To Seduce a Sinner (Legend of the Four Soldiers #2)

She held out her arms. “Come here, you silly man.”

He grinned and knelt by her side.

“What have you there?” she asked, because he held one hand behind his back.

His grin faded as he lay down beside her, propping himself on his elbow. “I’ve something for you.”

“Really?” Her brows knit. He hadn’t given her anything since the garnet earrings.

He took his hand out from behind his back and turned it over. In his palm lay a small tin snuffbox. It looked a little like the snuffbox she kept her treasures in, except this box was obviously new.

She raised her brows in question and looked from his palm to his face.

“Open it,” he said huskily.

She took it from his palm and was surprised at how heavy the little box was. She glanced again at his face. He was watching her with bright turquoise eyes.

She opened the box.

And gasped. The outside of the snuffbox might be plain tin, not ornamented at all, but the inside was glowing gold, set with precious gems. Pearls and rubies, diamonds and emeralds, sapphires and amethysts, jewels she didn’t even know the names of. They all sparkled from inside the box, nearly covering the yellow gold with a rainbow of color.

She looked up at Jasper, tears in her eyes. “Why? What does it mean?”

He took the hand holding the box and turned it over, brushing his lips against her knuckles. “It’s you.”

She looked down at the gorgeous, sparkling box. “«pargaiWhat?”

He cleared his throat, his head still bent. “When I first met you, I was a fool. And I was a fool for years before that. I saw only the tin you hid behind. I was too vain, too asinine, too foolish to look beyond and see your beauty, my sweet wife.”

He raised his beautiful turquoise eyes, and she saw that they were adoring. “I want you to understand that I see you now. I’ve basked in the wonder of your beauty, and I’m never letting you go. I love you with all my battered soul.”

Melisande looked one last time at the treasure box. It was exquisitely lovely. This was how Jasper saw her, and it rather awed her. She closed the lid carefully and set the box aside, knowing it was the most precious, the most perfect gift he could ever give her.

Then she pulled her husband down into her arms and said the only thing she could. “I love you.”

And she kissed him.

Epilogue

The sword pressed very tightly against Jack’s throat, but still he spoke up bravely.

“I would tell you who won the rings, my liege,” he said, “but, alas, you would not believe me in any case.”

The king bellowed, but Jack raised his voice to be heard over the royal rage. “Besides, it does not matter who won the rings. What matters is who holds them now.”

And just like that, the king was silent and every eye in the royal banquet hall turned to Princess Surcease. She seemed as surprised as any when she reached into the little jeweled bag that hung from her kirtle and drew out the bronze ring and the silver ring. She placed them with the gold ring already on her palm, and then all three lay together.

“Princess Surcease has the rings,” Jack said. “And it seems to me that gives her the right to pick her own husband.”

Well, the king hemmed and the king hawed, but in the end he had to admit that Jack did have a point.

“Who will you choose to wed, my daughter?” the king asked. “There are men here from all corners of the world. Rich men, brave men, men so handsome the ladies swoon when they ride by. Now tell me, which of them will be your husband?”

“None.” Princess Surcease smiled, helped Jack to stand on his stumpy legs, and said, “I will wed Jack the Fool and no other, for he may be a fool, but he makes me laugh and I love him.”

And then before the stunned eyes of the entire court and her royal father, she bent and kissed Jack the Fool, right on his long, curved nose.

What a strange thing happened then! For Jack began to grow, his legs and arms lengthened and thickened, and his nose and chin receded into their normal proportions. When it was all over, Jack was himself again, tall and strong, and since he wore the wonderful suit of night and wind and carried the sharpest blade in all the world, well, you can imagine, he was a very fine sight indeed.

But poor Princess Surcease did not like this handsome stranger who stood so tall before her. She wept and cried, “Oh, where is my Jack? Oh, where is my sweet fool?”

Jack knelt before the princess and took her little hands between his big ones. He leaned his head close to hers and whispered so only she could hear, “I am your sweet fool, my beautiful princess. I am the man who danced and sang to make you laugh. I love you, and I would gladly take on that twisted, horrible form again, if only to see you smile.”

And at these words, the princess did smile and she kissed him. For although Jack’s form had changed so much she no longer recognized him, his voice had not. It was the voice of Jack the Fool, the man she loved.

The man she’d chosen to marry.