Page 94 of Heiress Gone Wild

That all sounded grand, but Marjorie feared the reality wouldn’t be quite so romantic. “What you’re saying is that we’ll be living like rich wanderers instead of poor ones. What about children? What are we to do with them? Stick them in a school somewhere and leave them there?”

He actually had the nerve to smile. “I think we can afford a nanny to come with us, don’t you?”

“Don’t laugh at me!” she cried, jerking her shoulders, wrenching free of his hold. “Don’t you dare laugh at me.”

His smile vanished at once, and his expression became tender, tearing at her heart. “I’m not. But I do wish you’d get this idea that we’ll be homeless vagrants out of your head, because that’s not how it would be at all.”

“Why? Because you bought a house? I can’t think why you bothered if your plan is for us to live in hotels?”

“Because that’s not my plan. We’ll travel, yes, but...” He paused and spread his arms. “We’ll always come home.”

“And when,” she choked, “would all this world traveling begin?”

“Well, for you, I thought we could start with a honeymoon. For me, however...” He paused a fraction of a second. “I have to leave this evening.”

“Tonight?” She stared at him, unable to believe what she was hearing.

“I have to go to Gibraltar. Kayne set up a meeting about moorings there,” he added, speaking quickly, as if sensing her shock and hoping to diffuse it. “He was supposed to go, but since I’m involved now and handling the moorings shall be one of my primary responsibilities, we agreed I should go. My ship sails at five o’clock.”

“You’re leaving.” Even as she said it again, she still couldn’t quite believe it. She couldn’t believe that he could present her with such a perfect, beautiful life and then immediately abandon it. “You canceled your trip to South Africa, only to replace it with one to Gibraltar.”

“This won’t be for long. Just one month.”

As if the amount of time mattered. “You knew yesterday you were leaving. You knew this new venture would take you all over the world. You knew, and you didn’t tell me.”

“I intended to tell you today,” he muttered. “I had it all planned. That’s what I was talking about when I told you at the ball that I knew you’d need time to decide if I was the man for you. Remember? I told you I’d wait for you to be sure, and that while I waited, I’d be building a life for us. I thought while I’m away, you’d consider what I’m doing, and that when I got back, we’d talk it over, perhaps find a way to make it all work. But then, you came to my room—”

“So, why didn’t you tell me then?” she demanded, stepping back from him, feeling misled and manipulated. “Before I told you I loved you, before I shamelessly threw myself at you and gave myself to you, you could have told me all this, but you didn’t.”

His gaze slid away, the glimmer of a guilty conscience. “I was going to tell you, but then you started taking your clothes off, and I...” He paused, met her eyes again, and sighed. “I lost my head.”

She stared back at him, aghast. “Last night, you persuaded me to marry you, knowing this. You pushed me to agree, never saying a word—”

“You came to me last night. I didn’t come to you. Hell, I’ve been doing my damnedest to avoid what happened last night. Forgive me if I just couldn’t fight it anymore. Would you have preferred that I lie with you without wanting or expecting marriage? Would that make me more honorable in your eyes, or less?”

He stepped closer, closing the distance she’d put between them, gold glints sparking in his hazel eyes, glints not of desire, but of frustration and anger. “Did it ever occur to you that my heart was on the table last night? Did you consider what it would have done to me if I bedded you only to find out afterward you didn’t love me or that you wouldn’t agree to marry me and share my life? I’ll tell you what it would have done. It would have broken my heart.”

Still reeling from shock, still feeling deceived, Marjorie couldn’t find it within herself to worry much about his heart just now. “So, better to avoid telling me the truth until afterward, and risk that my heart will be the one broken?”

“Your heart isn’t broken, and by God, you’re working damned hard to make sure it never will be. That’s what this is about. You’re afraid of the day when I go off without you, as if that’s fated and inevitable.”

“Given everything I know about you, it’s a likely possibility.”

“No, it’s not. You know why? Because I am not like your damned father. I will not leave you.” He gripped her arms again, ducking his head to look into her eyes when she tried to look away. “I will never leave you.”

“You are leaving me! You’re leaving me tonight.”

“But I will be back in a month.”

“How long before it’s two months, or six, or a year?”

“Or never, like your father, you mean? You will just have to trust me. What I want to know,” he continued, ignoring her derisive snort, “is how long before you stop thinking you’re like your mother?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Your mother may have sat home and cried, but you don’t have to, because you’re not her. You are the girl who was going to follow her father and take photographs of the Wild West. The girl who, when her first dream was scrapped, made another and decided to move to another country, one she’d never been to in her life. The girl who hopped aboard a ship and followed me across the ocean without a second thought. The girl who was jumping up and down with excitement when she saw a field camera in a shop window.”

She shook her head, clamping her hands over her ears. “I don’t want to hear this,” she cried with a sob, fear clawing at her.

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