Page 56 of The Library of Borrowed Hearts

In other words, it was exactly like her.

“So youhaveheard of it,” she breathed. “I was hoping you had.”

“This book is illegal in the United States,” he said. He hadn’t yet opened the cover, fearful that the contents might burn him. He’d felt the way the first time Catherine had kissed him, and he wasn’t so sure he’d come away from that encounter unscarred, either. “You didn’t check this out from the library, did you?”

Her rich peal of laughter rang out, filling the cabin with the last thing needed to make it truly feel like home. “Of course not. Can you imagine me trying to sneak this past Mrs. Peters? She’d have palpitations just thinking about all those delicious Parisian orgies.”

“Then where did it come from?”

She slid onto the bed and lay back against the headboard, waggling her eyebrows as she went. “I have my sources.”

“You have underground literary sources? InColville?”

She giggled. “Okay, I got it from Lonnie, but you can’t tell anyone. One of her brothers got a whole box on his last trip to Mexico and has been selling them out of his trunk for twenty bucks a pop.”

Jasper released a low whistle as he considered the book in his hand. That kind of money was a steep price to pay for a single book, but he couldn’t pretend not to be intrigued. There’d been a lot of scandal attached to this book since its publication in the thirties, most of which had to do with indecency laws and the corruption of minors. “And you bought a copy? Forus?”

She took the book back and started lovingly flipping through the pages. “Well, I would’ve snagged one with or without you, but I thought it might be a fun thing for us to do together.”

“Catherine…”

She cast him a pair of innocent eyes. “What? It’s important to be well-read. Consider it the next step in your self-driven education.”

He tsked and shook his head, though not without a slight smile. Only Catherine could turn an innocent game of reading into something that threatened to upend his whole life.

“I take that to mean you’re in?” Catherine asked eagerly.

Obviously he was in. But what he said was, “Where did you come from, Catherine Martin? Whoareyou?”

She purred and stretched out on the bed, interpreting his questions in the most literal way possible. “I’m a nomad, Jasper. I come from everywhere and nowhere.”

“And?”

“And nothing. I’m exactly who I look like. A girl who’s spent her whole life doing what her father tells her to.” A slight grimace touched her lips. “Just like one of his obedient little soldiers.”

Jasper looked at the cabin around them, this nest of vice and virtue, the place that would forever hold his heart, and laughed.

“What?” Catherine demanded, sitting up. “What’s so funny?”

He climbed onto the bed with her. The moment his knees touched those sheets, the smell of her came rushing over him. “You’re nothing like one of your father’s soldiers,” he said as he brushed his lips over hers. “Everything you do is an act of defiance.”

“You’re only saying that because you want another act of defiance out of me before we leave.”

He shook his head, unwilling to let her turn this moment into one of her games. Threading his fingers through hers, he said, “I’ve never known anyone who flips the world upside down as easily as you. You read the books you’re not supposed to read. You make friends with the people you’re not supposed to befriend.” He blushed and stammered a little over the next one. “You seduce the men you’re not supposed to seduce.”

She squeezed his fingers in her own. “I do, don’t I?”

“Promise me you won’t ever let anyone make you feel like you owe them anything.” He spoke with a violence that was too heated, but since when was that new? Jasper always carried extra emotion wherever he went. It followed him and bound him at the same time. “Not me, not your parents, and definitely not men like William McBride.”

“Why, Jasper Holmes. That sounds an awful lot like jealousy.”

“It’s not.” He lifted her hand to his mouth and dropped a soft kiss onto each of her fingers. “I just know how the world works. It’s designed to grind people like you under its heel.”

“And what about people like you?” she countered, her gaze fixed on each movement of his lips. “What does it do to you?”

Jasper had the answer ready. “I was ground down the day I was born. The most I can hope for is to return to the earth exactly as I came into it.”

20