He nodded. "That is better. As to the wedding trip, I have had Monk on the Continent, scouting suitable destinations. He seems to think Venice would be lovely, or perhaps a villa in Greece?"
I stared at him. "Monk has been looking for a house? For us?"
"Of course. You don't think I would marry you and drag you off to someplace, sight unseen? I trust him implicitly. He always thinks to inquire about things like hygienic arrangements," Brisbane said, raising a brow significantly. "I gave him a list of places I compiled months ago and sent him off to look them over."
"I cannot believe you have been thinking about this marriage, planning this marriage for months."
He put a hand through my hair, twisting it around his fingers. "I have been planning it since that first interview in your study at Grey House, a few weeks after Edward's death. You were all wide eyes and tart tongue, and you insisted to me Edward could not have been murdered."
"You are joking," I said, tickling his chin with a lock of my hair.
He shook his head, wrapping his arms about me and pulling me closer still. "I seem to recall you are the one always telling me to respect the sight," he said, only slightly mocking.
"You had a vision? About me?" He did not answer at first, and I began to nip at him with my fingers until he replied.
"Ow, yes, stop that, you vicious little beast. I had a vision of you, the first time I stepped into Grey House, the night Edward died. That was why I kept staring at you while he lay on the bed, convulsing between us. I had seen you standing before me, your hand in mine. I could not hear what was said between us, but there was a sense of belonging to you, as if I had always known you somehow, and you had been waiting for me. It came as rather a nasty shock to realise you were already married."
"Why were you so cold to me then? I thought you quite hated me."
"I hated what was happening to you," he said, brushing a bit of hair out of my eyes. "I knew you would suffer when he died. Besides, I never quite thought of myself as the marrying sort."
I stared at him, comprehension dawning. "You were afraid of me."
"Quite terrified," he said, smiling. He kissed my palm then, and I settled back against him.
"I cannot imagine that," I told him. "You, so coolly disdainful and dismissive. Terrified of me as I stood trembling in front of you, thinking you were the most alarming man I had ever met. I cannot believe you have ever been afraid of anything."
"It was a rather novel experience, I assure you," he said, tracing a path along the small of my back. I thought of the journey that had brought us together, the earl's daughter and the country-bred Gypsy lad, and I marvelled at the workings of fate. So many little turnings along the way, and if either of us had taken a different path, we would never have found one another.
"Tell me," I commanded. "Tell me about your adventures. I know you have been to China, to Egypt. I want to know it all. Tell me about the Orient first. Is it very exotic?"
Without warning, Brisbane, my partner and now my husband, rolled me smoothly onto my back and put his lips to my ear. "Later," he said, applying himself enthusiastically to the conjugal arts.
"But I want to know about China," I said, laughing as he did something rather new and thoroughly enjoyable.
He drew back, looked at me with those mesmerising witch-black eyes. He put a firm finger across my lips. "That is a tale for another time."
ISBN: 978-1-4268-3075-4Copyright © 2009 Harlequin Books S.A.
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Silent in the Grave
Copyright © 2007 by Deanna Raybourn
Silent in the Sanctuary
Copyright © 2008 by Deanna Raybourn
Silent on the Moor
Copyright © 2009 by Deanna Raybourn
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