“I didn’t hurt him,” Jamie said, “if that’s what you’re afraid of.”
“It would serve him well if you did. He might learn from it,” she said.
Jamie felt a smile stretch across his face at his wife’s ferocity.
“What did you say to him?” she persisted.
“I told him we knew about his treachery, of his attempts to supplant the king. London knows also. There are letters outlining what he did.”
“Really?”
“The letters are real. I may have let him believe we found proof,” Jamie shrugged. “He believed me.”
“Good!” she said fiercely.
“London believes me, in any case,” he went on. “If you or Isabella experience discomfort at the hands of Castellimonte, those letters will make their way to Turin and to their allies in Vienna.”
She relaxed into the seat. “It really is over then?”
“Dispute over Robert’s will? Yes. The Rota’s findings will stand. You are the guardian. He can’t hurt you, Nora.” Emotions that Jamiewasn’t fool enough to try to interpret played across her face. She seemed to study his face. He let her look in silence.
“My stipend will be enough,” she said at last. “We will live in Robert’s house.”
We will live in Robert’s house. His hopes rose, but caution kept them in check.
“I think not.”
She blinked rapidly. “Not enough?”
“Not mine. The only thing I’ve ever agreed with Filiberto about is that,” he said. “I can’t take money from you, Nora. When we married, your brother’s money paid for everything, even the clothes on my back. No more.”
“But how—” she began.
He stopped her with a raised hand and leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself? You said ‘we,’ ‘we will live.’ There’s much unsaid between us.”
Her nod was wobbly, but her voice was firm. “Mr. Wentworth said we must. He said you agreed.”
“Wentworth exaggerates. With no one to challenge, no one is going to sniff around our domestic arrangements. You always have a choice.”
The blue eyes widened and then narrowed when her brows drew together. He watched her adorable lips slip between her teeth and then out again with a pang of longing. His little bird looked confused, exhausted, and undecided.
He needed to give her room to think, but he reached for her hands, giving in to the impulse that had plagued him since the Lateran.
“You have to decide, Nora. You have to know what you want,” he said.
“What do you mean, ‘want’?” Her pink tongue moistened her upper lip. He beat back the vortex of desire she caused.
“You’ve won what you wanted most—Isabella. You can care for her comfortably thanks to her father’s will. You don’t need me.”
She didn’t deny it.
“Is there room in that life for me? What do you want from our marriage?”
She didn’t speak, but she didn’t pull away. He rushed on. “I have to warn you, I don’t want what we had before, based on lies and misconception. I won’t be a piece of furniture in the home you’ve envisioned for Isabella, a hanger-on in your brother’s house. It is far, far too late for that.”
Nora pulled her hands from his and looked away. “You left,” she said, “and you never wrote. I don’t know what to think—I don’t know who you are.”
“I wrote. The letters didn’t reach you, but I’m here now.”
