Page 37 of Duke of Diamonds
Or at the very least, a match that did not make my very skin crawl.
“Oh, poor darling. You should have told us nonetheless. What are friends for?” Nancy said.
“Did you despise the match so much?” Anna asked.
Fiona drew a breath, tasting the bitter memory of it. “He’d been… unkind. Both in words and...” She paused, but there was no sense in softening the truth. “And in actions. I could not imagine binding myself to such a man for a lifetime.”
The collective gasp that followed was sharp, cutting through the quiet.
“Oh, dear,” they breathed almost as one, their horror plain.
Fiona lifted her chin. “I was desperate,” she said softly. “Desperate enough to choose scandal—ruin, if need be—over life shackled to him. My father would not hear a word against him, so… I had no other recourse.”
And if Craton had not intervened… God only knows what would have become of me.
A stunned silence fell, stretching long and uneasy.
“We are dreadful friends,” Nancy said at last, her voice thick with regret.
“Neglectful and oblivious,” Hester agreed, dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief.
“You suffered all this alone,” Anna murmured, her hand still wrapped tightly around Fiona’s.
“How could you have known,” Fiona said quickly, her voice low. “I told no one. I bore it in silence.”
Because admitting it would have made it real. And I was not yet brave enough for that.
She drew a breath and, emboldened by the tide of confession already loosed, added, “Craton has offered for me.”
The words hung in the air, heavier than even she had anticipated.
A new, awkward silence took hold. Her friends exchanged glances laden with meaning she could not quite decipher.
There it is. They doubt him. Just as they doubted Canterlack, though they had good cause.
“At least he has done the honorable thing,” Anna said at last, though a thread of uncertainty wove through her words.
Hester bit her lip, the motion betraying her worry. “But… what if he is just as bad as Canterlack?” she asked, the fear naked in her tone.
“You do not truly know him, after all,” she added, her hands wringing nervously.
“Oh, but we cannot let you throw yourself into another storm, Fiona,” Nancy said, her voice firm. “Not after what you have endured. I should hate to think what trials might await you there.”
Fiona drew a slow breath, gathering her thoughts before speaking.
“I may not have known Craton long,” she said, lifting her gaze to meet her friends’ eyes, “but I am certain of this—he possesses a kinder heart than the world gives him credit for.”
She shook her head, a small, almost wistful motion. “He has made just as great a sacrifice in all this as I have. He was under no obligation to aid me. Yet he did.”
He could have turned his back, washed his hands of the matter. But he did not.
“And now,” Fiona continued, her voice steady though her fingers twisted in her skirts, “he has offered to take me out of utter ruin.”
The memory of his hand reaching for hers, of the choice he had given her before the door swung open and fate overtook them, flared vividly in her mind.
He offered me a future when he owed me nothing at all.
She still could not fathom why he had gone so far, why he had bound his future to hers with such deliberate care. It had not been part of their bargain. No promises had been extracted from him. And yet...
