Chapter 28 #2
“Making a good show of it is half the battle in everything, is it not?” he continued. “Literature. The arts. Argument. Courtship.”
Courtship? Is that what was happening? Morrigan watched him as he reached into his coat.
“I brought you a gift.”
She touched the handle of her sgian dubh at her ankle, teasing him. “It’s not my dagger or my shoes, so it must be that you brought me another flyer from Inverness. Or is it the book you promised?”
“The book can wait. This is a proper gift.”
She stared at the small pouch made of green velvet in his hand. A red ribbon was tied neatly around it.
“Open it.” He placed it in her hand.
Morrigan felt her cheeks catch fire. With unsteady fingers she untied the ribbon and emptied it into her hand. The most beautiful necklace lay in her palm. A gold chain with a pendant that was fashioned like a miniature sword. The hilt was decorated with a turquoise stone.
“Oh my! It’s . . . it’s stunning.” She was too flustered to say anything more. No one had ever given her a gift so elegant and meaningful. “A dagger. So appropriate.”
She started to put it around her neck.
“May I?”
Morrigan nodded, and he rose to his feet. He moved behind her and took the necklace. She held her hair to the side, and a thrill raced through her as his fingers brushed against her neck. He fastened the chain and sat in his chair again, eyeing her appreciatively.
“Beautiful.”
She touched the treasure and looked into his eyes.
She loved him. How she loved him. The words wanted to spill out into the open, but she couldn’t allow it.
Meeting Aidan Grant was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to her, but she wouldn’t ruin his future.
She would not allow her feelings to take her to a place where hope led only to heartache.
Morrigan tried to think of something lighthearted to say.
“If I knew we were exchanging gifts, I could have done some embroidery or drawn a portrait or written a poem in praise of your virtues. None of which I have any talent in, but I would have done them with confidence. And besides, it’s the gesture that matters. True?”
He smiled. “I promise to give you the opportunity of doing all those things for me and more.”
Morrigan watched him reach into his coat again, and this time he withdrew a small box. Her heart began to beat so fast that she feared it might burst out of her chest and fly away like a bird.
“Dear Miss Drummond, I thought only of you while I was gone.” He moved to the edge of the chair and dropped to one knee. “I’m hoping that you would do me the honor of becoming my wife.”
For a moment, Morrigan sat in stunned silence. She couldn’t breathe. But the past snaked through the air like a whip and lashed at her. She tore her hand out of his grasp and jumped to her feet, edging away from him.
“I can’t.” Tears splashed down her cheeks. “I am sorry, Mr. Grant. I’m truly sorry, but I can’t be your wife.”
Morrigan turned and ran for the door.
“Wait. You can’t? That’s all?” he called after her. “Nothing more to say?”
Her steps faltered. She leaned a hand against the doorjamb for support. She couldn’t look back.
“Don’t I deserve to know why? Can’t you at least tell me what I’ve done wrong? Is it someone else? Why would you acknowledge our affection, return the passion I feel for you, but deny us any future?”
She knew she should walk away, but he would come after her.
Aidan was a man who was accustomed to getting answers.
And what did it matter, anyway? Her past was no longer a secret when people as vile as Sir Rupert were weaving their own twisted tales about it.
Wasn’t it better if he heard the truth from her instead of the lies that would no doubt spread?
She took out a handkerchief and stabbed at her tears before slowly turning around.
Aidan stood watching her with the expression of a tormented man. She took a few steps into the room but held her hand up, motioning him to stop as he started to approach. She had to speak quickly, before she lost her courage.
“Wemys is dead.”
His brow creased as he tried to understand what she was saying. “I know. I heard the news when I arrived. You are not upset about it, are you?”
“The first day we met in Inverness, you were correct. I intended to kill him.”
“I suspected as much. But you never felt you could explain. And whatever your reason was for going after him, I have absolute faith that it was a good one. I trust you, Morrigan.”
Her reason, she thought. She had reason.
Shame. Guilt. Mortification. Morrigan had accepted that her father’s approach was the only path.
Walk away and forget. She’d never been able to do that.
And when it came to Aidan, there was the fear that this man standing before her would think less of her.
Her throat felt raw, constricted, but she pushed the words out while she still could.
“Wemys was my uncle. When I was twelve years of age, he . . . he raped me.”
“Morrigan.” The whisper of her name emerged as a painful sigh.
He tried to come to her, but she held her hand up again, pleading with him to stay where he was.
The line between the courage to speak and the cowardly urge to run away was thin.
She had to say the words. The truth had to be laid bare between them.
She told Aidan everything—from her father’s reaction to moving away to Wurzburg to that October day in Inverness when she saw Wemys again.
Aidan listened. When she was finished, he ran a hand through his hair.
“I’m sorry, my love. It breaks my heart to hear what happened to you. You . . . you had every right to go after him. To punish him for what he’s done. Your courage . . . who you are, who you’ve become . . .”
He was pale, looking like a man who’d been run through with a sword. His voice shook and the words struggled to break free.
“And I am the greatest villain of all. I brought your worst nightmare back into your life. I delivered him here, where you were tormented day and night. I forced you to speak to him when he didn’t deserve to be spat on.”
“You didn’t know.”
Morrigan saw the anger building in the tension of his shoulders, the hard expression in his eyes.
“I wish he were still alive so I could strangle that blackguard with my own hands. I would have hung his worthless carcass—”
“Stop, Aidan. That would not have helped anything. No one could take away my pain except me. No one could cool the rage I carried inside. No one could fix this for me. My father thought he could, but he was wrong. What Wemys did, he did to me. Only I could fix it. The battle was mine to fight.” Morrigan spoke more calmly than before.
“Isabella once told me that healing is a journey. Time is needed. And patience. And luck. The way it ended, watching Wemys die, was part of my journey. I could not have healed any other way.”
She started to leave, but he called after her again.
“I love you, Morrigan. The past means nothing to me.”
One last time, she faced him.
“But it means everything to me.” Her past controlled the present, and it controlled the future for both of them. No argument Aidan could devise would ever change that. “Sir Rupert knows.”
Morrigan told him about the letters, about the lies that would be twisted to destroy her and Aidan both. He stood in stunned silence as she went out, shutting the door behind her. It was over. She could never marry him.