Kieran Kramer - If You Give A Girl A Viscount

Daisy inhaled a breath as best she could through the gag, but the shock of Perdita’s news made her limbs tremble violently.

She hadn’t caused the fire.

She’d been carrying a burden of guilt so heavy that it had crushed a part of her heart, making her afraid to love again, and it had all been so unnecessary.

Dear God, how could this be?

Tears sprang anew to her eyes, but they were tears of relief. She already knew she’d not been responsible for winding up in Roman’s bed. That had been Cassandra’s doing.

It was an astonishing revelation that Cassandra and Perdita, each in their own way, had unwittingly set the tragedy of her father’s death in motion. And neither one had known what the other was scheming—not until it was too late.

But Perdita was sobbing once more, and Daisy had to get through to her.

She nodded her head. “It’s all right,” she tried to say. But her words were completely garbled in the gag.

“Perdy!” From somewhere below them, Mona’s demanding voice called, “Are you done up there?”

Perdita hesitated only a second. She picked Daisy up and then—

Daisy kicked. Her other shoe flew off somewhere in the bracken.

And then Perdita gave a mighty heave-ho, and Daisy was flying …

Flying into the bog, where she landed with a mighty squishing noise faceup, thank God. There was a burbling of peat and water around her and the sensation of sinking into cold, mushy nothingness. She heard Perdita crashing through the woods, and she looked up and saw the pale white summer night above the branches overhead.

She was alone, and she was sinking, being sucked beneath the peat.

But before she could register that horrible fact, Perdita came crashing back again, this time toward her, and she was bellowing, “Hold on, Daisy! I’m coming to save you!” in a hopeful, noble voice—

As if she’d never been the one to dump her in the bog in the first place.

Perdita shoved the end of a branch at her, which Daisy couldn’t grab because her arms were tied behind her back. So Perdita angled the scrawny limb and then she was caught, just like a trout, her sleeve snagged by a knobby part of the wood that jutted out almost like a hook.

She hung there, moaning and crying, and watching the gray shape that was Perdita apologize for being so cruel to her.

“I am the Highlander,” Perdita said, holding firmly to the branch. “I hate Mother and her wicked ways. She may kill me, but I can’t do this. You don’t deserve to die, Daisy.”

It was some few minutes that she spoke, genuinely whispering for the first time in her life words of comfort and sorrow and shame that she’d been so stupid and wicked. And then her words melded into more gray forms that were shouting and crashing through the woods. And just when Daisy heard Charlie’s voice cry, “Daisy! Is that you?” she let her eyes close and the sound of his voice carry her into a sweet, black nothingness.

The hot bath had restored a healthy glow to Daisy’s cheeks. Now she lay in her old bed in the left turret at Castle Vandemere, safe and warm, bundled up and sipping a steaming mug of whisky punch Hester had concocted for her.

Charlie couldn’t believe how close she’d come to being taken away from him.

“You’ll stay here,” he said, doing his best to sound stern. “No going off to Rose Cottage.”

She gave him a tentative smile. “All right. I’ll stay in my room one night, and then go back.”

Not if he could help it.

The ceilidh had disbanded—again. His family had returned to the Keep. He was here alone with her, except for Hester, knitting in her old kitchen, and Joe, who was busy putting back all the whisky from the secret cellar he’d removed not an hour before. Charlie told him he wanted everyone to return to Castle Vandemere and so there was no need for Joe to confiscate it in the first place.

Charlie pulled Daisy’s new slipper out of his coat. “Here,” he said, feeling awkward. “I found this at the Stone Steps.”

Daisy sucked in a breath. “Mr. Glass’s slipper. I kicked the other one off by accident, before Perdita got me to the bog.”

He chuckled. “We’ll find it in the morning, you can be sure of that.”

“Thank you.”

Her expression was drawn, and she was so quiet. So meek. It worried him.

He cleared his throat. “I’m glad you changed your mind and were planning to come to the ceilidh .”

Her smile was tentative. “Your grandmother—my godmother—came to visit me. She brought me a beautiful gown”—her eyes filled with tears, and he took her hand and squeezed it—“that my … my mother once wore.”

Charlie held on to her hand. “Grandmother told me the story. And she showed me the gown. I’m so sorry it was ruined.”

Daisy wiped a tear away from her eye with her free hand. “I’m sad about the gown, but it saved me, in a way. My sleeve got caught on the branch Perdita was using to prop me up. It was like a hook, and I was the fish. A very grateful fish.”

“You always were the fish I wanted,” Charlie told her.

“Yes, Mona tried to tempt you with more elegant fish that day we ate the trout we caught together, but you were stubborn.”

He grinned, and she grinned back.

A little.

Actually, not very much.

He suppressed the feeling of panic that swelled in his chest and contented himself with the knowledge that she hadn’t released his hand.

He mustn’t be selfish. She’d just been through a horrible trauma. He shouldn’t expect to see her happy grin so soon after.

But the truth was, her happy grin was what he lived for.

He wanted her to be his lover and his wife, his companion and his very best friend. And he wanted her to know all this … but was it the right time?

Or a very wrong time?

She sat quietly watching him.

“So you liked the slippers?” he asked her.

She nodded. “They were exquisite. And such a gift. It’s uncanny how well Lucy knows me—even though she hasn’t seen me since I was a baby.”

Charlie took a deep breath. “ I commissioned those slippers.”

Daisy’s eyes widened, and she pulled her hand out of his. “You?”

“Yes,” he said. “I bought them for you. With money.”

“That’s the usual way you buy something,” she said pertly. “Oh, unless you’re in the Highlands. And then you can buy things with whisky. That’s what Joe says.”

This time her grin was definitely a grin.

“I was too green to know that,” Charlie replied, his heart warming. “And even if I had, I wouldn’t have done it. I wanted to use money. I wanted to lose the bet I made with my friends in London.”

“The bet,” Daisy murmured. “You aren’t supposed to use money, especially to help Lucy’s goddaughter.”

“Yes, I know. Because if I do, I’ll be thrust onto the Marriage Mart.”

“Poor you,” Daisy said, some of her old sparkle reemerging.

He pulled a tendril of hair off her face and tucked it behind her ear. “You see, there’s this girl I love. And I was very afraid to love her, even though she’s the most perfect girl in the world.”

“She is?”

“Oh, yes. Perfect for me. But I was hiding behind a silly mask—the mask of the misunderstood man of wealth—and I was using it to avoid facing the truth.”

“What is the truth?” Her face was so close to his, her breath warmed his cheek.

“The truth is,” he said, rubbing her shoulders, “that I was afraid I was worth nothing beyond my riches. But it was easier to blame the opportunists who longed to pilfer my wallet than to blame myself for allowing my life to mean nothing.”