“No, thank you.” He snagged her hand when she would have turned away. “Please, join me. I missed you this morning. Nearly everyone in the congregation was there…and still, I missed seeing you.” He waited until she’d poured a cup of coffee and slipped into a chair before sitting.
“I wasn’t…” She paused to take a sip of coffee and Kris saw the fine tremble of the cup. “I couldn’t…”
Kris eased the cup from her fingers and took both her hands in his. “Did you stay away because of me? Did I make you uncomfortable with my proposal last night?” He was shocked to see her eyes well with tears. “My dear, what is it? Am I moving too quickly?”
She didn’t respond, so he plowed on. “I’m not sure how to go on since I never thought to find a wife, but you’re all a man in my position could—” He stopped. This wasn’t how he wanted to tell her his feelings.
Kris slipped from the bench to one knee beside her. “Margaret Flanaghan, my timing may not be right, but my feelings are honest. I’ll never make much money, though you’ll never want for anything it is in my power to provide. I didn’t expect to find a woman so perfectly created to be my partner in my ministry and…and in my life. You bring the sunshine. I want you by my side. I need you there. I can’t imagine going on without you. Please, sweet Maggie. Say you’ll be my wife.”
Her smile was so sad it made Kris’s heart actually ache. “I want to say yes. I want it very much, but, oh, Kris.” Her words choked off as tears spilled down her cheeks.
“What’s wrong, Maggie? Tell me, and I’ll help you fix it.”
“You can’t,” she whispered. “There’s nothing to be done.”
Kris levered himself to his feet and pulled his chair close. “There is always an option.” A horrible thought occurred. “You said you aren’t married.”
“I’m not, but Albert—”
“I remember. He offered you a future he’d already given to another.”
A wrenching sob had his eyes narrowing and another, more horrible thought insinuated itself into his mind. “Maggie, did you— Are you…” He couldn’t even voice the question. “Tell me, Margaret. The truth, please.”
“I am not married, but I…” She reached for her cup, but her hand shook took hard to even take a sip. “He promised me everything and, fool that I was, I believed him.” She looked up, her green eyes swimming with tears. “I gave him my innocence, and now I’m carrying his child.”
Kris stood so fast he knocked his chair over, scaring a yowl from the cat. “That can’t be. You aren’t with child. I won’t believe it. I won’t!”
“I’m sorry, but it’s true.” Maggie’s shoulders slumped under the weight of her former fiancé’s betrayal. Leopold glared at Kris, then padded to Maggie and jumped into her lap. She cuddled him close, taking obvious comfort in the cat’s presence. “I trusted Albert’s declarations of love and promises of a future together.”
His mind whirling, Kris grasped at solutions, anything that would allow them be together. “You could give the baby away,” he reasoned. “Go somewhere—to your aunt’s home—and return after… After.”
“No.”
Her quiet response left him speechless. “Why not?”
“Because it isn’t the baby’s fault Albert was a jackass and I was a fool.” Her eyes flashed with her fierce conviction. “This child deserves at least one parent that wants her, that will love her.”
“The child could be placed in a loving home with two parents, perhaps siblings. Think of it, Margaret. The brothers and sisters you never had.”
“And what if she’s left alone like I’ve been?” Maggie argued. “No, Kris. She’ll have me. She will never know her father, but she will have me.”
“What about the father?” Kris knew he was grasping. “He and his wife could take the child—”
“No! That man lied to get what he wanted from me. I won’t leave a defenseless baby in his questionable care.”
“Why, Margaret?” Kris paced away to stare out the window, trying to breathe past the ache in his chest. “Why would you share your body with a man like that, a man not your husband?”
“He was going to be!” she cried. “He promised—”
“But he lied—and now I can’t marry you.” Kris faced her, swamped with feelings of betrayal and loss. That had to be what he was feeling. He couldn’t be heartbroken. Rather than examine that possibility, he reached for the betrayal. Wrapped himself in the rage of yet another instance of thinking he knew God’s plan, only to be proven wrong. “I’m sorry, but I must withdraw my offer of marriage, Miss Flanaghan. I have a responsibility to my congregation, to my work. A woman who…” He closed his eyes so he didn’t have to acknowledge the anguish in hers. “My wife has to be above reproach, and—”