As he stood and caught her hand, his eyes softened. “Fiona, I ken—or I can guess—what you’ve endured. I wouldnae ask this, if it wasnae the only way.”
For a moment, Fiona let her hand rest in his. It was mad, but his strength flowed into her, bolstering her against quaking terror.
But his strength only weakened her resolve against doing what he wanted. She wrenched away and began to wring her hands in distress.
“It can’t be the only way. I won’t believe that. How can we marry? I’ve only known you for a couple of weeks.”
She was grateful that he didn’t try to touch her again. “That’s long enough for ye to learn I’ve got your best interests at heart.”
Hot tears of rage and frustration pricked her eyes. She had the odious sensation that he backed her into a corner.
“And what about your best interests, Diarmid?” she asked in a broken voice. “Don’t they matter?”
“I said I placed myself at your service. I meant it.”
“And you get nothing in return?”
“I get the satisfaction of doing down the Grants. Since Allan Grant tried to shoot me, no’ to mention discovering what they did to ye at Bancavan, trust me, that’s a major inducement to help.”
She shook her head again, not that it seemed to make any mark on his determination. “It’s not enough.”
“It’s something.” His voice hardened. “A legal solution is the only way ye and your daughter can have security, Fiona. The courts willnae give a child to a single woman without means. They will give her to Lady Invertavey, who has the full backing of her powerful husband, a laird and a magistrate. No’ to mention a man with a network of aristocratic connections throughout Scotland.”
“I can’t do this to you,” she said dully, looking across the garden and seeing only darkness instead of the spectacular roses. The awful truth was that she was mightily tempted. She wasn’t blind to the good sense of what he said, but her conscience balked at tying him to her for life. “I just can’t. Don’t ask me.”
Diarmid went on as if he hadn’t heard her. “The courts willnae give Christina to a woman living openly with a man to whom she isnae married, nor to a woman who has been alone in that man’s company as they traveled halfway across the Highlands.”
Shock made her face him. “But we didn’t…”
“I know,” he said gently. “But as Fergus said, the appearance of sin is what counts, no’ the sin itself.”
This time her tears welled up beyond her control and trickled down her cheeks. “Diarmid, I’m sorry. I’m so very, very sorry.”
His mouth curved down in a bleak smile, as he passed her his handkerchief. She always seemed to rely on him for a handkerchief. She relied on him for more than that.
God help her, if they went through with this lunatic plan, she’d be relying on him as long as she lived.
The thought stiffened her backbone. She couldn’t believe he offered to do this for her. His generosity and self-sacrifice beggared her imagination. But despite that, she couldn’t allow him to proceed.
“If we marry, it’s forever,” she said in a thick voice.
“I know.” Almost hesitantly, he took her arm and steered her back to the bench. He sat beside her, keeping that decorous distance between them.
“What happens if you find a lady you want to marry, and you can’t because you’ve done this mad, gallant thing?”
He didn’t answer immediately but stared down at where his elegant hands rested on his knees. “Ye heard all about my mother when you were at Invertavey.”
She frowned. The statement seemed a million miles from his attempts to coax her into accepting his proposal. “She ran away with a lover and died in the Indies, they said.”
“They were right.” That muscle in his cheek returned to its erratic dance. She could see he loathed talking about this. “They probably didnae tell ye that my father fell in love with her at first sight at a ball in London. She was one of the Macgrath sisters, two famously beautiful girls from a humble background. Both of the lassies made stellar marriages, at least in a worldly sense.”
“No love?”
“Och, there was love, all right,” he said bitterly. “My father worshipped my mother until the day he died. He died with her name on his lips, though by that time, she’d been buried five years in a fever pit in Jamaica, with her twenty-year-old paramour dead beside her.”
“Your father had a steadfast heart,” Fiona said, still unsure what Diarmid was trying to tell her.
“A heart that stayed steadfast through years of infidelity and humiliation.”