“The beard suited you better,” she grumbled, looking down at her plate, although it was not true.
Jack was beautiful with whiskers or without, his hair shaggy and wavy or cropped close. He was beautiful in the dark moonlit night and in the light of the morning sun. He was just beautiful, the rotten devil.
“Hmm,” he said again.
She glanced back at him once more, but he had returned his regard to the newspaper spread before him.
“What does that mean?” she asked at last, losing her inner war to remain quiet.
“It means I do not believe you, my darling wife. Your lips say one thing, but your eyes say quite another.” His tone was confident.
He was doing a fine job of burrowing beneath her skin this morning. Indeed, he had been doing so ever since his return now that she thought upon it.
“Wishful thinking on your part, perhaps,” she suggested tartly. “Do not keep me from your account of the goings on of the world today, pray. I find being forced to carry on a conversation with you over breakfast renders me quite bilious.”
She was being beastly to him, but she did not care.
“The Timesis ever a font of information.” He sounded amused.
She flicked him an irritated glance to discover he was grinning at her, the blighter. “What is so bloody humorous, Needham?”
His levity only seemed to double. “Needham, is it? Last night I was Jack.”
“Last night, I allowed my baser nature to overwhelm my rational mind,” she snapped. “Do not fool yourself into believing I will conduct myself with such precipitous stupidity again.”
“Nellie, do you remember the day we met?” he asked then, his expression softening.
Of course she remembered. She would never, ever forget.
“I fear I have stricken it from my memory,” she told him just the same, lowering her gaze to her plate.
She would never be able to consume this much fruit—fresh orange slices, pineapple, strawberries. Her appetite was conspicuously absent this morning. All she felt was ill. But she forced herself to take great care in cutting a strawberry into bite-size quarters all the same.
“It was at Cowes,” he said softly. “A ball. You were wearing a pink gown with silk rose clusters on your skirts and the most delicate lace flounces, rather like gossamer. You had a matching ribbon and roses woven into your pretty curls. When I first saw you, you were dancing with Lord Whitby. You laughed at something he had said, and I was smitten. I begged Falkland for an introduction after he laughed at the way I could not take my eyes from you.”
No, no, no.
She did not want to hear any of this. Nor did she want to relive that day, which had once seemed so charmed. The best day in her life. How wrong time had proven her. Nor did she want to know he recalled the details of the dress she had worn or what gentleman she had been dancing with when he had first seen her.
She ignored him, continuing to eat her breakfast in silence, her gaze firmly trained upon her plate.
But Jack was not finished.
“We dancedLe Moulinet, and I was so bloody frustrated because it seemed as soon as I had you within reach, you were swirling away again. I asked you if I could call upon you afterward, and you said that I could. But I could not wait, because the hours between then and the next day seemed interminable. I caught you in an alcove and you gave me the ribbon from your hair. I wanted to kiss you then, but I was trying to act the gentleman, so I settled for the ribbon.” He paused in his lengthy recitation. “I still have the ribbon, you know.”
Nell steeled herself against his words, which were like a poison dart directly to her heart. She speared a strawberry with so much force, she left it macerated on her plate. Pink juice pooled on the fine bone china. She swallowed against a rush of unwanted emotion.
“I carried it with me everywhere I traveled,” he continued softly, “along with your picture and all the letters you had ever written me when we were courting.”
She closed her eyes and bit her lip against a rush of tears. She would not cry before him, she told herself. She would remain impervious. She would ignore him. Ignore the memories.
“Do you know that everywhere I traveled, I kept expecting to see you?” He laughed, the sound bitter. “It was a foolish habit, I will own. In Paris, I saw a petite woman with golden hair in the streets, and I had myself convinced she was you. She turned just before I could reach her onRue Notre Dame des Victoires, and I saw her profile. She was not you. No matter where I was, whether in Cologne or Rome or Constantinople, you were never anywhere but in my heart.”
Damn him to perdition. Her fork dropped with a clang to her plate. At last, she forced her gaze back to him.
“What is it you expect from me, Jack?” she bit out. “Youbetrayedme. You betrayed us, our marriage, everything we shared. You broke my heart. You were gone for three years, and now you expected to return with all this, thisunwanted sentiment, and have me what? Fall at your feet? Do you want my heart handed over to you like victory spoils? Am I supposed to feel badly for you because you only realized what we had when it was too late and you had already invited another woman into your bed?”
Fury had her trembling. She was angry, so angry. Angry with herself for making love with him yesterday. For wanting him the way she did. Angry with Jack for the way he had returned as if he had never been gone, all teasing smiles and charm and protestations of love and innocence.
