by JayneFresina
* * * *
Ever lifted the small box lid and caught her breath, the smile dropping off her face.
There, nestled in midnight blue velvet, was her seahorse brooch.
"You said you love them too," he said. "I thought it would look very well on you."
Her hand was shaking. "Yes. But...where...where did you get it?"
"Price's in Norwich. What's the matter? You don't like it?"
She couldn't breathe. Her heart was trying so hard to keep beating that it hurt. Made her chest tight.
"I can take it back if you don't like it," he muttered, his face perplexed, eyes dark.
Again she looked at the seahorse. It was identical to hers. With trembling fingers, she took it from the box and turned it over. Yes, there was the same mark, a tiny word hidden under the pin. Forever.
She had never told anybody about that word engraved on the underside. Her mother had never wanted to touch the brooch, and viewed it with suspicion, as if it were cursed and could only bring bad luck. Her father had only admired the front. Nobody tried to take it from her. As if they knew better.
Ever would not have relinquished it to anybody. Thus that little word on the back side "Forever" was known only to her.
"You don't like it," he said, his voice falling flat.
"No...yes. I mean, I do. But I have one just like it." She got the words out in a rush.
"You can't have," he replied, frowning. "I designed it specially for you. I can show you the drawings if you don't believe me. Price still has them. It's a one of a kind. There never has been and never will be another made like it."
Ever stared at him, the brooch clasped in her hand. "I don't understand how that could be. The one I have is identical. I swear it."
Now he sat up, his lounging pose abandoned, anger sharpening his jaw, his bare shoulders tense. "Does it have For Ever engraved on the back too?" he snapped.
"No, it has forev—" She looked down again at the brooch in her hand. "It says forever. One word. Just the same as this one."
Gabriel snatched it from her hand and looked at it. He cursed. "I told Price that it should say For Ever. I suppose he misunderstood. Damn the man. Well, I'll take it back. Clearly you don't like it. Don't believe I had it made for you."
But she reached for it. "No, please. I want it. Don't take it back. You had it made for me. Of course I believe you." And she did.
It was just another strange coincidence. More than could reasonably be explained away.He had closed his unrelenting fist around the seahorse brooch."That's alright. It doesn't matter."
She gathered her breath, sitting back on her heels. "I want it. You bought it for me. It says For Ever on the back. The jeweler won't want to accept a return now because it’s personalized."
He scowled, jaw stuck out. "It says forever. As you pointed out. He can bloody well sell it to anybody, can't he? It's his mistake, so let him worry about it. I wanted it to say For Ever. Can't help it if he's stupid."
Hands on her knees, she watched him as he sat there sulking against the headboard. How could it be that she found that seahorse when she was six and now it was put into her hands again as if brand new? A unique design, he said. There would never be, and never had been, another like it.
Might as well be describing himself, she thought glumly.
She tried to remember the last time she wore her seahorse brooch, the last time she held it before today. It had surprised her to discover that she'd overlooked the brooch when she packed her trunk to leave for Cromer. Ever was usually very careful with her seahorse and knew where it was at all times. Yet she had not had it in her possession since she arrived to work for Gabriel.
The note to her parents, asking for it to be sent on, went unanswered.
It was as if the brooch never existed until now. Except, of course, it had. She knew it had because she'd held it in her own hand.
Unless she was, finally, descending into madness.
Dr. Frazer was always very keen on sorting out problems by setting down the simple, known facts first. So she tried that now.
The facts known to be true: a silver and enamel seahorse brooch made to an original design and custom ordered in December 1905 could not have existed in July 1887. The same brooch could not be in two places at once.
The only other thing she knew for sure was that she was in love with the man who gave it to her today.
And that was all there was to it.
Yes, Dr. Frazer's method had never done him much good either. It usually raised more questions than it found answers.
Slowly she moved across the bed to where Gabriel sat. "I want my seahorse brooch. I love it. I adore it." She sat astride his hips and although he kept his dark gaze fixed to the window drapes and his arms folded stubbornly across his chest, she leaned in and kissed his chin, then his cheek, then his nose. "I've never had such a beautiful gift. It's mine. Give it to me." She kissed his eyebrows, one at a time, then his furrowed forehead. "Please, my darling, sweet, handsome, impossible Gabriel. Let me open it all over again."
Cautious, his gaze slipped back toward her face. "You said you'd already got one," he muttered gruffly.
"It was a jest. Don't you know a jest when you hear one?" She kissed the flattened bridge of his nose.
"Not one of yours apparently. Odd kind of jest."
"Yes," she replied somberly. "It was a bad joke. I'm not very good at them. I haven't had much practice, and I've been told I have a dark, sinister sense of humor."
He sniffed. "Who told you that?"
"My mother."
"Not some other man then? The one who bought you a brooch like mine?"
She shook her head, leaned in again and kissed his lips, exerting a steady, determined pressure until she felt them warming and melting a little. "There is no other man," she whispered, "and no other brooch. There never has been."
Slowly he unfolded his arms, pressing his fists into the mattress. A very defiant look came into his eyes. "Then you'll say yes to marrying me, won't you?"
Her mind twisted and stretched and pinged like an elastic band. She was exhausted by it and all she wanted then was to lay warm in his strong arms and not have to think about anything. Not have to figure anything out.
She licked her lips. "Can I have my seahorse back then? Please?"
His eyes sparked and narrowed. "Please...Gabriel."
"Please, Gabriel." Since he was in a thin-skinned mood she restrained herself from rolling her eyes.
"And the rest of it. All that other stuff you just called me. Darlin'... an 'andsome an'," his lips quirked as his eyelids lowered, "whatnot."
So she leaned in and kissed him again. "Please may I have my lovely seahorse brooch, my darling, sweet, handsome, delicious, desirable, beloved, impossible Gabriel?"
He raised a finger to scratch his chin. "Pass the box then and I'll put it back, so you can open it again, Princess." His lashes lifted, his heated gaze fixed upon her face. "And then we'll start again."
Ever smiled and nodded. She reached back for the box and put it into his hand. Then she closed her eyes and kept her own hands cupped, waiting. Her pulse danced in a manner that she could only describe as...frolicsome. An idea that made her smile. Yes, her pulse danced like a child with no worries, no responsibilities, just pure happiness to be alive— as she had been in the marketplace earlier.
When he set the jeweler's box into her palm again, he added, "Then I get to open your gift to me all over again too. As many times as I like."
How could a woman refuse such a demand? Especially when it was as much her pleasure to give as it was his to receive.
* * * *
Gabriel realized he still hadn't had her reply to his proposal. Slippery, cunning mermaid! She was likely to vanish again from his grip if he didn't secure her this time. Look how suddenly she left him once before? Disappeared without a trace.
It wouldn't happen this time.
As he made love to her again amid the rumpled sheets in th
e early hours of the following morning, he teased her wickedly, bringing her closer and closer to the brink of ecstasy but never quite letting her over it. Soon she was clawing at his back again, threatening to scream until every window in that hotel felt the tremors of her frustration, if he didn't give her what she wanted.
"Say you'll marry me," he growled, intercepting her hands when they tried to reach for his rampant manhood, and holding her wrists up over her head, pinning them to the mattress. "If you want all of Gabriel Hart as he is while very much alive— all of him, that is— you'll be my wife and stay with me. Always."
Finally she relented. "Yes. Yes, I'll marry you. Damnable man!"
He croaked with laughter and slowly, inch by inch gave her what she wanted. What they both wanted. "Thank god," he grunted. "Because I ain't in the mood to be a gentleman this time and pull out."
"How romantic," she sputtered wryly.
"Good thing you ain't."
She gasped, "Yes. I've always... preferred stories... of a... darker, quirkier bent." And when the climax started, he quickly put his mouth over hers to drink it down, appeasing his voracious appetite with the taste of her ardent cries, delighting in the way her legs wound around him, holding his body to hers. As if they were dancing, or drowning together in the green-gold light of otherworldly rapture.
Chapter Fourteen
Later that morning he left her alone to enjoy a bath and dress. She was to meet him in the hotel foyer for lunch and then they would start their journey back to Aylsham.
Oh, she did not want to emerge from that bed. Even once he had left her side, she still wanted to lay there, luxuriating in the warm sheets of their debauchery. She felt weak as a leaf tumbled from a tree and blown about by a raging, merciless wind. All her parts ached. All of them. Especially those she never knew existed until now.
"I shouldn't have been quite so...enthusiastic," he'd muttered this morning, apologetic as he pulled on last night's clothes to sneak like a thief back to his own room.
She'd laughed at that. "Thank you, but I really don't want an unenthusiastic lover, do I?"
"You know what I mean, woman."
"Indeed I do not. I loved every minute of it." She could not possibly complain about anything, for she'd wanted it just as much as he did, and had just as passionately thrown herself into the fray. Her mind, anticipating many future delights of the same, already galloped ahead to that evening, when they would be together again. She was becoming a dreadful loose hussy.
It felt wonderful.
Finally she stumbled from the bed and put herself back together again. But when she looked in the long mirror, she barely recognized herself. Everything was changed, everything was newer and brighter. Had her eyes always been so green?
She took the seahorse brooch from its box and pinned it to the collar of her tailored, brown serge traveling suit. There, back where it belonged. She patted it for reassurance and its tiny jet eye seemed to wink at her in the mirror.
At some point last night she had made the decision not to question the provenance of the seahorse any further. It would be rude since he'd had it made for her and she didn't like to see that dejected, disappointed look on his face. The mystery was one of those best left unsolved and unexamined. She was used to them by now and as he had said to her last night, "Perhaps it should be enough for us that we're here. That we found each other again. Now we can live in the present. Whatever that may be."
She lifted her shoulder in a shrug similar to those he was fond of giving, and the little seahorse winked again, complicit in her secrets apparently.
* * * *
When she joined him in the dining room for luncheon, Ever was startled to see another man at the table with him, and as she approached, unseen by either of them, she sensed this was an arranged meeting. They were deep in conversation, heads bent over the table, no menus open, just two brandy glasses between them. So early in the day again, just when she thought she'd broken him of that habit.
Clearly this other man— a stout fellow, red-faced and balding, with a little gingery moustache— was a bad influence.
He saw her before Gabriel did because he was facing the door of the dining room. His mean little eyes scoured her thoroughly, at greedy speed, and a leer lifted the wispy, curling corners of his moustache. When he realized her progress brought her toward their table he abruptly broke off his conversation. She saw his booted foot nudge Gabriel under the table, heard his mind hiss and spit like a coiled snake, What the devil is this? One of his hussies who doesn't know when she's outstayed her welcome? And then her lover turned to see her there.
Leaping up at once, Gabriel exclaimed, "Ah, Miss Greene!" A flare of teeth as he smiled, but not in that warm, indulgent way she'd seen lately. Now he was back to the man he had been on the first day, guarded. "May I introduce Mr. Max Connolly? Max, this is Miss Greene. My... fiancée."
"Fiancée?" Like a storybook villain, Connolly fidgeted with the ends of his moustache and then he too stood, belatedly, to give her an awkward bow, oozing condescension. "I 'ad no idea. What a delightful surprise, m'dear. Where's he been keeping you all this time?"
Although every part of her instinctively recoiled from the oily fellow, she allowed him to take her hand and kiss it as he burbled stupidly about not being told anything about her. As if he should have been the first to know. As if it was any of his wretched business.
"You're a sly one, Hart." He looked over at Gabriel. "And I thought I knew everything about you."
Ever didn't want to judge the man so quickly, but she could not help hearing every thought that ran through his mercenary mind. She'd better not get in the way. I wonder what Lucretzia will think of this? She's supposed to keep an eye on him for me. Marriage, indeed. He's not fit for marriage. What the devil is he up to?
She didn't like the way he looked slyly at Gabriel, as if they shared a secret she was not allowed to know. Just like Signora Brunetti. Nor did she appreciate the way he had leered at her before he knew who she was, the way he had broken off his conversation, as if she was not entitled to hear it. And she did not like the fact that Gabriel had not told her Connolly would be there. It was clear that this meeting was not by chance. There was a paper on the table between them and a pen, angled toward Gabriel, as if he was expected to sign that line along the bottom.
He had not though. Not yet.
Her heart sank when she considered that this might actually be the purpose of their trip to Norwich. And she had let herself think it was merely because he wanted to take her away with him for a few days of debauchery.
But she should not be upset. She'd had a wonderful time with him these past few days, and...last night. Oh, she felt her face grow warm at the thought of it.
"Why don't you study the menu?" Gabriel whispered as he leaned over to plant a peck on her hot cheek, "While Max and I finish business." He signaled for the waiter. "I don't suppose our conversation will interest you, sweetheart."
"Why not, darling?" she exclaimed, her voice taut, her hands in her lap rather than take the menu he tried to give her. "Why wouldn't it interest me? Besides, I'm not hungry." Then she smiled sweetly at Max Connolly. "But don't let me get in your way. Please continue."
The other man eyed her suspiciously. He had apparently mistaken her for an empty-headed floozy at first. Now he thought again. "Well...if you don't mind, Miss Greene."
"Not at all."
When the waiter arrived at their table, she ordered coffee but nothing to eat. She should have been ravenous after the exertions of last night— and this morning— but since she saw Max Connolly sitting there like a well-fed, self-satisfied toad on a lily pad, her stomach had begun to turn in somersaults that did not bode well for any food she might put into it. An awful feeling of foreboding came over her every time she glanced at that paper on the table between the two men. Fairly soon she was completely distracted by it, staring down and trying to read the words over the rim of her coffee cup.
"Like I said, Hart,
it will do you good to get back out there. Show 'em you ain't dead yet. None of the youngsters can hold a candle to you."
"And you wouldn't want me back in the ring just to fatten your nest egg for retirement, would you, Connolly?"
The other man laughed, a cigar resting between his yellowed teeth.
Gabriel sat back and folded his arms. "I made up my mind three years ago to pack it in. I don't need the money, so why go back? What's in it for me?"
Connolly took the cigar from his mouth. "You're just 'appy to fade into 'istory then, are you? That ain't the Gabe Hart I remember. Where's your pride? You know O'Rourke's been runnin' around, claiming he could have beaten you easy if you were still fightin'."
"O'Rourke's a boy."
"A boy with a big, ruddy mouth. I'd like to knock that smirk of 'is face meself."
"Then why don't you?"
"Because you'd do a better job of it." He leaned over the table and blew out a gust of smoke that made Ever wince. "None of these young upstarts could beat you. They're all talk. But if you let them keep talkin', people will start believin' it. They'll think you've lost your gumption. But that's alright. If you don't care no more."
She looked at Gabriel and saw his eyes darken, sinking deeper into thought. The angles of his face became more severe and he looked older. Tired.
His damnable pride. And that vanity he claimed not to possess.
Connolly knew how to push those levers, like an evil station master changing the points to derail a train. For his own selfish, sick purposes, giving no thought to the fate of the passengers on that train.
The coffee was hot and bitter. It burned her tongue, so she set the cup back with a clatter. She saw Gabriel's fingers tapping on the cloth, inching toward the pen.
