Page 79 of Heiress Gone Wild

She didn’t reply, and when he cupped her cheek, she stiffened, his touch threatening to shatter her resolve.

“I will come back,” he said.

“When?” she asked, trying to harden herself against him, for she wasn’t about to let the abandonment and loneliness of her past become her future. “In eight months? Ten years? Someday?”

“All right, then. Let’s make this simple.” He let her go, his hands falling to his sides. “I won’t go. I’ll find an envoy to go in my stead, and I’ll stay here.”

Oddly enough, instead of assuaging her apprehensions, that suggestion intensified them. “Even if you did stay, what then? If we marry, how would it be? How long before society starts to bore you, and you’re tired of it all, and you want to move on? What then? I’ll be stuck, waiting, wondering when you’ll come back from wherever you’ve gone off to. I watched my father do that to my mother plenty of times. I heard him make the same promises to her that he later made to me.”

“But I am not him,” he said, his voice so tender, it almost dissolved her composure. “And it wouldn’t have to be like that for us. If I do want to go off and roam a little, there’s nothing that says you’d have to stay behind. You could come with me.”

“And do what?” she cried. “Hole up for a year or two or three in a mining cabin in Idaho or a beach hut in Florida or a shack beside a South Africa shale field?”

“I think we could afford better accommodations than that.”

“That’s not the point, and you know it. You told me that you live the way you do because you’re searching for something to replace what you lost. But I have no intention of wandering across the globe with you while you keep looking for it. And what if you never do? I don’t want the sort of aimless life you live, and I certainly don’t want it for my children.”

“Marjorie,” he began, but she shook her head, refusing to listen to some description of how exciting it would be to go off with him to parts unknown and explore the world.

“No, Jonathan. I told you what I want the very first day we met. I’ve been sheltered and secluded most of my life, I know, but I have a new life now, a life of company and society, and I’ve only just begun to enjoy it. I haven’t come out, or had suitors, or even been to a ball. I’m not ready to marry anyone and, as you said yourself two months ago, I have plenty of time. I shall take that time to find the right man for me.”

Her voice was shaking as she spoke, from fear and doubt and the frustration of feeling forced to a choice that she knew would be unbearable to live with. “The right man will be able to court me honorably, demonstrating that he can be not only my lover, but also my friend, my companion, and my partner forever. That man will have a firm grasp on what he wants from life and a clear vision for the future and be glad to put down roots and make a home. We both know that man is not you.”

Her voice wobbled on the last word, the last vestiges of her self-control dissolving, and she knew she had to finish this before she started to cry. She’d cried in front of him last night, precipitating this whole mess. She had no intention of doing that again.

She swallowed hard, marshaling all her self-control. “I’m sorry, Jonathan, but my answer is no.”

She started to move around him, but he stepped in front of her, blocking her path. “There must be some sort of middle ground here. God, Marjorie,” he choked when she didn’t respond, “is there no place for us? Is there no way to carve out a life that would suit us both?”

She felt an irrational burst of longing and hope, but she snuffed them out. “I don’t think so.”

He still didn’t move. “I do.”

She began to shake inside, feeling desperate. “I’ve given you my answer. Now, please let me go.”

“All right,” he said quietly, moving aside to let her pass.

She did so, practically running for the door, but as she opened it, his voice called back to her.

“I’m not giving up. I want you too much to give up.”

She ignored that and walked out, head high, but if she thought she was achieving any sort of escape, she was mistaken, for as she raced down the corridor and up the stairs to her room, his words came back to her.

I want you. I feel for you a deep and passionate desire.

She shut her bedroom door behind her, trying to shut him out, but it was useless.

I’m not giving up. I want you too much to give up.

With his words still ringing in her ears, she couldn’t help thinking back to that day in White Plains, and what her most important goal back then had been. She’d wanted, more than anything, to be wanted.

It seemed she’d gotten her wish.

Marjorie sank down on the edge of her bed and burst into tears.

Had Jonathan been inclined to ask his sisters for their opinion regarding his proposal to Marjorie, he knew what they would have said. They’d have pointed out that his request for her hand had not been a request at all, that it had been intemperate, ill-considered, and cavalier, and they would have deemed her refusal just what he deserved.

And they’d have been right.

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