Lord John tells her he is half-tempted to accept her absurd offer, that it would please her aunt, outrage her mother and teach Brianna to play with fire
She tells him she assumed that his former marriage was just a formal arrangement like she is suggesting and that if she had known he did enjoy sleeping with women, she would not have suggested it, that if he did want to sleep with her, she can’t marry him, that it wouldn’t be right because of Roger. She explains her thinking, and Lord John says the main reason he can’t ie Fraser would kill him upon discovering his daughter was serving as consort and brood mare for a degenerate sodomite. She says she would never tell Jamie, and John says he already knows.
John agrees to help her
Brianna asks him what he meant by playing with fire, and since she was open with him, he tells her that she looks very much like her father and that he harbors feelings of affection for him, and here she comes offering her body and a promise of a child mixing his blood with Jamie’s all because her honor will not let her wed a man she loves or love a man she wed. He says the angels themselves would weep and he is no angel. Brianna tells her Claire thinks he is a good man, and he’s surprised and says he doesn’t understand why she regards him with suspicion. Bree tells him she thinks it’s because her mother thinks Lord John would hurt Jamie. Lord John tells him about how they met in Ardsmuir Prison when Jamie was a Jacobite prisoner and how he spoke 
for the other men, and they became friends and then were not friends when Jamie took blame for another man’s crime, and Lord John was forced to have him flogged as punishment. Lord John tells her that he cannot agree to her proposal and will not marry her, but he does put a ring on her finger and escorts her back to the house, so they can announce their engagement.
In April, Brianna hears from Lord John that Stephen Bonnet has been captured and then rushes to her side as it seems she might faint. She demands to know more about Bonnet, and he tells her that he was taken in Cross Creek and charged with numerous crimes and condemned to hang next week in Wilmington. She thanks him for the news and asks if Bonnet is still in Cross Creek, and John confirms he is and then is stunned when she demands to see him before they transport him. He refuses to take her, and she says if he does not she will tell her aunt and everyone in the county that Stephen Bonnet fathered her child. He shocked she would cause such a scandal. She says she has nothing to lose.
Brianna shows him a letter Jamie wrote her, saying that he might not see her again, and that she once asked if it was right to kill in revenge. He says that it is not for the sake of her soul, and she must find the grace of forgiveness. He writes that Bonnet will not escape vengeance and carries with him the seed of his own destruction, that if Bonnet does not die by Jamie’s hand, he will be another, but it must not be hers. Brianna tells John she never said good-bye to her father and must find a way to forgive Bonnet.