Page 67 of Crying Wolfe
A commotion filtered through the silence of the evening, doors slamming and her husband’s voice carrying through the halls with all of his unfettered American ruckus.
Smiling fondly to herself, she closed her eyes, listening to the tempestuous resonance of the man she wanted to have, but who would never be able to trust her.
Cruel, cruel stars.
The garden door slammed open, and Rosaline forgot to breathe.
Not an hour ago, he’d been inside her. And the desperate passion of that act had given her hope. A hope he’d crushed with the first words out of his mouth.
She didn’t want to face his wrath again. Not tonight. She simply couldn’t bear—
“Rosaline.” He choked out her name as running footfalls skidded to a halt beside her. She lifted an eyelid in time to see him hit his knees and scoop her up against his chest. “Rosaline. Honey. Breathe, damn you. No. No. No.”
Squirming in his tight hold, she pressed against the steely muscle beneath his jacket. “I can’t very well breathe if you’re smothering me with your chest.”
His arms went slack, and she fell back to the ground in a heap.
“Ow.”
“Shit, shit, sorry!” He reached for her, then paused, as if he couldn’t decide where his hands should go. “What have you done?” he asked, his eyes so wild she could see the whites. “Did you drink something? Did you jump?”
“What are you talking about?” She sat up, wriggling toes gone numb from the cold.
“You said you should have jumped from the roof at Fairhaven.” He looked up toward the ledge upon which their entire fate had been set in motion.
“And you thought I’d return home and hurl myself fromourroof?” She scowled at him. “What sort of fool do you take me for?”
He sat back on his haunches, pale as a ghost, staring at her as if she’d sprouted horns. “You were lying here still as a corpse, not breathing, on an icy December night, what the hell was I supposed to think?”
“That I was stargazing.” She pointed up to the astonishingly clear sky, cleansed by a week’s worth of freezing rain.
“Stargazing.” He closed his eyes as if he needed not to look at her for a moment. “Of fucking course, you were. Jesus Josephat Christ, woman, you can’t just—”
“What is this?” she interrupted as her foot caught on an upended leather satchel.
“Blackwell thought it best I didn’t parade through his guests waving the underkit you shoved at me, so he lent me this to hide them in.”
Rosaline gasped. Released a broken laugh. Then another as she grappled with the satchel’s buckles. “Did you find it?” she asked. “Have you opened it?”
“No, I didn’t have time to sniff your drawers between being searched for a thief and racing home to make sure I didn’t find you in a sprawled heap on the ground,” he groused.
“Eli,” she said with an excited breath as she rose to her knees and grappled with the lace and cotton drawers until she found the seam in which she’d tucked the treasure.
His treasure.
Extracting the sapphire, she offered it to him with both hands, transfixed by the deep blue beauty of the rough-cut stone.
He stared at it. Not blinking. No muscle twitching. No expression at all.
“I overheard you telling the Duchesse it’d been taken from you,” she said, encouraging him to take it by sliding it closer. “I thought… I don’t know what I thought. I just wanted you to have the treasure that meant so much to you. The one you and your brother spent a lifetime searching for.”
Eli rose to his own knees, snatching the gem from her outstretched hand.
To her everlasting astonishment, he tossed it on the ground without giving it a second glance.
“I came to this country searching for one fortune.” He lifted his hands to her face, cupping it as if it were the most fragile, precious thing in the world. “But I realize what I found was something more valuable than I could ever imagine.”
She swallowed as her heart leapt into her chest, not trusting the brilliant shine chasing the shadows away from his dark eyes. Could he truly mean…?
