Velvet (19 page)

“Perfectly,” Gabrielle said. An indigent relative offered house room could certainly be put to good use.

“But it’s Jake I worry about,” Miss Primmer reiterated. “I don’t know how to tell him.”

“I think that task should be left to Lord Praed,” Gabrielle stated firmly.

“Oh, but I’m sure he expects me to break it … oh, dear, that’s not what I mean … to prepare the child.”

“Nevertheless, I don’t think you should say anything—if you would take my advice, of course.” She reached for the decanter, offering to refill her visitor’s glass.

“Oh, too kind … no … no, thank you, it makes me quite giddy … not used to it, you understand.”

Indeed the lady’s cheek was somewhat flushed, her eyes rather bright.

“I must go back to the schoolroom. Jake will have finished his nuncheon now.” Miss Primmer rose slightly
unsteadily to her feet. “Oh, dear,” she murmured, taking hold of the back of the chair. “You’ve been very kind, countess.”

Gabrielle shook her head. “Not at all.” She escorted her visitor to the door. “Don’t say anything to Jake just yet.”

Miss Primmer looked at her with a gleam of hope in her eye. “Do you think it’s possible his lordship might change his mind?”

“I don’t know,” Gabrielle said with perfect truth. “But perhaps he might reconsider the timing of your departure.”

The governess bustled off looking a little less forlorn, and Gabrielle returned to the window seat. There was something about little Jake that tugged at her. Maybe it was the memory of herself as a child, so alone and frightened and confused. Jake was no orphan, but he was motherless and his relationship with his father was fractured, to say the least. And one of the loving and reliable pillars of his short existence was about to be snatched from him. And there’d be no chaotic and loving DeVanes to take her place, only a tutor and the harsh realities of school.

Gabrielle had heard enough about these realities from the De Vane boys to know the child Jake was now would barely survive physically, let alone emotionally. Why didn’t Nathaniel realize it? But of course that was what lay behind this banishment of the governess. It was preparation. It would certainly prepare Jake for random severity ….

“I hope your imagination’s been working overtime this morning.”

It was Nathaniel’s voice, his other voice, the one that accompanied the lingering hand of arousal. Gabrielle turned her head to the connecting door, where he lounged against the doorjamb in his shirtsleeves, deliberately unbuttoning the cuffs.

“Comfits.” she said, suddenly breathless, all thoughts of troubled children flown from her mind.

“Comfit?” His eyebrows rose. He rolled back the cuffs of his shirt.

“Sugar plums and sugared almonds,” she explained. “A perfect accompaniment to champagne.”

He nodded slowly. “Yes, I believe that will do nicely.” He gestured past him to his own room. “Will you walk into my parlor, madame?” The brown eyes were aglow, his mouth curved with promise.

“With pleasure, sir.” Gabrielle walked past him, and he closed the door.

“My, you have been busy,” she observed, taking in the table set for nuncheon in the window. “Two bottles of champagne, no less!”

“I’m planning a long afternoon.”

“But we have no comfits,” she pointed out. “Ham and cold chicken, but no sugar plums.”

“Hothouse grapes, however,” he said, plucking a succulent black grape from the bunch sitting on a chased silver salver.

“It seems you had no need of my imagination, Lord Praed,” she murmured, watching fascinated as he peeled the grape with his teeth.

“Two imaginations are twice as good as one,” he said. “I shall ring for sugar plums in a minute.” He placed the grape against her lips. “Open.”

His fingertips inserted the peeled grape between her lips and he smiled as she curled her tongue around the fruit, savoring its coolness and the texture of the flesh before biting into it.

“A promise,” he said softly.

“I think sugared almonds are the best,” Gabrielle declared, dipping one of the comfits in her personal champagne thimble. “There’s something about the
crunchiness of the nut with the silkiness of the champagne. What’s your opinion?”

“I don’t think I’m capable of one,” Nathaniel murmured, stretching his body beneath the butterfly flickers of her tongue sipping nectar from his navel. He drew a sharp breath as cold drops trickled over his skin when she carefully refilled the thimble.

“Keep still,” she commanded. “You’ll spill it.”

A quiver of laughter ran through him as he struggled to hold himself immobile.

“I’ll try a grape this time,” Gabrielle said consideringly, reaching sideways to select one from the depleted bunch. “Just to refresh my memory.” She popped the grape between her lips, and her laughing eyes held his for a moment before she bent her head.

He could feel her weight resting lightly across his thighs, her breath on his skin, the tickling brush of the dark red ringlets across his belly as she dipped the grape into the champagne well. Holding the succulent dripping fruit between her lips, she moved up his body until her face hung over his.

Nathaniel opened his mouth, closing his eyes, and she lowered her mouth to his, delicately pushing the grape between his lips with her tongue.

“Sugar plum now?” She ran her flat thumb over his mouth, the lingering embers of satisfied desire glowing in her eyes.

“If you’re trying to rekindle my flagging energies, ma’am, I’m very much afraid it’s not going to work,” he said, smiling as he ran his hands through the cascading ringlets, lifting them away from her face. “You have unmanned me, love.”

Gabrielle chuckled and pushed herself upright so that she was sitting astride his thighs again. “I don’t think I’m prepared to admit defeat quite so soon.”

“Mercy!” he cried, reaching down to seize her
hands as they set to work with wicked, dexterous skill. “Come cuddle for a minute.”

“If you’d prefer,” Gabrielle acquiesced equably, lying down beside him. “Just remember I wasn’t the first to cry quits.”

“You don’t have to work as hard,” Nathaniel pointed out, running a lazy hand down her spine as she curled against his side.

Gabrielle smiled and kissed the hollow of his shoulder, savoring the salt tang of his skin. “Don’t you think it might be easier for Jake to become accustomed to a tutor if Miss Primmer stays around for a while.” She kept her tone lightly conversational, tracing the shape of his ear with her little finger.

“I thought we’d agreed that Jake was not a suitable topic for conversation.” Nathaniel spoke with constraint, but it was clear he was making an effort to restrain his rising annoyance. The stroking hand lifted from her back, leaving a cold space.

Against her better judgment, Gabrielle persevered. She hadn’t intended to say anything at all yet, but somehow the long intimacy of the afternoon had blunted her natural caution and the words had formed themselves and spoken themselves.

“I just wonder if you’ve considered all the aspects,” she said, kissing his ear.

“Don’t do that, Gabrielle.” Nathaniel jerked his head sideways. “I don’t like it.”

“You don’t like my kissing your ear, or talking about Jake?”
In for a penny, in for a pound
.

“The latter,” he said. “It’s not your business, and you have no right to presume on the basis of what … of what we’ve been doing all afternoon.”

“It’s called making love, I believe.” Gabrielle sat up. “And I don’t mean to presume. But there are other ways of looking at things and maybe you’re being a bit shortsighted.”

Nathaniel sighed. “I would really appreciate it if you didn’t spend time discussing my private affairs with my staff while you’re here.”

Gabrielle gulped. Was that what she’d been doing? “Miss Primmer was very upset. I just asked her what the matter was.” She could hear the defensive note in her voice.

“And she poured out her woes and her opinions into your receptive ear, presumably hoping that you would use your influence while my guard was down.”

Gabrielle winced. “I don’t believe that was the case. She doesn’t strike me as manipulative, poor woman.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Nathaniel gave up the attempt at restraint. “Poor woman, indeed. You’ve been listening to her wailing and now I’m some harsh and exploitative employer turning out a pathetic, homeless crone—”

“Oh, stop it!” Gabrielle lost her own temper. “That’s not it at ail, and you know it. She was very insistent about your generosity, but she was concerned for Jake—as we all are, presumably even his father!” She glared at him through a veil of unruly dark red curls.

Nathaniel swung out of bed. “Yes,
even
his father. I think you’ve said enough, Gabrielle. If we’re to salvage anything of this afternoon, I suggest we part company and cool off.”

Dismissals didn’t come much clearer than that. If she wasn’t careful, he’d be calling a halt to their interlude long before the two weeks were up, and she’d have failed.

Without a word Gabrielle slipped from the bed, gathered up her discarded garments, and went naked to the connecting door.

“Don’t forget that
you
were the one who pointed out that passion can’t exist in a vacuum,” she said as she left. She closed the door behind her with deliberate softness.

Nathaniel swore under his breath as he looked around the room at the tumbled covers and the remains of their lascivious picnic. Lustful interludes with ho strings to the future and no connections with the past. Who on earth had they been trying to fool?

The memorandum was clear and precise: Le liévre noir
removed June 6
, 1806.
Agent six disappeared during assignment, presumed dead
. No
repercussions—death before capture is presumed
.

Gabrielle stared down at the paper in her hand, stared down at Nathaniel’s elegant script. A jet of fury leaped through her veins with all the vigor and crystal clarity of the fountains in the gardens of Versailles.

She’d known it, but the confirmation, here in her hand, burning into her eyes, shook her more deeply than she could ever have believed it would.

The document belonged in a file of private memoranda—notations, emotionless statements of the success or failure of various enterprises under Lord Praed’s direction. It was the spymaster’s personal, professional diary. And it contained the confirmation of Guillaume’s death as it was ordered by Nathaniel Praed.

Gabrielle took a deep, slow breath and looked around Nathaniel’s bedchamber. Late afternoon shadows gathered in the corners of the meticulously tidy apartment. There were very few personal touches in the
room, which was furnished with an almost spartan simplicity.

The house was very silent and there was a curious suspended quality to the quiet. The ormolu clock on the mantel chimed four o’clock. Nathaniel wasn’t expected to return from his ride around the estate with the bailiff until close to dusk, but there was no point taking chances. There was still much to be learned from the file, but the search of Nathaniel’s chamber had taken the best part of two hours and it was all too easy to make mistakes at the end if one cut things too fine.

Gabrielle slipped the folder back into the cavity beneath the false bottom of the top drawer of the armoire. She stared down into the space, concentrating as she pictured the position of the folder when she’d first lifted the false bottom. Satisfied that the folder was replaced at exactly the same angle, she dropped the bottom of the drawer into place and meticulously replaced the linen cravats that had covered it. She had removed each one separately to be sure there were no booby traps between the folds, but had found no strategically positioned pieces of cotton or fluff.

Again she stared down into the drawer, picturing it as it had been before her disturbance. It looked the same. She slid the drawer closed and drew from her skirt pocket a small envelope containing a fine white powder.

Her tongue dampened her lips, and a deep, intense frown drew her eyebrows together as she sprinkled a film of the powder over the top of the armoire to reproduce the undisturbed surface she’d found.

It was the dust that had alerted her to the hiding place, although she was willing to admit that she might not have noticed it if she hadn’t had such a scare over possibly missing something like it with the safe. But she had her own supply of the spy’s tricks of his trade, and substitution was no problem.

She backed toward the door that connected with her boudoir and then stood very still, examining the room, mentally checking everything over. It all looked the same, and she was willing to lay odds that not even someone as experienced as Nathaniel would be able to tell there’d been an intruder.

Gabrielle slipped through the door and back into the safety of her own apartments. Only then did she allow the grief to resurface. It welled up from deep within her, great racking gobbets of sorrow filling her throat so she could barely breathe, tears pouring heedlessly from her eyes, soaking the front of her gown, her face contorted with the raw brutality of her emotion.

She stood quite still and silent under the violent buffeting of indescribable sorrow, and then as it ebbed she waited for the cleansing fire of anger to sweep through her, hardening her with the compelling power of vengeance.