"Jack reached up to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. The perfume was growing on him. "How are your blisters?" It didn't work. "They sting," said Jane shortly. "But I didn't mind that. I didn't mind any of it. As I would have told you if you had only listened." Jack pressed his eyes shut. Somehow he had gone from being noble and wronged to just being wrong. He wasn't quite sure how that had happened. "I thought you wanted a bath and a proper bed." "There is," said Jane dangerously, "a vast difference between wanting a proper bed and requiring coronets on my sheets. Did it ever occur to you that I didn't care what sort of bed it was as long as you were in it?" The words rang through the small room. Jack's throat felt sore, swollen. He couldn't seem to force words out, even if there had been any words to say. Jane's chest was rising and falling rapidly, her bosom swelling distractingly over the low neckline of her white gauze gown. "Jane--" Jack managed, but it was too late. Jane jerked away, knocking over a bag of meal in the process. "I don't need another man to put me on a pedestal. I have enough of those already." She wrenched open the door to the drilling ground, the sky flaming red and orange behind her. "Congratulations on a successful mission, Moonflower." And the door slammed, taking with it Jane and the last of the light." --