She chuckled to herself, pouring the hot water over the tea leaves and shaking her head. Because the mugs were too hot to grip anywhere but the rims, she quickly transferred them onto a tray, dolloped enough cool milk in each to change the color from tar to sandalwood, and dropped a single cube of sugar into each.
By the time she’d returned to the room, Jasper was sitting upright, gazing out the window with his hair sticking up in several copper-red tufts from the embrace of his pillow. He gave her a sleepy, little smile, his head turning as she arrived, and reached out for his cup with a slow blink of those lovely, golden eyes.
“Thank you, wife,” he said drowsily.
“You’re welcome, husband,” she replied, amused by the affectation as she took her own tea, set the tray aside, and climbed in next to him. “What are you thinking about, gazing out the window so serenely?”
He yawned on a smile. “I was thinkingWherefore art thou, Libba?”
She pursed her lips. “You were wondering why I’m Libba?”
“What?” he said, frowning. “No. I… Is that what that means?”
“It is,” she confirmed, attempting to hide a smile behind her teeth. “Shall I answer, anyhow?”
He sipped the tea, his brows ticking up a notch. “If you like.”
She tilted her head to the side. “Libba because Malcolm chose it. Liberty because I did. Lennox because I was born to it. Townsend because I chose you.”
“Poetry,” he said, his face gone soft and his voice low, like he meant it. “Though Romeo would promise to save you from being a Capulet.”
“I’m not certain watching that play a dozen times in a row was good for your kettle, Townsend,” she said, laughing. “You saved me from being Xandine. Is that enough?”
“I didn’t do that,” he said, giving a mock gasp of shock. “I saved her from becoming a basket of hot air, but she is welcome to visit at any time.”
“Oh?” she laughed. “What about Galatea?”
“Permanently invited,” he answered briskly.
She grinned at him, smelling the steam in her tea. “Bess? Eliza? Liz?”
“All my wife,” he said. “They’re all just Libbas. Parts of the whole.”
She considered him for a moment, her cheeks still dimpled with happiness. “You’re only meant to have one wife, you know.”
“Well,” he said playfully, “perhaps we don’t tell anyone otherwise, and I’ll simply be lucky in silence.”
They giggled together, Libba leaning back on the pillows and throwing the coverlet up over her knees. “One of those women is certain to take issue with sharing.”
He gave a beleaguered, little sigh, his eyes twinkling. “There’s only one who matters. Because there’s only one at all, no matter what she might think to the contrary.”
She narrowed her gaze at him. Then sniffed and shrugged, leaning her head back against the shaft of sunlight on the pillows and closing her eyes for a moment. “You know, you told a lot of lies that night on the beach when you asked me to be Xandine, but one of the things you said was true. It is quite inarguably true.”
“Is that a fact?” he said, blinking like he couldn’t fathom such a thing. “What was it?”
“You said you would bebeyond uxorious,” Libba remembered with a little sigh. “A sentiment I thought delusional at the time. But you are.”
“Delusional?” he guessed, and she could hear the smile in his voice, even with her eyes shut.
“Uxorious,” she told him. “Beyond uxorious.”
“Ah,” he replied. “That, I am.”
For a few ticks of the clock, she simply felt the warmth and the tea on her chest, and the man at her side, and let the things he’d said sink deeper into her skin. She played the conversation thrice more in her mind, until her spine eased, like it had stowed the thing forever.
She turned her head to watch him, sipping at his own tea and looking back out the window again. “Jasper,” she said, giggling. “Really! What’s on your mind?” He turned back to her with a startle, like he hadn’t realized he’d drifted away again. He gave a sheepish little half-smile and reached out to toy with the sash on her robe, twisting it between his freckled fingers. “It’s nothing. I was just pondering some ideas,” he said, peeking up at her through his lashes. “Concepts.”
“Schemes?” she corrected firmly. “I thought we were past that.”
