She watched him in stricken silence as he mounted the grey stallion and rode off, before her legs gave way and she slumped to the ground. If she had glanced up, she would have seen him pull up to look back with a wistful expression, but instead she dropped her head into her hands. She had just made either the best or the worst decision of her entire life.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Eight

TWO HOURS LATER, AN EMOTIONALLY drained Margaret was waylaid before she could reach the sanctity of her bedroom. “What on earth is going on?” Julia demanded, guiding her into her sitting room. “First Lochiel turns up completely out of the blue, and the pair of you go off together before I have the opportunity to ask if he intends to spend the night. Then he returns alone and informs me he is going straight back to Dublin and not even staying for your birthday dinner. He was very abrupt, almost rude, and I thought—”

“Donald proposed,” Margaret said baldly, sitting down wearily on one of the chairs by the window. “And I turned him down.” A lump rose in her throat as she recalled the stricken look on his face when he left, but she swallowed hard. “He said he loves me, and I think I might love him, too, but I cannot, Julia. I can’t marry him.”

“Good heavens, whyever not? Admittedly he is not the man your father chose for you, but he is eminently respectable and an excellent catch. You surely cannot be worried that the duke would object to the match?”

“I don’t want or need my father’s approval,” Margaret snapped. “Sorry,” she added, immediately contrite, “I am, as you will have surmised, a little overwrought. I was not expecting . . .” She spread her hands helplessly.

“Has there been no hint in his letters of Lochiel’s intentions?”

“If there were, I missed them.”

“You need time to adjust, that is all. I am sure he thought it a wildly romantic gesture to come here unannounced and propose on your birthday, but it would have been far better if he had adopted a more conventional approach. Doubtless that is what he will do, when his pride has recovered a little.”

“It is not his pride but his heart I have wounded. If you are imagining that he will enlist my father’s help in persuading me to accept his suit, you are much mistaken. Donald knows me far better than that.” Margaret’s lip trembled. “His coming here today, his wildly romantic gesture, as you put it, was exactly the kind of proposal I would have wanted. If only I could have accepted it.” A stray tear escaped, but she scrubbed it away. “But I could not.”

Julia frowned. “I don’t understand. If he really does understand you so well . . .”

“He does! He knows me better than I do myself at times.”