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For a heartbeat, she appeared to consider kissing him again instead of working on the puzzle, and Henry wondered if they might be able to pause her activities to do just that. But before he could suggest they make good on her desires, she spoke, her fingertip barely running over the box. “H is for Henry.”
He nodded. “But it is not my box.”
“C is for... Clayborn?”
“My father. But it’s not his box, either.”
She tilted her head and studied him, the box nearly forgotten in her hands. “Whose box is it?”
He suddenly felt more sorrow for his father than he had in a decade. In longer. “It was my mother’s. He made it for her. To keep what is inside.”
“Henry,” she said, the puzzle forgotten as she lifted her hand to his face, tracking her thumb across his cheekbones. “I’m so sorry.”
“I was ten when she died. Too late to forget her, too early to really remember her. She’s shadows and feelings and warmth and beauty in my memories. But I can’t quite reach them.”
She nodded. “I did not know my mother, but sometimes I think I remember her.”?
Yes. It was like that. He clung to the words—to thetruth in them and the little piece of her she’d shared. He lifted his chin toward the box. “Press it. L for Laura.”
She did, and the top sprang open. “Henry,” she said softly. Different than earlier, when she spoke with pity. This one sounded remarkably like awe. “It’sbeautiful.”
Shewas beautiful.
“Every birthday, he’d build us a new one and hide something inside.” She turned to face him, her eyes light with interest, setting the unlocked, unopened cube on the bed between them. “Sometimes they would take hours to open. Jack always got frustrated and wandered off.”
She smiled. “Not you, though.”
He shook his head. “Not me. I loved the mystery of them. The challenge. I loved the way they revealed their secrets only once I’d proven myself.” He looked to her. “I still do.” He didn’t say more. Didn’t tell her that he would do whatever was required to prove himself to her.
She knew it. She had to.
“What was inside them?”
“Trinkets. A coin. A length of new fishing twine. A sack of lemon candies.” He gave a little laugh. “That’s why Jack always gave up. He thought the real gift was whatever was wrapped in paper and string.”
“You knew better.”
“I’ve never been interested in what’s easy.” He indicated the box. “This one is the most complex he ever made. Ours never had security measures.”
Because it kept a secret that he’d never wanted revealed. She reached between them and lifted the box, moving it several inches toward him. “Thank you for teaching me.”
His brows rose. “You don’t want to know what’s inside? What’s so valuable that a notorious gang of thieves was hired to steal it? What kind of secret might be able to do in the Duke of Clayborn?”
“No,” she said. “Some secrets are not for me.”
This one was, though. This one, he wanted her tohave—the proof that he would stand with her, at her side, facing whatever came, for as long as she’d have him. Proof, too, that he could not marry her.
She would understand when she saw. He pushed the box toward her. “Open it.”
Something flashed in her eyes. Something honest and urgent. “Henry—if I do... I need you to know... whatever it is... I’ll never use it.”
“I know,” he said. “But even if you did—I would not regret giving it to you. I would not regret this moment. This time, here in this place.”
“But... I deal in secrets.”
He caught her cheek in one hand and leaned forward, kissing the whisper from her lips. “This one comes with no charge.”
She opened the box just as he had a hundred times before her, marveling at the little tray within, suspended beneath a vial of blue ink that would have snapped in two if she’d pressed the wrong button, rendering the square of paper seated in the tray unreadable.
