Her lashes fluttered down, and for the first time, he saw the misery beneath her refusal. Hope stirred. Perhaps his case wasn’t as lost as he thought. Curse him for an impulsive idiot. He should have known he’d need more than a romantic setting to convince this superb woman to accept him.
But he’d been so sure of her. Too sure. He wouldn’t make that error again.
“It would be wrong.”
With a gentleness he should have enlisted from the first, he took her hand. She started without pulling away. Odd that after the many ways he’d touched her tonight, this simple, seemingly innocent contact should seem the most significant. “Come and sit beside me, sweet Maggie.”
She still refused to look at him, although her fingers twined around his with a desperation as revealing as her reluctance to admit she didn’t want him. “You’ll try to talk me around.”
Despite the fraught moment, he couldn’t contain a wry smile. “Of course.”
“And you think I won’t be able to resist you.”
“I hope,” he said, and meant it.
“Just because I slept with you, it doesn’t mean you’ll always get your way.”
He drew her across to a chaise longue and brought her down beside him. “Please make an honest man of me.”
“Don’t joke,” she said in a choked voice.
“I’m not.” He paused. “Or only a little. Please marry me, Maggie.”
Her hold tightened around his hand. “I can’t.” Her voice was so low, he had to lean forward to hear her.
“Yes, you can.”
At last she turned a stark azure gaze on him. “Then, I won’t.”
Despair crashed through him at the certainty in her voice. This made no sense. He could have sworn she’d found those moments in his arms as transcendent as he had. “Damn it, my darling, did I do something wrong?”
She frowned. “Of course not.”
It wasn’t enough. But it was something. “Then why won’t you have me?”
Maggie pulled away and stood to face him. He read her pride and her strength. And cursed the possibility that, despite all his advantages, he mightn’t prevail.
“You’re a man of principle, Joss.”
“I’d like to think so.” Although he hadn’t acted like an honorable man tonight.
“A man of principle doesn’t run around, deflowering virgins.”
“I did tonight,” he said uncomfortably.
“And now you’re offering to restore my reputation in the time-honored way.”
He must be bloody slow, because it took him a second to understand what she meant. “What the devil?” Genuinely angry, he surged to his feet. “Do you think I’m offering for you, purely for convention’s sake?”
As he should have expected, the rage of a six-foot-three brute who must outweigh her twofold didn’t send her into retreat. Instead she leveled an unimpressed stare upon him. “Aren’t you?”
His hands opened and closed at his sides, as he fought the urge to shake some sense into her. “No, I bloody am not. Didn’t you hear what I said? I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
A declaration of love rushed to hi
s lips. But her withering glance killed the words stone dead before he spoke them.
“You’re being kind,” she said stubbornly.