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“We were in a perilous time of life,” Jasper began. “Eleven, to be exact. The summer before we were sent away to school.”
“Oh?” She selected one strawberry and transferred it to her plate. It was neither the biggest nor the smallest berry, but it was perfectly red and ripe. She stroked it with her forefinger as if savoring the anticipation of eating Stioles it.
Jasper swallowed some wine. His throat had gone suddenly dry. “I’m afraid I’d escaped from my tutor that afternoon.”
“Escaped?” She turned the strawberry on the plate.
He watched her fingers on the fruit and imagined them somewhere else entirely. “My tutor was a rather elderly man, and if I had a bit of a head start, I could outrun him easily.”
“Poor man,” she said, and bit into the strawberry.
For a moment, his breath caught and all coherent thought fled his mind. Then he cleared his throat, though his voice still emerged hoarse. “Yes, well, and what was worse, Reynaud had slipped his traces as well.”
She swallowed. “And?”
“Unfortunately, we chose to meet up by the pond.”
“Unfortunately?”
He winced, remembering. “Somehow we got the notion to build a raft.”
Her eyebrows lifted, delicate light brown wings.
He skewered a bit of cheese on his knife and ate it. “As it turns out, building a raft from fallen branches and bits of twine is actually much harder than one would at first think. Especially if one is an eleven-year-old boy.”
“I sense a tragedy in the making.” Her face was grave, but somehow her eyes laughed at him.
“Indeed.” He took a strawberry and twirled the stem between his fingers. “By afternoon, we were covered in mud, sweaty and panting, and we’d somehow constructed a contraption about three feet square, although square it certainly was not.”
She bit her lip as if to keep from laughing. “And?”
He set his elbows on the table, still holding the strawberry, and assumed a solemn expression. “In retrospect, I very much doubt that the thing we’d assembled could float on the water by itself. Naturally, the notion of trying it out on the water before actually trying to sail on it never occurred to us.”
She was smiling now, no longer holding back the laughter, and he felt a thrill of gladness. To make this woman lose composure, to make her express joy, was no mean feat. And the wonder of it was the pleasure he took in making her smile.
“The outcome was inevitable, I fear.” He reached across the table and pressed the strawberry he held against that smiling mouth. She parted her pale pink lips and bit into the fruit. His groin tightened, and he stared at her mouth as she chewed. “We came a cropper almost immediately, the very instability of the raft saving us.”
She swallowed. “How so?”
He tossed aside the strawberry stem and folded his arms on the table. “We got only about a yard from shore before we sank. We landed in the weeds, the water only to our waists.”
“That’s all?”
He felt th S"3"idte corner of his mouth kick up. “Well, it would’ve been all had not Reynaud managed to land almost on top of a goose nest.”
She winced. “Oh, dear.”
He nodded. “Oh, dear, indeed. The gander took exception to us invading his pond-side cottage. Chased us nearly back to Vale Manor. And there, my tutor finally caught up with us and gave me such a caning I could hardly sit for a week. Haven’t really cared for roast goose since.”
For a moment, he held her laughing brown eyes, the room quiet, the servants somewhere out in the hall. Jasper could feel each inhale, feel time seem to pause as he looked into his wife’s eyes. He was on the precipice of something—a turning point in his life, a new way of feeling or thinking—he wasn’t sure, but it was right beneath his feet. All he had to do was take the step.
But it was Melisande who moved. She shoved back her chair and rose.
“I thank you, my lord, for a very amusing tale.” And she walked to the dining room door.
Jasper blinked. “Are you leaving me so soon?”
She paused, her ramrod-straight back still toward him. “I hoped you would accompany me upstairs.” She looked over her shoulder at him, her eyes grave, mysterious, and just a little teasing. “My courses are over.”
