Jade Star - Catherine Coulter [67]
She decided to write to Thomas.
“Well, if it isn’t Saint Michael and his lovely bride! Come on in, both of you.”
Saint shook his head ruefully. “You’ve done me in,” he said to Jules. “All right, Del, have your sport, but my wife is sworn to silence.”
“You mean silence about your other name?” Jules asked innocently, and he squeezed her until she squeaked.
Del Saxton grinned as he led Saint and Jules into the parlor. “Here’s our guest of honor, Chauncey,” he said. “Lord, you picked a beauty, Saint,” he added, giving Jules an appreciative look.
“Don’t show your true colors just yet,” Chauncey said, buffeting her husband lightly on the shoulder. “Remember you’re a very married man with a child to boot. Lovely, Jules, really lovely. The gown is perfect for you.”
“I agree,” Saint said. “The green nearly matches your eyes, sweetheart.” He’d had the strong urge, when she’d come downstairs to join him, to rip that lovely gown off her. Her shoulders were bared, milky white above the lace. “Lovely” wasn’t the word he would have chosen for her. Her waist looked minuscule and he guessed that Lydia had pulled her stays very tight. He disapproved of that, but Jules had looked at him with such eagerness, such hopefulness, that he said nothing about the damned corset. “Beautiful,” he’d managed in a choked voice.
“Truly? You’re not just saying that?”
“No, I’m not just saying that.”
She’d fluttered about for a moment, then blurted out, “It cost so much money! And all the underthings, and the gloves—”
“Don’t be an ass, Jules. I thought I told you to leave the money to me.”
Even now, in the middle of the Saxtons’ parlor, knowing he should have himself well under control, he wanted to lean down and kiss her white throat, and her shoulders, and the soft swell of her breasts. Lord, he wanted . . .
“You’re looking lost to this world, Saint,” Chauncey said. “Come, have a glass of sherry.”
He pulled himself together and forced himself to look at his wife without the greed of desire in his eyes. “Would you like some sherry, Jules?”
“I’ve never tasted it before,” Jules said, looking shyly up at her husband.
I want you so much, he wanted to tell her. Instead he said, “Just a little, Chauncey. I don’t want a drunken bride.”
The Newtons arrived a few moments later. Horace eyed Jules with an experienced connoisseur’s eye and nodded. “Well done, my boy. Aggie here told me what a pretty filly she was, but she didn’t go far enough.”
“I feel like a racehorse,” Jules said, and everybody laughed.
Agatha hugged her briefly. “You’ll have to get used to all the gentlemen looking at you like you’re a new dessert, my dear. Just wait until Tony and Dan arrive.”
Tony Dawson, a journalist to his fingertips, hadn’t, unfortunately, heard about Jules’s background, and asked her over the first course of terrapin soup how she’d managed to tie herself to a big oaf like Saint.
Saint felt her stiffen beside him. She sent him an agonized look, her tongue frozen in her mouth.
“Jules comes from one of the Hawaiian Islands, Tony,” he said easily. “I knew her when she was a skinny little girl. I must admit, age has brought some astounding changes.”
“Hawaiian Islands,” Tony repeated, his interest aroused. “However did you get together again?”
Chauncey said brightly, “Haven’t we some champagne, Del? Agatha, won’t you try one of Lin’s delicious rolls? Dan, some more peas?”
I can’t sit here like a puppet, Jules thought, and let everyone protect me. “I came to San Francisco and we met again, Mr. Dawson,” she said in a clear voice.
“I see,” Tony said. “Call me Tony. Everybody does, you know.”
“My father is a minister in Lahaina, Maui,” she continued, seeing that he was as confused as ever, but too polite to probe. “Michael was a doctor there.”
“Michael?” Tony said,