The Highlander's Return Read online

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

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

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

  But Alasdhair Ross was banished!

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘Tell me my old eyes are deceiving me.’

  Ailsa looked up, startled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  And then there was Ailsa.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘Alasdhair! It really is you.’

  ‘Calumn!’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Not yet.

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

  ‘Alasdhair?’

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

  Ailsa.

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

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

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

  Chapter Two

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

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

  ‘Not as much as you.’

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

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

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

  ‘What do you mean?’

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

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

  ‘And I meant it. Unlike you.’

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

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

  ‘I am not anything like my mother.’

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

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

  ‘You!’

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

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

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

  ‘Ailsa.’ She was white as a sheet. Stricken. Her eyes glazed with shock. Surely she could not be acting? Alasdhair knelt down before her, tried to take h
er 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.