The Chocolatier's Wife by Cindy Lynn Speer Page B

potatoes stewed in butter. Stan d ing outside his old prison cell, he reflected that it was the least he could do for her.
    Franny Harker ate in silence while he distracted himself by thinking about what needed to be done at the shop to get things going again. The shipment of chocolate had finally come in; one of the things waiting for him at home was a letter from the captain he’d paid to bring the shipment. Once he retrieved it from his father’s warehouse, he would be able to begin building his business again. Perhaps. He had much to do, first, and some of it had to do with the woman in front of him, who ate swiftly, like someone starving, yet she tried to savor it, a little at least, showing her to be someone who pe r haps wasn’t unused to such food, either.
    “Thank you,” she said, folding the napkin up and placing it in the wooden box the meal had come in.
    “My pleasure,” he said softly. She looked at him expectantly, knowing there was a price to be paid, so finally, he said, “What do you get out of this? Dying for a crime you did not commit?”
    “You know I didn’t do it?” she blinked. “Are you confessing, then?” Her voice was tired, but the sarcasm showed that she still had some fire.
    “I didn’t commit any crime and neither did you. I know... ”
    “Ah, so we’ve both been jailed for a crime we didn’t commit. What a terrible, terr i ble world this is.” She was controlling the conversation. If he was ever to become a d e cent investigator—which talent he only wished to develop so that he could find out the truth of matters and keep his life, conscience, and honor sound– - he must be the one in control. He looked her in the eye. “I know that you are paid to confess, to take the blame. I also know that the details you know had to have been fed to you by someone who actually saw the scene of the crime. Now please ... help me understand why you are doing this. What hold do they have on you?”
    Her eyes met his squarely. “I won’t help you if you intend to free me. If—now I only say if—I were innocent, the only thing that would induce me to be here would be the love of my children, who will be put through a good university, given an excellent ed u cation and a bright future that they could not otherwise have led.”
    “Induce?”
    He thought over her words, the way she said things. Her accent was odd; it r e minded him a bit of Tasmin’s, except she said some of her vowels a little more roundly. Also, even if a woman from the common class knew the word induce, she doubtless would never think to use it. Protective coloring, if nothing else. “You were not always poor, were you?”

“No.” She said, her arm around one of the bars, leaning on it. “But my lover was.” She pressed her face into her arm and said, “You have all I will give to you. Leave. And please, for all the food in the world, do not come back.”
    “I didn’t kill him,” he said, because it seemed important that she not think she was dying for a guilty man. He was not going to give up on her, but he still needed to say it.
    She opened one eye, startlingly green in the dark. “Very few think that you did. I was never one of them.”
    “Why not? You do not know me, only of me.”
    She pushed away from the bars and walked over to the wall, pointedly ignoring him. He had left some blankets and arranged for food to be brought to her every day. He had done his best to help her survive until he could help her live.
    He walked to the shore. The harbor itself was fairly wide, though treacherous. On either wing of the harbor, the barracks and the Admiralty house each dominated o p posite low rises of hill, guns facing to the sea. In the distance he could see a lofty little ship, her sails like dove’s wings, and he felt a tug deep in his heart, as if he were being pulled toward the waters. For a moment he was severely tempted to get Tasmin, load up a ship, and go back to the old life. Perhaps everything