Dearest William,
Again, there are no words. The dress is lovely, and the fact you took such care to replicate it means a great deal. You are a miracle of a man. If I had all the men that had ever breathed to choose from, you would still be the man for whom I would ask.
Yours, Always,
Tasmin
“So. Your mother tried to poison Lavoussier?” She was lying with her head on his bare shoulder, watching the firelight play against the canopy of their bed. She was more content, warmer, and happier, than she had ever been in her life, but in their rush to prepare for the wedding, there were questions that had gone unanswered.
“Hardly the topic for our wedding night, beloved.”
She poked him. “Tell.”
A long suffering sigh was her reward. “She realized who he was, one night, when Bonny invited the new Admiral to dinner. He has the same eyes she gave me and Andrew, and apparently favors one of her captors quite a bit. She saw a threat to everything, and she wanted him destroyed.”
“How awful it must have been.”
“The whole affair does not exactly make me wish to take you on a pleasure cruise.” He sighed, stroking her shoulder. “Or let you out of my sight. I do hope you will have mercy and remain within speaking distance of me at all times.”
“Hardly, and you wouldn’t want me to, either.”
“Never say that, beloved. Anyway, one night, she had Bonny take him a present. Twas meant to look like a simple gift, a bribe, of ground coffee. Mother treated it with poison, so that when he drank it, it would kill him over time. She hoped that would keep the coffee from accidentally killing anyone who happened to have a cup.”
“But the sprite would have sensed the poison, just as ours did.”
“Exactly. I think he wanted to get mother back for it, but couldn’t aim at her directly. He’s been planning this for ages, trying to find a way to worm himself in, even sending his wife here to find a place in the family.”
Tasmin was thinking about the other thing, first. “The coffee wouldn’t act fast enough to kill the Bishop, would it?”
He stroked her shoulder. “We know that Bonny lied about stealing the chocolates, she confessed as much to Andrew. The reason I didn’t recognize them was that Lavoussier and Franny scraped the chocolate off, melted it, and added the poison in. They injected the almonds with dye to make it look like I had used poorly roasted Halsey almonds, because most people don’t know about the taste or smell. I didn’t, until you tracked it down.”
“What I don’t understand is how a woman can so easily betray her vows. Or how a husband can send his wife to sleep with another man.”
“I think they were just looking for opportunities. Certainly, when she became a maid for my mother, sporting impeccable, though probably forged, references, she had not been planning to take to my brother’s bed. The request from my father must have been quite a shock.”
“I hope you never become such a hard man,” Tasmin said, her disgust plain on her face. “But did you never see her while she was working there?”
He was silent for a moment. “I was careful not to spend too much time under my parents’ roof. I usually slept on the ship.”
“But who wrote you to tell you were your chocolates were? Was it really Bonny?”
She felt him nod. “I think she was hoping to be able to keep everything…the house, the position, and get her revenge. She just did not reckon the price.”
She nodded. “I wonder if there will ever be a time when this conversation doesn’t make my head spin.”
And for a time they were silent.
“What? Are all of your questions answered?”
She smiled. “All save one. I saw a box downstairs, on the kitchen table, but of course, I had no real time to mark it. What does CW stand for?”
“Grab your robe and I shall show you.” He rolled out of bed and dressed in his breeches and cloak before lighting a candle. She followed him downstairs. He went to a corner, where there was nothing but a burlap sack, neatly folded. “Ah, we’ve had visitors since we retired,” he said with a rare blush, and used the candle to light a larger lantern. They went out the front of the shop, where he held the lantern high.
The sign on the chocolate shop’s once bare arm was exquisite. The anchor and the locket that she knew were part of his insignia remained, but in the background; now copper-foiled words overlaid them, glowing in the light.
“Oh,” she said, and placed her hands over her mouth.
He put an arm around her. “I had to name it for you. ‘The Chocolatier’s Wife’.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
For Cindy Lynn Speer, the pen and the sword are both equally mighty. She has written three novels, Blue Moon, Unbalanced and the book that you are holding right now. She has also written a number of short stories, to be released from Dragonwell Publishing in 2012 and 2013. When she is not writing, she studies historical combat and is an adept rapier fighter. Both things, in their own way, are about telling stories.
You can find out more about her at her website, www.apenandfire.com.
Did you enjoy THE CHOCOLATIER’S WIFE?
Check out more books and stories from Cindy Lynn Spear, upcoming from Dragonwell Publishing at www.dragonwellpublishing.com
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A SPECIAL PREVIEW OF
A Necklace of Rubies
By Cindy Lynn Speer
Appearing in “Once Upon a Curse” anthology from Dragonwell Publishing in November 2012
He was the handsomest man I’d ever seen.
Tall and slender, he wore his pale-as-snow hair to his collar, a perfect widow’s peak accentuating his aesthetic, almost lupine features. His eyes were the color of amber and sparkled strangely in the candlelight. Sometimes it was almost as if his eyes were on fire. I tried not to look him in the eyes too often. I didn’t know what he would read in mine.
He was always fashionable. Perfect clothing, tasteful and not ostentatious, perfect manners, perfect style. He followed the rules as if he walked on a knife’s edge, knowing just how long it was proper to touch, to stare, careful to never be alone with a woman longer than was proper. Managing to make one feel as if they, too, walked on the knife's edge with him without doing anything that could be remarked upon as unseemly. He was wealthy, and while he did not have the highest of titles, he had all the things that allowed him entrance into the finest circles. Better yet, some would say, he had all these things and he was as yet unmarried.
But the ladies, from the maidens looking for good marriages to the widows desperate for a man’s protection, all desperately avoided him. They flirted, yes, but only as far as safety allowed. No one would consent to marry him, it was said, no matter how fine the offer, no matter how beautiful the dowry gifts.
That’s not to say he hadn’t been married once already. And that was why, thanks to rumor and to superstition, it was said he would never marry again.
“What was she like, this Dona Meriania?” I asked my hostess, Dona Welicide. She was a second cousin who had graciously agreed to take me in after my guardian lost everything we had to gambling debts. He was in debtor’s prison in the capital, and there he could remain, really, for all I cared. He had tried to sell me once to avoid imprisonment and I figured better him than me.
Welicide brightened. I knew nothing of the local gossip, stories which, to her circle, were so overtold as to be threadbare. Now she could relate them to a new audience; in fact, I think it was half the reason she invited me, to have someone else to tell her stories to. “She was beautiful. As dark as he is pale, very much the lady of the moment. Everyone wanted her. She had a taste for rubies, I remember.”
I found myself smiling. “That’s all you can remember of her?”
“Oh, Tessa, I can remember much more than that, but I fear I did not care for the girl. She was my greates
t rival, ever since we were little.”
“Did you fight over Don Joaquin?”
“Shhh,” she breathed. “I was already engaged at the time, so of course not.”
Don Joaquin had dipped his fair head to take a sip from the glass he was holding. He was across the room, a room filled with music and laughing people, but still he stopped when I whispered his name, and looked up at me, slowly, first from the corner of his eye, then straight on, meeting my gaze. I smiled slightly, taken aback by his intensity. I could feel the weight of his stare like a touch, over my cheeks and nose and mouth. He returned the smile just as slightly, then turned to address a man who had come off the dance floor.
“Oh, but that man frightens me,” my cousin said. I would have been inclined to agree, but the chills running down my spine felt too good to be wrong.
I lost sight of him for a time, until I went outside to get a breath of air. I chose one of the smaller balconies that stood open on the far side of the room. I saw him almost immediately; the light of the moon shone on his hair like a beacon. I paused at the threshold of the doorway, then continued onto the balcony. I leaned against the rail opposite from where he stood, but still, there was only a foot between us.
I imagined I could feel the heat of his presence radiating off of him.
“You are not afraid?” His voice was deep, like the forest at night. He seemed surprised, perhaps even amused.
“I am not afraid.” I realized it was true.
“You have not been in our fair country long enough, perhaps.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps I do not listen to rumors.”
“Or perhaps you simply do not listen.”
The coolness of his tone took me aback. What did he know? “I think that you rather like your notoriety, Don Joaquin. Maybe you enjoy being dark and mysterious and dangerous.”
He straightened up, cold dark eyes meeting mine. “No,” he said. “I do not.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, but I spoke to the air, for he had already pushed past the doors and back into the ballroom.
That was not the last time I saw him, though perhaps it should have been.
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