“Ye should go to France.” Conviction filled Brogan’s voice.
“Aye, we should.” She reached for his hands, but he backed up a step and the unsettling feeling she’d had within her moments ago grew.
Brogan gave a curt shake of his head. “Nay, lass, just ye.”
“What? Alone? Nay.” Fiona vehemently shook her head. This was madness. “What are ye talking about? Ye’re to come with me.”
Brogan’s shoulders straightened, and he looked down at her as though they hadn’t shared the most intimate secrets, as though they hadn’t made love on the forest floor, in taverns, and in her childhood bedchamber. As if they hadn’t told each other and the world that they’d wed, that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together.
“My place is here, in Scotland, where I can protect the country, where my skills are best put to use. How am I to protect people when I’m no’ here?”
“My place is with ye.” There, she’d said the words. Abandoning the notion of one of them only boarding that ship. Abandoning the notion she’d had that her place was beside the prince. There had been a major shift in her over the past weeks, a life-changing shift. She could do better with Brogan by her side than she could alone. Look at all they’d accomplished together.
He shook his head. “This is your chance, Fiona. Your chance to be set free. Free of this marriage that was meant to be temporary and free from fear.”
This marriage that was meant to be temporary. She swallowed hard. “I didna think our marriage was going to be temporary.”
“It has been from the start.”
“And I thought we changed that. I just told the prince we were wed, and he acknowledged that.”
Brogan grunted, but said nothing. Nay! Not that again!
“Brogan,” she urged, trying to fight the tears stinging the backs of her eyes. “Dinna close yourself off from me. We are wed.”
He shook his head sharply, and she felt his denial like a crushing blow in the chest. To her back was the ship. She could easily board it and stay by the prince’s side. Honor the vow she’d made a decade ago to protect Scotland at all costs. Honor the prince who should be sitting on the throne in England and not run from his country.
Or should she stay here in Scotland with Brogan, her husband? Stay with the man who’d made her feel loved and safe. The safest she’d felt in years. The happiest she’d ever been.
A few months ago, she would have gone to France with no question. But not now. Things had changed.
And yet Brogan was denying their happiness. He was pushing her away.
“Ye canna mean it,” she said, trying to reach for him.
Brogan backed away another step. “Ye’re better off without me, lass.”
“Why do ye no’ let me be the judge of that?” Her voice shook as she spoke. Her insides felt like they were being sliced in two. “We made a vow, Brogan, to the cause. If ye dinna wish to be with me, if this has all been a ruse, at least honor your vow to the prince.”
“I made a vow to see Scotland free from the tyranny of King George’s reign, and how am I to do that an ocean away?”
Fiona shook her head. “With the only man, the prince, who can take King George’s place.”
All emotion had gone from Brogan’s face. Stoic and stubborn. She wanted to slap him until he showed her some real emotion.
“My place is here, Fiona. Go with the prince and fulfill your duties the way ye see fit.”
Fiona stared down at her chest, certain to see a knife protruding from her heart the way agony ripped through it, but there was nothing. Nothing save the pain of the words he lobbed at her.
Had this all been a ruse for him?
She took a step back, feeling used and humiliated. This made no sense. She was good at reading people, better at it than nearly everyone she knew, and yet she’d somehow missed the signs…
“Go,” he said again.
He need not tell her again. Fiona snapped her fingers at Milla and whirled around, practically running toward the ship with her hound at her heels.
Twenty
Brogan stormed down the pier, angry and hurt that Fiona had turned her back, but mostly furious with himself for having given her the option. But how could he not? She’d told him how much the cause, the prince, meant to her. Confessed her childhood vow. Showed him the box that Aes left her orders in. Messages she’d been receiving from him for a decade.
With every fiber of his being, Brogan loved her, but how could he make her give up everything she’d worked for simply to live a life with him?
The way her eyes had lit up when she’d seen the prince sauntering down the gangplank, and the way she’d beamed a smile at being asked to go to France to continue out her mission abroad had been both eye-opening and a gut punch for Brogan.
It would be selfish of him to keep her here. Fiona was a brilliant messenger and spy. Who was he to hold her back?
The only right thing to do had been to give her a choice. When you loved someone, you had to give them what they wanted most.
But damn, did it hurt to see her turn her back.
She’d begged him to go with her, and he’d not been mistaken in the tears he’d seen gathering in her eyes. But his place was here, and she knew that. And likely he would only get in her way.
“Brogan,” Sorley said, his voice stern.
“We’re leaving,” Brogan said.
“Why are ye no’ on that ship?” Fin asked. “Dinna be a fool.”
The rest of the men wore similarly confused looks upon their faces as though Brogan might have sprouted goat horns.
“I’ve been a fool already,” he said. And that was partially true. To allow himself to think that he deserved Fiona in his life. That he could ever be happy, fulfilled, was a cruel jest. He was the bastard son of the Chief of Clan Grant—a traitor. Brogan had so much work to do on Scottish soil that it made his head spin.
Work that would certainly never be done. Now that the prince had knighted him, he had more responsibility to see the country put to rights.
He was born into loneliness and he would die there.
“But ye love her,” Sorley said, brows pinched.
“What does love have to do with anything?” Brogan snapped.
“Nearly everything,” Fin answered as if he were a complete and utter dullard.
“Ye have love of your country, and ye have love of your woman. So why is your woman getting on a ship to go to another country?” Keith asked, just as incredulous.