"Perhaps we had better have a look beneath the leather."
Gabriel took a small penknife from Phoebe's escritoire and carefully slit the newly stitched leather. He watched intently as Phoebe lifted one edge. She peeled it back slowly to reveal soft, white cotton.
"What on earth?" Phoebe cautiously lifted aside the cotton.
Gabriel saw the gleam of dark moonlight, diamonds, and gold, and knew at once what he was looking at. "Ah, yes. I wondered what had become of it."
"What is it?" Phoebe asked in amazement.
"A necklace I had made up in Canton using some very special pearls." Gabriel lifted the glittering thing out of the book. "With any luck there will be a matching bracelet, a brooch, and a set of earrings."
"It's beautiful." Phoebe stared at the gems. "But I have never seen pearls of that color before."
"They're very rare. It took me years to collect this many of this quality." He held the necklace close to the candle flame. The diamonds sparkled with an inner fire, but the pearls glowed with a mysterious dark light. It was like looking into an endless midnight sky.
"I thought at first they were black pearls," Phoebe observed. "But they are not black at all. It's almost impossible to describe the color. They are some fantastic combination of silver and green and deep blue."
"Dark moonlight."
"Dark moonlight," Phoebe repeated in wonder. "Yes, that's a perfect description." She fingered one gently. "How extraordinary."
Gabriel looked down at her candlelit skin. "They will look magnificent on you."
She looked up quickly. "This necklace truly belongs to you?"
He nodded. "It did once upon a time. Baxter took it when he attacked one of my ships."
"And now you have it back," Phoebe said with satisfaction.
He shook his head. "No. You found it, my sweet. As of now it belongs to you."
Phoebe stared at him, obviously flustered. "You cannot mean to give me such a gift."
"But I do mean to give it to you."
"But Gabriel—"
"You must indulge me, Phoebe. I have given you very little thus far in our marriage."
"That's not true," she sputtered. "Not true at all. Why, just this evening you bought me this beautiful gown."
Gabriel looked at the awful gown and started to laugh.
"I fail to see what is so amusing about this, my lord."
Gabriel laughed harder. A fierce joy crashed through him as he gazed at Phoebe in her cheap, gaudy dress. She looked so incredibly lovely, he thought. Like a princess out of a medieval legend. Her eyes were huge and luminous and her mouth promised a passion that he knew belonged only to him. She was his.
"Gabriel, are you laughing at me?"
He sobered quickly. "No, my sweet. Never that. The necklace is yours, Phoebe. I had it made for the woman I would someday marry."
"The fiancée who betrayed you in the islands?" she asked suspiciously.
He wondered who had told her about Honora. Anthony, most likely. "At the time I had it fashioned, I was not engaged. I did not know whom I would marry," Gabriel said honestly. "I wanted to have a suitable necklace to give my future wife, just as I wanted a suitable motto for my descendants."
"So you invented the family jewels, just as you did the family motto." She glanced at the necklace and then back at him. "I'm certain you mean well, as usual, but I do not want such a spectacular gift from you."
"Why not?" He took a step toward her and stopped when she retreated an equal distance. "I can afford it."
"I know you can. That's not the point."
He took another step forward, crowding her back against the wall. He clasped the necklace around her throat and then braced his hands on either side of her head. He kissed her forehead. "Then what is the point?"
"Damnation, Gabriel, do not try to seduce me now. 'Tis not a necklace I want from you, and you know it."
"Then what do you want?"
"You know very well what I want. I want your trust."
He smiled slightly. "You don't understand, do you?"
"What don't I understand?" she breathed.
"I trust you, my sweet."
She gazed up at him, her eyes full of dawning hope. "You do?"
"Yes."
"In spite of all our little misunderstandings?"
"Maybe because of them," he admitted. "No woman who was deliberately trying to deceive me would make such a hash of it time after time. Leastways not a woman as clever as you are."
She smiled tremulously. "I'm not certain that is a compliment."
"The problem," Gabriel said, his voice roughening, "is not whether I trust you. What has torn my guts apart for days is that I didn't know whether you would continue to trust me."
"Gabriel, how could you think I would lose my faith in you?"
"The evidence was mounting against me. I did not know in the end if you would choose to believe your golden-haired Sir Lancelot or your increasingly short-tempered, overbearing, dictatorial husband."
Phoebe slowly twined her arms around his neck. Her eyes gleamed with love and mischief. "I could say that I came to a conclusion similar to your own. After all, surely no man who was out to charm and beguile me into trusting him would have been so appallingly heavy-handed."
He smiled ruefully. "You think not?"
"Let me put it this way. I was not certain if Neil was the victim of a misunderstanding, but I have never doubted you, Gabriel. I knew which man to trust tonight when I found myself suspended between you and Neil."
Gabriel was exultant. "What gave you the clue?"
Phoebe brushed her lips lightly against his. "Neil made the mistake of playing the chivalrous, gallant knight right to the very end."
"I heard him," Gabriel muttered.
"You, on the other hand, were acting much more like a genuinely frantic husband trying to save his wife. In that moment you did not even try to charm me. You were far too desperate to think of such a ruse."
Gabriel eyed her with a disgruntled expression. "I suppose that is true enough."
Phoebe laughed softly and reached up to frame his face between her soft hands. "I believe, my lord, that in all the ways that truly count, we do trust each other."
At the sight of the tender warmth in her eyes, an aching hunger seized Gabriel. "Yes. God, yes, Phoebe."
With a low exclamation he scooped her up and carried her over to the bed. The crimson skirts of her tawdry gown billowed around his boots as he covered her body with his own.
Phoebe's eyes were brilliant as she looked up at him through her lashes. Gabriel thought he would drown in that gaze. He kissed her with a desperate passion. His tongue surged into her mouth in an act of possession that presaged the even more intimate one that would soon follow.
"I will never be able to get enough of you," he whispered thickly. He lowered his head to taste one rosy nipple that had been revealed by a shifting black lace flower.
Phoebe arched herself against him with a sensual generosity that seared Gabriel's already inflamed senses. He tugged the bright crimson gown down to her waist so that he could savor the sight and feel of her breasts. Phoebe opened his shirt and twisted her fingers gently in the hair on his chest.
"I love you," she said against the side of his face.
"For God's sake, don't ever stop loving me," Gabriel heard himself plead in a tortured voice he hardly recognized. "I could not bear it."
He pushed the red skirts up over her thighs so that they bunched at her waist. The cheap satinet gleamed as richly as Italian silk in the candlelight. He looked down at the soft curls that shielded her softness and closed a hand over them for a moment. She was already damp.
Phoebe shivered at his touch. He could feel the rising heat in her. He could also feel his manhood straining against his breeches. He reached down to unfasten his clothing, freeing his shaft.