Hearts Beguiled (30 page)

❧

Two weeks later, Gabrielle—still feeling a bit wobbly-leaned against the paddock fence and looked up at her son with anxious eyes. Dominique sat astride an enormous cinnamon-colored horse, his stubby legs barely able to straddle the animal's withers.

The horse tossed its head and snorted, baring a pair of huge yellow teeth. "Jesu!" Gabrielle exclaimed. "Does he bite?"

Dominique giggled. "She's a lady horse, Maman. She's very nice. Her name is Marthe."

Gabrielle thought perhaps she should give Marthe a pat, as a token of friendship. Keeping a careful distance, she leaned far over at the waist and stretched out her hand to rub the horse's gray muzzle. The wind gusted, kicking up the velvet skirts of her new green riding habit and fluttering the tall heron feather in her hat. The feather was dyed bright orange.

Marthe's cavernous jaws stretched open and she lunged her neck, snapping at the feather.

Gabrielle shrieked and leaped backward. "Jesu and all his saints! He's eating my hat!"

Dominique cackled with laughter. "She thinks it's a carrot."

Gabrielle looked around her quickly to be sure no one, in particular a certain someone, had seen her making a fool of herself. She smoothed her skirts, trying to recover her dignity. "Very well, Dominique. You may show me what you've learned now."

Dominique nudged the horse into the center of the ring. "Are you watching, Maman?" he called out.

"I'm watching, mon petit," Gabrielle answered faintly, thinking that her life would have been much quieter all the way around if she had given birth to a girl.

Suddenly the horse broke into a fast trot and Gabrielle dug her nails into her palms to steady her nerves. Dominique and the horse seemed a blur as they sped past her, breaking into a canter around the ring, and Dominique waved. She forced out an encouraging smile and waved back. "Use both hands, cheri.''

She sucked in a lungful of the crisp winter air. It was a clear day, the sky a chilly, pristine blue, the sun a hazy yellow orb hovering low on the horizon. A snappy wind blew, stripping the trees of the last of their leaves and flattening the surrounding fields of rye. It brought with it the smell of burning wood. They were making charcoal in the nearby forest, burying stacks of wood, setting them alight and covering them with layers of turf.

During the last two weeks, Gabrielle had felt as if she, too, had been smoldering, just like the charcoal, as she fought with a desperate will to recover from her illness and regain her strength. She forced down tisanes that smelled vile and tasted worse; she drank countless bowls of turnip bouillon and endured mustard baths that left her skin feeling pickled. She made herself walk—from the bed to the water closet and back again.

The water closet had amazed her. It was all white marble and porcelain and luxurious beyond imagining. But then, so was the whole chateau. The floors were made of precious, fragrant wood and covered with priceless Aubusson carpets.

The walls were lined with silk and decorated with Gobelins tapestries and paintings by the grand masters—Titian, Rubens, Raphael. Luxury was evident everywhere, even in the small things such as the use of white wax candles instead of tallow, and whitewash on all the outbuildings. Everything proclaimed nobility and tax-exempt privilege—even down to the gold-plated weathercock on the stable roof.

The chambermaid, whose name was Louise, told her that all this belonged to the comte de Saint-Just, Monsieur Max's father. Now that Monsieur Max was the comte's only surviving son they had managed to set aside their differences. Well, not completely set them aside, mind you, for they still butted heads like a pair of old bulls whenever their paths crossed. Gabrielle had the impression the servants were waiting with bated breath to see what would happen when the comte returned from his hunting trip to discover his rake of a son ensconced in his chateau, and with a suddenly acquired wife and son. Knowing Max's sarcastic tongue, Gabrielle could almost sympathize with the poor old comte.

Since that first evening of accusation and revelation, Max had not been back to see her. Sitting in a gilded armchair by the window, wrapped in satin quilts, she had watched him cavort with her son around the chateau grounds, teaching him to ride, chasing him across the sweeping green lawns. Even with the window closed against the winter air she could hear their laughter, and she felt a longing that was an actual ache in her chest to be a part of it. She envied her own son, that he was to be given Max's love so unconditionally. But then, he had done nothing to forfeit it.

Gabrielle knew it was going to be difficult to win back her husband's love. He was not the sort of man to give his heart lightly or easily, yet he had allowed his careful guard to relax long enough to fall in love with her, only to be terribly wounded as a result.

To Max, who had never loved before, love was a gift to be given without reservation. He couldn't believe it had been possible for her to mistrust him, to leave him, while still loving him. In his mind she hadn't loved him enough, not if she could suspect him capable of betraying her to Louvois. And he would be damned before he would ever trust her with his heart again. He might as well have been clanking around the chateau in an old-fashioned suit of armor, so fortified was he now against letting her near him.

The only ammunition she had on her side, she knew, was the chance that she might be able to make him want her physically again. Unfortunately the fever had melted what little flesh she had left off her bones, so that her figure resembled a witch's broomstick. Her complexion was so ruined she looked like a blanched and wrinkled prune. Worse, she literally hadn't a single thing to wear.

The first day she felt well enough to get up and sit in the chair by the fire, she asked Louise what had happened to her clothes. With a sniff, Louise said if she was talking about those old rags, they had been burned days ago. An hour later, the girl returned with a beautiful blue quilted-silk dressing gown folded in her arms. And the next day a modiste arrived at the chateau bearing ells of silk, satins, and gossamer muslins.

Since this generosity could only have come from Max, Gabrielle had spent the next two days humming and smiling to herself. When the first of the new clothes arrived—a dress of soft peach silk with coffee-colored flounces—she waited impatiently for him to come see how it looked on her. She waited in vain . . .

"Look, Maman!"

Dominique thundered past her on the huge cinnamon-colored horse. Gabrielle had just opened her mouth to shout at him that he was going too fast when, to her utter horror, he put the reins between his teeth and stretched his arms straight out in the air like angels' wings. His feet flapped against the horse's sides and his hair billowed like a flag around his head, and he was going to fall off and break his neck.

Gabrielle waited until he had slowed the horse and trotted back to her. Only the ominous tapping of her foot on the ground was there to warn Dominique of the coming explosion, but he didn't notice it.

"Did you see me, Maman? Did you see?" he exclaimed proudly.

"I saw you, young man, and if you ever do such a reckless, harebrained, addlepated thing again I'm going to give you the whipping of your young life!"

Since she had never even raised a hand to him before, Dominique was not particularly impressed by this threat. "But it wasn't dangerous, Maman. Papa says I have good balance."

Gabrielle clenched her teeth and vowed to have a word or two with the Vicomte Maximilien de Saint-Just. "Get down," she told Dominique in a tone of voice that brooked no argument.

Dominique nudged Marthe over to the fence and used the rails to climb down. He grinned up at her. "Do you want to go for a ride now, Maman?"

Gabrielle opened her mouth, then shut it. She looked at the big cinnamon-colored mare, standing docilely beside them, munching on a tuft of grass. Surely it was ridiculous that she'd passed the age of twenty-two and had never once sat on a horse. How difficult could it possibly be if a five-year-old child could master it?

She looked around to be sure there were no snickering eyes watching her. "Well . . . perhaps a gallop or two around the ring."

With lots of unsolicited advice from her son, Gabrielle managed to get herself onto the mare's broad back. It had not been at all as easy as it looked, and for several terrifying seconds she found herself lying stomach down and crossways on Marthe's broad withers, with the beast making terrible snorting sounds and whipping her tail ominously back and forth. Finally Gabrielle was upright—and a long, long way off the ground.

Marthe had gone back to munching the grass. "She doesn't seem to want to move," Gabrielle said nervously.

"Kick her in the side with your heel, Maman."

Gabrielle gave her the merest nudge.

Marthe stamped her foot.

Gabrielle shut her eyes. "Mon Dieu ..."

"Give her a good thump, Maman."

Gabrielle gave her a good thump.

Marthe bolted across the paddock, snorting and kicking up her hooves. Gabrielle did a somersault over the mare's hindquarters and landed on her tailbone with such force that she grunted.

Familiar laughter, rich and husky, joined with Dominique's high-pitched whoops to fill the air. Gabrielle's cheeks burned. She might have known he would arrive just in time to witness her humiliation.

She pulled aside the heron feather, which was drooping over one eye, to glare toward where her husband and son stood outside the paddock, laughing at her expense. Immediately they tried to assume their wide-eyed, innocent looks.

"Is something amusing you, Monsieur le Vicomte?" she asked icily, lifting up one hip to rub her sore bottom.

He bowed. "I beg your pardon, madame." He had managed to assume a somber expression, but a tic at the corner of his mouth gave him away.

Gabrielle scrambled awkwardly to her feet. She marched toward them, and they started to back away from her. She pointed a shaking finger at Marthe, who had once again gone back to her grazing. "That . . . that wild beast is dangerous!"

Max made a noise that sounded like one of Marthe's snorts. "That wild beast was born the same year I was. She wouldn't hurt a honey bee."

"Ha! She tried to eat my hat!"

"Maybe she thought it was a carrot."

Gabrielle stopped before him, her hands on her hips. The heron feather fell over her eye again, and she pushed it away impatiently.

Their eyes met and Gabrielle stopped breathing.

The smile that brightened his face slowly faded. His eyes darkened until they were almost as black as the charcoal that burned in the forest. His mouth looked hard, inflexible, and she wanted to press her lips to it, to feel it soften, melt, succumb to her. Love for him overwhelmed her, making her chest ache.

She leaned into him, touching his hand. "Max ..."

He recoiled as if her fingers were a burning brand and, indeed, their skin had seemed to sizzle at the contact.

He backed up a couple feet, but he didn't leave. He looked out across the fields. She looked with him. They stared together at a man in the distance who turned over the dark earth with a large-wheeled plow. Nearby was a mill, and the water tumbling over the wheel caught the sun's rays and shimmered like shards of glass. She felt his body beside her, coiled as tightly as the spring in a mousetrap.

"If you're well enough to be out cayorting around the countryside, then you can join me for supper this evening," he said, although he made it sound like a command.

She gave him her sweetest smile. It had some effect, for she saw a vein begin to throb in his temple. "If you wish," she said. She smiled again. "I haven't had a chance to thank you for all the lovely gowns and things."

"There's no need. I'm your husband and it's my duty to provide for you. If you are going to go cavorting around the countryside, I won't have you doing so dressed as a beggar—" He cut himself off, but it was too late. The were both remembering the condition he had found her in, and how she had come to be that way.

He turned away from her. "I'll tell Guitton to have us served informally in the small dining room. We'll begin with a glass of brandy in the library."

❧

At the sound of a door opening and closing upstairs, Max quickly knocked back his fourth glass of brandy. There was a pleasant hum in his head and his fingertips were starting to feel numb. It was just the state he wanted to be in—drunk enough to be as cruel as it would take to survive the coming battle.

That it was going to be a battle he had no doubt. The only question was the nature of the enemy. The worst enemy, he had decided, was his own treacherous body. How had he allowed himself to get to such an impossible state where only one woman on earth was capable of satisfying him? And what fiendish god had decreed that the woman would be Gabrielle?

Gabrielle.

Lying, deceiving, falsehearted Gabrielle. He refused to believe he still loved her. He refused to let himself love her. The minute he did she would hurt him again. Leave him, probably, or take a lover. Only a man who enjoyed suffering would deliberately let himself in for that kind of pain.

A part of him wanted to flee to the other side of the world, where he would be sure of being out of reach of that damned spell she could cast with just one of those sweet smiles. On the other hand, she was his wife, which meant he could avail himself of her body, that glorious, sensual body, whenever he felt in the mood. And tonight he was definitely in the mood.

The door opened.

She stood with the oil lamps in the hall backlighting her hair, so that it blazed like the sun. Her gown was of flesh-colored vaporous silk and in the flickering light he thought he could almost see right through it to her naked body. She had laced her bodice so tightly that, as she breathed, her breasts rose and quivered, threatening to spill over the top of the deep decollete, and the lace that trimmed the edge of it was so sheer he had a hard time telling where it left off and her bare skin began.

Max set his teeth to bite back a groan. How was he ever going to win this war when the enemy possessed such formidable weapons?

He splashed more brandy into the glass, spilling a good portion onto the ruby and blue Aubusson carpet. He lifted the glass to her in a mock toast and fought back with the only weapon he had—words.

"You shouldn't wear that gown in public, ma mie. You're liable to start a revolution."

A blush spread slowly across her cheeks, then she raised her head to stare proudly at him. "I had hoped you would be pleased with the dress, Monsieur le Vicomte. Since it is you, after all, who has paid for it."

"Actually, I charged everything to my father's accounts. I hope it was outrageously expensive."

"Oh, but it was!" Her eyes crinkled at the corners and she laughed softly. Max emptied half the brandy snifter down his throat.

He went over to the sideboard to refill his glass and pour one for her. She glided into the room as if on a bubble of air. She paused to look around her, taking in the lustrous mahogany and gilt furniture, the shelves of books bound in gold-embossed leather, the wainscoted walls broken up by double French doors that led to the gardens. Max glanced at her.

She walked over to the fireplace, gazing up at a portrait over the mantel of a stern-looking man in a uniform dripping with gold braid. "Your father," she stated. "I can tell. You have the same arrogant nose."

"Do we?" Carrying both brandies, he came to stand close enough to her that the sleeve of his shirt brushed her bare arm. The fine hairs rose on the back of her neck and he smiled to himself. She might have the ability to drive him half mad with desire, but at least he'd always had the same effect on her.

He pressed one of the brandy glasses into her hands, allowing his fingers to linger in hers, smiling again as he heard her breath catch. She smelled wonderful—of spring flowers and sun-drenched meadows.

He looked down. She was breathing rapidly and he could see her nipples pressing against the lace of her bodice, like two dark red rosebuds . . . Jesus, he wondered. Had she rouged them?

He jerked away from her. He stumbled stiff-legged over to a chair by the window and flung himself down on it. Draping one leg over the chair arm, he cradled his brandy glass in his lap to hide the hard bulge in his breeches. His hands were trembling.

She had noticed the other portrait opposite the one above the mantel and she went now to study it. This one was of a woman with rich chestnut hair and glowing hazel eyes, and a melancholy smile on her full lips that left just the hint of a dimple in one cheek.

"My mother, the whore," Max said.

Gabrielle looked at him in surprise.

"The comtesse, the real comtesse, has been banished to the attics." He got up and went to stand before the portrait. The bulge in his breeches was still there; he decided not to care if she noticed it. "The real comtesse died, you see, and my father thought to go looking for his other wife. He found her in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, walking the streets, and me"—his lips curled into a bitter smile—"doing things you don't want to know about. I was twelve. He brought us back here and she died six months later." He waved his glass at the portrait, and brandy slopped over the rim. "Since then the old bastard's convinced himself she was the one true love of his life."

"Perhaps she was." Gabrielle had spoken in such a strained voice that he barely heard her.

"He had a strange way of showing it then, didn't he? Abandoning her to a life of prostitution. But maybe I'm a sentimental fool when it comes to marriage and love."

The color drained from her face and he felt a spasm of self-disgust. To quench it, he finished off what was left of the brandy in his glass.

She tilted her head back to look again at the portrait. "I was wondering where I had seen her before . . . You have a miniature of her in the apartment back in Paris."

"Ah, yes, I'd forgotten about that day you stole into my apartment and rummaged through my drawers. I never did discover what you were really looking for. But never mind telling me now, Gabrielle. Anything you said would probably be a lie and, besides, I find the air of mystery that always surrounds you to be something of an aphrodisiac. It seems I'm never making love to the same woman twice."

As she turned to face him, he saw tears glinting in her eyes. Even as he watched, one spilled over and rolled down her cheek.

"Damnation!" he exclaimed, hurling his empty brandy glass across the room.

She brushed the tear impatiently away. "If you're trying to make me pay for what I did, Max, then you are succeeding. What will it take for you to forgive me?" To his horror she fell to her knees before him. "I beg—"

He seized her arms, hauling her to her feet. "Don't do that, for Christ's sake!" He shook her and her eyes fluttered shut and her mouth fell open. He started to lower his head, stopping himself in the second before his lips touched hers.

He flung her away from him and, whirling, fled from the room and the sight of that white, hurt face, and the knowledge that he had loved her then, loved her now, would always love her, no matter what.

No matter what.