Page 52 of Taming the Heiress
She sat up, heart pounding, and shook her head. "I cannot—we cannot. It is not necessary for you to do this."
"Let me help you." He sat up with her, kept a hand on her back. "Life is hard in the Hebrides. I know that. I can help you and your family. I have... a respectable income."
"No," she said, getting to her feet. He stood with her. "Please, no."
"I thought—"
"I am grateful for the offer, but I... I cannot marry you."
He turned away, rubbed a hand over his face as if to summon patience, turned back. "Meg, I have wronged you. I have a conscience, woman. Allow me to make this up to you."
"I beg you, do not pity me or feel a sense of duty. I could not bear it," she finished, and whirled to walk past him.
He grabbed her arm, turned her back. "I did not ask you to marry me out of a sense of obligation, you darling wee fool. I love you."
Her heart bounded. A fierce ache of longing within her became deep remorse, then bitter pain at the irony. Here was all she had ever wanted—his heart, his love, his desire—and yet she was powerless to accept or to explain. She stared at him in anguished silence.
"I love you, Meg MacNeill," he murmured. "I want to be with you. I think I have loved you for seven years but did not know it until now. The night we met, you were my salvation. I owed you my life that night, and yet afterward I hurt you without knowing it."
"We saved each other that night," she said fervently. "There is nothing owed. You are forgiven, if that is what you seek."
"Listen to me," he said, his grip fierce on her arm. She felt caught as if by a spell. In the moonlight, his voice dropped to hoarseness blended with the sea. "You are not the only one with a dream."
She watched him through tears. "Mine cannot come true." The awful finality of that seemed to twist inside of her.
Suddenly he let go of her. "Aye, then," he said, and she heard a cold edge now in his voice. "Do what you will. I have made the offer, and it stands. I told you I never give up." He watched her. "And I have great patience."
Spinning on her heel, she half ran over the sand, her heart sinking with each step. She felt her heart and soul beating against the cage that had been locked around her by wealth and secrets.
The deepest hurt of all was that he had let her go, somehow. Yet she had given him no choice, no hope for their future.
She had never even told him that she loved him.
* * *
He saw blue sky and clouds through a depth of water as clear as crystal. Golden shadows rippled over the mountainous base of the rock as daylight streamed through the water currents. As he looked up, a pair of dolphins swam past overhead.
Good, Dougal thought. Where there were dolphins there would be no sharks, and he did not want to meet those fellows ever again. He turned, awkward in his gear and suit, and pointed upward.
Standing near him, Evan looked like a sea beast, his tentacle-like hoses undulating. He raised a gauntleted hand to acknowledge the sight of the dolphins overhead and turned back to the undersea hill.
Dougal made his way over the rock with strange, slow clumsiness. Noises assailed him even through the brass-and-copper helmet, dominated by the sound of his own breathing as air whooshed in and out of the hoses and valves connected to his helmet. Every puff of air pumped down the length of nearly two hundred feet of hosing, smelling sharply of rubber, became his next breath. With each exhalation, he heard the click and suck of air drawn through the exit valve. Through the helmet, he heard the shushing waves and the sound of the wooden platform knocking against the rock, stirred by currents. The water was never still, never quiet, the sea too powerful here to be tranquil.
Dougal traced his gauntleted hands over recesses and protrusions, checking crevices as he searched for any signs of damage from the blastings on the rock. Sgeir Caran was massive under the surface, not overly high but as broad as any hill on Caransay, and too large for two men to walk around in one short diving session. As the blastings and construction continued, they regularly dove downward to make sure the rock remained intact.
"Dougal." Alan Clarke's voice came through the speaking tube, surprisingly clear through two hundred feet of hose.
"Aye," Dougal responded. "All is well here."
"Good. You've been down long enough. Another minute or so."
"Aye, then," Dougal said. He signaled Evan, who climbed onto the wooden platform and tugged three times on the ropes to alert the men above that he was ready to come up.
Dougal waited his turn, watching as Evan was hauled upward slowly. The platform stopped, then ascended a little farther. The crew members were always careful to bring up the divers in slow increments, halting frequently to allow their lungs to adapt to the changing depths.
Dougal brushed his gloved hand over the rock to examine a small horizontal niche, loosening a cloud of sand and debris. Something glinted in a soft spill of daylight, floating away. Dougal snatched at it, capturing it clumsily in his fingers.
Covered with an encrustation of coral, the tiny object winked golden in his palm. Thinking it was a coin, he scraped at it and discovered instead a bit of jewelry, though he could not tell quite what it was. He slipped it into the canvas bag attached to his belt.
