsa has an interest in this. I’ll explain later.’ Until he heard her side of the story and could judge for himself its impact, he had no intention of sharing his love for Ailsa with his mother. It was too precious.

‘On your head be it,’ Morna said in a resigned voice. ‘Any road, I suppose I might as well put to bed any lies that mother of yours has put about.’

Ailsa looked confused. ‘What do you mean? What has my mother to do with this?’

He remembered then, the look on Lady Munro’s face when she had called Morna the root cause of it all. A premonition of something malevolent made Alasdhair take Ailsa to one side. ‘Perhaps it would be best if you—’

‘No. If your mother’s story has some bearing on me, I want to hear it. Come, Alasdhair, you can see how upset she is by all this; let us get it over with.’

Reluctantly, he allowed her to precede him into the cottage. This was not working out at all as he had anticipated. He had expected to find this meeting upsetting, but he was struggling to feel anything other than a wish to have done with it, added to that there was now an impending sense of doom. His mother seemed strangely reluctant to talk. He had thought she would be anxious to explain herself and couldn’t understand why she was not.

Inside, the longhouse was partitioned in two, with the living quarters for the animals at the back where a second floor formed an attic. A peat fire burned in the middle of the floor, the smoke curling lazily towards the hole in the thatch that served as a chimney. A bed with a straw mattress took up one corner. There was a table upon which was the makings of a stew and, on the fire, a pot of broth set on a trivet simmered appetisingly. Four wooden chairs were set around the table. An aumrie, a low wooden linen chest, sat under the single unglazed window, whose shutters were open. A rag rug, a patchwork cover on the bed, a knitted blanket folded neatly on top of the aumrie and Morna’s woollen shawl, spread across the back of one of the chairs, were the only signs of comfort in the clean but spartan cottage.

Thinking of the simple but elegant furnishings of his own plantation house, remembering the domestic comforts of his childhood home, Alasdhair was shocked.

‘It is not much, I know,’ Morna said, looking embarrassed as she pulled out chairs and ushered her guests towards them. They sat side by side. Morna took the seat opposite to her son, her hands clasped tightly together under the cover of her apron. ‘I don’t know where to start,’ she said, pulling one hand out to rub her eyes, then put it back again. ‘Maybe if you could tell me what you know it would help me to understand what it is you want from me.’

‘They told me you ran off with another man. I’ve never understood how you could leave my father in such a cruel way, knowing what it would do to him. You never made any attempt to get in touch, not even when he died. And you abandoned me, too. I thought it didn’t matter any more why; I’ve had twenty years to grow used to it, but now I need to know.’

‘You came back all the way from America to see me?’

‘No. Not at first. But since I got here, so much of what I thought was the truth has turned out to be such a different kettle of fish that I realised I owed it to you and to myself to hear your side of things. For better or for worse.’

Morna pursed her lips and nodded silently. She seemed to have regained her composure, though the effort it cost her was writ large in the rigid way she held herself. She did not seem able to look directly at Alasdhair, but rather snatched frequent glances at him, as if afraid that anything more prolonged would result in his disappearance.

Ailsa watched her from under her lashes. She herself felt on edge, as if she were sitting on the sinner’s stool outside the kirk, bracing herself for a dousing. Her nails were forming painful crescents on her palms, so tightly was she clenching her fists in an effort to stop herself from shaking. She was afraid of what was to come. Not for herself—she could not believe any of the ancient history Morna was about to divulge could have much to do with her—but for Alasdhair. She prayed that whatever Morna’s secrets were, they were not any more shameful than those he had already imagined.

Morna gazed off to a spot over Alasdhair’s shoulder. ‘I came to Errin Mhor as a chambermaid, part payment for a debt my father owed. It was not long before the Munro married Christina MacLeod, and I married your father, his factor—a match the laird organised, as was the way, but we were happy enough.’

She paused to untangle her knitting wool, that had fallen from her pocket and twisted itself around the leg of the chair. When she sat up again, her colour was heightened. ‘It was the laird’s birthday. Lady Munro was big with child, and they were short-handed for the ceilidh, so Alec sent me to help at the castle. I was fetching a bottle of the special whisky for Lord Munro; he wanted it brought to his library. I knocked on the door and he bade me enter. He was alone. I never thought—I didn’t mean to—I wouldn’t have gone to the room alone if I had known.’

Morna’s eyes were large with unshed tears. Watching her, Ailsa was suddenly afraid of what she was about to say. Looking over at Alasdhair, she saw the same fear on his face. Her impulse was to flee the room, the cottage, the village, with her hands over her ears, but if she did, then Alasdhair would blame himself for upsetting her. She must endure it, for his sake.

Morna’s hands were shaking; she was obviously struggling for control. She spoke more quickly now, eager to have it done with. ‘He forced himself on me. I didn’t have chance to stop him, he was on me before I could escape.’

‘The despicable bastard! He raped you.’ Morna turned scarlet. ‘He was the laird. You don’t understand how it was in those days, Alasdhair, most people would say he had the right to me. I should have kept out of his way. I should have had more of a care.’

‘For God’s sake, you talk as if it were your fault.’

‘It was, in a way. I should have known better.’

‘He took you against your will. You, a married woman.’

‘Aye, but that was not the way he saw it, or the world. I could scream or I could just close my eyes and let him get it over with. I chose the latter. I thought if I made a fuss it would be worse for Alec, so I let him get on with it and, dear God, I wish I had not, for she walked in on us.’

Ailsa could hardly bear to speak, but she knew she must. ‘My mother?’

‘Lady Munro. She turned white as a sheet. I thought she would faint away. I actually felt sorry for her, though God knows it was misplaced. She has no entitlement to anyone feeling anything for her. She turned on me. She must have known how things had been, but I suppose she couldn’t very well vent her temper on the laird, so she blamed me and he, God rot him, was happy enough to allow her. Until she started demanding retribution, that is. That he was having none of; he just laughed at her when she demanded I be sent away, but the more he denied her what she wanted the more upset she got, falling into hysterics and claiming it was damaging the child. Well, that swung everything in her favour, as you can imagine. She wanted me banished. He agreed, eventually, though only to my going. Alec was too good a factor for him to lose over a bit of skirt, and of course there was no way on earth he’d let me take you with me, Alasdhair. Thrawn old bastard that he was, the more I begged to be allowed to take you with me, the more he dug his heels in.’

‘So you left.’

‘I was banished.’

‘The laird had a fondness for that particular punishment,’ Alasdhair said sardonically.

‘It is his right, and no matter what you might think, Alasdhair, it was partly my fault. If I had not tried to blame him as I did, if I had not tried to excuse myself, if I had just kept quiet, maybe Lady Munro would have allowed it to be forgotten and none of this would have happened. Your father might still have been alive. I would not have lost you. For years, when I first came here, it was all I could think about, finding ways to undo what had been done, ways to change what I couldn’t change. It eats away at you, Alasdhair. The only way to deal with it is not to think about it.’

‘And what of my father? What had he to say to all of this?’ Alasdhair’s voice was devoid of emotion, but his fists were clenched on the arms of the chair in which he sat.

‘Alec had no more choice than I did. The deed was done before he knew of it. I was not allowed to say goodbye. Those are the rules for those banished and I didn’t dare break them for fear of the retribution that would be wrought on the two of you.’

‘I know all about the Munro rules of banishment,’ Alasdhair said bitterly. ‘So there never was another man?’

Morna laughed scornfully. ‘No. There was only ever the one.’

‘Why didn’t you try to see me? Why didn’t you try to tell me the truth?’

‘That word again. I’ve told you, Alasdhair, there’s no such thing as the truth. I didn’t try to see you because I didn’t think I had the right, especially not after your father died and the blame was laid fair and square at my door. Guilt and shame are terrible things. Seeing you today is more than I’ve ever hoped for. It’s enough. If you can find it in your heart to forgive me, I will die happy.’

‘There is nothing to forgive.’ But the words did not sound forgiving, and though he meant them, Alasdhair did not feel them. He wanted to, but he could not rid himself of the conviction that Morna was allowing him only to see a part of the picture. ‘None of this is your fault,’ he said, though it was himself he was attempting to reassure.

Morna shook her head. ‘It’s nice of you to say it, but it isn’t true. I always loved you though, Alasdhair. I’ve carried you in my heart these twenty years; there’s not a day’s gone by without me thinking of you.’

Now, surely, he had what he wanted, Ailsa thought, watching Alasdhair closely. Now he knew that he had always been loved, surely he could find it in his heart to make the first move? But Alasdhair remained in his chair, a frown drawing his brows firmly together. ‘When my father died, why did you not come back for me then? If you cared about me as you claim, surely you must have worried about what would become of me? I had no other kin on Errin Mhor.’

Morna shifted uncomfortably in her seat. ‘I knew the laird would take care of you.’

‘How could you have known that? I was the son of his factor, nothing more. You said yourself that Lady Munro had made it plain she was determined to see the back of you. Why would you assume she’d be willing to take me in under those circumstances?’

‘I knew the laird would do his duty by you.’

‘What duty?’ The feeling of impending doom he’d had earlier was closing in over him like the chilly black waters of the deepest loch. Morna was refusing to look at him now. ‘Mother? What duty was it that impelled Lord Munro to make me his ward, when the obvious thing to do was to send me to you? He knew where you were.’

‘Alasdhair, believe me, there are some things that it is best to leave buried.’

Alasdhair hesitated. Maybe she was right. But though part of him urged caution, the larger part of him, the part that had fought its way into the light with the aid of Ailsa’s love, was stronger. ‘What are you not telling me?’

Morna’s eyes darted from Alasdhair to Ailsa and back again to her son. ‘Maybe if you could ask the lass to wait outside,’ she said hesitantly.

Alasdhair shook his head and reached for Ailsa’s hand. ‘Whatever you’re about to say, she has the right to know. Ailsa and I are to be married.’

The effect of those words on his mother were astonishing. Morna rose out of her seat, her hands clutching at her breast. Her face turned from white to grey. ‘No! Oh, dear God in heaven, no.’ She clutched at the edge of the table to support herself. ‘You mustn’t marry the Munro’s daughter.’

Alasdhair pushed back his chair so violently that it fell to the floor. ‘Enough! Unless you wish our estrangement to be for ever, you will think very carefully before you say another word. I love Ailsa with all my heart. Whatever prejudices you have about her family—and Lord knows they have given you just cause—you will keep them to yourself.’

‘Alasdhair, please don’t,’ Ailsa interrupted, completely bewildered by the turn the conversation had taken. ‘It is perfectly understandable that—’

‘No.’ He pulled her to her feet and put his arm around her shoulder, anchoring her firmly to his side. ‘You are to be my wife. If my mother cannot treat you with the respect you are entitled to, then she does not deserve to be my mother.’

Morna’s knees gave way under her. She tottered back into her seat, waving away Ailsa’s attempts to come to her aide. ‘It’s not you, lass,’ she said, her voice made harsh by her laboured breathing. ‘I swear to you, Alasdhair, it’s not Miss Munro’s heritage that is the problem.’ She took a deep breath. ‘It’s your own.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Your father.’

‘What about him?’

‘Alec isn’t your real father. He couldn’t sire bairns; it was one of the reasons he consented to the match, so he could have a child to call his own.’ Morna licked her dry lips and forced herself to meet her son’s accusing gaze. It broke her heart to see the shadow of pain lurking there.

‘So there was another man all along. You did run off with him, didn’t you? Is he my father?’

‘There is, there never was, another man.’

Alasdhair looked bewildered. ‘Then who on earth is my father?’

The answer, when it came, was so quiet as to be barely audible. ‘Lord Munro.’

‘What!’

‘Lord Munro is your father.’

Chapter Ten

‘No!’

‘Yes. I’m so sorry, but it’s true. That night of the ceilidh,’ Morna said, head bowed, ‘was not the first time the laird had his way with me. When I first came to the castle he—he—it was his way of making his mark, you see.’

‘No!’ Alasdhair’s roar was like a wounded lion. ‘No! It can’t be true.’

‘I’m sorry, but you wanted the truth.’

‘You’re saying that I am Lord Munro’s bastard? But that means …’ Out of the corner of his eye Alasdhair saw Ailsa’s face drain of colour, so quickly it was as if the blood had been let. He wanted to go to her. He wanted to gather her close to him and to run and run and run away from here.

She got to her feet and reached for him. ‘Alasdhair?’

Her voice was thread-thin. She looked bewildered. Lost. Her eyes like bruises, beseeching him.

It broke his heart to see her like this. ‘Ailsa.’ He pulled her to him, felt the achingly familiar shape of her nestling into him, bending to him, fitting so perfectly that it was meant for him. He turned to his mother again. ‘You lie,’ he said with conviction.

‘I’m sorry,’ Morna said wretchedly, seeing now in the way the girl cleaved to her son what she had not noticed earlier. It was too late. The ultimate sin had been committed, and it was her fault for keeping the truth secret. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said again, for there was nothing else to say. ‘You cannot believe how much I wish I could change things, Alasdhair, but I cannot. Why else do you think the laird so readily took you in under his own roof?’

Ailsa was shaking uncontrollably against him now. ‘Alasdhair?’ She tried to catch his eye, but he looked away, and it was that, the sliding away of his peat-smoked eyes, eyes that had looked so truthfully and so lovingly into hers only a few short hours ago, that made her realise the full, horrible implication of Morna’s bombshell. Only a few hours ago the world had seemed to have been made for them. It was she who had insisted they come here. If she had not. If they had gone back to Errin Mhor instead of coming here to Inveraray. If she could just unravel the last few hours. If she could unpick them back to the flaw like a tweed still on the loom, if she could tie the threads anew in a different way so that the pattern they weaved would be different. If she could only …

Alasdhair, too, was beginning to shake, for it felt like the whole world was rocking under his feet. ‘Why did you not say? Why did no one tell me?

Why …?’

‘I thought it for the best,’ Morna said. ‘No one else knew, save Alec, not even Lady Munro. Why land you with the label of bastard when Alec was willing to keep you as his own? And then when he died I was so ashamed, so guilty, knowing I had hastened his death—it seemed so—and I never thought, you see. I thought you were in America.’

Alasdhair put Ailsa from him. Bereft, she stood, swaying, her mind frozen on that one thought. If only they could turn back the world, just a few short hours. But she knew only too well that ‘if only’ never worked. It seemed to her as if she and Alasdhair were destined after all to live their lives in the land of ‘if only’. The full horror of the implications had not yet sunk in. She did not think of her crime or of their sin. She could only think of ‘if only’ and ‘if only’ and ‘if only’. And Alasdhair. ‘Alasdhair.’ She said his name, like a plea from a death bed. She turned to him. She reached for him. But he flinched and that was it. The end. Their ending. And she wished with all her heart in that moment of agonising revelation that it would be hers, too. Now and for ever.

‘I’m sorry,’ Morna said again, ‘It never crossed my mind that you and she—the laird’s daughter—it never crossed my mind that you would look at each other in that way. He would never have allowed it.’

‘He didn’t. “Ailsa’s the very last girl you should be thinking of that in that way.” That’s what he said to me six years ago. That’s what he meant.’

‘Six years ago?’

‘When Ailsa and I first … our feelings for each other are of—were of long standing.’ Alasdhair’s voice cracked. He felt as if he were dissolving. An ominous silence filled the cottage. Outside, the sun still shone. The birds still sang. The fishermen fished and the workmen continued to labour on the Duke of Argyll’s new castle. Outside, the world went about its business oblivious. Inside, blackness brewed.

Morna, run out even of apologies, buried her head in her apron and wept, silent acrid tears.

Alasdhair stood motionless, his eyes glazed, his mind struggling to reassemble the facts into a logical order that made sense. That did not slay and flay. That did not destroy utterly.

Ailsa’s heart beat faster and faster. Her breathing was ragged. Her mind darted first one way, then the other. She could not think of facts, but only of colours. The shining silver of the future she and Alasdhair had planned. The deep crimson of their lovemaking. The burning gold of her love for him. She tried to clutch them to her heart, to keep them safe from the marauding black that threatened to cloak them all in its vileness. The sins of the father. The sins of her father. Alasdhair’s father.

‘No!’ Desperately, she tried to reach him. Only a few inches of floor separated them, but it felt like a vast void. The floor was moving under her feet, shuddering and tilting like a brewing storm. If she could just reach him, it would be all right. If he would just look at her, if she could just see the love he had for her in his eyes, it would be all right. None of this was true. It couldn’t be. ‘No.’ She reached for him, but he stepped back. A roaring in her ears made her stagger. ‘Alasdhair, say it’s not true.’

The room tilted. Ailsa felt her knees give way, but just before she fell, Alasdhair caught her, holding her tight against his chest, his grip painful, a pain she welcomed, for at least she could feel it. ‘Alasdhair.’ She burrowed her head into his chest. She drank in the achingly familiar smell of him. Her mind reeled, a swirling mass of turgid colours. Then blessed unconsciousness claimed her as she fainted clean away in his arms.

Alasdhair deposited her carefully on the bed. Leaning over, he stroked her hair from her face and kissed her icy cheek. ‘Look after her,’ he said tersely to Morna, standing beside him like a spectre. ‘Where are you going?’

‘To hell,’ Alasdhair barked and strode out of the longhouse.

He walked. He did not know where he walked, nor did he care. Along the banks of Loch Fyne he went, to the edge of the trees and then into the forest, where the gloomy ambiance suited his state of mind. He stumbled over the roots of the Caledonian pines that spread like the gnarled fossilised joints of ancient crones over the sparse earth. He splashed, indifferent to both wet and cold, through the burbling streams, swollen with the run-off from the mountain snow. He tramped over clumps of ferns unfurling from silver spores, over the sharp green shoots of bluebells and the soft browning velvet leaves of dying primroses. He tripped when his toe caught in a rabbit’s burrow, causing a startled roe deer to leap with balletic grace from a clearing. The low-hanging branches of the trees caught in his hair as it flew out behind him. Gorse clutched at the pleats of his plaid. Alasdhair strode on and on, away and away, falling into a kind of trance somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness, almost numb in a grey twilight world where his unwitting sin lurked like an evil kelpie in the deepest cavern of his mind.

Eventually, he stopped. Eventually, he came to the realisation that running away was futile. The fate that awaited them, a life for ever apart, must be confronted. He could not, nor would he, wrench Ailsa from his heart, but he must cut her completely from his life.

Garnering all his resolution, with a leaden heart that would, he knew for certain, grow heavier as each year passed, Alasdhair turned around. Slowly, like a man facing the gallows, he walked back the way he had come, instinctively taking the same paths he had not even noticed himself choosing, a man on a tumbrel of his own making, heading inexorably towards destruction.

Back in the cottage, the pale creature who had once been Ailsa fought her way back to consciousness. She looked like a wraith. She felt like a will-o’-the-wisp, the fabled marsh creature made of smoke whose destiny it was to cast fatal spells over men. She had no words with which to express how she felt, not even to herself. She wanted nothing so much as to bury herself deep in a dark place like a wounded deer, to endure the lonely vigil that would be her life from now on. If she could not have Alasdhair—and she could not, she could not, she could not—then she would have nothing and no one.

Though she could see that Morna, too, was suffering greatly, Ailsa had nothing to offer that would give her comfort. She pitied Morna in a way that she did not pity herself. Her pain was too great for pity, the crime she had so innocently committed too all-encompassing for her to think beyond its existence. The full horror of it would no doubt dawn on her, and with it, perhaps, repentance and shame. But for now, Ailsa’s only way of dealing with the truth was to reject it by simply refusing to take it in.

Every part of her was frozen, save her love for Alasdhair. That continued to burn, feverish and defiant, a straining of her heart. She knew it was wrong, but she could not bring herself to slay it.

Not yet.

Not yet.

Ailsa struggled to her feet, brushing aside Morna’s outstretched arm, shaking her head at the offer of sustenance, for her throat felt as if it were closed. Gathering her arisaidh around her, she opened the door of the cottage and took a deep breath of fresh air. She must find him. When she knew he was safe, then she would leave him. But first she must find him.

She was stepping down from the path to the beach when a hand stayed her. A familiar hand. An achingly familiar body. ‘Alasdhair.’

‘Ailsa.’

They stared at each other for long moments. The world had changed utterly, yet it seemed utterly unchanged.

‘I thought you were gone,’ she whispered, her voice thin and parched.

‘I will be. Soon.’ His own sounded tortured.

‘Alasdhair, I …’

‘Don’t!’

‘If I had known, I would not have …’

‘Ailsa,’ he said, gentler now, ‘it wouldn’t have changed the truth.’

‘Your mother was right,’ she replied bitterly, ‘there is no such thing as the truth.’

‘No, you are wrong. The truth is what you feel in your heart. I love you. You are a part of me. You were made for me, and without you I won’t ever be complete. That love is not wrong, Ailsa—I won’t ever believe it is. I love you, and though it is a profanation, and I can never tell the world of it, I will always love you. If that is a sin, then it is one I will continue to commit, in thought if not in deed. This parting which must be is not an ending. I have you tucked in my heart. Though it feels as if I am slain, knowing I must never again feel your lips on mine, your hand in mine, my love is strong enough to transcend even that.’

‘Oh, Alasdhair,’ Ailsa said brokenly, ‘I have you in my heart, too, I promise. Always.’

‘I know you do. I know you do, Ailsa, and it is enough,’ he said fiercely, fighting with all his might the urge to take her in his arms. ‘It is enough,’ he repeated, determined to make it so. ‘It will be.’

They were too wrapped up in their own tragedy to notice her presence until she was upon them, too caught up in contemplating the pain and agony that awaited them. The terrible journey they knew they must undertake, from blissful togetherness to desolate separation, lay ahead.

She had left her horse at the howf, and come on foot. She was dressed entirely in black, her golden hair, which the years had not faded, concealed under a widow’s cap.

It was Ailsa who saw her first, startled by the motionless figure whose attention was focused on her in a way that reminded Ailsa of the Errin Mhor village women when the fleet was overdue. They would stand on the end of the pier just like this, still as statues, frozen between joy and grief until each boat landed and each man was accounted for.

‘Mother,’ Ailsa said numbly. ‘I don’t understand, what on earth are you doing here?’

‘Ailsa.’ Faced with her daughter and disconcerted by the bereft expression that was written over her beloved countenance, the extent of her task overwhelmed Christina Munro. Frozen by fear of failure or, worse, outright rejection, she took a faltering step towards Ailsa, then stopped. Any normal mother would envelop her daughter in a hug, but Lady Munro knew, having had ample time to reflect on the journey here, that she was about as far from being a normal mother as it was possible to be. ‘Ailsa, I had hoped I might find you here. I need to talk to you, explain. It is very important.’

‘Whatever you have to say, it is too late now,’ Ailsa said flatly.

Gazing helplessly into her daughter’s eyes, the same violet shade as her own, Lady Munro felt despair wash over her. ‘You don’t understand. I wanted to see you—to tell you—I want to put things right.’ She tried to smile encouragingly.

‘Put things right! Nobody can put things right. Nothing will be right ever again.’

Looking closely at her daughter, Christina Munro noticed for the first time the tightly drawn look of her, her eyes huge in the chalk-white face. ‘You look as if you have seen a ghost.’

‘I have,’ Ailsa replied. ‘And it is a spectre that will haunt me to the end of my days.’

Christina felt as if the little blood she had was icing over. ‘Morna. You have spoken—she has told you.’ She clutched at her daughter’s arm. ‘It’s not what you think. What your father did—it’s not the whole story. If you would let me explain, Ailsa …’

‘How can you? What can you possibly say to change the fact that my father is also Alasdhair’s?’ Ailsa said hysterically. ‘I presume you knew that, Mother? I presume that is what was at the bottom of your hating Alasdhair so much? My father’s exercising of his feudal rights!’

‘Ailsa, it’s not—’

‘To hell with the laird and his sins,’ Alasdhair snapped. ‘I’m sick of hearing about him. What about the sins of omission?’ he said furiously, turning on Lady Munro. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? I don’t understand why you just didn’t—before we… . Dear God, woman, have you any idea what this has done to us? To your own daughter?’

Lady Munro clasped her hands together to stop them shaking. She cleared her throat and forced herself to look at her daughter. Her Ailsa. Her lovely Ailsa. ‘It doesn’t mean what you think it means.’

‘What? What the hell else do you think it could mean?’ Alasdhair said disgustedly. ‘Unless you are saying that my mother somehow got it wrong and mistook the man who planted his seed in her.’

‘No, I’m not saying that.’

‘Then what, Mother? What are you saying?’

Lady Munro threw back her head, meeting her daughter’s gaze full on. ‘Alasdhair might be Lord Munro’s child, Ailsa, but you are not.’

It seemed for a moment as if the world stopped. The air resonated with tension. Alasdhair and Ailsa were incapable of speech, too terrified to believe, too scared to even move in case the spell was broken and it proved another devilish twist in the nightmare that had befallen them.

‘It’s true.’ Lady Munro broke the silence, her voice shaking.

‘But why? Who? How?’ Ailsa’s voice shook pathetically. ‘I don’t understand. Why did you not tell me? Why, all these years, did you lead me to believe—why?’

‘Oh, Ailsa, why would I? There were all the reasons in the world not to tell you.’

‘But …’ Ailsa clutched at her head, that was reeling.

With an immense effort of will, Alasdhair took charge. ‘Not here. We need to—not here. We’ll go back to my mother’s cottage.’

‘Morna Ross won’t want me in her house.’

‘If what you say is true, she will welcome you with open arms.’

‘I promise you,’ Lady Munro said fervently, ‘I promise you it is true. You are no kin of my daughter.’

The look that passed between Ailsa and Alasdhair contained a tiny flicker of hope, like a candle flame trying valiantly to burn in a draught. They looked and they hoped and then they looked away, for fear of tempting fate. As the three of them made their way to the cottage, the white clouds of the morning, which seemed now so very long ago, gave way to a watery blue sky bearing a weak sun.

Morna Ross was waiting for them on the doorstep, her arms folded tight across her chest. ‘Well, well, as I live and breathe. To what do I owe this dubious pleasure?’

‘Mother,’ Alasdhair said, ushering Morna into the cottage, ‘Lady Munro has some extraordinary news which may put all to rights. Let us go inside.’

They did so. Morna and Christina Munro took stock of each other across the table, like old adversaries trying to ready themselves for a battle neither relished, but would die rather than default from.

Ailsa and Alasdhair sat side by side so that every nuance of expression was felt rather than seen. Though they did not touch, their bodies harkened towards one another, pulled by some unseen force, like a magnet pulls the point of a compass north. They waited with bated breath for Lady Munro’s explanation to release them, still fearing that by some chance her words had been misinterpreted, condemning them utterly.

Lady Munro sat ramrod straight in her seat, her long thin fingers plucking at the lace of her delicately embroidered handkerchief. ‘I never wanted anything else but your happiness,’ she said suddenly, turning towards her daughter. ‘I know you don’t believe that, but it’s true. It’s all I ever wanted.’

‘Then help me now, Mother, please,’ Ailsa begged her, ‘because the only thing that will make me happy is being with Alasdhair.’

Christina Munro nodded. A piece of lace came away from the fine lawn cotton handkerchief with a little tearing sound. ‘Yes. Yes, I see that now. I’m only sorry it took me so long.’ She nodded again. Silence stretched taut as a sail in a head wind. She closed her eyes as the past, a country from which self-preservation had prevented her setting foot, beckoned like a forgotten continent, the contours of the landscape familiar, the surroundings changed. Christina took a deep breath and opened her eyes. ‘I loved my first husband,’ she said, her gaze focused only on Ailsa. ‘I was devastated when he died,’ she continued in a harsh tone. ‘We had not been long married, and I was young, not even eighteen, with my first-born bairn, Rory, still in swaddling.’ She began to rock in her chair, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. ‘You see, Ailsa, I can say his name well enough. I just find it—experience has taught me it is better not to. When you cannot heal a wound, it is better not to pick at it.’

She hesitated briefly before continuing. ‘I was a widow just a few months before the clan married me on to the Munro. My boy was not a year when they tore him from my arms. I didn’t know, you see. They didn’t tell me that it was part of the nuptial agreement. Rory was the heir to Heronsay, the Macleods wanted him under their wing, and my new husband did not want a Macleod cuckoo in the Munro nest. But I didn’t know any of that.’

Rocking. Rocking. Rocking. Ailsa stared at her mother as if she had never seen her before. She seemed to have aged these last few days, not in her looks, but in her carriage. The straight-backed rigidity in which she had been sitting was gone. She was curled into herself now, struggling to hold herself together. She looked pitiable. She had never looked pitiable before.

The rocking slowed, but did not quite stop. Lady Munro’s fingers ripped at the lace. ‘It broke my heart to leave Rory in Heronsay. On our wedding night the laird promised me that when I gave him his own son he would let me have my first born to live with us. I thought he meant it.’ Her lip curled. ‘But when I gave him Calumn he just laughed at me. When I’d had a second child, he said, one more than I’d given the Macleod. So I let him back into my bed and endured his attentions though I knew him for a liar, because what else could I do?’

Lady Munro turned briefly to Morna. ‘When it is our children’s well-being at stake, we will endure much.’

Morna gave a half-shrug of assent, but said nothing.

‘I tried, but to no avail,’ Lady Munro continued,

‘and after four years I was nigh on giving up hope. I did not really believe he would grant me Rory anyway. You won’t believe me—why should you after the way I’ve treated you?—’ she said to Ailsa, ‘but what I really wanted was a daughter of my own.’

She paused again, and Ailsa was astonished to see a blush steal over her mother’s cheek. ‘Go on,’ she said, wondering what on earth was coming next.

‘I wouldn’t have thought of it had not circumstances conspired,’ Lady Munro said, her words coming out in a rush now, anxious as she was to have the shameful part of the tale over with. ‘The laird was away from Errin Mhor on clan business. He’d been gone nearly two months, visiting cousins in the Hebrides. Neil Murray was an old flame of mine. When Rory’s father died, he asked for my hand, but though he was of good family and I liked him very well, he had not the wealth nor the lands of the Laird of Errin Mhor, so his offer was rejected.’

This confession was so far from what Ailsa had expected that her mouth fell open in astonishment. She made to speak, but Alasdhair’s hand on her arm stopped her. ‘Wait,’ he mouthed, afraid that were Lady Munro interrupted she would falter.

‘He called at Errin Mhor with a message for my husband,’ Lady Munro said, her blush now apparent to all. ‘He stayed seven days and nights, and we—I—he came to my bed on every one of them.

I was lonely, and I was desperate, and Neil showed me kindness, which my husband had never done, and he reminded me of better times. I know that is no excuse. By the time he left Errin Mhor I suspected I might be carrying his child. By the time my husband returned, three weeks later, my suspicions had been confirmed. I know it was wrong to deceive him, no matter that he had deceived me, but that is what I did. I made sure he had no reason to doubt me, and I was lucky, for no one questioned you being supposedly a few weeks early, Ailsa, for Calumn was an early baby, too. I was lucky, and I was careful. No one knew, not even Neil. Until today, this has been my secret.’

‘Are you sure?’ Ailsa asked urgently, leaning forwards in her seat. ‘Are you absolutely positive, there can be no doubt of my true father?’

‘No doubt at all, I promise you. I am quite certain of my dates, but there is something else, if you need further proof. Look at your hands.’

Ailsa spread her fingers on the table in front of her. ‘What am I looking for?’

‘See.’ Lady Munro did the same. ‘The middle finger and the fourth—in most people they are different sizes, but yours are the same length. It is a quirk Neil told me of, all his family have it.’

Frowning, Ailsa examined her hands, surprised to find that her mother spoke the truth, more surprised to find that she herself had never noticed it before. ‘Is it really so unusual?’

Lady Munro nodded. Alasdhair and Morna, both examining their own hands now, nodded too. ‘It’s true,’ Morna said, looking at Ailsa’s hands now with interest, ‘I’ve never seen that before.’

‘So I am definitely not a Munro,’ Ailsa said slowly.

‘No,’ Lady Munro answered, her voice tight.

Morna spoke for the first time, her voice tinged with something akin to admiration. ‘You cuckolded the laird in his own nest.’

‘Aye, I did.’ Lady Munro said, meeting Morna’s gaze firmly, still as stone, even her fingers at peace. Each word seemed drawn from her like a sharp stone, so painfully that there could be no doubting the truth of them. ‘When I found him with you that night, I was furious that he could do so easily and thoughtlessly what had cost me dear. It was not your fault, I know that, but I did not see it that way at the time. If it is any consolation at all, you should know that he punished me, too, for the shame of having discovered him. What I did to you was done to me in return and your son took my son’s place at the castle.’

‘It is hardly the same,’ Morna said heavily.

‘I do not make any claim that it is,’ Christina agreed. ‘Nor do I claim that I committed no sin. I only want to explain. And it is not your forgiveness I came here to seek anyway but my daughter’s.’ She looked over at Ailsa again, her eyes now clearly damp with unshed tears. ‘I loved you all the more for who you were, Ailsa, and who you were not, but the laird must always come first, you see, so I took care never to allow him to see what I felt for you. But you were right. There has been time, more than enough time since, for me to change things between us, and I have not. I’ve been afraid to, for the damage I’ve inflicted has been too terrible to contemplate. I’ve always loved you, Ailsa, even though I’ve never shown it. I came here to tell you that whatever you want from your life, it has my blessing. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?’

‘Màthair!’ Careless of her tears, Ailsa got to her feet and knelt at her mother’s feet, wrapping her arms around her knees and putting her head on her lap. ‘I have never been so happy in my life to hear that the man I thought my father is not. For it means I can have what my heart desires above all, which is to be with Alasdhair. I can forgive you anything for that.’

Hesitantly, Christina touched her daughter’s soft curls. ‘All I ever wanted to do was to keep you safe. I thought no one else could do that but me. I was wrong and I’m sorry. If marriage to Alasdhair Ross is what you want, then it’s what I want, too.’

Alasdhair lifted Ailsa to her feet and hugged her so close she could not breathe, though for neither was it close enough. ‘Do you swear that what you have told us is the truth?’ he said, looking sternly at Lady Munro. ‘I swear.’

That it should be the one woman in the world who had done the most to keep them apart who now demolished what had seemed an insurmountable barrier to their happiness was an irony, but, like Ailsa at present, he did not much care about anything other than the fact that it meant they could be together. ‘Thank you,’ he said to Lady Munro. ‘I take it, then, that your daughter has your blessing?’

‘With all my heart,’ Lady Munro said.

Morna, too, got to her feet now. ‘Well,’ she said, fixing Lady Munro with a stern stare, ‘I don’t pretend to forgive you, but I do feel sorry for you, Christina Munro, and since it looks like we are to be kin through marriage, I will do my best to overlook the worst of your sins.’

Lady Munro got to her feet ‘It’s late, you’ll be wanting some time alone, and I’m suddenly very tired so, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll return to the inn and rest.’

Ailsa slipped out from under Alasdhair’s arm to give her mother a tentative kiss on the cheek, and was rewarded with a painfully fierce embrace before her mother dashed her hand over her eyes and fled the room.

‘I’d better go after her,’ Morna said, ‘make sure she’s all right. It’s been quite a day for all of us. Quite a day and no mistake.’

Alone at last, Alasdhair put his hand around Ailsa’s shoulders and guided her out of the cottage towards the shores of the loch. It was almost dark, but there was a full moon, glowing hazy through the remnants of the grey mizzle cloud. He turned her towards him, his hands cupping her face, drinking deep of her beloved countenance. For long moments they gazed at each other, violet eyes on bitter chocolate, the horror of the last few hours easing gradually away as the glowing light of their love suffused their bodies.

‘I love you,’ Alasdhair said huskily, his lips so close that they brushed hers. ‘I love you. I love you. I love you. I will never, ever tire of saying it, nor will I ever cease to be grateful that I can.’

‘I love you too, Alasdhair,’ Ailsa whispered, ‘more every moment that passes.’

He pulled her closer. Her soft curves pressed and moulded themselves into his hard form. She smelled of sunshine and sea and Ailsa. Alasdhair closed his eyes and drank her in, relief giving way to desire as the horrors of the day began to fade.

He kissed her then, finally, a kiss that emptied his heart into her, wrapping her tight in the balm of his love, binding them together in a way that left them in no doubt that they were two halves of one. It was a kiss that seemed they had been waiting a lifetime for. A proclamation and a promise.

‘I love you, Alasdhair, I love you so much.’ Ailsa took his hand and rubbed it against her cheek. ‘This is our clean slate, isn’t it? You don’t mind that I’m not who you thought I was?’

He laughed. ‘No. You’re exactly who I thought you were. I’m only worried that you’ll mind the same about me.’

‘You’re you, exactly who I thought you were. Isn’t it funny—you came all the way from Virginia to find answers and you weren’t even asking the right questions.’

‘There’s only one question in my mind, and that’s how soon can we be married?’

‘Soon. As soon as we can call the banns.’ Ailsa sighed with contentment and nestled closer into Alasdhair’s comforting embrace. ‘I can’t believe it’s really happening.’

‘And you promise me you’ve no regrets, Ailsa? You mean it when you say that leaving here, returning with me to Virginia, is what you really want?’

‘You are what I really want. If I can have you, nothing else matters.’ She stood on tiptoe to kiss him. ‘I want a new world, not this old one.’

‘Then the New World you shall have. What of your name?’

Ailsa frowned. ‘I don’t know. Calumn must be told the truth, it would not be fair to hide it from him, but I doubt very much that he’ll want it known. As far as I am concerned, my name will be Ross and that’s all that matters to me.’

Alasdhair kissed her again, lingeringly this time, and sweetly, savouring the fullness of her lips, his hands caressing the sweet contours of her body. ‘Then if my mother is happy to keep her secret, and yours is too, there is no need to proclaim the truth to the world—are we agreed?’

‘Yes,’ Ailsa said, pulling his head back towards her. ‘And now can we stop talking about mothers, please?’

He pulled her closer. ‘Let’s stop talking all together,’ he whispered. Then he kissed her. And he kissed her again. And he did not stop kissing her until she lay glowing and sated beneath him.

Chapter Eleven

They were to be married under their baptised names. After much heart-searching, both Morna and Christina had agreed that the truth should be kept under wraps, provided Calumn was also in agreement.

Alasdhair had insisted on telling him himself, rightly judging that Calumn would prefer to hear the unvarnished facts rather than to have to listen to the competing emotional reactions of two women.

Calumn listened with a growing look of astonishment on his face, but when the tale was finally told, he shook his head in resignation. ‘My father took the precaution of unburdening himself of much of his wrongdoing before he died,’ he said with a grimace. ‘His religion does not require confession, but he chose to burden me, his eldest son, with the worst of his sins, just in case the question of reparation came up. Canny to the end, the old goat. You’ve no idea,’ he said with a wry grin, ‘the cess pit of a black soul he was carrying around inside him, but I did not think even he capable of this. I expect he thought forcing himself on your mother and fathering you were duties rather than sins. I’m sorry, Alasdhair.’

‘It’s not your fault.’

‘No, but it is my dishonour to inherit.’

‘Not as far as I am concerned. You do realise this means you and I are brothers?’

Calumn’s brow cleared. ‘By all that’s sacred, so it does!’ He clasped Alasdhair’s hand. ‘I know I’m twenty-odd years too late, but welcome to the family, brother.’

Alasdhair laughed. ‘Better late than never.’

Ailsa awoke on the morning of her wedding to find that fate had provided them with a beautiful day. She would still have thought it beautiful even if the skies had opened and the rain pelted off the ground, for the sun seemed to shine straight out from her heart these days. Though under strict orders to keep to her room this morning, she was far too excited to stay in bed, so she wrapped a blanket around herself and perched on the window seat.

Outside, she could see the fishing fleet strung out on the seas beyond the Necklace like one giant fishing net. The shoals of herring had come to Errin Mhor’s waters. The silver darlings ran here for only a few weeks of the year, but when they came they were plentiful. Within the hour almost every woman from the surrounding villages would be down at Errin Mhor harbour, her fingers bound with strips of cotton, ready to gut and salt the catch as soon as it was landed. The precious harvest would then be packed in careful layers in wooden barrels, providing vital sustenance throughout next year’s long winter.

Out on the moors, the back-breaking task of peat cutting had already begun. In the big enclosed kitchen garden on the far side of the castle, they were getting ready to plant out the summer vegetables. Madeleine had been experimenting with some strange specimens she’d had sent over from her father’s farm in France, with no encouragement at all from Lady Munro, of course. The new orangery that Calumn had had built for her was filled with boxes of unfamiliar seedlings. Lambing was over and calving had begun, and soon enough the rush of early summer bairns would also be born. Another harvest, this time the product of the long autumn’s nights. It was a pattern so familiar that Ailsa thought of it as a huge round tapestry, like a wheel. The seasons, and Errin Mhor life with it, revolving slowly and inexorably.

‘And very, very soon, I’m going to a new world with a whole new round of seasons I know nothing of,’ she said to herself as she stared, unseeing now, out of the window. ‘Far across the ocean, a whole new beginning. With my husband, Alasdhair.’ A now familiar heat spread out from her belly at the thought of him. ‘My husband,’ she whispered again experimentally.

Her face softened into tenderness. Though the last six weeks had passed in a blur of activity, from preparing her trousseau and her bottom drawer, the all-important collection of things a bride must bring with her to the marriage, to organising the wedding feast and taking her leave of all her special places, the man in question had been forced to spend much of his time in Glasgow on business, though he had been to the kirk, as required, on the three Sundays when their banns had been called. ‘It makes it easier to keep my hands off you before the wedding,’ Alasdhair had whispered the last time he’d set off for the south, but Ailsa found it a poor consolation. She ached for his touch. Much as she longed for the ceremony and looked forward to the celebrations, she could think of little else but this, their first lovemaking as man and wife.

A knock on the door heralded the arrival of Ailsa’s breakfast. Madeleine and Lady Munro, now formed into a most unlikely alliance, were conspiring to keep her appearance secret until the moment she left for church. Guests had been arriving from near and far for days now. Morna Ross had graciously accepted the invitation to attend her son’s nuptials, but had declined the offer of a room at the castle, preferring instead to stay with the Sinclairs where she and her old friend Mhairi spent many happy hours reminiscing about the old days and catching up on the latest gossip. The castle was overflowing with visitors, including friends and acquaintances of Lady Munro from her childhood, of whom neither Calumn nor Ailsa had even been aware. Her daughter’s wedding, a long-overdue visit to a frankly astonished Rory and his family on Heronsay, and the imminent arrival of her second son’s first-born had given Christina Munro a new lease of life. It would be something of an exaggeration to say that she had become light-hearted, but a smile had been sighted on at least five occasions, and once she had laughed, quite startling all those present. She was softening, mellowing, Ailsa thought in astonishment, as she realised that her mother was not about to fidget with her hair, but was actually kissing her cheek. She was blurring at the edges, like an icicle caught in the first rays of the spring sunshine.

As the morning progressed, Ailsa bathed and washed her hair and tried to relax. But the clatter of a constant stream of people going up and down the stairs, doors banging, the scraping of heavy furniture being moved about, and over it all the continual muffled noise of people talking and laughing, made her desperate for the ceremony to begin. The clock seemed to tick more and more slowly, seconds becoming minutes, minutes stretching into hours. As she finally began to dress, she felt as if she’d been waiting a lifetime in her room for this moment. Her wedding to the man she loved.

Madeleine and her mother helped her with the final preparations. Her dress was silver and blue, the colours of constancy, a striped open robe worn over a sky-blue silk petticoat. Her stockings were tied with silver ribbons, her hair dressed with silver pins, and a silver coin placed in her left shoe, after she carefully put her right shoe on first. Though she was not usually superstitious or one for following tradition so slavishly, she wanted nothing to go wrong, nothing to be left to chance, even allowing her mother to drape the mirror in her room, lest she catch sight of her own reflection. Pearls were for tears, and so were considered unlucky, but as she was preparing to leave, her mother produced the most delicate gold locket and fastened it around her neck.

‘It belonged to my own mother,’ she explained. ‘I wore it myself on my first wedding day, to Rory’s father, but not on my second.’ She gave Ailsa another unprecedented peck on the cheek and went so far as to hug her. ‘My first marriage was a happy one. I know yours is going to be, too.’

‘Thank you, Mother.’ Ailsa fingered the gift, touched beyond words.

‘And this is from Calumn and me,’ Madeleine said, fastening a bracelet around her wrist. ‘The sapphires are for the sea, and the little diamonds are for the sand, so you never forget Errin Mhor and your family here.’

‘I’m going to miss you, all of you.’

‘You’ll be far too busy with your exciting new life to be worrying about us. Anyway, I’ve got plenty to occupy me here. There’s Rory and his family to get to know and Maddie here is about to provide me with a new grandchild.’ She smiled benignly at her daughter-in-law. ‘Now, no crying on your wedding day,’ Lady Munro said, hurriedly dabbing at Ailsa’s eyes. ‘Stand there now, let us look at you. Aye, you’ll do well,’ she said, nodding crisply, but Ailsa could not help noticing her mother dabbing surreptitiously at her own eyes too.

The two women left her to descend the staircase on her own. She paused at the top, looking down into the great hall that had been transformed by swathes of bunting and spring flowers. Calumn awaited her at the foot of the stairs, in full ceremonial Highland dress, ready for the short walk to the kirk where everyone else awaited them. She took his arm, grateful for his solid presence, for her legs were beginning to feel decidedly shaky, her heart was a-flutter and she could think of nothing except that in a few short moments she would be there. Alasdhair would be there, too, and they would be joined for ever as man and wife. A new entity made of two separate people.

Later, she would have no recollection of the walk, a journey she had made thousands of times. The doors of the kirk were open wide. Those who arrived too late for a seat inside clustered round the gate, lining the path, crowded around the entrance-way, smiling and shouting good luck wishes, but their faces were a blur.

‘Are you sure you want to go through with this?’ Calumn said to her gently. She smiled with such certainty that he laughed and kissed her cheek. ‘I’m duty-bound to ask, but I recognise that look. You’re sure,’ he said and gave her his arm.

‘How do I look?’ Ailsa asked nervously.

‘You look radiant, Sister, and I am the proudest man in Scotland to be giving you away. Alasdhair is the luckiest man alive.’ He squeezed her hand reassuringly. ‘Come, now, let’s get you wed.’ With that, they walked slowly into the church.

Ailsa had eyes only for one person. It was always the same, as far as she was concerned, if Alasdhair was there, he was the only one present. And he was there, waiting for her exactly as he had promised he would be. He wore a touchingly anxious expression. She took a deep breath and walked with graceful confidence towards him, her eyes locked on his, her mouth hovering on the cusp of a smile—for it would not do to smile too openly on such a solemn occasion.

Like Calumn, Alasdhair wore full formal Highland dress. His plaid had been woven especially by Mhairi Sinclair. The buckle at his waist bore the Ross arms, made for him by Hamish. His coat was of dark blue cloth, short and fitting tightly across the breadth of his chest, the width of his shoulders. His filleadh mòr was fastened with an ornate pin made of silver topped with a large sapphire, a tiny version of which was nestled in his necktie. His hair was neatly tied back.

His face, his beloved face, softened into the most tender of expressions as she made this, her final journey as Ailsa Munro. Alasdhair took her hand when she arrived at his side, pressing a tiny kiss to her palm, pulling her as close into the solid shelter of his side as decency would allow.

They said their vows not to the minister, but to each other. In truth, he almost felt superfluous to the occasion, and in truth he was rather shocked at the kiss that followed the conclusion of the ceremony. A simple peck on the check was the custom. A touching of the lips was just about permissible. But what he witnessed—well, he could only be relieved that the cheering and stamping of the congregation finally reminded the two of them of where they were.

Later, it would be said that no one had ever said their vows so earnestly, though there were some who felt that Ailsa should have shown more maidenly hesitation. Later, it would be said that never had such a bonny couple graced the kirk at Errin Mhor—a statement much disputed by those who had attended the wedding of Calumn and Madeleine. Later, it was rumoured that Lady Munro shed a tear, though that was never proved conclusively. But none disagreed on the touching charm of the occasion, and all agreed vehemently there was no doubting the radiant love that seemed to emanate from the happy couple.

The formal ceremony over, everyone save the happy couple were very much focused on beginning the festivities back at Errin Mhor castle as soon as decorum would allow. Calumn threw the shoe, symbolising the passing of responsibility from himself to the groom. Everyone cheered and clapped, and Ailsa and Alasdhair led a long and extremely noisy procession back to the castle where they presided at the top table over endless toasts to their health, wealth and happiness, holding hands under the table and feeling guilty for wishing to be left alone.

‘I recognise that look,’ Jessica McLeod, Rory’s wife, whispered to Madeleine, nodding in Ailsa’s direction.

Madeleine giggled. ‘Me, too. Guilt at wanting to escape from your own wedding party. I remember. How long do you think it will be before they sneak away?’

‘As you did,’ Jessica teased.

Madeleine blushed. ‘I thought no one noticed.’

‘Don’t worry about it, Rory and I did the same thing ourselves.’ She nodded at Lady Munro, keeping an eagle eye on her daughter. ‘If we could just distract our dear mother-in-law, we’d be doing Ailsa a very big favour.’

‘Teenie!’ A rasping voice was heard above the mêlée.

‘Mon Dieu! That is Angus McAngus,’ Madeleine exclaimed, spotting the distinctive tangle of faded red hair across the room. ‘I have not seen him since before I was married. I remember now, he told me he used to have a tendre for Lady Munro before she married Calumn’s father.’

The two women inched forwards, eager to see what their stiff-necked mother-in-law would make of the man being presented to her. Angus McAngus was a typical Gael, short and lean, the top of his head falling some inches short of Lady Munro’s height. His hair was a rusty colour, streaked with grey, but it was obvious to Madeleine that he had made an effort on Lady Munro’s behalf, for though it still resembled a bird’s nest, it was a combed one, and his straggly beard had been trimmed. With a claymore by the look of it, but trimmed none the less.

‘Christina,’ he was saying with a roguish smile, ‘you’ve no’ changed a bit. Still as bonny a lass as I’ve seen in many a year, you’re a sight for sore eyes.’

Lady Munro bowed stiffly. ‘Laird.’

‘Away now, it was always Gussie to you, as you were aye Teenie to me.’

Madeleine and Jessica exchanged looks, their eyes dancing.

‘I have not been referred to as Teenie for many years,’ Lady Munro said in her best cut-glass voice.

Anyone else would have dropped her hand and made his excuses, but McAngus, it would seem, was made of sterner stuff. ‘That’s because you’ve no’ met anyone else to replace my special place in your heart,’ he chortled. ‘Aye, Teenie, ‘tis a long road we’ve travelled apart, but destiny has brought you to me, widowed and free at last. I’ll no’ mince my words. I’m a lonely man with a cold bed for you to warm. What do you say?’

‘If that is a proposal, Angus McAngus,’ Lady Munro said, her voice now as chill as the January gales, ‘the answer is categorically no.’

‘Come now, Teenie, ye’ve no’ thought it through.

That laddie of yours is going to be filling the place wi’ weans soon enough, and before you know it, ye’ll be turned into an old crone of a grandmother wi’ no life of your own. I ken for a fact that man o’ yours was a cold bugger—God rest his soul. What you need is a bit of a life of your own.’

‘Nonsense. I am far too old to be thinking of marriage. As you are, Angus.’

McAngus chortled. ‘You’re in the prime of life, Teenie, and as for me—well, you know the old saying.’ The old laird patted his sporran with a leer. ‘The older the stag, the harder the horn.’

Jessica managed to stifle the shocked laugh that rose in her throat, but Madeleine did not, though she made a paltry attempt to turn her giggles into a fit of coughing. Her husband muffled her mouth with his hand, and the familiar warmth of his palm on her lips had the effect of distracting her completely from the tableau playing out before them. In fact, she would have happily taken advantage of Lady Munro’s preoccupation to drag her husband up to their rooms, for she never could resist him in his plaid, and they had not been alone for what seemed like days, what with the wedding preparations and …

But Calumn resisted her tugging at his sleeve. ‘Later. We can’t all disappear, and much as I would love to, my sweet, I think it’s only fair that we let Alasdhair and Ailsa have first call. It is their wedding day, after all.’

Even as he spoke, Madeleine noticed that the couple were making good their escape, heading through a side door unnoticed by their celebrating guests. ‘Remember our own wedding night,’ she whispered, standing on tiptoe to reach her husband’s ear.

His arm curled around her, and he rested his hand on the swell of her belly. ‘I love you, Madeleine Munro.’

‘I love you too, my lord,’ Madeleine replied with an answering gleam.

‘Maybe we could just …’

But at that moment, the resounding slap of Lady Munro’s open palm making contact with Angus McAngus’s cheek made them look round. There was a shocked silence, then McAngus laughed. ‘I’ve a mind to take your mother off your hands,’ he shouted over at Calumn with a lascivious wink, ‘auld leather makes a fine saddle.’

They had opted to spend their wedding night in the relative privacy of a cottage out by the stables that Calumn was having refurbished for Madeleine’s new French head gardener, not yet arrived from her native Brittany. It was a simple affair, two rooms separated by a wooden partition, but Calumn had had a fireplace installed, and the two small windows glazed. The fire was lit when they arrived, and an oil lamp was burning in one of the windows. Madeleine’s work, Ailsa guessed. She had caught her sister-in-law’s conspiratorial wink as she and Alasdhair left the great hall.

Ailsa was nervous. Turning to her husband for reassurance she was suddenly lifted off her feet, and carried, laughing, over the threshold. Alasdhair kicked the door shut and headed straight for the bedroom. The lamp and the firelight cast a warm glow. Flowers were everywhere. Madeleine must have scoured the entire reaches of Errin Mhor to find such quantities. Even the covers of the bed where Alasdhair set her down were strewn with petals. She had no doubt that underneath would be a twig of willow, traditionally used to bestow fertility. She had already been presented with the pot of salt and the moppet doll by the women of the village, Shona MacBrayne at their head, that signified the same thing.

She watched from the bed as Alasdhair unfastened the pin that held his filleadh mòr in place and divested himself of his boots and hose. Such domestic actions, but so incredibly intimate. He was her husband. She was his wife. She couldn’t quite believe it. He looked over at her and smiled, the smile that made his eyes turn smoky and made her insides turn to jelly.

‘I love you, Ailsa Ross,’ he said, joining her on the bed.

‘And I love you,’ Ailsa whispered, ‘with all my heart.’

‘The last few weeks have felt like years,’ Alasdhair said, slowly and deliberately extracting the many pins that by a miracle had held her hair in place throughout the day. ‘You have no idea how much I’ve longed for this moment.’

‘Oh, but I do,’ she said, with a shy smile. ‘I do.’

He ran his fingers through her hair to spread it out over her back. He cupped her face in his palm. She tilted her head up, then he kissed her. Warmth spread through her blood like a flood of sunshine. With a sigh, she kissed him back and melted into his arms. Such strong arms. Such familiar arms. Arms that would keep her safe and hold her close for the rest of their lives. ‘Make love to me, Alasdhair,’ she said, wrapping her own arms around his neck and pulling him back on to the bed with her.

‘I intend to,’ he said.

And he proceeded to do just that, slowly divesting her of her wedding finery, lavishing kisses on every bit of flesh he exposed in the tantalising process, until she was alight with his touch. Her stockings were the last thing to go. She lay completely naked, excited, exalted by the way his eyes feasted on her, damp with anticipation at the thought of his possession of her.

‘You’re so lovely,’ Alasdhair said, ‘I can’t believe you’re really mine.’

He was lying on his side, running his hand over her breasts, down her stomach, to the top her thighs, dipping into the heat there, then running his fingers back up again, tantalising and teasing, stroking and stoking her into a tingling mass of clamouring nerves and throbbing heat. She could not believe she had ever hated her body. She could not believe she had ever wished her curves away, not when he looked at her so. Not when he touched her so. They were made for him to enjoy. For him to pleasure. For her pleasure. Ailsa moaned as he dipped his hand once more between her thighs. She grabbed his wrist. ‘Take off your clothes. I want to see you,’ she said.

He grinned and obliged far more quickly than her own fumbling fingers could have managed. When he stood before her, completely naked, she sat up, catching her breath at his stark male beauty. Her head was on a level with his stomach. She wanted to touch him as he had touched her. She wanted to learn his body as he was learning hers. She wanted to share. She stood up and reached for him, daringly fluttering her fingers over his buttocks to his flanks, round to the softer skin between his thighs, then up, to the proud length of his manhood.

Alasdhair moaned.

‘Show me,’ she whispered.

‘You’re torturing me, wife,’ he said with a twisted grin, but he could not resist when she already had her fingers loosely, tantalisingly tentative, on him, and all he could think about was doing what she bid him.

Taking her by surprise, he lifted her by the waist, pulling her with him back on to the bed, so that she lay on top of him, her breasts soft mounds of delight on his chest, her nipples grazing his skin, streaking sensual pleasure. He moaned again, half-sitting up, in order to kiss her mouth, to twine his fingers into the fall of her beautiful hair, before pulling her to him and kissing her deeply, lingeringly, rousing them both to an intoxicating heat that was nigh on unbearable. They had the rest of their lives for slow pleasure; he wanted to be inside her now. Alasdhair tried to roll her over on to her back again, but Ailsa had other ideas.

She slipped from his grasp, slithering down his body, skin on skin, to kneel between his legs and drink in the shape of him. The length of him. The curve and weight of him. Awed, she touched, running her fingers over him intimately, lightly stroking, then enclosing, then cupping, and with every touch more blood surged to engorge him further, so that he wondered if he could endure without exploding. She leaned over and her nipple grazed the tip of his shaft. She gasped with the pleasure it gave her and repeated the action so that she did it again.

She wrapped her fingers around his shaft and stroked him. Alasdhair moaned, thrusting his hips upwards. She remembered that feeling when he touched her, too, and did it again, enjoying the answering surge in herself at seeing the pleasure she could etch on him, feeling him throb and pulse in her hand. She stroked again, then leaned forwards to touch her tongue to the tip of him. He tasted exactly as she felt inside. Hot and delightful. She could feel herself tightening between her legs. She wanted him there. But she wanted to touch him more. She wanted both.

Watching the pleasure and concentration on her face, seeing how her touch touched her, despite the wholly untutored nature of her caress, Alasdhair had never felt anything so deeply arousing. But he needed to be inside her urgently, now. He pulled her forwards so that his shaft nestled against her curls.

Ailsa writhed with pleasure. Below her, Alasdhair’s face was flushed. His hands held her thighs. His chest rose and fell rapidly. Her own, too. She leaned forwards to kiss him and he gripped her bottom and tilted her and the tip of him nudged and slipped inside her and she kissed him as he filled her, and almost immediately he did, the pulsing, tightening coiling inside her started.

He kissed her swiftly, hard. Then he pushed her back upright, so that his erection surged up inside her, and when she moved, the twisting tantalised and teased the burgeoning bud between her folds. With his encouragement she lifted herself, then dropped back on to him, closing her eyes briefly at the whoosh of his release and plunge. Again, bracing herself, tilting forwards, and as she did, crying out with the pleasure of it. Alasdhair reached to stroke the swollen, swelling pulsing roundness and just one touch and she was lost, lost, swirling and moaning his name, but still he gripped her, and even as she pulsed around his shaft she felt it swell and surge and explode high, impossibly high inside her, and heard his answering moan, heard him say her name, and she collapsed on to the damp of his chest, just holding on to him, clinging on to him, and knowing, really knowing, what it meant to be one.

It was rude, it was ungrateful, but they were reluctant to return to the wedding feast. Wrapped in one another’s arms, they wanted only to stay there for ever. It was Alasdhair who finally moved first, kissing the top of Ailsa’s head and gently forcing her into an upright position.

‘We have the rest of our lives,’ he told her when she protested. ‘We really should get back.’

They dressed slowly, with much kissing and touching and whispering of tender endearments. While she struggled with the laces of her robe, Alasdhair leaned over to pin a brooch just above her breast. A luckenbooth made of gold, two hearts entwined, with a thistle and a crown. ‘A present to mark our wedding day,’ he said, kissing the irresistible curve of her neck. ‘I love you, Mrs Ross. I told you that we were naïve six years ago, that love changes nothing, in the real world. Well, I was wrong because love changes everything. It’s certainly changed me.’

‘And me,’ Ailsa concurred. She smiled. ‘Mrs Ross. I like that, it just sounds so right.’

‘I like it, too.’ Alasdhair wrapped his arms around her and kissed her deeply. ‘Ailsa Ross, you have made me the happiest man in the world.’

‘Then we are a well-matched pair,’ Ailsa said, rubbing her cheek against his chest and drinking in the delightful essence of him, which seemed to linger at that precise spot, ‘for I am most definitely the happiest woman in the world.’

‘I think, then, that we’d best return to our wedding and spread that happiness among our guests.’

So that is what they did. Eventually.

One day and for always. A solemn vow. And today was that day.

All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

All Rights Reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II BV/S.à.r.l. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

® and TM are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

First published in Great Britain 2011

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited,

Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

© Marguerite Kaye 2011

ISBN: 978-1-408-92369-6

Table of Contents

Excerpt

Author Note

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Copyright