---

 

Joss waited for Maggie to rush into his arms, to say an ecstatic yes, to kiss him. Perhaps even tell him she loved him.

Because he was certain she must.

He wasn’t an idiot. Only love made a woman like Maggie Carr give herself to a man. And while she might have kept the words back, her love had illuminated every second of these last incandescent hours.

But to his astonishment, instead of running toward him, she faltered back. An expression that looked like anguish tightened her features, and all the lovely rosy softness vanished in a blink.

“Maggie?” he asked uncertainly, staggering to his feet.

He suddenly felt like a fool. Was he wrong about her feelings? Had his arrogance alone convinced him that she cared?

The thought that she didn’t love him after all crashed down like a landslide, and for a long moment, he couldn’t breathe. Joss wasn’t a man who prayed much, but faced with her closed expression, he found himself praying that he misunderstood her reaction.

She avoided his eyes and folded her arms across her lovely bosom in an obviously protective gesture. What in Hades did she need to protect herself from? Surely not him. Good God, he was ready to pledge his life to cherishing her.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he said urgently.

The ragged demand made him wince. An hour—ten minutes—ago, he’d have said they were so close, he knew everything in her head and heart.

Now she was a stranger.

She regarded him with the wariness he hadn’t seen since he’d arrived. He hated it. He’d believed she trusted him. Hell, she’d come to his bed. What greater statement of trust could she make?

Apart from promising him the rest of her life. And from what he could see, that asked far too much.

“I’m grateful for your offer,” she said in a flat voice.

“Grateful?” Baffled rage surged. What the devil was going on? “What blasted sort of namby-pamby response is that to a fellow’s proposal?”

She flinched from his tone. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Have to? What’s going on?” He frowned. “I want to marry you, by heaven.”

The familiar obstinacy settled on her features. He’d seen it during their first days together, when she’d battled to keep him at a distance.

Well, he’d demolished it before. He could demolish it again. But beneath his bravado lurked desolation.

It was so clear that they belonged together. Why in blazes couldn’t she see that, too?

“It’s not suitable.” She drew herself up, looking as proud as a queen. “I’m a servant.”

A servant? God give him strength. He couldn’t imagine a woman looking less like a servant. “Devil take you, of course it’s suitable,” he snapped.

“Stop shouting at me.”

Joss wasn’t exactly shouting, but he knew he was acting like a bear instead of a suitor. He struggled to moderate his tone. It was difficult when this meant so damned much—she meant so damned much—and she spouted such arrant nonsense.

“I’m sorry.” But not as sorry as he was that she hadn’t said yes, blast it.

“I don’t have to marry you,” she said with a hint of truculence.

Joss subjected her to narrow-eyed attention. “No, you don’t.” Although God help them, if he’d put a baby inside her, she bloody well did. “Forgive me if I mistook your feelings, but I hoped you might want to marry me.”

She continued to avoid his eyes. That suddenly struck him as a good sign. The first good sign since his impetuous proposal.

“We’ve only known each other a couple of days.” In a dance of distress, those slender hands twined and untwined at her waist. “We’re not far off strangers.”

“Piffle,” he spat out.

His uncompromising response had her raising surprised eyes to his. He stepped close enough to loom over her. His inconvenient size intimidated most men, but gallant Maggie Carr squared her shoulders and glared. If only she knew how that defiance made her his perfect bride in a way that transcended issues of status or fortune.

His heart crashed against his ribs as he recalled how perfectly they’d fitted together when he’d thrust inside her. She was a fool to deny that they were fated to be together.

He went on before she could muster another argument. “If we’re strangers, what the hell do you mean by giving yourself to me?”

The delicate jaw set firmer. “You’re still shouting.”

“No, I’m not.” But he paused to run his hand through his hair and suck in an impatient breath. And his voice was marginally quieter when he continued. “Maggie, don’t you want to marry me?”

Her lashes fluttered down, and for the first time, he saw the misery beneath her refusal. Hope stirred. Perhaps his case wasn’t as lost as he thought. Curse him for an impulsive idiot. He should have known he’d need more than a romantic setting to convince this superb woman to accept him.

But he’d been so sure of her. Too sure. He wouldn’t make that error again.

“It would be wrong.”

With a gentleness he should have enlisted from the first, he took her hand. She started without pulling away. Odd that after the many ways he’d touched her tonight, this simple, seemingly innocent contact should seem the most significant. “Come and sit beside me, sweet Maggie.”

She still refused to look at him, although her fingers twined around his with a desperation as revealing as her reluctance to admit she didn’t want him. “You’ll try to talk me around.”

Despite the fraught moment, he couldn’t contain a wry smile. “Of course.”

“And you think I won’t be able to resist you.”

“I hope,” he said, and meant it.

“Just because I slept with you, it doesn’t mean you’ll always get your way.”

He drew her across to a chaise longue and brought her down beside him. “Please make an honest man of me.”

“Don’t joke,” she said in a choked voice.

“I’m not.” He paused. “Or only a little. Please marry me, Maggie.”

Her hold tightened around his hand. “I can’t.” Her voice was so low, he had to lean forward to hear her.

“Yes, you can.”

At last she turned a stark azure gaze on him. “Then, I won’t.”

Despair crashed through him at the certainty in her voice. This made no sense. He could have sworn she’d found those moments in his arms as transcendent as he had. “Damn it, my darling, did I do something wrong?”

She frowned. “Of course not.”

It wasn’t enough. But it was something. “Then why won’t you have me?”

Maggie pulled away and stood to face him. He read her pride and her strength. And cursed the possibility that, despite all his advantages, he mightn’t prevail.

“You’re a man of principle, Joss.”

“I’d like to think so.” Although he hadn’t acted like an honorable man tonight.

“A man of principle doesn’t run around, deflowering virgins.”

“I did tonight,” he said uncomfortably.

“And now you’re offering to restore my reputation in the time-honored way.”

He must be bloody slow, because it took him a second to understand what she meant. “What the devil?” Genuinely angry, he surged to his feet. “Do you think I’m offering for you, purely for convention’s sake?”

As he should have expected, the rage of a six-foot-three brute who must outweigh her twofold didn’t send her into retreat. Instead she leveled an unimpressed stare upon him. “Aren’t you?”

His hands opened and closed at his sides, as he fought the urge to shake some sense into her. “No, I bloody am not. Didn’t you hear what I said? I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

 A declaration of love rushed to his lips. But her withering glance killed the words stone dead before he spoke them.

“You’re being kind,” she said stubbornly.

“I’m not kind,” he snarled.

To his surprise, a hint of a smile softened the austere line of her lips. “Of course you are, Joss. You’re the kindest person I’ve ever met.”

The compliment didn’t please him. Not when she was using it against him.

He spread his hands. “Maggie, don’t let your pride consign you to a lonely life.” He paused. “And you could be carrying my child. I wasn’t as careful as I might have been.” He’d been so drunk on pleasure, he hadn’t thought about trying to protect her from pregnancy until it was too late.

In an age-old gesture, her hand crept to cover her belly, and for a fleeting instant, she didn’t look like some warrior goddess condemning a mere mortal to eternal banishment. She looked like a young girl facing an uncertain future. “I mightn’t be.”

“Not good enough.” The glance he shot her was a match for any uncompromising attitude she could summon. “I will not have a child of mine born a bastard. You can put aside any noble thoughts of letting me escape the consequences of my acts.”

“I’m not being noble,” she said, and her voice cracked.

“Neither am I,” he said brusquely.

To his horror, tears glittered in her lovely eyes.

“Don’t cry, Maggie. For God’s sake, don’t cry.” He reached out, but let his hands drop back to his sides when he saw how distraught she looked. “Would it really be too horrible to marry me? I thought you liked me.”

Her lip trembled. “Of course I do.”

“Then why?” he asked in bewilderment. “Did I frighten you when we came together? I can be a careless brute, I know. But I promise to do better.”

Her tears spilled over and trickled down her pale cheeks. “You didn’t frighten me. You’re wonderful.”

“So wonderful you won’t have a bar of me.” The air he drew into his lungs tasted as bitter as vinegar. “Instead you want to stay here in this wilderness and forget you ever knew poor lovelorn Josiah Hale.”

At last he dared to mention love, but he couldn’t blame her for missing it in the rest of what he said. He’d meant to tell her, once he’d asked her to marry him. But everything had gone wrong after the proposal, and his declaration had shriveled away into silence.

“Oh, Joss,” she said on a broken sigh. “You know that’s not true.”

Sick with wretchedness, he turned away. He’d sworn to make her happy, yet every word he spoke wounded her more deeply. He was a blasted lumbering clodpoll. No wonder she didn’t want him. “I only know the girl I long to marry won’t have me.”

He stared into the fire and struggled to imagine a future without Maggie at its center. The devil of it was that shouldn’t be so difficult. A week ago, he hadn’t known she existed. Going on without her shouldn’t feel like someone bashed him with a club.

But that was how it did feel. Worse.

Mere hours ago, he’d found the will to leave her. But since then, he’d taken her innocence and made a commitment to her in his soul. A commitment that felt stronger than steel.

“If I’m not pregnant, nobody need ever know we came together,” she said in a reedy voice.

He cleared his throat. Humiliating how one small woman had the power to vanquish him. “I told you I want you. I’m not doing this because I should, but because I can’t live without you.”

Another bristling silence, before he heard a faltering step behind him. “Is that true?”

He didn’t dare turn around, although he sensed she was close behind him. “Of course it’s bloody true.”

“If it isn’t true, I’ll never forgive you.”

Slowly he turned to face her. She was still crying, which made him want to smash something. “Maggie?”

“Because…” She sucked in a shuddering breath, then spoke in a rush. “Because if you’re marrying me out of duty, I couldn’t bear it. I love you too much to endure your pity.”

He stared into her lovely face and tried to make sense of what he heard. “What did you say?”

She squared her shoulders as she gathered her courage. The stance was familiar. Just so had she greeted him when he’d stumbled into the house—and his destiny—out of a snowstorm. “I said I don’t want your pity.”

He gave a derisive snort. “As if I’d pity you. You’re magnificent.”

She frowned in puzzlement. “Thank you,” she said, not sounding very sure.

“Anyway, not that bit. The other bit.” He stepped within touching distance, and this time he let his hands curl around her slender arms in their loose flannel sleeves. She started at the contact, but didn’t move away, thank the Lord. “The bit about loving me.”

She had such an expressive face. Joss watched fear and vulnerability chase each other across her features, before the valor so essential to her nature took over. “Of course I love you. But that doesn’t mean you owe me anything.”

It was his turn to frown, even as his heart performed elated cartwheels. She loved him? How could he lose? “You ask too little of life.”

“Life has taught me not to expect much.”

“So when happiness comes knocking, you send it away?”

“I said you make me happy.”

“For one night, not for a lifetime.”

Shock darkened her blue eyes. “I thought you meant to stay with me over Christmas.”

“I do,” he said seriously. “And past that, for every Christmas the good Lord allows us.”

She trembled in his hold. “But only because you think you have to.”

“I do have to,” he said urgently, and watched despair darken her gaze. “Haven’t you been listening? You’re the woman I want as my wife. I’ve never met anyone like you. I’ve never felt the way I have in the last days. If you make me leave you behind when I ride out of this valley, you’re sentencing both of us to a lifetime of heartbreak.”

She studied his face as though it was a textbook, and she had a big examination to sit tomorrow. “Joss, I’m not the bride you should choose.”

He released one arm and cupped her cheek with the tenderness she always aroused in his heart. “Should has nothing to do with it. You were meant for me, and I was meant for you. Don’t make me go on without you.”

She kept staring at him, her eyes seeking the answer to some profound question. “Do you mean that?”

Solemnly, he nodded. “With all my soul.”

Maggie bit her lip, and he barely resisted the impulse to kiss her. But this fight wasn’t about passion, but gaining a commitment from her gallant heart.

“And do you think one day you might love me?” she asked in a small voice.

What a bloody numskull he was. He’d told Maggie everything, except the most important thing of all. No wonder she still hovered on the brink of saying she’d take him. Because she was so close to saying yes. He sensed it in the way her body softened and tilted forward. As if the space between them, however narrow, pained her as much as it pained him.

He slid his arms about her. “My darling, don’t you know I love you?”

She pushed back against his hold, just as he prepared for her surrender. “No, I don’t,” she said with a hint of acerbity.

His laugh held a note of exultation. She was a delight, his Maggie. “You damn well should.” His voice deepened into ardor. “I love you. I loved you when I first saw you, although being the blockhead I am, I confused love and lust. It took me far too long to see that I’d found the woman I want for all time, not just for Christmas.”

The tension eased from her features, and her eyes lit with what he frantically hoped was happiness. “It didn’t take you that long. A few days.”

“A few days can change the path of a lifetime. By the time I came back to you tonight, I was in no doubt that I’ll love you until the day I die.”

Her luscious mouth curved up in a radiant smile. “That’s a very nice declaration, Joss.”

“I thought my declaration when you first came in was very nice, too.”

“It was.” She slid her hands up his chest and linked them behind his neck. “But this one was nicer.”

Dear God, if he didn’t kiss her soon, he’d explode. But he hadn’t quite got what he wanted from her. “Nice enough for you to say yes?”

She studied him as if still trying to pierce through to all his secrets. Renewed fear sliced through him, sharp as a knife. Could he fail even now, when they’d both declared their love and surely only a happy ending awaited?

His grip firmed on her waist. “Maggie, please say you’ll have me. You’ll break both of our hearts if you don’t. I swear I’ll be a good husband. You’ll never regret marrying me. I love you. You love me. We’re better together than we ever were apart. Don’t condemn me to eternal torment because you’ve got some bee in your bonnet about being a servant. I don’t give a rat’s arse about that. Hell, I work for my living. I’ve got nothing but admiration for how you faced up to your difficult circumstances and made the best of them. That’s the girl I want to marry. Someone who will be a true partner. Not some pampered princess who sits around on a cushion all day, waiting to be adored.” His voice broke with emotion. “Maggie, please say yes. I’m not a man for romantic words, but you must know how much I need you.”

Her stare didn’t waver. He had no idea what thoughts lay behind those clear blue eyes.

“Please?” he said unsteadily.

“I think…I think you really do love me,” she said in a tone of discovery.

He couldn’t resist anymore. He kissed her hard, but broke away before the kiss deepened into passion. “Of course I bloody do. Haven’t you been paying attention?”

“Indeed I have.” To his surprise, humor lightened her expression. “And you’re wrong, you know.”

He groaned. “What else must I do to convince you? I’ll do anything.”

To his surprise, she caressed the back of his neck. “Oh, I’m convinced, Joss.”

“Then what is it?” He was too close to the edge to take her statement for granted.

“I can’t agree with your claim that you have no gift for words. Nobody could fault this most recent effort.”

He was so close to despair that he didn’t trust what he thought he heard. Although the girl in his hold looked more like the ardent creature who had yielded with such sweetness than she had since his proposal. “But did it work? Will you marry me?”

She rose on her toes and kissed him on the lips with the same ruthless possessiveness he’d shown her. “Oh, yes.”

He stared down at her, as disbelief faded into boundless joy. “Soon?”

“Yes.”

“And you love me?”

“Yes.” As emotion thickened her voice, she trembled in his arms. “More than I ever imagined it was possible to love anyone.”

He stared into her eyes and accepted it at last. This Christmas brought him a gift more precious than he deserved. He vowed to cherish that gift until the day he died.

“Well, that’s good, then,” he said, and this time, their kiss was long and passionate and said everything in their hearts.

When he raised his head, Maggie’s eyes were so brilliant, he was dazzled. With a ringing laugh, he swung her up into his arms and strode toward the door.

“Joss!” she said, in what he was sure was meant to be a protest, but instead sounded like another declaration of love.

“It’s time for all good girls to be in bed, my darling.”

“And what about all good boys?”

He kissed her quickly and lowered his voice to a growl. “Oh, my love, once I get you back into bed, I intend to be very good indeed.”