At last he dared to mention love, but he couldn’t blame her for missing it in the rest of what he said. He’d meant to tell her, once he’d asked her to marry him. But everything had gone wrong after the proposal, and his declaration had shriveled away into silence.
“Oh, Joss,” she said on a broken sigh. “You know that’s not true.”
Sick with wretchedness, he turned away. He’d sworn to make her happy, yet every word he spoke wounded her more deeply. He was a blasted lumbering clodpoll. No wonder she didn’t want him. “I only know the girl I long to marry won’t have me.”
He stared into the fire and struggled to imagine a future without Maggie at its center. The devil of it was that shouldn’t be so difficult. A week ago, he hadn’t known she existed. Going on without her shouldn’t feel like someone bashed him with a club.
But that was how it did feel. Worse.
Mere hours ago, he’d found the will to leave her. But since then, he’d taken her innocence and made a commitment to her in his soul. A commitment that felt stronger than steel.
“If I’m not pregnant, nobody need ever know we came together,” she said in a reedy voice.
He cleared his throat. Humiliating how one small woman had the power to vanquish him. “I told you I want you. I’m not doing this because I should, but because I can’t live without you.”
Another bristling silence, before he heard a faltering step behind him. “Is that true?”
He didn’t dare turn around, although he sensed she was close behind him. “Of course it’s bloody true.”
“If it isn’t true, I’ll never forgive you.”
Slowly he turned to face her. She was still crying, which made him want to smash something. “Maggie?”
“Because…” She sucked in a shuddering breath, then spoke in a rush. “Because if you’re marrying me out of duty, I couldn’t bear it. I love you too much to endure your pity.”
He stared into her lovely face and tried to make sense of what he heard. “What did you say?”
She squared her shoulders as she gathered her courage. The stance was familiar. Just so had she greeted him when he’d stumbled into the house—and his destiny—out of a snowstorm. “I said I don’t want your pity.”
He gave a derisive snort. “As if I’d pity you. You’re magnificent.”
She frowned in puzzlement. “Thank you,” she said, not sounding very sure.
“Anyway, not that bit. The other bit.” He stepped within touching distance, and this time he let his hands curl around her slender arms in their loose flannel sleeves. She started at the contact, but didn’t move away, thank the Lord. “The bit about loving me.”
She had such an expressive face. Joss watched fear and vulnerability chase each other across her features, before the valor so essential to her nature took over. “Of course I love you. But that doesn’t mean you owe me anything.”
It was his turn to frown, even as his heart performed elated cartwheels. She loved him? How could he lose?
“You ask too little of life.”
“Life has taught me not to expect much.”
“So when happiness comes knocking, you send it away?”
“I said you make me happy.”
“For one night, not for a lifetime.”
Shock darkened her blue eyes. “I thought you meant to stay with me over Christmas.”
“I do,” he said seriously. “And past that, for every Christmas the good Lord allows us.”
She trembled in his hold. “But only because you think you have to.”
“I do have to,” he said urgently, and watched despair darken her gaze. “Haven’t you been listening? You’re the woman I want as my wife. I’ve never met anyone like you. I’ve never felt the way I have in the last days. If you make me leave you behind when I ride out of this valley, you’re sentencing both of us to a lifetime of heartbreak.”
She studied his face as though it was a textbook, and she had a big examination to sit tomorrow. “Joss, I’m not the bride you should choose.”
He released one arm and cupped her cheek with the tenderness she always aroused in his heart. “Should has nothing to do with it. You were meant for me, and I was meant for you. Don’t make me go on without you.”
She kept staring at him, her eyes seeking the answer to some profound question. “Do you mean that?”
Solemnly, he nodded. “With all my soul.”
Maggie bit her lip, and he barely resisted the impulse to kiss her. But this fight wasn’t about passion, but gaining a commitment from her gallant heart.
“And do you think one day you might love me?” she asked in a small voice.
What a bloody numskull he was. He’d told Maggie everything, except the most important thing of all. No wonder she still hovered on the brink of saying she’d take him. Because she was so close to saying yes. He sensed it in the way her body softened and tilted forward. As if the space between them, however narrow, pained her as much as it pained him.
He slid his arms about her. “My darling, don’t you know I love you?”
She pushed back against his hold, just as he prepared for her surrender. “No, I don’t,” she said with a hint of acerbity.
His laugh held a note of exultation. She was a delight, his Maggie.
“You damn well should.” His voice deepened into ardor. “I love you. I loved you when I first saw you, although being the blockhead I am, I confused love and lust. It took me far too long to see that I’d found the woman I want for all time, not just for Christmas.”
The tension eased from her features, and her eyes lit with what he frantically hoped was happiness. “It didn’t take you that long. A few days.”
“A few days can change the path of a lifetime. By the time I came back to you tonight, I was in no doubt that I’ll love you until the day I die.”
Her luscious mouth curved up in a radiant smile. “That’s a very nice declaration, Joss.”
“I thought my declaration when you first came in was very nice, too.”
“It was.” She slid her hands up his chest and linked them behind his neck. “But this one was nicer.”
Dear God, if he didn’t kiss her soon, he’d explode. But he hadn’t quite got what he wanted from her. “Nice enough for you to say yes?”
She studied him as if still trying to pierce through to all his secrets. Renewed fear sliced through him, sharp as a knife. Could he fail even now, when they’d both declared their love and surely only a happy ending awaited?
His grip firmed on her waist. “Maggie, please say you’ll have me. You’ll break both of our hearts if you don’t. I swear I’ll be a good husband. You’ll never regret marrying me. I love you. You love me. We’re better together than we ever were apart. Don’t condemn me to eternal torment because you’ve got some bee in your bonnet about being a servant. I don’t give a rat’s arse about that. Hell, I work for my living. I’ve got nothing but admiration for how you faced up to your difficult circumstances and made the best of them. That’s the girl I want to marry. Someone who will be a true partner. Not some pampered princess who sits around on a cushion all day, waiting to be adored.” His voice broke with emotion. “Maggie, please say yes. I’m not a man for romantic words, but you must know how much I need you.”
Her stare didn’t waver. He had no idea what thoughts lay behind those clear blue eyes.
“Please?” he said unsteadily.
“I think…I think you really do love me,” she said in a tone of discovery.
He couldn’t resist anymore. He kissed her hard, but broke away before the kiss deepened into passion. “Of course I bloody do. Haven’t you been paying attention?”
“Indeed I have.” To his surprise, humor lightened her expression. “And you’re wrong, you know.”
He groaned. “What else must I do to convince you? I’ll do anything.”
To his surprise, she caressed the back of his neck. “Oh, I’m convinced, Joss.”
“Then what is i
t?” He was too close to the edge to take her statement for granted.
“I can’t agree with your claim that you have no gift for words. Nobody could fault this most recent effort.”
He was so close to despair that he didn’t trust what he thought he heard. Although the girl in his hold looked more like the ardent creature who had yielded with such sweetness than she had since his proposal. “But did it work? Will you marry me?”
She rose on her toes and kissed him on the lips with the same ruthless possessiveness he’d shown her. “Oh, yes.”
He stared down at her, as disbelief faded into boundless joy. “Soon?”
“Yes.”
“And you love me?”
“Yes.” As emotion thickened her voice, she trembled in his arms. “More than I ever imagined it was possible to love anyone.”
He stared into her eyes and accepted it at last. This Christmas brought him a gift more precious than he deserved. He vowed to cherish that gift until the day he died.
“Well, that’s good, then,” he said, and this time, their kiss was long and passionate and said everything in their hearts.
When he raised his head, Maggie’s eyes were so brilliant, he was dazzled. With a ringing laugh, he swung her up into his arms and strode toward the door.
“Joss!” she said, in what he was sure was meant to be a protest, but instead sounded like another declaration of love.
“It’s time for all good girls to be in bed, my darling.”
“And what about all good boys?”
He kissed her quickly and lowered his voice to a growl. “Oh, my love, once I get you back into bed, I intend to be very good indeed.”
Epilogue
Thorncroft Hall, Yorkshire, 24th December 1826
Maggie Hale loved Christmas Eve almost as much as she loved Christmas Day, which in recent years had become a rambunctious, laughter-filled celebration of family love.
She paused at the top of the carved oak staircase and surveyed the bustling hall below, decorated with greenery and candles, and hung with mistletoe brought from the Hale family home in Sussex. In one corner, Joss’s brothers and sisters crowded around the piano singing carols. In another, the more senior members of the party, including Dr. Black, sat beside the fire, sharing reminiscences of Christmases past. In the center of the room, the older children, nieces and nephews and cousins, played snapdragon and other Christmas games. Their excited laughter rose to the rafters. The youngest children had been sent to bed an hour ago.
Joss’s tall, handsome father, an older, more grizzled version of Maggie’s husband, had joined the snapdragon game with a gusto that put his grandchildren to shame. She watched her old friend Jane come in, bearing a tray of cakes. Jane remained at Thorncroft Hall, but these days, her daughter and son-in-law augmented the household staff. With the addition of Jane’s four grandchildren as well, Thorncroft was no longer the lonely, echoing barn of a place it had been when only Jane and Maggie rattled around inside it.
The Thorncroft estate had changed, too, now containing a complex of elegant buildings. Instead of ordering changes to the manor, Dr. Black had built three new lodges to Joss’s design, out of sight of the main house. Perfect for an influx of guests like this.
This year, the Festive Season was special for so many reasons. Not least because this was the first Christmas that she and Joss spent where their love had begun.
They played host to their family and friends. During the past six months, Dr. Black had transferred ownership of the estate to Joss. Maggie became the chatelaine where for so many years, she’d been a servant.
The fact still had the power to astonish her.
Joss came up behind her and slid his arm around her waist. She’d known he was there before he touched her. They’d reached such a level of closeness that she could sense his presence from a couple of rooms away.
“Our daughter is a demanding chit,” he said, drawing Maggie back against him. She basked in the warmth of his big body, familiar and beloved.
“Arabella wouldn’t let you go without reading her a second story?” Their four-year-old girl was clever and pretty and imperious, and knew she had her papa twined around her little finger. Maggie remembered the wonder in Joss’s expression the first time he saw his newborn daughter. He’d been the little girl’s slave ever since.
“I’m lucky I escaped before midnight. And that might have put our private celebrations back an hour or two, my love.”
Anticipation heated her blood. She and Joss always marked the night they’d come together as their true anniversary, instead of Valentine’s Day when they’d married at his parish church in Sussex. Oh, how Maggie still thrilled to recall those winter nights of sensual discovery five years ago, when they’d had this rambling manor house all to themselves.
It had taken some contriving to place a gloss of propriety on a courtship begun so unconventionally. Joss had left her on Twelfth Night, the day before Jane returned from Goathland as the proud grandmother of a little girl.
He’d arrived, ostensibly as a stranger, to meet and fall in love with Maggie at first sight. Not, as he said, that far from the truth.
Within a couple of weeks, he’d invited his parents to Fraedale to meet his betrothed. Maggie and Joss had then traveled south in a family party for a February ceremony, all chaperoned and above board.
How difficult it had been to sleep alone during those nights before the wedding, when Maggie had to pretend she was an appropriately virginal fiancée. Luckily, Arabella had arrived a respectable nine months after their nuptials, almost to the day.
Maggie glanced up at her husband. “Your son and heir couldn’t wait for me to go back to the party, so he could sneak out of bed to play with his blocks by the light of the moon.”
Thomas, three years old, and much quieter than his sister, was fascinated with building and the way things worked. Her husband’s brilliance as a designer had clearly descended upon the next generation.
Joss’s embrace tightened, and he kissed the top of her head. “We’ve been lucky, haven’t we?”
Maggie still delighted in his casual gestures of affection. After her lonely years, she’d never take Joss’s love for granted.
As she snuggled closer, a secret smile curved her lips. “Yes, we have.”
She raised a hand to press his palm to her midriff, just above where their next baby grew. Tonight she’d tell him the news in the privacy of their room, the room where they’d first shared a bed.
“It’s good to be back. You know, we could live here six months of the year and six months in London.”
“I’d love that,” Maggie said. “But can you leave your practice so long?”
“I can bring work up with me. In summer, getting in and out of Fraedale isn’t so difficult.”
“It is in winter.”
His soft chuckle brushed across her skin like velvet. “Winter here has other compensations.”
“Yes,” she said on a reminiscent sigh.
Below them, Joss’s mother Kitty was clearing a space for dancing. Maggie loved Kitty, who had welcomed her from the first and never shown any sign of minding that her handsome, successful son had chosen a girl who worked as a servant.
“And the practice has people lining up with commissions.” Joss’s architectural business was thriving. Another secret they kept this Christmas was the knighthood that became official in the New Year. Maggie Carr, humble housekeeper, would step into 1827 as Margaret, Lady Hale. The change still struck her as hard to credit. “I can afford to play the lord of the manor now and again.”
“Especially when you are the lord of the manor. How generous Dr. Black was to give us this estate.”
“Absurdly so. I’m so glad Uncle Thomas is here this Christmas.”
“He and his namesake have established quite the alliance. I suspect he might end up visiting Thorncroft more often, now he’s given it away, than he did when he owned it.” She stroked Joss’s large, capable hand. “The house ha
s come alive. It’s hard to recall what it was like before you burst into my life.”
“You were so stern when I turned up on your doorstep.”
A huff of wry amusement escaped her. “Your fatal charm soon proved my downfall.”
“Will my fatal charm lure you away now, to start our special Christmas Eve?”
“Tempting.” She caught Kitty’s eye, as her mother-in-law glanced up from the crowded hall. “We have guests.”
“Who are all staying until after New Year.”
“Perhaps we can slip out in an hour.”
“I sometimes think you married me purely to become part of my family,” he said with mock self-pity.
She smiled, in a mood to tease. “I’m so sorry you’ve finally realized the sad truth.”
“They love you nearly as much as I do.” He presented his arm. “Shall we go downstairs, my lovely wife?”
Once down in the hubbub, there were no more chances for quiet conversation. Instead Joss was caught up in a riotous game of blind man’s bluff that tripped up more than one dancer, while Maggie joined the older folk around the fire.
It was well beyond the promised hour when Maggie at last found herself dancing a waltz in her husband’s arms.
“Shall we retire soon? Nobody will miss us.” Joss smiled down at her. “Although it seems unkind to remove the prettiest girl from the party.”
Dizzy with love and happiness—it was hard to keep a sensible tongue in her head when all her dreams had come true so magnificently—she smiled back at the man she adored. “You’re too kind, sir.”
“No, I’m not, by God.” He whirled her around, until they came to a breathless halt beneath an elaborate arrangement of mistletoe and red and gold ribbon suspended from the beams. “You’re still the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”
His kiss was more circumspect than usual—after all, they had an audience—but it still told her how deeply he loved her.
“Oh, Joss, I do love you,” she whispered as he drew away. And blushed when she saw that Kitty and Dr. Black had stopped close enough to overhear her fervent declaration.
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