The bed had become an unexpected battlefield between them; they faced each other across the vast expanse of its rumpled sheets.
“I’m just being realistic.” Her tone was both irritated and resigned. “You’re going to find a wife who doesn’t mind being left behind, and that’s definitely not me. I feel like my own life’s justbeginning. For the first time in years, I’m excited about my future. If Father’s eyesight improves, I can make plans I never dared to consider before. I can start having adventures of my own.”
Her eyes were soft, begging him to understand, and his gut tightened in reluctant sympathy. He knew that yearning feeling precisely.
“One night wasn’t enough,” he said, trying to keep his voice level.
She swallowed, clearly digesting that idea, and his spirits rose, but then she tilted her head and sent him a scornful look.
“So what do you suggest? That we keep doing this for another few weeks until you’re married? Because I won’t be any man’s mistress, Morgan. I won’t sleep with another woman’s husband.”
“You don’t have to,” he said crossly. “You can marry me.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Marry me.
Morgan could have kicked himself for such a graceless proposal.Idiot!A woman wanted to be asked, not told.
Harriet’s expression was one of utter shock. He held his breath, waiting for her reaction. It was the same sensation of weightless dread as hearing the boom of an enemy cannon, of seeing the puff of smoke, and then waiting for the whistle of an incoming cannonball that might or might not kill you.
As always, Harriet did the unexpected. She placed her hands on her slim, silk-clad hips and frowned at him.
“Marry you? Are youmad?” She shook her head as if to dislodge a cobweb from her hair. “You’re not serious.”
Bollocks.He was cocking this up. He should be down on one knee, begging, not blurting it out across a messy counterpane in only his breeches. He held her stare, silently willing her to believe him.
“I’m perfectly serious. I want to marry you. I love you.”
Those magic words did not have the effect he’d intended. Her brows lowered in furious disbelief.
“No, youdesireme. It’s not the same at all. It’s a temporary aberration from which you’ll recover very soon.”
He flexed his fingers in frustration.
“That’s not true. I won’t deny that I desire you physically.” He gestured angrily at the still-hard rod in the front of his breeches and gained a moment’s satisfaction from the way her eyes widened in belated realization of his state. “I’ve wanted you since I was sixteen years old. But there’s more to it than that. Wesuit, Harriet. In all the ways that count.”
“Is this some kind of joke? To tease me because I won the race?”
“Of course not! I love you.”
“Stop saying that!” She was almost shouting. “You don’t love me. You lovetormentingme. You love beating me in our stupid games and this is just another game to you. Well, I don’t want to play anymore. You win. You wanted me in your bed, as a conquest? You’ve had me. You wanted me to wantyou? I do! Against my better judgment. Against all good sense.”
She stopped, panting, her cheeks flaming as she realized how much she’d admitted. But the bed stretched like a gulf between them. The ridges of the fabric might as well have been an actual mountain range, such was the distance.
“Then what’s the problem?” he growled. “I want you, and you want me. Why shouldn’t we get married? And don’t give me that ‘Davieses and Montgomerys are sworn enemies’ rubbish, because we both know that has nothing to do with it.”
“You’re in the navy,” she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“So?”
“So I want someone to share my life with, a partner, a friend. Someone who’s there to hold me in his arms at night and tease me beyond reason during the day.”
“I’m leaving the navy. Resigning my commission.”
“That’s a terrible idea. Iknowyou, Morgan. You need constant challenges, new worlds to conquer. You’ll be bored within weeks.”
“I’ll never get bored with you. I love you. How can I prove it?”
