He knew what she’d say before she spoke.
“Jonas, I can’t.” Her voice was husky with tears. She made a less emphatic and equally futile attempt to break free.
“Of course you can.” She wasn’t eager to leave him. He couldn’t have mistaken the situation so badly. For God’s sake, she’d just been crying as if her heart broke. He reared up on one elbow to study her. The weak daylight filtering into the room illuminated her face. She looked sad and defeated.
She turned to him and once more he tumbled into fathoms of brown. Nobody looked at him the way Sidonie did. Thank God she’d dragged him kicking and screaming to abandon the blindfold. His heart constricted as he recalled staring into her eyes when he moved inside her. He’d floated in eternity. It was unbearable to think he’d never again experience that ineffable connection.
“You said it yourself. I have a mere week of freedom. If I’m late back, I’ll be found out.”
He frowned and brought their linked hands to his lips. He kissed the erratic pulse at her wrist. “Would that be so bad?”
“I don’t want people calling me a whore.” Her slender throat moved as she swallowed. “I won’t miss you less for the sake of another day in your arms.”
With her departure breathing down his neck, the confession didn’t mollify. He leaned over her as if sheer physical presence could change her mind. His voice emerged as a growl. “I’m not talking about one more day, Sidonie.”
Her mouth constricted with unhappiness as she touched his scarred cheek with one of those caresses that always pierced his heart. “Another two days. Three. A week. It’s only putting off the inevitable.”
Jonas sucked in a breath, knowing how recklessly he was about to dare fate. “You could stay forever.”
She flinched as if he’d hit her. “Jonas…” She lowered her hand and clenched it against the sheets. “It’s impossible.”
“Why?”
Her lips twisted in a bitter smile. “I’m at heart a conventional creature. Think of the scandal if the world discovered you kept Lady Hillbrook’s sister as your mistress.”
He sucked in another breath and steeled himself to say what he should have said first. “Then, hell, marry me.”
Shock flooded Sidonie. Shock, dismay, denial, and a lurking, unforgivable gratification. She stared into Jonas’s face, wondering if he’d run mad. “M-marry you? But you don’t know if I’m going to have a baby yet.”
“That’s not why I’m asking you.” He shifted up against the headboard and stared down at her with a light in his eyes she’d never seen before. “Think about it, Sidonie. Why shouldn’t we marry?”
“Because—” Her voice faded. At last she wrenched her hand free. And immediately missed the connection.
His mouth quirked with derision. “That’s a good reason.”
She rose to her knees so their eyes were level. She was achingly conscious of their nakedness, but it seemed too missish to raise the sheet, given the night just passed. “You can’t be serious.”
A muscle flickered in his cheek, proof that this astonishing conversation wasn’t a momentary whim. “I’m unencumbered with a wife. You’re unencumbered with a husband. There’s no legal impediment.”
Her lips flattened in distress. “There’s more than legalities to consider and you know it.”
“On your admission, you’re not happy with Roberta and William.” He paused while a discomfited expression darkened his face. “I’m one of the richest men in the kingdom. Perhaps that compensates for my personal deficiencies.”
His self-denigration hurt her. She didn’t care about his money. She only cared about him. Much good it did her.
“Don’t be a fool. You know I—”
Even as they demanded to be spoken, she bit back words that committed her to a lifetime with him. She was astonished that her first reaction to his proposal wasn’t a categorical refusal. The plan never to marry had been one of the pillars of her existence for as long as she’d comprehended the unequal relations between husbands and wives. Jonas had taken a mere week—admittedly a passionate, emotional, life-changing week—to bring her to a point where the idea of marriage was no longer anathema. Of all the changes he’d wrought in her, coaxing her from innocent girl to sensual woman, making her see the world in much wider terms than she ever had before, this was the greatest.
But marriage still meant voluntarily placing herself in someone else’s power for the rest of her life. Even as the desire to accept his proposal bubbled up inside her, she adjured caution. She’d known him a mere week. She needed to solve Roberta’s dilemma before she revealed the truth of his origins to Jonas and perhaps, perhaps, agreed to become his wife. Not to mention the possibility that when he realized she’d been hiding such significant information, he mightn’t want to marry her anymore.
Nerves made her voice shake. “You know I want yo
u. Any woman would be lucky to have you.”
The disbelieving look he cast her struck her bruised heart like a blow. “Any woman who could stomach a troll.”
Anger spurred courage. She straightened and took his face firmly between her palms. “You’re the best man I know.”