“You know him.” Robert moved so quickly that she didn’t have time to whisk herself out of the way, his warm hand closing over her wrist as he towered over her, his eyes blazing into hers. “Don’t play your games with me. You knew I and my family needed that onyx box to win my brother Michael’s release, yet you still took it. And you did so at the behest of George Aniston. I can only be grateful that my brother and I managed to wrest it from you.”

Which had been a bitter loss, too. She managed a cool shrug. “You have the box, so there can be no issue now.”

“That would be true, if there were only one such box.”

She tried to insert a bored tone into her voice. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, but you do. For now I find you here, where rumors have it that another onyx box–an almost exact replica of the other–might be for sale. My dear, that cannot be a coincidence.”

“Do you see such a box among the items? For I do not.”

His brows lowered. “No, but it was rumored it would be here. And we both know it. Now, tell me why you are assisting George Aniston in this quest. I will have the truth.”

She curled her fingers into the palms of her hands to hide their dampness. “My association with George Aniston is none of your concern.”

“Oh, but it is, for he and I pursue the same object. I already have two of the onyx boxes. Now I want the same thing he does; the same thing you’ve chased here—the third and final one.”

She’d give everything she possessed to defeat George Aniston. No one hated him more, and no one had more reason to beat the vile Aniston at his own game.

But first she had to extricate herself from her current situation. She eyed her wrist, still in Robert’s steely grip, then shot him a look through her lashes. “You are hurting me.”

“I doubt that.” Yet he loosened his hold.

She almost winced. Not because he’d hurt her, but because she recognized the inherent decency that was so much a part of him. That decency was also the reason she’d left him; he was a man who would do the right thing come hell or high water. Unfortunately, she hadn’t wanted him to do the decent or right thing. No, her life was too complicated for that.

She set her jaw against an unexpected flash of sadness at the way fate had betrayed her. “You may release me.”

He lifted his brows in silent disbelief and she frowned.

“Have I tried to strike out, attempted to flee, offered resistance of any kind at all?”

His gaze narrowed. “Not yet.”

“I have remarkably little information for you, but I will tell you what I know. For a short while I was Aniston’s messenger where Miss Beauchamp was concerned.”