Jacquie D'Alessandro by Who Will Take This Man Page B

confined in close quarters with any woman. The fact that this… termagant had inspired lustful thoughts just proved that theory.
    He felt considerably cheered until his inner voice chimed in. You spent over an hour alone with Lady Sarah—your fiancée—in the privacy of the dimly lit gallery, and not once did your thoughts stray to that.
    “Did you discover something?” she asked.
    Yes. That you’re having the most unsettling, unwanted, uncharacteristic effect upon me. And I don’t like it one bit. “No.” He forced a smile he hoped didn’t appear as tight as it felt. “Just a bit of a cramp from all the crouching.” Nodding toward the pile of artifacts carefully lined up on the blanket, he asked, “Anything interesting in your crate?”
    “All of it is interesting. Fascinating, in fact. But nothingeven remotely resembling what we’re looking for.” She waved her hand in an arc encompassing the artifacts spread around her. “This is truly amazing. Incredible that you found all these things. Amazing that they were once held by people who lived centuries ago. You must have been filled with wonder every time you discovered something else.”
    “Yes. Filled with wonder. That describes it exactly.”
    “Did you actually dig these things from the ground?”
    “Some of them, yes. Some were purchased with my own personal funds, others by funds allocated by the museum. And still others were bartered for English goods.”
    “Fascinating,” she murmured. Reaching down again, she picked up a small bowl. “Who would barter away something this beautiful?”
    “Someone who was starving. Someone who may have stolen it. Someone desperate.” Some perverse devil in him prodded him forward, almost as if daring his mind and body not to react to her, as if he required proof that the past few minutes were nothing more than an aberration. He stopped when only several feet separated them. “Desperate situations often force people to act in ways they might not otherwise.”
    Something flashed in her eyes, something dark and pain-filled. In a blink that haunted look disappeared, and if it hadn’t been so stark and vivid, he would have thought he’d imagined it.
    “I’m certain you’re right,” she said softly. She looked at the bowl cradled in her hand and ran a fingertip over the glossy inside. “I’ve never seen anything like this. It looks like flattened pearls. What is it called?”
    “Mother of pearl. I estimate this piece hails from approximately the sixteenth century, and most likely belonged to a noblewoman.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “Mother of pearl comes from the inside of molluskshells and is associated with the moon and water, thus making it very feminine in nature. While not as valuable as pearls, mother of pearl was still costly and would have only belonged to someone of wealth.”
    Her finger continued to slowly move over the smooth inside of the bowl, a hypnotic motion that riveted his attention in a way that dispelled his hope that his body would not react further to her. “There’s something so lovely, so magical about pearls,” she said in a soft, trance-like voice. “I recall as a child seeing a painting of a woman with long ropes of lustrous pearls wound through her dark hair. I thought she surely must be the most beautiful woman ever born. She was smiling in the portrait, and I knew the reason she was so happy was because she wore those pearls.” A wistful-looking smile touched her lips. “I told myself that someday I would wear pearls like that in my hair.”
    He instantly imagined her with ropes of the creamy gems wound through her midnight curls. “And have you?”
    She looked up and their eyes met. He could almost see the curtain fall over the glimpse into the past she’d taken as the memories were chased from her eyes. “No. Nor do I expect to. It was merely a childish yearning.”
    “My mother was very fond of pearls,” Philip said. “They were once thought to be the