The Highlander's Return. Marguerite Kaye

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