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“Where are you going?”
She froze, her gaze moving from the urn back to his face. “Deveril is waiting for me.” That was plausible.
She was surprised at the devastation that washed across his features. “You really intend to return to him?” He rose onto one elbow and frowned at her. She’d had to light a candle to see to dress and his eyes looked bleak in the gloom.
Jemima felt helpless. “What choice do I have?”
“Be mine.”
She stared, and for a moment the idea held enormous appeal. But she was not about to give up everything she’d worked toward when she was now so close.
“How can I? He’s a jealous man.” She kept her voice low while she continued to smooth her dress, tidy her hair. Anything to keep herself occupied while guilt and desperation churned within her.
“Are you afraid for me, or for yourself? I will protect you.” His voice was strained. He got out of the bed and moved toward her. Tentatively, he opened his arms, and she stepped into them, resting her head against his hard chest briefly.
“He will never let me go; you know that, Miles. He will fight you, and I can’t bear that.”
“Let me decide what risks I’m prepared to take.”
“He might kill you.”
Miles stroked her hair. “I’m prepared to take that chance if I can be with you.” He drew in a laboured breath and tilted her face up as he indicated the bed. “What was that supposed to mean just now? Surely you didn’t slip into my room for one si
ngle night of pleasure. I don’t think you’d be so cruel when you know how I feel about you.”
Jemima felt the pain of his words like a lance. She believed he meant what he said. “I would not put it past Deveril to do you serious damage. Then he would treat me like a slave if he didn’t find worse ways to punish me.”
“So your fear of him is truly greater than your desire for me?”
“Desire.” She played with the word thoughtfully as she dropped her hands and stepped back. “If I felt only desire for you, I would treat it with the contempt such an emotion deserves. Desire makes monsters of us. No, Miles, my feelings for you go deeper than that, but now is not the time to put our love to the test.”
“Love, Jemima?” There was hope and confusion and disbelief in his tone. “Are you telling me you love me?” His voice broke on the last word as he gripped her shoulders and held her away from him. “It’s what I feel for you, Jemima. I love you. I love you more than I’ve loved before. I didn’t know what it was to feel love like this.”
“But you can’t make me your wife, and I’m not prepared to be mistress to yet another man.” She held up her hand to stay his protest. “I understand very well that my position is untenable. Of course you can’t make me your wife. You have political ambitions and if you gave in to your desire for me—your love, even—I would destroy you – not intentionally but because I am what I am - and you would come to resent me.”
“I want you, Jemima. Please!”
“I want you, too,” she said simply. And she did. More than she’d wanted anything except her reputation. “And perhaps Deveril’s desire will wane. Perhaps I will be yours sooner than we might imagine. But not tonight. He has a young wife under this same roof, and I would not jeopardize her happiness and create a scandal that would resonate through all the corners of the kingdom. Let me return to Deveril tonight, and I won’t discount the possibility that we will be together when the time is right. But first…”
She felt she had his acquiescence on this point, just as she realized she hadn’t the height to reach into the urn. He was dazed and battling his emotions. Perhaps he wouldn’t question her if she requested only this of him.
After eliciting his help for the last buttons on her dress , she remarked, “I am very intrigued by this Grecian urn, and you know my fascination for antiquities. Please, would you fetch it down from its pedestal so I might look more closely at it?”
His dazed look became more pronounced, even as he moved like one in a dream to do as she asked. “You wish to see an urn when you’re about to return to your lover whom you claim you don’t love, while I’m in agony?”
She ignored this, moving quickly toward the heavily-worked vase which he’d placed on the low table by the bed. With pounding heart, she put her hand into the neck, reaching down…down…to the very bottom, her fingers grasping at air, fear making her sick until she felt it. The clay tablet resting where she had left it.
Exactly a year ago.
He was looking away when she snatched it up and secreted it in her stays. She’d not want him to question how she’d known to find it there.
“Thank you. It is very lovely but now I must go.” Reluctantly, she moved past him toward the door, pretending languor when now she was desperate to leave. It was ten minutes to midnight, and the music drifted up from the ballroom. She had just enough time to run back to her room and snatch her bag, and then she could leave Lord Griffith’s estate forever. She would change her clothes in the darkness, and the coach would be passing by within the hour. As long as Deveril did not return early everything was still running according to plan.
It was only when she was nearly back at her chamber that she thought to fish the tablet from her bodice. As she weighed it in her palm, the damaged corner was like a burning reproach.
Panicked, she turned to look over her shoulder, back the way she’d come. How necessary to deciphering the code were the missing words that had obviously broken away when she dropped the tablet to the bottom of the urn all those months ago?
She was only a corridor away. In less than a minute, she could return to retrieve the rest of the tablet, but was it worth it? She stared at it in an agony of indecision. The script ran across the disc in three neat lines, but now, as she looked closer, aided by the light of her candle, it was clear that two words from the end of each line were missing. More than a third, in fact of the entire message. The ache of self-recrimination at her carelessness was almost overwhelming. She had to retrieve the missing piece else she’d never be able to make sense of it.
