Her face flushed a dull red, but she kept her head high. “Very well. I will leave.” She turned, but then paused. “Of course, that means that you have lost your wager, Fiona. And your marriage. I hope you’re happy.”

With those bitter words, she swept from the room, slamming the door behind her.

Malcolm looked at Fiona. “I’ve never heard you speak so firmly to her before.”

Fiona gave a faint shrug, her shoulders seemingly weighted. “It was overdue. I-I suppose I shall return to our guests as well.” She made as if to turn, but Malcolm’s hand closed over her arm.

“Stay,” he said softly. “Please? Perhaps you can help me sort this out.”

Her eyes widened, but after a moment, she nodded.

Devon knew the time had come. He and Kat both knew the rules of society, but when they were together, the rules seemed to vanish. They became unimportant in the face of other things, like passion, and companionship, and love.

He turned to Kat and took her hand in his. “Kat, this is not the way I’d thought to do this, but I want to make things right. For now and for always. Will you marry me?” “No.”

The word echoed in the silence that followed. Devon could not believe his ears.

She bent her head. “Devon, thank you but…I do not want to marry you.”

A thick ache arose in his throat, and he suddenly realized that though he knew his feelings, he didn’t know hers. Or he hadn’t until now. He raked a hand through his hair, wondering what he was supposed to do now, feel now, think now.

She didn’t love him. She had refused his offer of marriage without even pausing. It had cut to his soul, and he found that he could not breathe, could not think. Love was not supposed to be painful, was it? Or so despairing. Had he known it would hurt so, he would never have allowed it to happen.

Damn the talisman ring. This was the retribution he received for having lost it. Unless…what if the legacy of the ring was not, as he’d thought, marriage? What if it was merely the act of finding one’s true love? And in that act, many things could happen, marriage being one of them.

Or heartbreak.

Malcolm blinked as if as bewildered at Kat’s answer as Devon was. “Kat, lassie, do you know what you’re saying?”

“I know,” she said, her gaze locked on her hands, clasped in her lap.

A mirthless smile touched Devon’s lips. He had feared that blasted ring all these years because he’d thought it represented the inevitable loss of his freedom. Now that he would have welcomed that loss, he found that it was all moonshine…An untruth. A fabled myth.