he spat out the word as if it revolted him '—like trying to charm Grandpère into selling you more of his books, or querying him about a suspect provenance of one he had sold you...'
‘I haven’t been trying to steal the necklace, Jack,' she croaked insistently. 'For God's sake—I've been trying to give it back!'
Deep, dark colour flushed across his face as his lips pulled back in a rictus of a smile. 'You take me for a fool?' he demanded fiercely, leaning into her so that she felt the hard grind of his hips against her trembling belly and the grate of her spine against the table.
'No—Jack—I'm telling the truth this time.'
'Huh!' The pressure didn’t ease one iota. Elizabeth thought about bursting into tears but she realised he would probably enjoy hearing her sob—or, worse, think that she was still trying to manipulate him with her vulnerability. She was bleakly aware of the miserable fate of the Boy Who Cried Wolf.
‘It's true,' she said huskily, trying to speak calmly through her severely restricted airway. 'The necklace and those books—they were sent to my uncles by mistake in the crate with their purchases from your grandfather. Obviously your grandfather couldn’t have packed them so it must have been someone who didn’t know books, who didn’t check the inventory properly, or was careless. By the time they realised what had happened my uncles were worried that they'd be accused of stealing...'
'Why—if they were totally innocent of guilt?' he challenged harshly. ‘If they had returned everything straight away Grandpère would have been grateful rather than suspicious of any wrong-doing.'
Elizabeth swallowed, sternly reminding herself of the clean breast that she had promised herself to display. Her voice quavered bravely. 'Well, actually Uncle Seymour did find the necklace and the books more or less straight away but—"well, he's old and he loves beautiful old things... Since no one was shouting for their immediate return he—he just thought that it wouldn’t hurt if he enjoyed them for a while...
'He never intended to withhold his finding indefinitely,' she added desperately. 'He just looked on it as minding... And when Uncle Miles realised—well, they did try to arrange a return through the proper channels. Uncle Miles phoned and wrote, but your grandfather never replied and we couldn’t just send the necklace back in the post! So-so I offered to bring it back and try and explain and apologise—'
'And since you were already set for a spy mission on Ile des Faucons it was all incredibly convenient!' There was not a shred of belief in the sardonic interruption, but imperceptibly the grip on her throat eased.
‘It was the other way around,' she said quickly, hoping that the worst of the explosion was over and that now he would start to think. ‘I told you the truth last night— the Corvell thing was sprung on me at the last minute at the airport. I had no idea that the Hawkwoods and St Clairs were the same family...or whether the disappearance of the necklace had even been discovered. I had to know what the situation was before I blundered blindly into it. I'd promised Uncle Miles that I'd be very discreet. Don’t you see, I had to get into the estate and meet your grandfather before I could say anything...' Heartened by the slight easing of his hand, she ventured tentatively, 'Could you—do you think you could please get off me now? You're hurting me.'
She had misread his softening. He didn’t budge. If anything his body settled more deeply on to hers, stressing the weakness of her position and the power of his. His eyes, as cold and grey as dead ashes, contrasted with the flaming tension that smouldered in the bunched muscles of his body.
'And you think you haven’t hurt me with your litany of lies?' he grated. 'Did you think that I was so far under your spell that I would believe any ridiculous fabrication you chose to feed me?'
Her description of events sounded absurdly unbelievable even to her own ears, and the fact that some of his condemnation was deserved undermined her feeble flutter of confidence. His reaction seemed to confirm her earlier decision not to confide in him until she had proof of her honest motives.
She realised wearily that she was paying the price for two crimes here—one of which was not even her own. In Jack's mind she and the treacherous Zenobia had temporarily merged into one. The other woman had always been beyond any dream of vengeance, but she, Elizabeth, was right here, literally within his grasp.
'Look, you can call Uncle Miles and ask,' she said, struggling against a fresh desire to weep. 'He'll tell you—'
'Of course he would lie for you, if he was an accomplice. Was it he who wormed the information of the existence of the necklace and where it was kept out of Grandpère...?’
'Don’t be ridiculous, he's seventy-two!' she snapped with a trace of her natural resilience.
'Age is no barrier to deceit.'
‘I know what Seymour did was wrong, but it wasn’t his intention to deceive,' she cried. 'He's a very gentle and unworldly sort of man. What will you do? Please don’t let my mistakes prejudice your actions. My uncles wanted so badly for things to be smoothed over that I don’t think it occurred to them that I wouldn’t succeed. They'd be horrified if they knew what had happened—'
'What you'd done, you mean?'
'Yes—no! I mean, yes, what I've done—not what you think I've done...'
'Bartering your body for a key to the kingdom of St Clair?'
'No! Don’t you dare say it was that!' she said, reacting fiercely to his degrading reduction of what they had shared to its lowest physical denominator.
'Well, if you came all this way to return the necklace to its rightful owner, why didn’t you mention the fact to my grandfather tonight?'
Because tonight had been forbidden magic. A little slice of heaven. She was accepted in his home—desired, admired, wanted... gracing his table and his bed in the bitter-sweet knowledge that she loved him and that this one last night might be all that she would ever have of him. She had selfishly wanted it to remain unblemished.
‘I didn’t know I was going to meet him,' she said defensively. ‘I wasn’t prepared... You said he was sick. I—I couldn’t just blurt it out over dinner, so I decided to wait until tomorrow...'
'You mean until I was out of the way and you were free to play on his sympathy with your pathetic story?' He flayed her with the accuracy of his contemptuous guess.
‘It was his property I was returning, not yours.' She flew the defiant tatters of her dignity at him. ‘It was only right that he be the one to decide what to do!'
Her frustration at the hopelessness finally broke the bonds of her control. 'Oh, damn you, Jack, let me go. Please. I can’t even think with you lying on top of me!'