Free Healing the Wounds by M.Q. Barber Page B

service with smooth elegance.
    “Just Jay to clear, thank you.” Henry gestured to his left. “Emma, please, sit. You’re our guest tonight.”
    “Of course.” Emma retook her seat. Her hand went to the choker at her throat. “My apologies, Henry.”
    Silence fell over the noise of Jay bustling about with the dishes, swapping soup bowls for salad plates. Henry excused himself to put the main dish, a baked seafood ravioli tossed with fresh vegetables, served in separate ramekins, in the oven to heat while they enjoyed their salads.
    Alice chased down a stubborn piece of lettuce with her fork and stabbed. “Your necklace is beautiful.” Three rows of pearls circled Emma’s neck, little silk knots between them. “Was it a gift?”
    “Oh, yes.” The depth of Emma’s smile dazzled, a brilliance more than simple politeness, and her eyes shone. “Victor gave it to me many, many years ago.”
    “A wedding present?” Expensive, for sure, with vertical bars of platinum evenly spaced after every five pearls.
    “Our first anniversary.” Cheeks pinking, Emma lowered her eyelids in a slow blink. “I knew of his pursuits when I married him, but he refused to begin training me until after we were wed. He surprised me on our anniversary with a collaring ceremony.” She shook her head, her voice little more than a whisper. “Told me I was exquisite. That he was well pleased, beyond even his hopes for our joining. I feel his hand on me even now when I wear it.”
    She’d felt an inkling of that herself. When she wore clothing Henry had chosen for her. Emma had spent decades with a reminder of her husband’s claim around her throat. No wonder if the sense memory of him lived in her skin.
    Jay ate his salad, seemingly unaffected, but surely he had moments, too, when it took nothing at all to recall the warmth of Henry’s hand. The pressure of his lips. The sweet stroke of his tongue.
    With the main course snug in the oven, Henry stood in utter stillness, watching them from the kitchen. No. Watching Emma, though he couldn’t have seen more than the back of her bowed head.
    Lust for his knowledge, his insight, his history, bit Alice with fierce teeth. He saw more than the woman before him. An echo of who she’d been or the memory of his friend and mentor or something Alice couldn’t name and might never know.
    His parting lips and shifting shoulders bespoke a sigh, though no sound emerged. He came to the table and took his seat. “Moonlight,” he murmured. “Victor once told me that was why he’d chosen the pearls.”
    Emma looked up, one elegant eyebrow arched. “Moonlight?”
    “I’d asked him about collaring. The personal significance and how he knew. He said his grandmother told him a story when he was very young. Poetic, though hardly scientific. I’m paraphrasing, of course, but…” Henry paused, head tilted. “When the full moon holds sway over the tides, its brilliance keeps the oysters from their beds. They open, and the pearls inside bathe in the luminescence. Forever on they glow with an inner light, a shard of the moon hidden within.”
    He grimaced. “I was young and clumsy and entirely too ignorant of the nuances of love at the time. I asked if you were his moon, if he meant the pearls as a reminder that he had trapped bits and pieces of you and knotted them into a net to hold you fast.”
    Fine, if Emma liked that sort of thing. Not me. Dishonest. She clamored for Henry’s ownership. Greedy desire and pride had shot through her at the club when Santa William said Henry considered them collared. But if Henry had that claim, she demanded an equal claim in return. Another failure to be submissive. She was racking them up tonight.
    “Never before nor since did I ever see him so offended, so personally affronted.” Henry shook his head, his eyes distant and clouded. “And rightly so. He told me I’d gotten everything backward, and he would have to begin again with me, because for all my skills I