Free His Californian Countess by Kate Welsh Page A

conversation with him on deck with the other passengers listening. Unfortunately, his presence seemed to shrink the comfortable cabin to the size of a teacup. She backed away, gestured to the chair she’d occupied just minutesearlier. Her stomach flipped around like a landed carp. With nowhere else to sit, she sank to the edge of the bed.
    “How can I make it up to you?” he asked as soon as she was seated.
    She clasped her hands together, trying to maintain control. “Make it up to me?” she demanded through her teeth. “Give me back my reputation. The life I had planned. My virginity so I can get the annulment you promised. I gave you back your life by taking care of you. As thanks, you stole mine.”
    A look very much like pain crossed his face. “That wasn’t what I intended. And I am sorry. For that and for what I said this morning when I woke. I wasn’t thinking clearly yet, you see. Just reacting. I woke in the night, but I thought it was still a dream. I suppose because so much of my time spent in there was spent in delirium I had trouble telling the real from the imagined. There you were, sleeping so near—so lovely. My pixie. And when I touched you, it was all so perfect— you were so perfect. Then when I woke and…”
    He raked a hand through his already tousled hair. “It was something in my past that made me react so poorly. But that is no excuse. I did not take the time to think it through. I lashed out. I was wrong. And I am sorry.”
    She nodded, not knowing what to say. He seemed sincere. But her heart broke just a bit for herself. And for him. He was stuck with her. And his next words confirmed it.
    “As you say, an annulment is not possible now, but a quiet divorce here in your country will set you free to pursue the life you seem to be mourning.”
    Was he this dense? Did he think Americans so lax in morals that divorce was not frowned upon? “Do youthink this story won’t leave the ship with its passengers? That the family who hired me as governess to their little girls will want me even near them once they hear about it? And about a divorce?”
    “I don’t know. I am trying to make it up to you.”
    “As I have just explained, you cannot.”
    He shook his head. “I remember snatches of the days of my illness. I care for you, as well. How could I not? You’ve done so much for me. Is there no chance of you coming to care for me? But perhaps not.” He smiled. “We agreed, did we not, that the annulment was only to occur if at the end of the voyage, we felt we did not suit?”
    That had been the plan. She nodded.
    “Though annulment is no longer possible,” he went on, “why not follow that original plan? Get to know each other during the voyage? Decide upon our futures together? Will you trust me that far?”
    She looked down at her hands. “I do not know. This was not the way I thought to return to California.”
    “As before, if we do not suit, we will separate. I am sorry about your plans, but I would settle a good sum on you. You would not have to work at all.”
    She could retire to a town home in San Francisco and live out her days alone with a “past” to be lived down. Pride forced her to say, “I don’t need your charity,” though she didn’t know what she would do without it now.
    “But it appears I need yours. A divorce in my country is a difficult thing. A very public embarrassment. Only if I proved you an adulterer, would I be permitted to divorce. I couldn’t do that to you. Regardless of our marital status, you need not work and raise the children of others. You could remain with me—with us—and raise Meara. Mimm is only her nanny. She isn’t educated enough to be Meara’s governess. You could fill that role in my home and be my countess at the same time.”
    Amber dropped her gaze to her hands where they lay folded in her lap. Countess—the one position she wasn’t sure she could fill. Nor did she think she would be able to live under Jamie’s roof