Chapter 23 Christian—
Fiona read the letter twice, her hands trembling.
Abduction. Corruption. Legal action.
Her father believed she had been kidnapped.
Believed Christian had coerced her, manipulated her, somehow corrupted her into remaining here.
He could not—would not—believe that she had chosen this for herself.
That she had chosen love over respectability, passion over propriety, Christian over everything she had been raised to value.
Slowly, she lowered the paper.
Christian had been watching her as she read, his expression carefully composed. Yet she saw the tension in his shoulders, the tightness in his jaw, as though each word her father had written had been another stone laid upon his back.
“I told you the words were not kind,” he said quietly.
“No,” Fiona whispered. “They were not.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke. The great hall seemed suddenly too large, the silence pressing in on all sides.
Then Christian drew a slow breath and straightened.
“Well,” he said, his voice steadier now, though she could still hear the strain beneath it. “At least the matter is plain.”
“Christian—”
“I had hoped,” he continued, almost absently, “that if I wrote to him directly—honourably, respectfully—he might judge me on my intentions rather than my reputation.”
He gave a faint, humourless smile.
“That hope was… optimistic.”
Fiona folded the letter carefully, though her fingers still shook.
“My father has always cared more for appearances than truth,” she said softly. “If the village gossip has reached him, he will have convinced himself of the worst.”
Christian looked at her then, the hardness in his expression easing slightly.
“I am sorry you must stand between us,” he said. “Between your family and… this life with me.”
“You are not something I must endure,” Fiona replied firmly. “You are the life I chose.”
Something flickered in his eyes at that.
He reached for her hand, closing his fingers around it with quiet strength.
“Then we shall face it together,” he said.
She stepped closer, resting her free hand against his chest.
“What will you do?”
“I will write again,” he said after a moment. “More carefully this time. I will make it plain that you remain here of your own free will. That I intend to marry you, and that my intentions are entirely honourable.”
Fiona searched his face—the determination there, the quiet steadiness beneath the hurt.
“I do not regret coming here,” she said softly. “Not for a moment.”
His hand tightened around hers.
“Nor do I.”
For a long moment, they stood together in the entrance hall, the letter still folded between them like an unwelcome witness.
Outside, the last of the mist had begun to lift from the hills.
But Fiona could not shake the uneasy sense that the storm gathering around them had only just begun.