Chapter Twenty

Death didn’t hurt.

It wouldn’t hurt because, well, a person would be dead.

However, Aisla hurt everywhere—her brain, her body, her heart. Or perhaps she was in hell and was meant to suffer an eternity of torment. She breathed in a ragged breath and shuddered. Why on earth did hell smell like fresh-baked bread?

Confused, she fought her way to the surface of the gloom, her eyes pricking open. Light penetrated slowly, but it was light all the same. The edges of her vision were dark, but a single lamp flickered. Her aching body felt swaddled in softness. She was on a bed, she realized. In a house.

She wasn’t fighting for her life in a mine shaft underground.

Was she dreaming?

Aisla lifted a hand and groaned as her fingers appeared, blurry at first. Elation broke through her and then the purest, sweetest joy. She was alive! How was this even possible? She was alive, and she had to tell Niall how she felt. She also had to tell Julien that she didn’t want to leave, not ever. Her home and her heart were here. In Scotland. With the man she loved. Everything was so startlingly clear now, even if she couldn’t see more than the gloom of a darkened room. It was nighttime, she realized. How long had she been unconscious?

Aisla parted dry, chapped lips, uncaring of the sting and the burn that accompanied the action. “Hullo,” she croaked aloud. “I need…to tell…”

A looming shadow filled her fogged vision, blocking the light of the lamp for a second as a cup of water was gently pressed to her mouth. She took a grateful sip before all her strength was sapped from her and she sank into the softness of the bed beneath her. Gentle fingers brushed her cheek and stroked her damp hair off her brow. Her eyes fluttered closed. But no, she meant to stay awake. She had something important to say.

“Julien, please…” She trailed off, her words fumbling and deserting her, even though she knew exactly how she felt. “Oh, Jules, I love…I love…”

“I’ll get him for ye,” a man’s soft voice said, the familiar sound of it making her heart leap for a moment, but it was lost in the sweet embrace of oblivion that claimed her once more.

She dreamed of the Highlands in the throes of summer. Of the vibrant green knolls of undulating fields and hills, purple heather springing from the craggy rocks littering the land. Clear skies and sweet meadow grass that went on and on, without end. And Niall. She was with her husband and she could hear his laughter, feel his warm breath as he kissed her temple and held her close.

When Aisla’s eyes cracked open once more, the summer scene was gone, replaced instead by a soft, sunlit bedchamber. And Niall wasn’t there. Firm fingers were prodding her ribs and moving her stiff limbs into place. She should have felt shock, but she was too relieved not to feel more pain upon waking, as she had every time she’d found consciousness.

A man blurred into her immediate vision, including a pair of twinkling brown eyes set in a weathered face. “Welcome back, Lady Maclaren,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“Not dead.” Aisla gave her attention to the man in front of her. “Where am I?”

“Safe at Maclaren.”

A gasp made her eyes connect with Pauline’s who stood near the door, her own face fraught with emotion. She managed a weak smile, her own eyes welling at the sight of the unabashed tears pouring down her maid’s cheeks.

“Come now, Pauline,” she said, her voice a husky rasp, her jaw a bit sore. “It’s not as bad as all that, is it?”

“Oh, my lady,” she cried, “you had me worried to death.”

“So it is as bad as all that,” Aisla replied, striving for a dash of levity to lift her maid’s distress, to which Pauline answered by weeping openly, dabbing at her cheeks with a handkerchief. Aisla dimly noticed the other people entering the room, hovering at the edges near the door. She recognized Julien, and behind him an unhurt Makenna. Aisla heaved a sigh of relief that she was home, and didn’t appear to have been ill treated. Lady Dunrannoch and Ronan, Niall’s eldest brother, were also there.

The duchess stepped forward, her own eyes suspiciously wet. She indicated the man standing at Aisla’s side. “This is Doctor Stewart. He’s been tending you since…since…” Her voice broke as she covered her mouth to hide a sob.

Ronan put a hand around his mother’s shoulders. “Since ye fell.”

Aisla blinked, the events coming back to her in a rush. Dougal Buchanan had been behind it all. He had chased her into the tower house, and he had shot Fenella. Oh, God.

“Where is Fenella?” she whispered. “Is she here?”

Julien clasped her hand and squeezed. “No, chérie. She died, but not before she told the laird where you were. It was how he was able to find you. And also to learn of Dougal Buchanan’s part in it.”

A tear slipped down her cheek. Fenella had not been a friend, but she had not deserved to die. Aisla swallowed, her throat clogged. She needed Niall. Where was he?

“Ronan,” she said urgently. “That coward put explosives near the mines where I fell. He was behind all of it. All the accidents. You have to tell Niall at once.” Black spots filled her vision for a moment.

“We know, Aisla,” Ronan said in a low voice. “The mines are clear, and Dougal Buchanan has been dealt with.”

Dealt with. That sounded ominous, though not nearly enough. It was less than the man deserved after shooting a woman he’d been intimate with. If Aisla had had a pistol in her possession instead of a meager dagger, the outcome would have been much different. Instead, she’d fallen into a mine shaft, where she’d remained for an indeterminate number of hours. Miraculously, however, she’d been found, though try as she did, she couldn’t recall anything specific about the rescue. Niall had been the one to rescue her, she was sure of it. Or had she imagined him, too?

“How long have I been here?”

“Four days,” Makenna said, moving to stand beside Julien. “We thought ye may never wake.”

Aisla drew a shallow breath, astounded that she’d been unconscious for so long. No wonder Pauline had been sobbing. Aisla made a brave face to the doctor, who had stepped aside when she’d been speaking to the duchess and Ronan. “Exactly how bad is it then?”

“Not as terrible as you would expect,” he said, in softly accented English though it was clear he was a Scot. “I’ve given you some laudanum for the worst of the pain.”

“Ah,” she said with a soft puff of laughter that made her torso ache slightly, though not unbearably. “No wonder I feel so remarkably pleasant.”

“In addition to a worrisome head injury, you’ve sustained several bruised ribs, and a sprained ankle.” He smiled wryly at her. “Though I know it does not sound quite so minimal, you could have broken your neck with such a fall. You were lucky, my lady.”

“Lucky,” she murmured, immediately thinking of Dougal’s pistol. If he hadn’t been such a poor shot at longer range, she would not have been so lucky. Poor Fenella. How she had managed to crawl from the mines to get help was both miracle and mystery combined.

Doctor Stewart packed up his things into a small portmanteau. “We will have to keep an eye on the head wound, but if all goes well in the next few days, I expect you to make a full recovery. You’ll need to stay off that ankle and let it heal properly, but I foresee no complications.” He gave a short bow. “And refrain from any strenuous activity that will put unneeded pressure on your ribs. I’ll be back tomorrow to check on you.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

After the doctor took his leave, Aisla’s spate of energy flagged, and she felt immediately fatigued. It did not escape her attention that her husband was not in the room. She did not want to seem ungrateful to those who were there, however, so she pasted a smile on her face.

“What happened to you?” she said to Makenna, trying to remember beyond the past few days. “Did the Campbell’s men take you?”

Makenna bit at her lip, her gaze sliding away. “Nae, Dougal Buchanan took me. The Campbells had naught to do with it, and did no’ know of the man’s plans.”

Aisla gasped. “Good Lord, if I ever see that lout again, I will murder him myself.”

“No need,” Makenna said with a wry twist of her lips. “Dougal challenged Niall’s honor, and Niall offered him a chance to prove himself by sword. He lost, and then tried to kill Niall after he’d fairly won. Dougal’s dead.”

Aisla couldn’t even summon up a puff of remorse for the man after everything he’d done and how many people he’d hurt, manipulated, and killed. “Good. I’m glad.”

Where was Niall?

It had been four days, she reminded herself. Perhaps he had been here, and had needed to return to see to business at Tarbendale. He was a laird, after all, and couldn’t be expected to drop everything to mind a bedridden invalid.

Certainly, he would care if she lived or died, but he wouldn’t have put his life on hold for a woman he probably loathed. Her throat clogged up unexpectedly with a burst of emotion. She needed to see him, and speak to him. The desire she’d felt when she’d first woke to tell him exactly how she felt, whether he wished to listen to her or not, came back to her in a rush. Aisla blinked back the useless tears that were suddenly stinging the backs of her eyes.

“Do ye remember what happened?” The question came from Ronan, his normally booming voice quiet.

She cleared her throat, swallowing the tears. “Not fully, no.”

“If it’s too much, ye needn’t try to remember.”

“No, it’s fine,” she said, knowing those in the room would all be wondering what had caused her to go missing. “The laird and I had parted ways just that morning, and it was not…exactly on good terms.” She paused, her face growing hot as she realized they all likely knew that part of the story by now. “Fenella, being Fenella, thought it best to see me out, and she said some odd things about Dougal. That he’d been fishing for information about Makenna, myself, and the mines. When I confronted her about whether she’d mentioned Makenna’s early morning rides, she admitted that she had. It was too coincidental. I had to tell Niall, and she insisted on telling him herself about her part in it. Once we’d ridden out to the mines, I noticed there was no one there.”

“’Twas a Sunday,” Makenna murmured.

“Yes, I realized that soon afterward,” Aisla said. “We did not find Niall, but we found Dougal with a barrel of powder and a fuse rope. He shot Fenella and then came after me. I hurled my dagger at him, and then fell through some rotted boards in the tower house. That’s the last thing I remember until I woke up.”

“’Twas a miracle ye did no’ break yer neck, lass,” Ronan said, his tone full of compassion. “And ye got him in the shoulder with yer dagger.”

“I aimed for his black heart.”

Aisla’s eyelids felt heavy, her bones lethargic. It was probably the effect of the laudanum and the effort of speaking. Her throat felt somewhat raw. Soft hands held hers, and she opened her eyes to see Lady Dunrannoch sitting beside her on the bed.

“My God, Aisla, we were so worried about you.”

“I’m sorry.”

Her mother-in-law smiled through her tears. “Don’t be sorry, dear. I was just glad when Niall found you. I’ve never seen my son look so crazed. You were black and blue, and he would not let you go, not to another until you were safe here in bed. Oh, my dear, had I known what sort of danger it would put you in, I never would have insisted you stay on instead of returning to France.”

Aisla frowned. “You insist? I thought it was your solicitor…”

Lady Dunrannoch squeezed her hands and another tear fell. “I may have meddled a bit, thinking more time together was all the two of you needed to reconcile. Oh, but it doesn’t matter now, does it?”

She broke off after a quelling noise from Ronan, her eyes wide with horror as if she’d said something she shouldn’t. Aisla’s eyes slid to Julien and Makenna who both wore a strange expression that bore a marked familiarity to the one on Ronan’s face. Something like dread scattered in her heart.

“Where is Niall now?” she asked finally.

The duchess looked horrified, her lips opening and closing, but no sound came from her mouth.

Julien stepped forward. “Perhaps, you should rest, chérie. You’re looking rather peaked. We can talk later, I promise.”

His evasive answer had all her senses reeling with worry. Where in God’s name was Niall? Was he hurt? Had he been injured at Dougal Buchanan’s hand? She pushed up onto her elbows, grimacing at the protest of her bruised and battered body.

Pauline rushed to her side, propping a pillow behind her. “Easy, my lady. The doctor said you should not exert yourself needlessly.”

But Aisla would not be deterred. Her eyes met the embarrassed faces of her friend, and her in-laws. “Where is my husband?”

Julien walked to the foot of the bed, his expression pinched.

“Aisla, please, trust me when I say that this is perhaps not the best time for us to be discussing such things,” he began, but she lifted a shaking palm to stop him.

“Don’t patronize me,” she said, aware of the pathetic, pleading note in her voice. “Where is he?”

Ronan cleared his throat. “She deserves to be told.”

Aisla felt utterly bewildered. Deserved to be told what exactly?

“He’s no’ here, Aisla,” Ronan said, holding her in a steady and steely glare.

She was almost afraid to ask the question hovering on her lips. “Then where is he?”

“He received word from Edinburgh,” he answered after an interminable moment, the expression on his face inscrutable. “He’s gone to finalize yer divorce.”