"I've been feeling rather wicked myself lately."
Persephone giggled beneath her hand and said, "Oh good. Because I saw an advertisement for a performance. I was hoping to find someone to escort me."
"I would be delighted, of course."
"Although perhaps we ought not bring Belle. I'm not sure it's fit for unmarried ladies, and Belle tells me that I'm not quite stern enough as a chaperone."
"Belle tells you that? "
"Not in so many words, of course. I doubt she wants to spoil such a good thing. But I know which way the wind blows."
"You're not going to the theater without me," Belle put in.
"I suppose we shall have to take her," John said with an affected sigh. "She can be quite stubborn when she puts her mind to it."
"Oh, be quiet," Belle returned. "And get to work. You have some writing to do."
"I suppose I do," John replied, nodding at Persephone as she disappeared down the hall. " 'Persephone in the Lemon Tree' is sure to be my masterwork."
"If you don't get to work soon it's going to be 'Belle sends you to hell.' "
"I'm quaking in my shoes."
"As well you should be."
John saluted her and then stepped forward and stretched out his arm, assuming a dramatic pose. "Persephone in the lemon tree-Sings to me indomitably." He quirked a boyish grin. "What do you think?"
"I think you're marvelous."
John leaned down and kissed her on the nose. "Have I told you that I have laughed more in the last few weeks than I have in my entire lifetime?"
Wordlessly, Belle shook her head.
"I have, you know. You do that to me. I don't know quite how you've done it, but you've stripped away my anger. Years of hurt and pain and cynicism made me brittle, but now I can feel the sun again."
Before Belle could tell him that that was poem enough for her, he kissed her again and was off.
***
A few nights later Belle was cuddled up in her bed, several anthologies of poetry strewn around her. "He's not going to fool me with another 'Song-To Celia' again," she said to herself. "I'll be ready for him."
She was a little worried that he might be able to trip her up with one of the newer poets. Her governess had gone over only the classics with her, and it was only because Lord Byron was so notorious that she'd known "She Walks in Beauty."
A quick trip to the bookshop that afternoon had supplied her with Lyrical Ballads, by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge as well as Songs of Innocence and Experience by a rather obscure poet named William Blake. The proprietor assured her that Blake would someday find great fame and tried to sell her The Marriage of Heaven and Hell in addition, but Belle had put her foot down, figuring that there was no way John would be able to find something romantic in that.
A smile on her face, Belle opened up Songs and began to flip through the pages, reading aloud as she went along.
"Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"
She pursed her lips and looked up. "This modern stuff is very strange." Shaking her head, she turned back to the book.
Thump!
Belle caught her breath. What was that?
Thump!
No doubt about it, someone was outside her window. Terror gripped her and she slid out of bed to the floor. On her hands and knees, she crawled across the room to her dressing table. With a quick glance to the window, she grabbed a pewter candlestick from Boston that Emma had given her as a birthday present a few years earlier.
Remaining close to the ground, Belle scooted over to the window. Careful to stay out of the intruder's line of vision, she climbed up onto a chair which was placed against the wall right next to the window. Shaking with fear, she waited.
The window creaked and then she saw it start to rise. A black gloved hand appeared on the windowsill.
Belle stopped breathing.
A second hand found its place next to the first, and then a firm body tumbled in soundlessly, somersaulting when it hit the floor.
Belle raised the candlestick, setting her aim for the prowler's head when he suddenly turned and looked up at her.
"Good God, woman! Are you trying to kill me?"
"John?"
Chapter 13
"What are you doing here?" Belle gasped. "Would you put that thing down!"
Belle finally lowered the candlestick and offered John her hand. He took it and got to his feet. "What are you doing here?" she repeated, her heart starting to flutter strangely at the sight of him in her bedroom.
"Isn't it obvious?"
Well, he might be here to kidnap her and spirit her away to Gretna Green, or he might be here to ravish her, or he might just be here to say hello. "No," she said slowly. "It isn't obvious."
"Do you realize that in the past week I have seen you four times with Persephone, twice with my brother, once with your chum Dunford, and thrice at social functions where I'm allowed to talk with you only in the presence of women over the age of sixty?"
Belle bit back a smile. "We've had some time together here when you've come to call."
"I don't count it as being alone when I must worry about Miss Lemon Tree barging in at any moment."
His expression was so petulant that Belle had a vision of him as an eight-year-old stamping his foot at some horrid injustice. "Now, now," she chuckled. "Persephone's not that bad."
"She's supreme as far as chaperones go, but that doesn't eliminate the fact that she's got bloody repellent timing. I'm damned near afraid to kiss you half the time."