revulsion in her voice slicing straight into his heart.
A prison? Beau was stunned speechless. The concept of marriage to him being a prison was horrifying enough, but the way she’d said it...as though it would be an unbearable torture!
The doors were opened and she was out on the balcony before he could raise a protest. Escaping from him, as though his offer had conjured up something monstrous. Beau’s insides twisted into knots. This wasn’t right. It was no more right than the way she had been sitting when he’d come in.
He stared down at the paper in his hand. Maggie Stowe was pregnant with his child. Whatever was disturbing her so deeply had to be resolved. He couldn’t let her move on from him, dropping out of sight and out of contact. His whole being revolted against that eventuality. He had to reach out to her, into her, and somehow hold her to him.
Pumped up to fight for the outcome he wanted, Beau tossed the fax sheet on the bed and followed her out to the balcony. She was standing against the balustrade, as far away from him as she could get. Her gaze was aimed at the far north shore of the harbour, above and beyond the artfully landscaped gardens of Rosecliff, as though her immediate surroundings—however beautiful—were part and parcel of what she needed to get away from.
“How can you call Rosecliff a prison?”
The question shot from his mouth as he stepped up to the balustrade, turning to scrutinise her profile and discern whatever he could from her expression. He had to start with something and hopefully she’d give him enough signals to find a path to an understanding between them.
She rigidly ignored him. Or rigidly held herself in.
“You could have all this...” He waved at the grounds below them, property that would be coveted by anyone. “...If you married me.”
She closed her eyes. Her fingers curled more tightly over the curved top of the balustrade. Her body wavered slightly. Beau waited, not prepared to rush into any judgment. He’d already made too many mistakes with Maggie Stowe.
“It’s people who make a prison, not a property,” she answered, as though dragging the words from some deep place inside her.
People? What people?
She turned her head and looked at him, her eyes burning with unshakable conviction and an accusation that reduced his material argument to ashes in the wind. “It’s the people in charge of the compound. The people in power. They make the prison.”
Him? How could she equate him with a prison?
He stared at the searing knowledge in her eyes and his stomach curled. This wasn’t some theoretical philosophy. She had lived through what she was saying and it was still very real to her, traumatically real. He’d wanted to learn what drove Maggie Stowe and here it was...an experience so soul-scarring she couldn’t move past it, not even with all the running she’d done over the years.
She turned her gaze back to the far horizon. “I won’t live like that,” she said with fierce determination. “I won’t let my child be subjected to it. I’ll keep us both safe. And free.”
Her voice shook with the emphasis she gave to freedom. Beau found himself intensely moved by it. He understood the desire for freedom, empathised with it, but he knew intuitively this was more than desire. It was need...deep-rooted need.
His mind flicked to Mrs. Zabini’s statement. Not a runaway, he thought, an escapee from a prison. Though it couldn’t have been a government institution... nothing criminal. The investigators hired by Lionel Armstrong would have turned up any official records of her. Maybe the prison had been some private orphanage. A big foster family, she’d told Mrs. Zabini. Yet surely those also came under the jurisdiction of the social welfare arm of government.
She’d used the word, compound. Beau had an instant vision of high, secure fences. Illegal immigrants were kept in a compound until their cases could be evaluated. But once again, that was government business. How had Maggie remained outside the official net until she was—Mrs. Zabini’s guess—sixteen?
Whatever the answer, that wasn’t his immediate problem and he doubted she’d tell him anyway. She was equating him with the people in charge, the people in power. He had to change that view of him and do it convincingly or she would disappear from his life. The issue was not material advantages to her.
Acceptance, approval, liking, respect... those values overrode everything else in Maggie Stowe’s mind. That was decisively brought home to him now. If he couldn’t answer them...
He took a deep breath. The sense of being on the edge of a precipice was very strong. One careless step and he was gone. He’d wanted action with Maggie...any action. He’d had no idea the ground was so perilous.
A trapped animal will always turn on its captor, he thought. He had to soothe, win her trust, move them both back to a safe place where they could negotiate with each other.
“Why do you see marriage to me as a prison, Maggie?’ he asked quietly, careful to keep any judgmental note out of his voice.
She shivered. “You’re only thinking of what you want, Beau.”
It was a flat statement, uncoloured by the emotions he suspected were still ripping through her. The truth of it was undeniable.
“I want what would be best for all three of us, Maggie, not only myself,” he countered softly.
“I haven’t given you the right to judge what’s best for me. And I’ll fight you over judging for my child, as well.” She turned to him, eyes blazing in challenge. “No one will ever take from me the right to be my own person and make my own judgments.”
He frowned. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”
“Yes, you did. Why else would you want marriage if not to lock me and our child into your life where you’ll be in legal charge of us?”
“I just wanted to be in a position where I could take care of both of you,” he argued, sincere in this belief of himself.
“You wouldn’t respect my wishes. You don’t care about my feelings.”
Another flat statement. He struggled against it. He did care. He felt a tumult of caring right now. But he could see she wouldn’t believe it. “I have tried to show you differently this past week,” he said, searching for some way to appease the hurt he’d given.
She shook her head. There was a twist of irony on her lips as she answered, “There’s a difference between being civilised and actually accepting a person in your heart. Liking them. Wishing them well. You think I don’t know it?”
He’d done his best to stand back from the attraction he felt, seeking the truth about her. He hadn’t wanted to be any more stupid than he had been. But he couldn’t offer those reasons as excuses for his manner towards her.
Her eyes mocked his dilemma. “From the very start you didn’t trust me, Beau. You still don’t. That’s why you want to lock me in.”
It was terribly disconcerting that she saw him so clearly, saw what he himself hadn’t quite grasped until she laid it out to him. She shamed him with her truths. All his actions had been motivated by what he wanted while she had been the hub of endlessly rotating wheels of suspicion.
“Maggie, is the pregnancy a prison? I mean...not thinking about its tie to me. Apart from that...” He hated asking this question but he had to, in fairness to her, aware that he had driven the course to these consequences and wanting to remove the trapped feeling she had to have. “...Do you want to have the child?”
“Yes. Yes, I do,” she answered decisively, without even a slight hesitation.
Beau breathed a huge sigh of relief. “So do I.”
She slanted him a look, checking if he meant it.
He tried an appealing smile. “I know it’s not the most propitious circumstances, Maggie, but I can’t help feeling excited