Page 41 of Meet A Rogue At Midnight
“Muddle through?”
Jonas’s little speech had all the ardor of a limp vegetable. Who was this man standing before her with all his talk of family responsibility and income? Mrs. Bainbridge’s words of wisdom blended with her mother’s. An arrangement with a man was cold comfort. Jonas was doing his duty and giving her the promise of a comfortable life.
He wasn’t giving her his heart.
She opened the tower door. Her limbs numbed as if she’d slept oddly on them. Nothing worked properly, certainly not the man in front of her. Jonas tugged his cravat as if it were Tyburn’s noose.
No! No! No!
This wasn’t happening.
The back doors of the drawing room opened. Mr. Haggerty stepped outside, facing the tower and shading his eyes. In a way, the man waiting for her by the drawing room was willing to give her more than her friend of many years. It was heart-aching. Demoralizing.
“Thank you for your kind offer, but I cannot accept.” She faced Jonas, pained to the soles of her feet.
His jaw dropped. “Livvy?”
Jonas blanched. The blankness in his eyes searching her…he was empty. Hollow.
The numbness faded, replaced by discomfort. Everywhere. Her stomach churned. She wanted to cast up her accounts. Hand on her midsection, she pressed her stomacher.
“You don’t have to work on the chair,” she mumbled.
“Bugger the chair.” He took a step toward her and stopped when she took a step back.
Clarity was bright as the blinding winter sun. She knew what she wanted and she’d not settle for anything less.
“All these years, I didn’t know what I’ve been waiting for. But now I do,” she said, her voice growing steadier with each word. “It was you. Not some business arrangement or a man to choose me out of a sense ofdutyandresponsibility. It was you I’ve wanted.”
Head shaking and arms spread wide, he said, “I cannot be more here than this.”
Jonas glowered at her, his black brows snapping in a fierce show of emotion. At least he showed anger well. She’d take it if it meant getting the rest of him. All of him. It was his love, his heart she wanted.
“I don’t know what else to do, what else to give.” His arms flopped to his sides.
Her fist clenched on her breast bone, a tremor edging her voice. “There’s only one thing I want from you, but you…I…”
She searched his eyes unable to finish. Then, quietly, proudly, she walked away.
Chapter Ten
Jonas tossed hislaundry into the sea chest. Cambric shirts tangled with neck cloths which twined with stockings and breeches. He kicked the chest against the wall. It slid across the floor and banged into the wall supporting the window, the same window Livvy Halsey had climbed in and out of his bedchamber.
“Bloody sea chest,” he mumbled and lifted the lid.
“Bad day at the Halseys?” The Captain shuffled inside and his rump dropped into the winged chair by the fire.
“No.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
“No.”
Jonas rearranged the clothes, but it was all for naught. He added more chaos than order. From his crouch in front of the sea chest, he took a good look at the Captain. The lines on the old man’s face, the snowy hair peeking out of his night cap, the spindly ankles above his shoes. His grandfather sniffed and dabbed a handkerchief to his nose. He nursed his annual winter ailment, a mild fever with the sniffles. It came every winter when Jonas was a boy. The Captain would wear his banyan and nurse himself with beef tea, spending a day or two abed.
Holding on to the sea chest, Jonas’s heart cracked. His grandfather had been his rock, but the Captain, who was always old, was getting older. The finality of it hit him in the same place on his chest where Livvy had fisted her hand on her breast bone. Life’s threads were fragile.
Apparently, the thread between him and Livvy Halsey was fragile, too. He’d believed differently. Facing her had scared him, so too had her rejection. Emotion slid like quicksilver through his veins. His blood boiled worse than when he faced down real pirates.
