After three weeks of marriage, she commended anyone who valued her wonderful husband as he deserved.
This approval didn’t stop her from wanting to slap Hamish for his easy assurance that right must prevail. Neither of the cousins knew what Allan was capable of. They underestimated their foe’s animal cunning and his obsession with winning.
She’d tried to make Diarmid and Hamish understand that for Allan, the game had changed from merely keeping Christina and retrieving Fiona. It would now be a compulsion to best Diarmid Mactavish.
More than best him. Destroy him utterly.
Since they’d settled on final arrangements, she’d been sick with dread for the man she’d married. Barely able to sleep, picking at her food, finding surcease only in the passion that blazed like an inferno between her and Diarmid.
“Courage, Fiona,” Diarmid murmured, putting his arm around her shoulders and kissing her cheek. He must guess that she was tense to the point of shattering and so afraid that she felt like vomiting.
“I can’t bear to think, even now, that something might go wrong.” She returned the telescope to him. “Don’t trust Allan for a second. Even if it seems as if you’ve beaten him, he’s always got another plan.”
“Aye, he’s dangerous, which is why I wish ye hadnae come,” Diarmid said.
“Allan insisted.” This argument had raged since the last correspondence from Bancavan. “Anyway, Christina needs me. She doesn’t know you or Hamish, and she’s been frightened enough already. I have to be here.”
All good reasons, but she didn’t speak the most powerful reason: that she intended to step in if Allan played some last trick. For her sake, Diarmid put his life at risk. She wouldn’t let him lose it, whatever it cost her.
“I’d still feel better if ye were safe back at Glen Lyon.”
“And I’d feel better if I’d never met Allan Grant, and my life was nothing but sugar plums and honey crumpets,” she said with asperity.
“For heaven’s sake, we’ve got other fish to fry.” The laughter in Hamish’s voice made her blush with mortification. “You two need to stop squabbling like an old married couple.”
“And only wed three weeks,” Diarmid said drily.
Hamish rose to his full six foot five. “From what you say, an eventful three weeks.”
Diarmid was right to describe his cousin as a Viking. He was large and vigorous and golden fair. It wasn’t difficult to imagine him leaping off a long ship in a berserker fury. Fiona still struggled to accept that this brawny Highlander was a highly respected astronomer.
“We should go, Diarmid,” Hamish said. “No point extending everyone’s misery.”
The morning was cold and rainy, typical of the end of a wet Highland summer. The woolen shawl covering Fiona’s head was uncomfortably clammy. Her husband had insisted that she hide her distinctive hair. Like her, he expected trickery.
Diarmid rose, slipping slightly on the muddy grass. When she moved, he placed one hand on her shoulder.
“No, Fiona, wait here. We agreed you’d let me make sure all is safe before ye get close to Allan.”
“You told me. I didn’t agree,” she retorted as she subsided. Behind them, twenty armed men from Glen Lyon waited. Nobody knew what lay ahead of them today.
“Let’s go, Hamish.” Diarmid strode forward from under the shelter of the trees. Hamish followed him down the slope to the small stone bridge where the exchange was to take place.
“Dear God, keep him safe,” Fiona whispered, and was surprised that her prayer was first for Diarmid and not for Christina.
She rose onto her knees to see better. Her heart fluttered in her throat, and coiling snakes of terror writhed in her belly. At her waist, her hands twisted together so tightly that they hurt. Had she and Diarmid come so far, only to fail now?
***
Diarmid knew a crowd of people watched from the wood behind him, including Sir Quentin Avery, the Englishman who owned the land he currently walked across. He was the local magistrate, and Diarmid had invited him as a witness, in case there was any treachery.
But as Diarmid walked away, he could only feel one set of eyes, Fiona’s. Her gaze burned into his back like a brand. Since the day he’d found her, every moment had led to this confrontation. Diarmid couldn’t let her down.
To secure Christina’s future, she’d faced danger, she’d committed crimes, she’d traveled across half the Highlands, she’d submitted to an unwanted second marriage.
Except in their time together at Inverness, she hadn’t seemed a reluctant bride. He’d started to feel a cautious optimism about his future with his lovely wife.
Och, well, they would sort out everything else, once Allan was no longer a threat and Christina was back in her mother’s care.