Free Season For Desire by Theresa Romain

there. Holding it up to one eye, he squinted over the surface to find the fine lines at which the patterned pieces were joined. The diagonal patterns led the eye astray; within the box, intricate straight edges and corners held its secrets.
    “There’s nothing in the box.” Lady Dudley folded her arms.
    “It could have papers inside,” said Richard.
    The viscount laid a quelling hand on his wife’s forearm, which she shook off. “What papers? If they were important, Lady Beatrix would have kept them with her.”
    “She couldn’t bring anything of value with her,” Richard replied. “Her belongings were sifted and searched. The marquess and marchioness were hardly pleased that their daughter wanted to marry an apprentice jeweler from America—though I had good prospects. Beatrix and I had to make for the Scottish border, then the Atlantic.”
    Giles had heard this story at least ten thousand times before, to put a conservative figure to it. But with a new group of listeners, the hoary old tale seemed alive in a new way. He couldn’t help but think of Audrina, dragged almost to the Scottish border against her will. But what an adventure—dear God, now he was using that word—if instead one eloped in the course of a love affair.
    He caught Audrina’s eye; she was looking a bit serious and pale. Setting the puzzle box down again, Giles stretched his arm across the small table and chucked her under the chin. “And your father thought your elder sisters married poorly, princess. Just imagine if an American tradesman turned up and threatened to take them halfway around the world.”
    She batted his hand away. “He would probably prefer that to our staying in England besmirching his good name.”
    “Would he really say ‘besmirch’? Do people here talk like that?”
    Audrina raised a brow. “Lady Irving, if you could accidentally step on Mr. Rutherford’s foot?” Giles supposed he deserved the countess’s hearty stomp on his boot, though she could have done it with a little less enthusiasm.
    “All right, your foot’s been flattened, young Rutherford,” grumped Lady Irving. “Now get the damned thing open. We’ve all waited long enough. If I want to hear a tragic family story about illness and whatnot, I’ll visit our fine feathered wastrel of a king and ask him about his mad father.”
    Giles stared at her just long enough for her to understand he wasn’t obeying, then began testing the panels of the box again.
    “There’s nothing tragic about what I said,” Richard protested. “These puzzle boxes are a nice tradition.”
    “It’s plenty tragic,” retorted Lady Irving. “When you speak of Lady Beatrix still as your wife, though she’s been gone for three years.”
    “She’s the only wife I’ve had. Why should I not call her that?”
    “Someday, Rutherford,” said Lady Irving, “I am going to get you to lose your temper.”
    “Why?”
    Lady Irving made no reply, but the expression of her shoulders was eloquent.
    Under the pressure of Giles’s fingers, the ancient wood of the puzzle box gave a creak. He fumbled with the tiny panels, feeling large and clumsy. “I’ve got one side, I think—oh, no, I haven’t.”
    Audrina crouched to peer at the box from tabletop level. Looking straight down at her, Giles could see the pale parting in her pinned-up hair. A fine line of naked skin, soap-scented and clean from a bath the night before.
    So he assumed. Not that he knew for certain. But it only made sense, cold and gritty as she’d been after her long days of travel, that she would want to sink her proud weariness into a great copper tub, and . . .
    “Is there a problem?” Still crouching, Audrina looked up at him. Was that a knowing smile on her face? He had no idea what the expression on his own looked like, or whether it was possible for her to read I was starting to imagine you undressing for a bath across his features.
    “Somewhere in the world, there certainly is. But if you’re