"We'll never know, because you are most certainly not going to ask her." Gabriel reached out and caught hold of her shoulders. He swung her back around to face him. "Phoebe, tell me everything that happened tonight. I know it was Alice who had you kidnapped. What did she say to you?"

Phoebe hesitated. "She was going to hold me for ransom."

"She wanted money?"

"No. She wants The Lady in the Tower."

"Good God, why?" Gabriel asked.

"Because Neil wants it and she will do anything to get revenge on him. He did not keep his promise to marry her, you see. He left her in hell while he went off to the South Seas. She will never forgive him."

"Damnation," Gabriel whispered, trying to sort it all out. "There have been two people, not one, after the book all this time."

"So it appears."

"It was probably Baxter who searched my town house library before our marriage." He searched her face. "Why in God's name were you climbing down those sheets into Baxter's arms?"

"1 was trying to escape. I didn't know he was in the alley until I had started down the side of the wall. Gabriel, what is this all about?"

"Revenge, I think. But there's something more. Something to do with that damned book." Gabriel forced himself to take his hands off Phoebe's bare shoulders. He paced across the room to the window.

"It always comes back to The Lady in the Tower, doesn't it?"

"The thing is," Gabriel said, thoroughly frustrated, "the book simply isn't all that valuable. It's not worth this kind of trouble."

Phoebe considered that for a moment. "Perhaps it's time we took a closer look at it."

He glanced around sharply. "Why? There's nothing unusual about it."

"Nevertheless, I think we should look at it again."

"Very well."

Phoebe crossed the room and took The Lady in the Tower from the bottom drawer of her wardrobe.

Gabriel watched as she put the book on the table and leaned over to examine it closely. Candlelight gleamed on her dark hair and lit her intelligent face. Even in a whore's red dress she looked like a lady. There was an innate, womanly nobility about her that no gown or circumstance could alter. This was a woman a man could trust with his life and his honor.

And she had chosen him.

"Gabriel, there truly is something different about this book."

He frowned. "You said it was the very one you gave to Baxter."

"It is, but something has been done to it. I believe the binding has been restitched in places. See? Some of it look's new."

Gabriel examined the thickly padded leather covers. "It was not this way when you gave it to Lancelot?"

Phoebe wrinkled her nose. "Don't call him that. And to answer your question, no, it was not this way. The stitching was uniformly old when I gave it to Neil."

"Perhaps we had better have a look beneath the leather."

Gabriel took a small penknife from Phoebe's escritoire and carefully slit the newly stitched leather. He watched intently as Phoebe lifted one edge. She peeled it back slowly to reveal soft, white cotton.

"What on earth?" Phoebe cautiously lifted aside the cotton.

Gabriel saw the gleam of dark moonlight, diamonds, and gold, and knew at once what he was looking at. "Ah, yes. I wondered what had become of it."

"What is it?" Phoebe asked in amazement.

"A necklace I had made up in Canton using some very special pearls." Gabriel lifted the glittering thing out of the book. "With any luck there will be a matching bracelet, a brooch, and a set of earrings."

"It's beautiful." Phoebe stared at the gems. "But I have never seen pearls of that color before."

"They're very rare. It took me years to collect this many of this quality." He held the necklace close to the candle flame. The diamonds sparkled with an inner fire, but the pearls glowed with a mysterious dark light. It was like looking into an endless midnight sky.

"I thought at first they were black pearls," Phoebe observed. "But they are not black at all. It's almost impossible to describe the color. They are some fantastic combination of silver and green and deep blue."

"Dark moonlight."

"Dark moonlight," Phoebe repeated in wonder. "Yes, that's a perfect description." She fingered one gently. "How extraordinary."

Gabriel looked down at her candlelit skin. "They will look magnificent on you."

She looked up quickly. "This necklace truly belongs to you?"

He nodded. "It did once upon a time. Baxter took it when he attacked one of my ships."

"And now you have it back," Phoebe said with satisfaction.

He shook his head. "No. You found it, my sweet. As of now it belongs to you."

Phoebe stared at him, obviously flustered. "You cannot mean to give me such a gift."

"But I do mean to give it to you."

"But Gabriel—"

"You must indulge me, Phoebe. I have given you very little thus far in our marriage."

"That's not true," she sputtered. "Not true at all. Why, just this evening you bought me this beautiful gown."

Gabriel looked at the awful gown and started to laugh.

"I fail to see what is so amusing about this, my lord."

Gabriel laughed harder. A fierce joy crashed through him as he gazed at Phoebe in her cheap, gaudy dress. She looked so incredibly lovely, he thought. Like a princess out of a medieval legend. Her eyes were huge and luminous and her mouth promised a passion that he knew belonged only to him. She was his.

"Gabriel, are you laughing at me?"

He sobered quickly. "No, my sweet. Never that. The necklace is yours, Phoebe. I had it made for the woman I would someday marry."

"The fiancée who betrayed you in the islands?" she asked suspiciously.

He wondered who had told her about Honora. Anthony, most likely. "At the time I had it fashioned, I was not engaged. I did not know whom I would marry," Gabriel said honestly. "I wanted to have a suitable necklace to give my future wife, just as I wanted a suitable motto for my descendants."

"So you invented the family jewels, just as you did the family motto." She glanced at the necklace and then back at him. "I'm certain you mean well, as usual, but I do not want such a spectacular gift from you."

"Why not?" He took a step toward her and stopped when she retreated an equal distance. "I can afford it."

"I know you can. That's not the point."

He took another step forward, crowding her back against the wall. He clasped the necklace around her throat and then braced his hands on either side of her head. He kissed her forehead. "Then what is the point?"

"Damnation, Gabriel, do not try to seduce me now. 'Tis not a necklace I want from you, and you know it."

"Then what do you want?"

"You know very well what I want. I want your trust."

He smiled slightly. "You don't understand, do you?"

"What don't I understand?" she breathed.

"I trust you, my sweet."

She gazed up at him, her eyes full of dawning hope. "You do?"

"Yes."

"In spite of all our little misunderstandings?"

"Maybe because of them," he admitted. "No woman who was deliberately trying to deceive me would make such a hash of it time after time. Leastways not a woman as clever as you are."

She smiled tremulously. "I'm not certain that is a compliment."

"The problem," Gabriel said, his voice roughening, "is not whether I trust you. What has torn my guts apart for days is that I didn't know whether you would continue to trust me."

"Gabriel, how could you think I would lose my faith in you?"

"The evidence was mounting against me. I did not know in the end if you would choose to believe your golden-haired Sir Lancelot or your increasingly short-tempered, overbearing, dictatorial husband."

Phoebe slowly twined her arms around his neck. Her eyes gleamed with love and mischief. "I could say that I came to a conclusion similar to your own. After all, surely no man who was out to charm and beguile me into trusting him would have been so appallingly heavy-handed."