Page 24 of Wouldn’t it Be Scottish?

As soon as Richard had offered to marry Agatha, Donal had lost his reason. At least that was what it had felt like. He had feared she would jump at the chance because that was what she had wanted all along, wasn’t it? That was what they were trying to do—win Richard and Mary back. It may not have turned out quite as they had imagined, but Richard had proposed. That was all that mattered. Wasn’t it?

No, no, and a resounding NO! Richard didn’t love her, and Donal could see perfectly well that the other man was only proposing because he felt duty bound. Agatha would be wretched if she were leg-shackled to him, and Donal couldn’t bear to see her lovely smiles fade and her flushed cheeks grow thin and wan. As for his own feelings . . . If he had to explain them to anyone right now then he would be hard pressed to do so. Off-kilter perhaps was the word. Or slightly depressed, although more than slightly. Confused and bewildered and with an ache in his heart that made no sense to him whatsoever.

It had been a strange sort of day.

Those moments they had shared in Hattie’s kitchen returned to him in graphic detail. The kisses and the caresses and the sheer joy and bone-melting pleasure they’d found together. He’d wanted more, of course he had. He had wanted her in his arms every day for the rest of his life!

Now he stood in the drawing room with the door closed, looking down at Agatha’s flushed and excited face, trying to make sense of it all.

“You want to marry me?” he said slowly. “I asked you to, Agatha, and I meant it, but I thought you loved Rich—”

She shook her head a wildly. When she had run upstairs, he had not expected to see her again so soon, but here she was, looking wild-eyed and, if he were honest, a wee bit demented.

“I don’t love him, not anymore,” Agatha said flatly. “I just don’t.”

“You don’t love him?” Donal repeated slowly.

“No. Seeing him with Miss Elliot made me angry. And sad. But over the past weeks I have come to accept he is no longer my Richard. He isn’t the man I believed myself in love with, and perhaps he never was. Just now, when he offered to marry me, I knew it would be a terrible mistake. One day I hope he and I can be friends again, but I don’t want to be married to him. And I couldn’t in clear conscience do that to him either, not when he loves someone else. It would be a disaster!”

Donal supposed it did make sense. “But what about Mary?” he blurted out.

He hadn’t even given Mary a thought since they had left the picnic, so he wasn’t sure why he was thinking of her now. When Richard had proposed to Agatha, he had known only that he must not let that happen. Mary had not factored into his own proposal at all.

Her pale eyes brimmed with sympathy. “I am sorry, Donal. I haven’t explained myself properly, have I? Seeing Richard here, willing to deny himself his own happiness for my sake was, I admit, gratifying. And although I don’t want to marry him, it gave me an idea. If we were to become betrothed, officially, so that everyone knew about it, then Mary can no longer pretend to herself that you will always be in the background waiting for her. She would have to accept that if you married me, then she would lose you. Don’t you think that could finally spur her on to admitting how much she loves you?”

Donal stared down at her as he worked through her words. “You think if Mary believed we were to marry, she would suddenly realize she loved me best after all.” His voice sounded doubtful because that was how he felt. Mary had set her sights on Belvoir, and he was already learning to accept that was not going to change.

“Exactly!”

She seemed so convinced her plan was going to work that he didn’t like to dampen her spirits with his own qualms. And she was being very generous, really, thinking of him instead of herself. Which brought to mind another serious misgiving he had with her scheme.

“What about you, Agatha? If this goes the way you think it will, and Mary decides to return to me, what about you?”

She gave a shrug. “Now that I know I don’t want to marry Richard, it doesn’t really matter about me, does it? There might be some talk when we break off our engagement, but that is easily managed. I will go home to Setholm and you can take Mary back to Bonnyrigg.”

He didn’t quite believe her indifference. Agatha was being ridiculously selfless, and it made him feel uncomfortable. His thoughts flashed back to Mary’s angry face when she saw him arrive at the picnic. She’d wanted him gone. He was a nuisance, and her sights were firmly set on Belvoir. Was a change of heart even possible?

“What if Mary doesna come to her senses?” he said at last. “We would still be engaged, or would you break it off?”

Agatha waved a careless hand. “Yes, I will wait for a respectable time and then break it off. We can go our separate ways. At least we will know we tried, Donal. I think we should try, don’t you?”

He was looking into her eyes. They stayed like that as the seconds ticked by. “But Agatha,” he said at last, “you would still be compromised. And with a broken engagement, your reputation would suffer even more. None of this was your fault, so it doesn’t seem fair.”

“Remember what Richard said? If there is a scandal, then society will blame you for corrupting me. You and your disgraceful brothers. It is entirely likely that I will come out of the situation far less tarnished than you.”

“Agatha, I dinna think—”

She gave a strange little laugh. “Donal, what does it matter? If my idea works, then at least one of us will have a happy ending. You and your Mary can thank me.”

Donal did not like it. This felt wrong. Even as Donal tried to imagine Mary suddenly seeing him in a new light and begging him, with tears running down her lovely face, to marry her instead. There was a certain dark pleasure in this scenario because he wanted Mary to feel the despair he had felt when she left him. He wanted revenge. But were they the sort of feelings a man should be having about the woman he loved? The woman he had claimed to want to spend the rest of his life with? And why was he worrying more about Agatha’s situation than winning Mary back?

“Agatha, I canna let you do this,” he said gently.

She frowned at him. “Yes, you can. I want you to. I . . . I have nothing else to keep me here in London, but if we pretend to be engaged, then I will be able to enjoy some more balls and—and whatevers.”

She seemed to be clutching at anything she could think of to convince him. Did she really love dancing so much? He wasn’t sure she was being completely honest. Did she crave more of the London social scene, and becoming engaged to Donal was a way she could have it? That sounded more like something Mary would say. One thing he was sure of, Agatha wasn’t broken hearted about Richard. He had saved her from that awful fate.

And then there was their passionate interlude. Richard had said Agatha’s reputation was at stake, but he hadn’t known the half of it. They hadn’t had full congress, but it had been close enough. The least Donal could do was marry her. Mary be damned, Agatha needed him, and it was time he stood up and proved himself a man.