His good hand made a sweeping gesture. “A lie dishonors everything between us.”
“Yes, it does. But I hate that I’m hurting you. Are you sure that you love me?”
His lips tightened. “That’s an insulting question.”
She didn’t flinch. “Fergus says you suffer from an excess of chivalry. Is there any chance that you’re confusing your urge to rescue a damsel in distress with something more profound?”
“You’re nae damsel in distress.” He snorted with scornful amusement. “You’re a force of nature. Nothing can stop ye. Just ask Allan Grant. Or at least, you could ask him, if ye hadn’t comprehensively trou
nced him. He came to grief today because he underestimated how strong and dangerous ye are. How can I help loving you? You’re powerful and brave and loyal. And sweet and warm and passionate. And bonny. You’re so bonny, it nigh breaks my heart every time I look at ye.”
***
Fiona stared at this remarkable man who laid his heart at her feet and felt utterly sick with herself. She swallowed the bile that soured her mouth and made herself speak the harsh, unwelcome truth.
“Diarmid, I honor you. I admire you. I like you. I like being with you. I like what we do in bed.”
“Like, like, like,” he said grimly.
How she wished she could get away with a comforting falsehood, but he knew her too well. And something within her flinched from telling him a lie when he’d been so honest with her.
“Yes. I wish it was more.” She forced herself to proceed to the difficult truth. “But we’ve only had a few weeks together, a handful of days for me to learn what it is to live in the sunlight, to trust a man, to be friends with a man.”
“Before that, ye had ten years of Bancavan.”
His tone hinted of hard-won acceptance. He understood. Of course he did. But understanding didn’t stop her rejection from wounding him. She flinched to think of the pain she inflicted.
“Yes. Ten long years. I let a vicious old man use my body. I had my child stolen away from me. I was beaten and confined and treated with contempt. Something inside me was broken then. Despite your kindness and care and…love…” Even saying the word was difficult. “…I’m still broken.”
“I cannae believe you’ll be broken forever.”
“But it’s possible that I will be.” Possible? So probable it was certain. “I can’t hold out any hope that I’ll ever be capable of loving you the way you deserve to be loved.”
The telltale muscle flickered in his cheek. He maintained an outward calm for her sake, but she knew that every word she spoke wounded him. “Once you thought ye were incapable of passion.”
“Love is more complicated than passion—and passion is complicated enough.”
“Aye, it is.”
She stared at him, seeing him clearly for what felt like the first time. One thing was apparent—he’d loved her for a long time. Now that he’d put a name to the glow in his eyes when he looked at her, she realized that light had been there at least since he’d married her. Maybe even before that.
“I’m sorry, Diarmid,” she said with aching regret. “If I was to love any man, it would be you.”
“No’ much consolation.”
“No,” she said bleakly. Not much consolation at all.
For a long time, she stared into his face, willing what she saw there to be an illusion. But he was as steadfast as she was. She couldn’t doubt that he loved her. Nor could she doubt that he suffered because she couldn’t love him in return.
Eventually Diarmid shifted, wincing as he jolted his sore shoulder. When he reached out to take her hand once more, she didn’t pull away. “Och, lassie, it’s no’ the end of the world.”
He was so gallant. She crushed his hopes to nothing, yet he found the generosity to offer her comfort.
Fiona started to cry. Because she wanted to love him and couldn’t. Because when she’d seen him fall to Allan’s bullet, she’d feared that she lost him forever and that prospect had turned the world into a blighted desert. Because the day had been full of too many overwhelming emotions, and she reeled with the rapid changes from fear to fury to joy, all ending with this excruciating conversation that threatened to tear her apart.
“It feels like the end of the world,” she sobbed, trying to dash the tears away with shaking hands.
“I’ll survive.”