She dove for the paper. He raised his hand overhead, removing it from her reach. Despite herself, she hopped in a futile attempt to grab it. He chuckled at her attempt, and she felt the loss of dignity keenly.
“ ’I told Miss Price our kiss was incendiary,’ ” he finished.
Oh, Lord.
He folded the paper and returned it to his breast pocket. “This one isna so bad, really. There are more. Many more. You may recall, they grew quite personal.”
Yes. She recalled.
For young Maddie, those letters had served as a diary of sorts. She would write down the things she didn’t dare speak aloud. All her petty complaints, all her most uncharitable thoughts born of adolescent moods and disappointments. Her ill-informed dreams about what love could be between a woman and a man. She’d sent those letters to Captain MacKenzie precisely because she’d never wanted anyone who knew her to read them.
And now he threatened to expose them to the world.
A sense of despair churned in her belly. She felt as though she’d spent her youth stuffing heartfelt wishes into bottles and tossing them into the ocean—and suddenly, years later, they’d all been returned.
By a sea monster.
“What if I refuse to marry you?” she asked.
“Then I think I’ll forward your letters on to someone else. Someone who’d be verra interested.”
She winced. “I suppose you mean my father.”
“No, I was thinking of the London scandal sheets. Most likely I’d go to both and see which one will offer me more money.”
“I can’t believe anyone would be that heartless.”
Chuckling, he touched the folded letter to her cheek. “We’re just getting acquainted, mo chridhe. But believe me when I tell you I’m nothing you ever wanted and worse than you could have dreamed.”
Of course he would be.
This was a perfect example of Maddie’s luck. Of all the ranks in the army, all the names in Christendom, and all the clans in the Highlands . . . she had to randomly choose his.
If this had only been a matter of some mortification, Maddie would have taken that punishment, and gladly. However, if those letters became public, it would mean more than simple embarrassment.
People laughed at a fool; they hated a fraud. Perhaps she hadn’t set out to deceive all of England, but she’d made no objections to stirring her family’s sympathy and her peers’ jealousy. Years later, after the captain’s supposed death, she’d accepted their condolences.
She’d even accepted a castle.
All of her acquaintances would know that Maddie had deceived them, and for the silliest of reasons. The gossip would haunt her family for years. And who would commission scientific illustrations from a woman infamous for lies? She could find herself all alone with no means of support.
Her sense of panic only grew.
“Let’s discuss this rationally,” she said. “You’re proposing to blackmail me with letters I wrote when I was sixteen years old. Didn’t you do anything rash and foolish when you were sixteen years old?”
“I most certainly did.”
“Good,” Maddie said eagerly. Perhaps she could convince him to be sympathetic. He would agree that no one should be forced to pay a lifelong price for youthful folly. “And what was your foolish choice?”
“I joined the army,” he said. “More than ten years later, I’m not through paying for that choice. Most of my friends paid with their lives.”
She bit her lip. When he put it that way . . .
“Please try to understand. If you read my letters, you must believe I took no pleasure in lying. It simply mushroomed beyond my control. I’ve wished so many times that I’d never said anything.”
“You’d take it all back?”
“Yes. In a heartbeat.”
She thought he flinched a little at her eagerness, but maybe it was just her imagination. She had a well-established surfeit of imagination. Particularly when it came to men in kilts.
“If you want to take back your lies,” he said, “then you should marry me.”
“How do you reason that?”
“Think on it. You wrote letters to your Scottish intended. I received them. Those are the plain facts, are they not?”
“I suppose.”
“Once you marry me, none of it is a lie,” he pointed out. “It will be exactly as though you’ve told the truth all these years.”
“Except for the part where we love each other.”
He shrugged. “That’s a minor detail. Love is just a lie people tell themselves.”