21

Nighttime at the jail was a noisy affair. Cups clanging against metal bars, drunken singing, moans of despair, guards shouting

to keep quiet. It wasn't unlike a night in the East End.

Esme could endure it all except for the tiny intruders crawling about her sackcloth of a dress. As soon as she'd satisfied

one itch, another popped up on her opposite shoulder. Then hip. Then elbow. Turned out to be quite the losing battle.

Perhaps it was punishment for all the wicked deeds and lies she'd supported herself on over the years. If that was the case,

the enormous bite on her arm driving her to distraction must have been courtesy of Jasper.

That man.

That man...

She dropped her chin to her pulled-up knees on the cot and sighed. That man had become the brightest color in her world, and

she'd let him get away. He had offered every part of himself, and what did she do? Closed herself off and ran just as she

always did. A reaction that had kept her safe and one step ahead of the game, but Jasper wasn't one for lagging behind.

He'd been right next to her, matching her step for step, and she had reveled in their equal footing. He was the only man to keep up with her. All along she'd been waiting for him to tie her down and shove her in a box, yet being with him was exhilarating in a way she had never experienced before. Swiping Empress Josephine's emerald brooch had been an incomparable high—until the night she and Jasper rode horseback through the French countryside with the Valkyrie tiara perched atop her head. She'd thrown her arms wide and laughed with all the freedom of a victorious warrior.

Free. That was how he made her feel.

And that scared her more than anything. So she ran.

Checking that her cellmate still snored on the cot in the opposite corner, Esme reached into her brassiere, scratched a bit,

and pulled out her wedding ring. If the guards had seen it, they would have confiscated it like all her other belongings,

but Esme's light fingers had stowed the ring before their greedy eyes caught sight of it.

Holding it up, she inspected it as the dim corridor light shone through the gold circle like a halo. Halos never suited her.

Then again, they didn't suit Jasper either. Two sides of the same coin, they were. One flipping over the other until they

blurred together into the same image.

Conspirator. Thief. Charmer. Thrill-seeker.

But never liar.

Well, she stretched the truth from time to time, but Jasper did not. He was unflinchingly honest for a thief. When he had come to see her after the arrest, perhaps if she had remembered that odd characteristic, they would have parted very differently, but the thought of his betrayal had pierced her blind. She'd felt helpless, taken advantage of by the one man who had come closest to touching her heart, and all her worst fears had consumed her. She'd pulled them close, a familiar comfort to staunch the hurt pouring through her.

If there'd ever been any doubt she was cut from Mimsy's cloth, her survivalist reaction toward Jasper was the irrefutable

proof.

Now, sitting in this dank cell with unseen vermin making a meal of her, all she had for comfort was this cold metal ring and

what it could have been. What would happen if she stopped running? If she took Jasper for all he was and not what her fears

twisted him to be?

"Would you take me back?" she whispered to the ring. "Would you forgive my foolishness? Or am I too late?"

Her cellmate snorted. "Put a cork in it, will ya? Trying to sleep." Flopping on her belly, she snored against the wall.

Esme quickly tucked the ring back into its hiding spot, just over her heart. She didn't want to follow in Mimsy's footsteps,

a bright smile pasted over a lonely existence, forever seeking fulfillment yet never finding it. Late or not, she would confess

her true feelings to Jasper.

He would demand groveling, the louse, but she could distract him with a kiss. A real kiss with her entire heart behind it.

He deserved that after all the misery she'd put him through and the time squandered keeping them apart. If groveling and a

kiss didn't do the trick, well, she had plenty of time cooped up behind these bars to think of other persuasive means.

No matter how long it took, Esme Fox always got her prize in the end.