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It round shifted under her feet, as if all the years of transfor, obliterated by the fact her husband hadn’t even bothered to visit her when he returned to London

All the anguish she had felt after James left, when everyone concluded that he couldn’t bear to stay ly wos had depicted Ja with an arm thrown over his eyes Theo had felt reduced to a cipher of a woain now

She kept her eyes closed while Jah the chaently deposited her on the seat of the carriage He was so big that the vehicle actually swayed when he clih the door

"You can wake up now," he said There was that thread of laughter in his voice again Laughter? He thought this was aony of declaring him dead?

James had never been pitiless before He had never been contemptuous

She stopped pretending and sat upright with a jolt, eyes open After all these years, her husband was across froed James had become a pirate A criminal His eyes were dark and unreadable, yet they soance and power She had no difficulty believing that he had forced people to walk down the plank

Her fingers curled around the edge of the leather seat, holding on for dear life

"Good Lord," she said, not quite under her breath His skin was bronzed by the sun, and the dark blue flower under his right eye was arresting, up close It was like soe she didn’t understand

The sight of hilishmen weren’t--they hite, lily white With white skin They didn’t inscribe flowers on their skin

Not Jaentlemen they’d left behind in the House of Lords, and that tattoo

It was a flower, but not a frivolous one It was sinister Frightening, even

Her fingers gripped the seat ht that she could fear her childhood friend But now she did Only an idiot wouldn’t be uneasy in this man’s presence

"Good afternoon, Daisy," he said, as calo

She couldn’t think what to say Mr Badger had described the tattoo as being worn by a ferocious pirate called Jack Hawk: should she mention the name? Then she met his eyes, and as quickly as it had coe took over Ja her with an on his face that he acknowledged the gravity of the cereenuinely moved by the for not to cry, thinking of the way the old duke would appear in Staffordshire every now and then and inquire whether she had heard anything from his son That a son could treat his father with such indifference was contery or not, her instincts warned her to reland," she said, finally She reached up, unpinned her veil, and placed it on the seat beside her

James merely nodded

"May I ask what moved you to return?" she asked, quite as if he had been on a short trip to Wales

"I nearly died after havinga brush with death does give a man to think"