Grabbing her wrists, he pinned her arms to the mattress to hold her still so she would have no choice but to look at him as he admitted grimly, “Yes, and every word was true.”
She stopped struggling and stared at him, blinking in bewilderment. From her reaction, she certainly hadn’t expected to hear him confess to that. But it was true. And it was time he took responsibility for it.
He sucked in a deep breath, then explained, “At the start of the season, I wanted nothing more than to marry you off, secure the partnership, and wipe my hands of you. You were nothing more to me than a means to an end, and I had no intention of getting to know you better.” His shoulders slumped with remorse. “So when Winslow proposed buying up properties in St Katharine’s to profit off the new docks, I was certain you’d put the company before the school, that you’d be happy to move it once you saw the company’s earnings.”
She sniffed haughtily, still unwilling to let go of the anger pulsing inside her. “You were wrong.”
His chest squeezed hard around his heart. He deserved every bit of her rancor. “And I am truly sorry for it,” he murmured, his voice growing raspy with regret when he saw the hurt on her face.
She said nothing, the accusatory glint in her glistening eyes cutting into him like glass. She was going to make this difficult on him, and he didn’t blame her. He’d hurt her too badly for the wounds to heal with only a few words of explanation and an apology. No, he had to lay bare his heart before he could be absolved.
“By the time I realized how much St Katharine’s and the school meant to you, your father had already made offers to the property owners. That I did not know about.” He punctuated that with a lift of a brow. “I would have tried to stop him if I had.” He risked a caress to her cheek then, and relief filled him when instead of turning away she trembled beneath his touch. “You should have been told from the beginning.”
“Yes,” she whispered, “I should have.”
He bit his cheek to keep back a smile at her obstinacy, yet noted with chagrin that she’d ignored his apology. “I can’t change what I did in the past, but I can promise you that I’ll have no hand in the project going forward except to use my influence in Parliament to stop those docks from being built. To save the borough and the school.”
She turned her face away, but not before he saw the glistening of tears. “You’re just saying that to get what you want.” She shook her head. “You want Winslow Shipping.”
“I want you, you stubborn hellcat!” His patience snapped, and exasperation poured from him. “For God’s sake, Mariah, if all I cared about was the company, I never would have made love to you, and I certainly wouldn’t have ridden after you. I would have let you elope with Whitby and gotten my reward for it.”
“Then why didn’t you?” she demanded, then shook her head. “I’m just supposed to believe that everything has changed? That your motives are selfless—”
“Not selfless,” he corrected firmly, knowing how much choosing Mariah was costing him when it came to the memory of his father. Choosing her meant never having a place within Winslow Shipping. “Marrying you is the most selfish thing I’ve ever wanted in my life.”
She stared up at him with uncertainty as she searched his face for answers. Yet she gave him an opportunity to change her mind when she grudgingly asked, “Why should I believe you?”
Hope surged through him. “Because I know now what’s truly important. Because now I’m willing to lose everything I have if it means being with you.” He paused, his eyes staring deeply into hers. Then he threw all caution to the wind—“And because I love you.”
Her breath caught with a loud gasp of stunned surprise, and for a heartbeat, she froze as she looked up at him, incredulous. Then, she asked so softly that he could barely hear her, “You…love me?”
“Of course I do,” he confessed. Then, blowing out an aggravated breath, he added, “Although you make it damned hard at times, Mariah, you truly do.”
The distrust melted from her flushed face, replaced by a look of contrition as she blurted out, “Evelyn.”
His turn, then, to stare in confusion. He blinked. What did her sister have to do with this? “Pardon?”
“She’s the reason Mrs. Smith and I traveled north, to stop her from eloping with Burton Williams. Whitby agreed to be our escort.” Contrition flashed across her face. “I never wanted to marry him.”
Relief swelled inside his chest as understanding sank through him. The note was simply Whitby being Whitby. Thank God.
But his plea for forgiveness wasn’t yet finished. Resting his forehead against hers and helpless to stop the nervous pounding of his heart, he sucked in a deep breath, held it a moment, then—“Marry me, Mariah.”
Her lips parted as she stared up at him, stunned. But the love he saw in her watery green depths ripped his breath away. “You can’t!”
He grinned, happily looking forward to a lifetime of arguing with her. “I think I can.”
“No, Papa won’t let you. He’ll think you a fortune hunter.”
“I don’t care if I never have a position with Winslow Shipping,” he assured her quietly, meaning every word, “as along as I get to spend the rest of my life with you.”
“I don’t understand,” she whispered, frustrating him to no end because she hadn’t answered him. “You wanted that partnership so much…”
“You were right about my father,” he admitted softly. “I’m never going to be able to prove myself to him. All I can do is live the life he wanted for me, which wasn’t one of wealth and power. He wanted me to be happy, to marry the woman I love and create a safe and loving home for her and our children, just as he’d done for us.” His voice choked. “Marry me, Mariah, and give me that life.”
Her eyes glistened, and he feared she might cry. “You hurt me, Robert,” she whispered, barely a breath on her lips.
“I know.” He soberly tucked a stray ebony curl behind her ear. “I can’t ever make up for that. All I can do is promise that I will never knowingly hurt you again.” He dropped his hand away, his eyes staring pleadingly into hers. “Can you forgive me?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
That single word warmed through him. Then she sent his heart somersaulting—
“I will marry you.”
He captured her mouth beneath his as joy filled him, hungrily kissing her with all the love and desire inside him. Her arms wrapped tightly around him, as if she were afraid he might slip away from her even now. But she had nothing to fear. He would never let her go.
“Minx,” he purred, lowering his head to tongue her throat and the pulse beating wildly there.
She whispered as she blinked back tears of happiness, “Make love to me, Robert.”
With a groan of desire, he seized her lips in a blistering kiss, and to his delight, she met his mouth eagerly and with equal passion. He rose up on his knees to strip out of his coat and waistcoat, neckcloth and shirt…Damnation! He would have to leave the bed to remove his boots and breeches, and letting her out of his arms was the last thing he wanted to do.
Before he could move away, Mariah rolled onto her stomach beneath him and gestured toward the row of tiny buttons down her back. “Undress me?”
“Anything you want,” he promised as his fingers worked loose the buttons, only to open the dress to find a stay and chemise beneath. He groaned in frustration. Women wore too many damned layers.
“What I want…is you, Robert,” she panted out. “The only man…I will ever give myself to.”
His cock flexed, already straining hard against the tightly fitted material of his riding breeches. Giving up on attempting to unlace the stays, he grabbed her skirt in his hands and pulled it up her legs, revealing her stockings and smooth stretches of thigh beyond their lace edges, the round curves of her bare buttocks and hips above.
She tensed. “What are you doing?”
“Making love to you,” he answered huskily.