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“Oh, in this respect, Simon, believe me, I do.”

  There was something about the way Nathaniel said this that struck Simon as a little curious.

  Nathaniel put down his glass. “I must change for dinner. I’ll leave first thing in the morning, since my business here is done.” The door closed behind him.

  And what of friendship? Simon thought sadly. Is that done too? Nathaniel saw everything these days in terms of business, and the dictates of friendship meant nothing to him. It hadn’t always been the case. Like Miles Bennet, Simon Vanbrugh hoped for the day when the old Nathaniel would emerge from this cold, distant carapace. He’d had the faintest hope that Gabby might have some effect. Few people could come within her orbit and remain unaffected by her personality or her outlook on life. But it seemed he’d been indulging himself in wishful thinking.

  Upstairs, Gabrielle embalmed her weary muscles in hot water before a blazing fire in her bedchamber and told Georgie the details of her day with Lord Praed.

  Her cousin was too worldly to be shocked at the picture of two near strangers locked in an ardent embrace in a deserted orchard. She did, however, somewhat tentatively question Gabrielle’s taste.

  “I thought you didn’t like him. You said his eyes were like stones at the bottom of a pond.”

  “So they are sometimes.” Gabrielle raised one leg and soaped it languidly. “But they can also be warm and merry … and very passionate,” she added with deliberation, switching legs.

  “And you’re in the market for passion?” Georgie took a sip from her sherry glass, watching her friend closely.

  “In the market and in the mood,” Gabrielle said calmly. “Fve played the grieving widow long enough.”

  “Gabby!” This did shock Georgie. “You were desolated after your husband’s death.”

  “No, I wasn’t,” Gabrielle said. “Roland was a deeply unpleasant man who managed to hide it until our wedding night. When he died, I was not desolated in the least. It seemed to me I’d suffer a lot fewer bruises as his widow than as his wife.”

  “Oh.” Georgie was silent, absorbing this new light on her cousin’s past. “But your letters were so depressed … so listless.”

  Gabrielle sat up and picked up her own glass of sherry from the carpet beside the hip bath. Frowning slightly, she traced a pattern in the condensation on the glass. “I was depressed, not at Roland’s death, but at the thought that I’d allowed myself to be treated as badly as he treated me. I’d misread him, fallen for the facade. I felt a fool … and worse.” She sipped and put the glass down again. “It’s humiliating to be ill-treated, Georgie. Not the kind of thing you want people to know about. You begin to think you deserved it in some way.”

  “Oh, Gabby, I wish you’d said something ….” Georgie stumbled in inarticulate sympathy. Such situations were not uncommon, but that didn’t make them any less horrifying.

  Gabrielle looked up and gave her a reassuring smile. “It’s over and done with, and I’m my old self now. And I find the prospect of a little dalliance with Lord Praed very enticing … or do I mean challenging?” Her damp shoulders rose in a light shrug. “Either way, I want to go into dinner with him, if you can arrange it.”

  Georgie laughed, only too glad to let go of the disturbing image of her strong and self-determining cousin suffering beneath the thumb of a violent husband. “Of course I can. But I must say, I don’t see what you see in him.”

  “But you don’t like rocky roads,” her cousin pointed out. “Whereas I’ve always chosen them over the smooth path.”

  And loving Guillaume was the rockiest road she could ever have chosen. Rocky, wonderful, desperate—no middle ground ever. He was either in her bed or facing death and danger somewhere. There was either love or fear. No chance for the contentment of ordinary happiness, the possibility of boredom, no time to learn the irritating little habits as well as the glorious.

  “That’s true, I suppose.” Georgie stood up. “Simon’s a very smooth path. I’d better go down to the drawing room. Lady Alsop always appears well before the other guests and feels very slighted if I’m not there to look after her and see she’s immediately ensconced by the fire, protected from the blaze by a screen, with a glass of ratafia beside her.”

  “I don’t know why you let yourself be bullied by the old besom,” Gabrielle said irreverently.

  Georgie shook her head “She’s Simon’s great-aunt And anyway, I don’t mind.”

  No, of course you don’t, Gabrielle thought affectionately as the door closed on her friend Georgie had the sweetest nature.

  It was decidedly unpleasant to deceive her friends, Gabrielle reflected, but the cause was too important to let personal scruple get in the way. She’d had to produce some credible reason for her willingness to jump into a liaison when she was officially supposed to be a grieving widow. Georgie would tell Simon the real reason for Gabrielle’s apparent depression and neither of them would question subsequent events.

  Subsequent events. She stood up, dripping, and wrapped herself in the towel. First she had to maneuver herself into Nathaniel Praed’s bed. Guillaume would understand, she knew. He’d approve of the reasons behind her actions; they belonged to the world of dark secrets that he’d made his own. But how would he feel about the other thing, about the sexual current between herself and the man who’d ordered his death? She thought he’d understand it. He was a man of such passions himself and he knew her own. But Gabrielle wished with all her heart that she felt only revulsion for Nathaniel Praed. To go willingly—no, not just willingly, eagerly and filled with excitement—to his bed was a betrayal of Guillaume, however pure the motives.

  But Guillaume was dead. She was twenty-five and the years ahead stretched into a bleak wasteland.

  She reached for the bellrope and rang for Maisie to help her dress.

  Nathaniel was waiting for her to enter the drawing room. He tried to tell himself he wasn’t, but his eyes were constantly on the door. When his vigil was rewarded, he was again breathless at the bold statement of her appearance. Black velvet fell open over a flame satin underdress. Her hair was piled high on her head, held by a diamond-studded comb. A diamond pendant nestled in the deep cleavage of her gown. They were her only adornment.

  She walked directly across the room to his side as if she saw no one else, as he saw no one but her. Heads turned, but Gabrielle appeared unaware.

  “Good evening,” she said softly, reaching him.

  “Good evening.” He smiled at her and brushed a fingertip over her cheek where the faintest scratch marred the pale translucence. “The tree branch scratched you.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Battle scars.”

  They were alone in the crowded room, oblivious of the startled looks, the whispers, the nudges.

  “We have to do something,” Georgie whispered urgently to Simon, who, having heard the details of Gabrielle’s bath-time confession, was watching the encounter with amused fascination. “Everyone’s staring at them.”

  She crossed the room swiftly, her husband at her heels. “So what do you think of our hunt country, Lord Praed?”

  Her voice broke the charmed circle, but Nathaniel’s eyes were glazed for a split second as he turned to respond. “Rough on occasion, Lady Vanbrugh,” he said, recovering smoothly.

  “Georgie doesn’t hunt,” Gabrielle said, recovering her own senses as swiftly and smoothly. “So when she talks about hunting, you have to realize that she’s only being polite. She trots out the terms but doesn’t have the faintest idea what they mean.”

  “Oh, unjust,” Georgie said, laughing. “I’ve listened to you and Simon most of my life. Of course I know what they mean, don’t I, Simon?”

  Her husband smiled down at her. “It doesn’t matter, my love, one way or the other. Why should you need to know what they mean?”

  “Well, I own I dislike hunting excessively,” Georgie agreed. “I feel so sorry for the fox.”

  “There is that,” Gabrielle agreed.

  “O
h, come now, countess,” Nathaniel put in. “You made absolutely certain you were in at the kill, and I’ll swear you didn’t flinch.”

  “I’m not squeamish,” Gabrielle said. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t feel sorry for the fox.”

  The conversation rapidly became general, and when Gabrielle went into the dining room on Nathaniel’s arm, the strange and disconcerting moment of intimacy was forgotten by most of the guests, if not by its participants.

  4

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard that sound,” Miles observed to Simon as they entered the drawing room after dinner.

  Simon needed no expansion of the remark. The deep, warm sound of Nathaniel Praed’s laughter seemed to fill the corners of the long, high-ceilinged room. He was leaning over the back of Gabrielle’s chair; her head was tilted upward, turned against the taffeta cushions as she spoke to him. Whatever she was saying seemed to be amusing his lordship mightily.

  “He says she’s trouble,” Miles continued thoughtfully. “But I’m getting the impression the gentleman doth protest too much.”

  “Does it surprise you, my friend?” Simon chuckled. “If I weren’t happily leg-shackled to Georgie, I could almost be tempted myself.”

  “Not I,” Miles said. “Gabby’s too much of an enfant terrible for me. A man would never know whether he was on his head or his heels with her. She’s got the devil’s own sense of humor, always mocking. Half the time I don’t know whether she’s serious or not.”

  “But one would never be bored,” Simon commented. “Perhaps that’s what Nathaniel needs.”

  “Perhaps.” Miles took snuff with an indolent flick of his wrist. “It certainly won’t hurt him to cross swords with someone who can give as good as she gets. A lesson in humility might be the saving of him. Gabby’s not one to be intimidated by Nathaniel’s particular brand of arrogance.”

  Simon laughed. “She has more than her own share of imperiousness—much as I love her. Maybe they’ll take each other down a peg or two.”

  “Well, it’ll certainly be an interesting spectator sport. Let’s suggest a game of whist. I’d dearly love to see them partner each other.”

  They sauntered over to the engrossed pair and Miles said cheerfully, “Gabby … Nathaniel … you have to rescue us from certain disaster. Lady Alsop and Colonel Beamish are looking for another pair to make up a whist table. If you don’t agree to play with us, Georgie will volunteer us the minute she looks in our direction.”

  Gabrielle examined Lord Praed with an air of speculation that was as mischievously inviting as it was challenging. “How well do you play, sir?”

  “Well enough, ma’am,” he responded without a blink of an eyelid. “But I might ask you the same question.”

  “I play as well as I hunt,” she asserted glibly.

  “But not, I trust, as recklessly.”

  “I take no unnecessary risks.”

  “You’ll have to forgive me if I doubt that.” His eyes held hers and that charmed circle enclosed them again.

  Simon cleared his throat. “I can vouch for Gabby’s cardplay, Nathaniel. She’s not a conservative bidder, certainly, but she’ll not leave you in the lurch.”

  “No,” Gabrielle agreed with a sweet smile at her prospective partner. “I am an utterly reliable partner, Lord Praed. In whist as in other things. Perhaps it’s time I proved it to you.”

  Nathaniel’s head was whirling, his scalp tight, as if he were in the grip of a fever. And perhaps he was, he thought distantly. The woman was drawing them both to the brink of the devil’s own inferno. Somehow he had to keep from toppling in. He looked for the cold, formal response so much a habit with him.

  For a moment nothing would come to his lips, and he knew he was smiling and his eyes were warm. Gabrielle’s crooked smile and dark eyes hung like the moon in a mist before his rapt gaze, wisps of dark red hair escaping from the diamond comb. She was scarlet and black—she was trouble. Helen’s soft features came suddenly to his rescue—the liquid eyes, the tentative expressions, the gentle hand.

  “I’m not in the mood for cards,” he said, his voice clipped, his eyes now cold and harsh. “I must ask you to forgive me, madame, I couldn’t do you justice as a partner.” He bowed and turned away, walking with undue haste to the drawing room door.

  Simon sighed. “For a minute there I thought I spied the old Nathaniel.”

  “The old Nathaniel?” Gabrielle’s eyebrows quirked.

  “I told you this morning that he lost his wife in childbirth,” Miles reminded her with a touch of his earlier stiffness.

  “We all have tragedies,” Gabrielle said quietly, and to the surprise of both men for once there was no mockery in her voice. Her eyes were dark pools of unhappiness, and then it was gone. “Well, if Lord Praed won’t play, you must find me another partner.”

  She smiled in her usual fashion and took Simon’s arm as they went into the cardroom.

  Nathaniel lay fully dressed on his bed, listening to the voices from below, the strains of dance music as a few couples took the floor in an impromptu country dance. He’d left instructions with the stables that his postchaise be at the front door at five o’clock, well before dawn. Now all he had to do was get through the night and he’d be on his way to Hampshire and safe from the devil’s inferno embodied in a pair of charcoal eyes.

  After a while the noise died down and he heard the called good nights as his fellow guests made their way to bed. He undressed and tried to sleep. But all the usual tricks he used to bring about oblivion when he was keyed up failed him. When the handful of gravel flew through the open window and rattled on the polished wooden floor, he understood what he’d been waiting for.

  To question the inevitable was an exercise in futility. He relit his beside candle, then got up, shrugged into his dressing gown, and went to the window. Gabrielle de Beaucaire stood on the pathway below, hands on her hips, her head thrown back as she looked up at his window, every line of her body both a question and an invitation.

  Nathaniel leaned out into the moon-washed night. He said nothing, merely crooked a finger at the still figure. For the barest moment she seemed to hesitate, then she was swarming up the creeper, hand over hand, toes searching for a foothold, gripping where they could. Leaning his elbows on the broad sill, he watched her progress, trying to conceal his anxiety from himself.

  When her head came level with the windowsill, he reached for her, taking her strongly beneath the arms and lifting her bodily through the window.

  Gabrielle was so surprised at this evidence of more than ordinary strength in a man whose physique indicated wiriness and agility rather than muscle power that she made no sound until her feet made firm contact with the bedroom floor and she was released.

  Then she drew breath and brushed the hair away from her forehead, offering him a small smile.

  “I was a little scared of the climb tonight. But one shouldn’t give in to fear, should one?”

  He regarded her, unsmiling. “And temptation?” he inquired softly. “What of temptation, Gabrielle?”

  “Ah.” She put her head on one side, considering. “Resisting temptation is a different matter. A matter best left to individual consciences, I believe, according to circumstance.”

  “Yes,” he said, still softly. What reason did he have for resisting this temptation just this once? He’d be away from there in a few short hours, away from Gabrielle de Beaucaire, and he’d never see her again. She wanted this as much as he did. This was an ephemeral temptation, not one that need be resisted.

  His hands went to the buttons of her shirt. In leisurely fashion, one by one, they came undone. Gabrielle stood motionless under the purposeful unfastening, although her blood flowed swiftly and her heart was beating fast.

  Lifting and turning her wrists, he unfastened the tiny pearl buttons before pulling the shirt-sleeves off her arms. He tossed the shirt aside and stood looking at her, bared to the waist in the moonlight. She held still for the long, unhurri
ed scrutiny, her skin prickling, her nipples lifting and hardening with the cool breeze from the window.

  He held the generous swell of her breasts in the palms of his hands, his thumb flicking the nipples, his eyes holding hers before he lowered his head and drew his tongue in a slow, easy stroke first over the right breast and then over the left. It was a caress so full of promise that Gabrielle caught her breath, but she obeyed the unspoken rule of silence that held them both.

  In the same silence Nathaniel caught her waist and lifted her onto the windowsill before pulling off her boots and stockings in turn. Slowly, he unfastened the waistband of her britches, lifted her down again, and pushed the garment off her hips. Then, smiling, he hitched her back onto the cold stone windowsill and pulled the britches clear of her feet.

  Gabrielle shivered, but it was not with cold, although the stone was hard and chill beneath her bottom and thighs as she sat naked in the window.

  Nathaniel lifted her with the ease of before, cradled her in his arms, and carried her to the bed, laying her gently on the rumpled coverlet.

  “Why do you keep carrying me around?” she inquired, her voice sounding strange as the intense silence was at last broken. She tried for a lightly amused tone, but there was a quiver in her voice that spoke of much more than amusement.

  Nathaniel stood looking down at her as she lay on the bed, vulnerable in her nakedness. Her limbs were long and straight as hazel wands, and the generous curve of hip and bosom surprised and delighted him. Clothed, her height masked the richness of her body. “I suppose because it makes you more manageable,” he said. “Or at least it gives me that illusion.”

  “And you need me to be manageable?”

  “I have my share of masculine pride.” A glimmer of self-mockery touched his eyes, and it was as if the harsh, isolated coldness he so often evinced belonged to a different man. He threw off his dressing gown and came down on the bed beside her.

  “I’d never have believed it,” Gabrielle murmured, brushing her fingertips over his chest. “Such a modest and unassuming man, I thought you were.”