The Highlander's Return

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

‘Alasdhair! It really is you.’

‘Calumn!’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not yet.

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

‘Alasdhair?’

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

Ailsa.

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

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

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

Chapter Two

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

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

‘Not as much as you.’

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

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

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

‘What do you mean?’

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

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

‘And I meant it. Unlike you.’

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

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

‘I am not anything like my mother.’

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

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

‘You!’

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

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

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

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

‘Please don’t touch me.’

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

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

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

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

‘We could walk to …’

He instinctively knew what she was going to say.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I swear.’

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

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

Summer 1742

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘She loves me.’

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

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

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

‘I don’t believe you.’

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

‘McNair!’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Lady Munro!’

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

‘What are you talking about?’

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

‘You lie! Ailsa said—’

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

‘That’s not true.’

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

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

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

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

‘And what did he say?’

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

‘The laird has exiled you?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘What?’

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

‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

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

‘Yes, but—’

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

Spring 1748

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

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

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

‘Here, let me.’

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

She remembered them on the tiller that day. She remembered the way she’d pressed one of them to her cheek. He’d smelled of salt and sweat. Now he smelled of soap and expensive cloth and clean linen. And Alasdhair. Something she couldn’t describe, but it was him.

‘There.’

He looked down at her and there it was again, for a split second. Recognition. A calling of like to like. And a yearning. She couldn’t breathe. He licked his lips, as if he was about to speak. He moved towards her just a fraction. Then he pulled away, shifted so that there was a defined space between them.

‘Your finger’s bleeding.’

‘It’s nothing.’ Without thinking, she put it in her mouth, sucking on the tiny cut.

Alasdhair stared, fascinated. He forced himself to look away. ‘Why are you crying then, if not out of pity?’ he asked roughly.

‘You’ll understand when you hear my side of the story. Oh, Alasdhair, you will understand only too well, as I do now.’ Ailsa blinked back another tear and took a deep breath. ‘You remember my mother saw us from the drawing-room window that day on our way back from the island? When I went in she was furious. Said she’d been watching how we behaved together and she was becoming very concerned.’