The Corrupt Comte (25 page)

He was a spy, and Claudia knew enough of spies to anticipate the worst. How easy it would be for him to sneak away from her in the night, seeking out excitement and pleasures and God only knew what until, eventually, he never bothered to creep back home come morning light. Gaspard was a man drawn to intrigue and adventure, and she…

Well. She was drawn to him. That was hardly enough upon which to base a lifetime together.

A snore interrupted her morose thoughts. He’d fallen asleep, thank goodness. She wished she could smile down at him, wished the betrayal with which he had blistered her heart would transform into the tender hope she’d felt for their future in the moments after he’d stolen her from Évoque, before he’d confessed his terrible lie.

Yet she couldn’t bring herself to leave his side. She couldn’t even lift her hands long enough to break contact with him, so she eased down next to him, ignoring the uncomfortable compression of her lungs beneath her stays. His arm immediately banded around her, tugging her into him as he shifted his overheated body to hold her.

She didn’t protest when he squeezed her until she could barely breathe. She didn’t do anything but lay her hands to his bare chest, letting the light dusting of hair over his hot skin gently abrade her palms. And when he nuzzled his face into her loosened braid, she exhaled against his neck, closed her eyes and sleep finally came for her too.

Chapter Fourteen

21 February 1820, London, England

Something was wrong with Claudia, and if Gaspard didn’t figure out what it was soon, he would take the knife hidden as usual up his coat sleeve and start stabbing members of the British
ton
, until they told him exactly why his fiancée looked so miserable.

Because she
was
miserable. She stood to the side of the opulent ballroom in her family’s Mayfair mansion, magnificent in royal-blue silk that made her creamy skin look like something from a confectioner’s shop. But her usual blush was missing, and her lips were pressed into a tight line that leached them of rosy color. She was beyond lovely but unhappy, and it was obvious she wished to be anywhere but where she was.

Where she was, he thought ruefully, was at their engagement ball, his and hers. Everything had been rushed, due to their hurried return from Paris, but the Pascales seemed to want them wed as quickly as Gaspard himself did, though for far different reasons.

Auguste and Phoebe wanted the daughter they were ashamed of off their hands for good…whereas he just wanted his hands all over their shameless daughter, every minute of every day.

He wasn’t touching her now. He wasn’t even standing near her. It had surprised him, how many Parisians were in attendance. He’d thought he would never again be surrounded by so many familiar faces, but there they were. Staring, assessing. Murmuring wonderingly behind gloved hands and snapping fans. They watched him as they might a zoological oddity, waiting for him to roar and charge and devour them all.

The only spectator he wanted to devour was Claudia, and she refused to so much as glance in his direction. He scowled. In the days following their arrival in London, Gaspard had barely had a moment to spend with her, and he had sinking suspicion that he’d revealed too much of himself during that torturous boat crossing. Her distant behavior tonight only worried him more.

Tolerating that distance felt like a rotten tooth demanding to be yanked from aching gums. In four days’ time, they would marry—and he would
not
allow her to renege on their engagement. She would finally belong to him, until death did they part, unable to ignore him as she currently did. She was his, as she had been since the closet, and Max’s ballroom, and Évoque’s mansion.

His need to possess every inch of her body and every shadow in her soul would likely terrify him if he wasn’t so hell-bent on owning her.

He needed to own her. He needed one person in this ugly world to be his, solely and unalterably, and if he had that…then maybe he could determine who he’d be now that he wasn’t a soldier or a whore, or even an active spy, if Évoque planned to honor their sordid agreement.

His mind blanked as Sabien approached Claudia where she stood on the ballroom’s edge. Sabien bowed, and the expression on her face as she accepted his proffered hand… Gaspard’s stomach twisted, but he didn’t stride forward to stop them from dancing together.

She’d told him she didn’t dance often. He wouldn’t deprive her, even though he seethed inside. This possessiveness was a wretched thing, and God, he hoped it dissipated with time, because he was blisteringly aware of the eyes upon him, and upon his fiancée.

They wanted to know, he realized. They all wanted to know if this was the sort of marriage Gaspard and Claudia would lead—wherein they had their…
individual
pursuits, he as a known buggerer and she as an innocent English rose. The outside world would never believe there lived an attraction between Claudia and himself, and because of his past, they could never prove that world wrong.

Claudia and Sabien made a striking pair, with her darker coloring and his fair male beauty, like something out of a children’s fable. It poked at Gaspard, made him want to shift and stir and transform into the beast he knew himself to be on the inside. But he couldn’t react. To react was to give away everything he’d striven to conceal in one fell swoop. If they suddenly knew what a liar he’d been, how he’d conned them into so many instances of trust—and then betrayed those confidences—the world would turn on him. His every action dissected, his every acquaintanceship investigated. His true association with Sabien and Max and Faron would be revealed if he wasn’t careful, and he found he couldn’t put them in peril, even though he’d continually decried emotional attachment to his fellow spies.

The consequences they’d suffer would be…heavy.

Not to mention the consequences to Claudia. He stared out at the dance floor, watching her waltz gracefully in the arms of his friend. She was an excellent dancer, he discovered, a small pang of something that felt like remorse rattling beneath his breastbone.

He should’ve asked her to dance. It was his duty as her fiancé to twirl her around ballrooms, if that’s what she wanted to do. She didn’t have to be a wallflower anymore—he was going to make her a damn countess.

But if he were found out, she wouldn’t get to stay a countess. The title would either be revoked or tarnished beyond repair, and she would be an outcast. Regardless of the fact that she vowed not to care for society, there was more to being an outcast than simply not being invited to the right parties. Her family, awful as they were, would cut her publicly, and no doubt cut her off financially. Friendships would disappear, and she’d be harassed on the street, making it unsafe for her to leave her home. And eventually, when he was hanged or guillotined or brought before the firing squad for his crimes, she’d be made a widow, and by that time utterly alone.

Dread filled him, quashing the jealousy at witnessing Sabien hold Claudia so close. There would be no quiet existence for Gaspard and Claudia, no out-of-the-way life for them to share in anonymity. This was the price he paid for his past, and the deal he’d made with Évoque. He wouldn’t disappear. He’d attend the soirées, wear the fine clothing suited to his public persona and be noticed. Dismissed as the quasi-outcast he was but always, always noticed.

He now understood why she appeared so miserable. She had reached the same conclusion as he: Gaspard would forever be the molly
comte
…and because of that, Claudia would forever be an object of pity and ridicule.

Because of him.

His heart seized as he stared at her, the waltz coming to an end. By marrying him, Claudia was consigned to a life of constant public humiliation. No matter what he did after the vows were spoken, she would suffer. Much as she suffered now.

He’d never hated himself as much as he did in this moment. Never.

Sabien bowed over Claudia’s hand, and Gaspard watched as she was led over to him. “You’re a lucky man,” Sabien said, without a trace of irony.

“I know.” And he did. Gaspard took Claudia’s hand and tucked it into his arm, ignoring the look of surprise on her face at the lieutenant’s words. He didn’t want to know if those words made her happy or angry. He didn’t want to know if just hearing that compliment from a man she’d once intended to wed, coupled with her epiphany about their future together, was enough to make her cry off, which he couldn’t allow to happen.

They were both trapped in lives of their own making. They might as well be trapped together.

“Claudia,
chérie
,” and he used a flippant tone one would expect to hear from a man who didn’t remotely lust after his betrothed, “you are tired, yes? Do you wish to retire?”

She nodded mutely, and he allowed her the safety of silence. Hadn’t he tortured her enough over the course of their acquaintance? Her hand lay limply in the crook of his elbow, and the pain in his chest doubled, then tripled as she allowed him to lead her out of the ballroom with her eyes trained on the floor. It wasn’t obedience or submission. It was defeat.

Gaspard wanted her to fight. Hell, he’d discovered he
liked
it when she fought, resisted and snarled. When she questioned him, challenged him…it made any surrender she offered that much sweeter.

Together, they departed the ballroom, the curious stares of the gathered guests pounding against their backs. Gaspard led her out into the hall, marbled and ostentatious and yet somehow rather boring in the way that only the English could be, and then up the stairs. He’d been relegated to a separate wing from the family’s suites but had made it a point to learn exactly which room was Claudia’s upon arrival at the Pascale home, and he unerringly directed her up the stairs to its tall, white-paneled door.

The bedchamber was decidedly more tasteful than the rest of the house, more
her
. Rose-and-cream-striped damask papered the walls, and elegant, delicate-looking furnishings with dark wood accents and pale-hued upholstery filled the small space. Its size confused him, considering the opulence of his own chamber, not to mention the rest of the mansion. “This is your room?”

“Yes,” she responded dully, detaching herself from his arm and moving to the bed. “Thank you for escorting m-me here.”

His eyes narrowed as she boosted herself onto the neatly made counterpane. “I am not leaving.”

“Fine.” She curled on her side, the vibrant blue of the dress in stark contrast to her colorless face.

It was
not
fine, and Gaspard found he could no longer tolerate her listless behavior, his guilt over causing it too close to the surface. Though he feared he knew the answer, he asked, bitingly, “What is wrong with you tonight?”

Her eyes slid shut, and she sighed, so wearily he felt exhaustion weight his limbs in sympathy. “I’m t-tired.”

“Liar.” He strode to the bed, stopping only when his thighs hit the frame, and folded his arms across his chest. “Tell me what has upset you.”

Her shoulder lifted in jerky response, the shrug aborted due to her position on the bed. The capped sleeve of her gown, puffed and tucked around her upper arm with dainty pleats, shifted lower to reveal the smooth curve of one pale shoulder. She didn’t answer.

Not answering was no longer an option for the lady, however. “No more silence, Claudia. If you do not speak to me, we cannot fix what ails you.”

“You.” Her dark-lashed eyes snapped open, flashing sparks at him. “
You
ail me. I c-can’t do this.”

Even though he’d expected such an announcement, Gaspard stumbled back a step, away from her harsh words, her animosity. “I see.”

“Do you?” She pushed upright, tugging at the bodice of her gown. “Because what I s-s-saw downstairs makes m-me ill.”

“I…see.” He couldn’t say anything else, and so simply stood there, looking down at her while she glared up at him. There was no softness in her gaze, nothing but stiff misery in the straightness of her spine, and his chest felt as though it had been on the receiving end of a swift kick from horses’ hooves. Except horses’ hooves hurt less than this. He brought up a hand to rub over the phantom ache in his sternum.

Shaking her head, she dropped her chin, then began plucking numerous pins from the elegantly styled mass of her hair. “You don’t understand.”

He swallowed around the lump in his throat, unable to stop watching her nimble fingers search out the pins from one curl to the next because
he
wanted to be the one to loosen her hair. He wanted his blunt peasant’s fingers to be responsible for that shining dark silk to tumble haphazardly down her back. “Explain it to me.”

Her look lashed him with contempt. “You never c-c-cease trying to m-make me s-s-speak. It’s always ‘tell m-me’ this,” she mocked as she forcefully flung a pin across the rug. “‘Explain it to m-me.’ I don’t have to s-s-speak if I don’t w-want to!” With an aggravated growl, she tossed the hairpins from her lap, sending them flying into the air and against his legs, after which they plunked soundlessly to the floor.

She always looks at me like a wounded animal might. One that’s been kicked repeatedly by its owners.

Except this time, Gaspard had done the proverbial kicking. His head buzzed at the memory of Sabien’s words, and he followed the descent of the pins until he crouched before her, his weight resting on his heels. He picked up an errant hairpin to hold between his thumb and forefinger, neither offering it to her nor keeping it for himself.