Sweet Revenge

without understanding her great need to do it.
    “I’ll need some assurance first.” She turned so that the warm breeze caught at her hair to blow it, rich, black, and fragrant, away from her face.
    “Of what sort?” Though even as he asked he saw something in her eyes, something in the way she stood that made him realize he would have promised her anything. A realization like that numbed a man.
    “That what I tell you stays between us. That it won’t be something you take back to your superiors.”
    His eyes were hooded against the sun, but he watched her. “Haven’t we gone beyond that?”
    “I don’t know.” She fenced a moment longer, trying to measure him. She could give him a lie, or could try to, but wondered if the truth would be safer. As long as he was dogging her heels, she would never get to Jaquir to take back what was hers. “I know what you were, Philip, and haven’t asked your reasons.”
    “Would you like them?”
    The surprise came clearly before she turned her head. She hadn’t expected to find him so willing to give them. “Someday perhaps. I told you more this morning than anyone else knows. Even Celeste has heard only bits and pieces. I don’t like anyone involved in my private life.”
    “It’s too late to take back what was said, and a waste of time to regret it.”
    “Yes.” She turned back. “I like that about you. Romantic or not, you’re a practical man. The best thieves are a combination of the practical and the visionary. How much vision have you?”
    He rose as well, and though he stood at the rail, the width of the table remained between them. “Enough to see our paths crossing again and again—no matter how uncomfortable it might be for both of us.”
    Even under the strong sun she shivered. Destiny was the one thing she knew couldn’t be stolen. “That may be, but it isn’t the issue. You asked why I continued to work, and I’ll tell you. It was practice, training you could say, for the biggest job of my life. Perhaps of anyone’s.”
    He felt the muscles of his stomach tighten. In fear, he realized, in simple, sharp-edged fear. For her. “What do you mean?”
    “You’ve heard of The Sun and the Moon?”
    Now the fear raced out of his stomach and into his throat like something vile. “Jesus Christ. You must be out of your mind.”
    She only smiled. “Then you have heard of it.”
    “There’s no one in the business who hasn’t heard of that necklace, or of what happened in 1935 when someone had the bad sense to try to steal it. The thief’s throat was slit after both of his hands were severed.”
    “And his blood washed over The Sun and the Moon.” She moved her shoulders. “Such things legends are made of.”
    “It’s not a game.” He moved on her, grabbed her by the shoulders and yanked so quickly that she nearly lost her balance. “They don’t lock thieves nicely in jail in that country. For God’s sake, Adrianne, you should know better than anyone how rough your father’s justice would be.”
    “It’s justice I want, and I’ll have.” She jerked out of his grasp. “Since the first time I stole to keep my mother out of award, I swore I’d have justice. The necklace was hers, given to her as a marriage gift. The bride price. In the laws of Jaquir what a woman is given in marriage she keeps after death or divorce. Whatever a woman possesses becomes her husband’s, whatever she is, is his to do with precisely as he chooses. But the bride price remains the bride’s, so The Sun and the Moon was my mother s. He refused to give her what was hers, so I’ll take it.”
    “What good will it do her now?” He knew he was rough, too rough, but could find no other way. “No matter how much it hurts, she’s gone.”
    “You think I don’t know she’s gone?” It wasn’t grief that came into her eyes, but anger driven by passion. “A fraction of the necklace’s worth would have kept her for years, the best doctors, the finest treatment. He knew how desperate we were. He knew because I buried my pride and wrote, begging him for help. He wrote back, telling me that the marriage was ended, and with it, his responsibility. Because she was ill, and I was a child, there was no way to go back to Jaquir and demand, through the law, that the necklace be returned.”
    “Whatever he did to you, to your mother, is over now. It’s too late for the necklace to make any difference now.”
    “Oh, no, Philip.” Her voice changed. The passion