to find out, we are legally married, but with Hale being the only lawyer in town and him being the one to say we're not, I guess we can play it safe and have it done in the church. That should satisfy all concerned."
Evie nodded. "Why do you think Mr. Hale is trying to keep us separated?"
Tyler set Evie back on her feet and went in search of his coat. "I'm willing to wager the answer to your question is in the file I confiscated from his office."
Reluctantly, Evie pulled on her chemise and followed him. She had wanted the answer to the mystery, but not right now. Right now she wanted to be in that bed celebrating her marriage with Tyler. But if Hale or the sheriff showed up, Tyler would likely be back in jail, and there wouldn't be any more celebrating. If the answers to some of their problems were in those papers, they needed to know.
Tyler lit the lantern while Evie struggled with her corset. With her breasts pushed up by the corset and the chemise beneath untied and revealing the valley between, she hadn't accomplished much in the way of removing temptation. And when she sat down in a chair and began drawing on garters and stockings, Tyler nearly crumpled the table he'd grabbed for support.
"Evie."
She looked up expectantly.
Tyler's gaze fixed on the curve of her calf, and his voice was slightly strangled as he spoke. "It might be best if you dressed in the other room. I haven't quite got the hang of this husband business yet, and what I'm thinking right now hasn't got anything to do with responsibility."
Her smile was absolutely and utterly devastating. Tyler continued to clutch the massive ebony table as she stood up and eyed him through those blasted dark-lashed eyes of hers. When he thought he'd have to pick her up and carry her back to the bed again, she swished her little derriere and glided gracefully out of the room. Tyler heaved a sigh of relief. Life with Evie would never be dull.
When she returned, properly clad in a high-necked gown with dozens of tiny jet buttons, Tyler was poring over the papers spread across the table. He took in her appearance with a mixture of disappointment and relief. He preferred the naked imp, but the lady was much safer.
"Would you mind telling me what you were doing taking a bath in this forsaken place if you were just waiting for Hale to return?" The question had finally worked its way to his consciousness and worried at him while she dressed.
With a proprietary wiggle, she appropriated his lap and looked over the papers he was reading.
"Mr. Hale kept talking about the nice fire and the food and the bed and how everything was just fine, and I had the nasty impression that he meant for me to be here for a while." She picked up the packet of papers labeled Trust Agreement. "I had a really long, wretched night, and I figured I'd feel a whole lot better if I met the new day with a nice bath. It gives the world a whole new perspective."
"I'll say it does," Tyler muttered, snatching the paper from her hands. If she hadn't been standing there naked when he came in, this whole thing could have had a completely different ending. But he'd rather make love than fight any day. He kissed the side of her neck, wrapped his arm around her waist to hold her in place, and began reading again.
When he was done, he sat there silently for a minute. Evie took the papers away and turned back to a page she hadn't quite finished. The dying fire crackled and a spark shot up the chimney while they digested what they had just read.
"When will you be twenty-one?" Tyler finally asked.
"September," Evie replied, rereading the beginning paragraphs. Even through the legal verbiage, she could read her mother's despair. The trust agreement had been written when Evie was three years old, upon the death of her Grandfather Howell, shortly after her mother had married Randall Harding. Had her grandfather died just a little sooner, had her mother waited just a little longer, she would have had the money to come and get her daughter.
The checks to Nanny before that had come out of her grandfather's pocket and only with the promise that Elizabeth would marry Randall. Her mother had been coerced into giving up her daughter, and trapped after