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gaze alighting on his left wrist and the thick carved ivory band he wore over it. “That’s a most unusual bracelet. I don’t recall you wearing such adornments before you…left.”
    Her eyes veered to his pierced ear, and he availed himself of the distraction to slip down his sleeve. “I’ve worn your locket every day since we parted, albeit concealed beneath my neck cloth.” Every day save one—the day his torturer had ripped it from his throat. “Of all the jewels that have since come into my possession, none can touch your token in its worth.” Eschewing several nearby chairs, he seated himself on the cushion beside her, his thigh brushing hers.
    She slipped over as if to make room, and even after all these years, Robert knew her too well to misread the gesture. Those few millimeters separating them might as well have been a chasm.  
    Regarding him over the rim of her glass, she remarked, “And you’ve grown out your hair.”  
    He reached his free hand toward her tumbled tresses and clipped a curl between his thumb and forefinger. Testing its silkiness, he said, “So have you.”
    She pulled back and rather than press her, he let his hand fall to his lap. “After you…died, I hardly cared for keeping up with fashion.”  
    Robert stiffened. “And yet you’ve managed to land yourself a lord for a husband.” Admittedly it was a boorish way to begin. Beyond her flashing eyes, she didn’t answer, nor did he blame her. “Forgive me. I should not have—”
    “No, you should not have. Six years you’ve stayed away without a word, allowing us all to believe you dead. One line from you, Robert, one bloody line, and I wouldn’t only have forestalled marriage plans. I would have lived for your return.” She stopped there, waiting.
    The condemnation in her face and voice was deserved, he knew—he’d more than earned it. And yet as tempted as he was to rise up and defend himself, how could he possibly foul her ears with the truth? That until six months ago, he’d let himself believe it would be kinder, nobler, to let her and all the rest go on thinking him dead? That though his body might be healed, his mind was as yet too shattered to trust himself in her society, let alone her bed? That months of wandering and later those at sea had seemed to halt time to a standstill, the hope of “someday” floating before him like an elusive golden grail he could never quite commit to, let alone reach out and grasp? What would have been the point in writing only to let her know that, for the foreseeable future, he must as yet remain away? Instead he’d waited until he could trust himself not to fall apart in front of her, until Caleb’s soothing herbs and other healing ways had hushed his inner demons to a muted roar, their salivating jaws and snapping tails banished to his nightmares and no longer his waking. And, it now seemed, he’d waited too long, acted too late.
    “And now you’ve returned. What did you bloody well expect, a hero’s homecoming?”
    Phoebe Tremont, Phoebe Tremont, Phoebe Tremont…
    Him heralded as a hero? The mere suggestion had him awash in shame. He fought his way back to the present—and sanity—by focusing on minutia, notably her expanded vernacular. The Phoebe of his recollection had never once uttered any oath bolder than “What fustian!” or “Stuff and feathers!” The outraged female facing him now was fully capable of cursing a blue streak if provoked, he felt certain of it. The stark shift might be damnably disconcerting, but it was also undoubtedly…arousing.  
    Fantasizing other, more pleasurable pursuits to which her rosebud lips and sharp tongue might be put, gamely he said, “I’d settle for a smile—and a kiss.”
    Her gaze narrowed. “And I’ll settle for answers.”
    “It’s a long story,” he warned, taking a swig of port to buoy his courage.
    She stared at him askance. “Fortunately I find myself with some time.”
    Setting his glass aside, Robert