Velvet (23 page)

Gabrielle listened attentively to the boy’s seemingly irrelevant prattle as they drove along the country lanes between hedgerows bright with holly berries. It was almost as if someone had taken the lid off a bubbling well, she thought. Jake talked as if he could talk forever. Was he not used to an audience? she wondered as he embarked on a convoluted description of some fantasy game he liked to play. It was an elaborate and imaginative scenario, the details lovingly and carefully described to his attentive listener. This was clearly a child who lived in his head, she concluded, as the rich
inner landscape took shape for her. And Nathaniel presumably had no idea.

What kind of child had he been? As lonely as Jake, certainly, but tougher, she suspected. The son of the daunting-looking sixth Lady Praed, rather than the sweetfaced, gentle-natured Helen, seventh Lady Praed.

As she thought these thoughts and lent an attentive ear to the child’s chatter, the seventh Lord Praed was conducting a systematic search of her possessions.

Nathaniel had conducted many such searches in his career, more often than not under conditions of secrecy and the threat of imminent exposure. That afternoon he was in his own house, secure in the knowledge that Gabrielle was well out of the way and that no one would either question his presence in this room or interrupt him.

It gave him the leisure to proceed with excessive thoroughness. Coldly, he blocked out all thought of the personality behind the possessions as he examined the gowns in the wardrobe, checking seams and hems. She had an enormous number of shoes, he registered distantly as he examined the soles of each one, testing for the hollow sound that would indicate a cavity in the heel.

He went through the lacy undergarments in the drawers of the armoire, looking for concealed pockets, loose seams. He had the advantage of Gabrielle in that he knew the room itself contained no secret hiding places. If she did have anything compromising, it would be in her possessions, unless she’d made her own hiding place in the furniture or draperies.

He went through her jewel case, raising his eyebrows slightly at the priceless gems, realizing that so far he’d seen Gabrielle wear barely half of the treasure of the Hawksworths.

He went through the contents of the
secrétaire
, running his eye over the letter from Talleyrand that she’d
read at breakfast. She’d left nothing out in her reading. There was no other correspondence, no journal even.

He stripped the bed and examined the mattress. There were no suspicious cuts or lumps. He ran his hands along the curtains at the windows and around the bed. He looked under the carpets, turned the chairs upside down, and lifted the cushions.

There was nothing to be found. He wondered if he’d expected to find anything. And only then did he realize how relieved he was.

He stretched in the shaft of weak sunlight falling from the window and ran his fingers through the silver swatches at his temples. Then his eye fell on the books on the floor beside the window seat. For some reason, he’d missed them.

He bent to pick them up. There was a copy of
Delphine
by Madame de Staël and a copy of Voltaire’s
Lettres philosophiques
. He opened the latter, shaking out the pages. Nothing fluttered loose. He did the same for
Delphine
with the same results. Idly, he picked up the Voltaire again. It had been a long time since he’d read this critique of prerevolutionary French institutions. The inflammatory book had sent the author into exile and was generally considered an incitement to the revolution that had followed its publication.

He flipped through the pages, his eye running over the text. Suddenly he went cold, the hairs on his forearms rising.

He stared down at a long paragraph where certain letters were marked faintly with lead pencil. There were numerical annotations in the margin.

With a heart of stone he took the book into his own room next door and copied out the passage, including the annotations. He would master the code at his leisure. Then he replaced the book and checked the room to make sure that everything was as he’d found it. The bed looked a little less neat than it had, but no one would notice. He smoothed the coverlet and then
went down to the library to await the return of Gabrielle and his son.

He’d used such codes himself many times, he reflected distantly as he poured himself a glass of cognac. Books were the ideal medium. They were such a natural component of one’s personal possessions, easy to carry around, and only those fluent in the language of spies would notice on a casual glance anything remarkable about faint markings on the text.

Fluent in the la
nguage of spies
… Dear God in heaven! Of all the treacherous, duplicitous
whores—
peddling the glorious wares of her body while she betrayed …

He hurled the glass into the fireplace. The delicate crystal shattered and the fire spurted blue flame as drops of brandy splattered on the logs.

How close he’d been to believing her! A hairbreadth away from entrusting her with the most sensitive political intelligence and the lives of half a dozen agents in France. A hairbreadth away from entrusting her with his own soul …

What a fool! How could he have been such a fool? With her laughter and her challenges and exuberance … with the glorious wildness of her passion and her deeply erotic sensuality … she’d wormed her way under his skin, nibbling away at his defenses like some internal parasite, destroying the protective shield he’d erected since Helen’s death.

She’d entranced him and captivated his son in order to betray him
.

Icy sweat broke out on his brow as a wave of revulsion swept through him. Jake—she’d used the child, Helen’s child, to weave her damnable spells around her quarry, to learn his secrets, to exploit his weaknesses. And he’d let it happen.

And her friends. He saw her laughing with Simon and Georgie, singing that silly song, joined in the deepest intimacies of a shared past. A shared past to be exploited,
without conscience and without loyalty. She had duped Simon as neatly as she’d almost duped himself.

He stared into the fire and in the wreathing flames he could see Gabrielle’s body contorted with joy, her hair flowing on the white pillow, her limbs twisting around his, drawing him ever closer to her center, to be engulfed in the glorious conflagration of their fusion.

With a violent oath he swung away from the fire and its mesmerizing images. He strode out of the library and left the house, almost running down to the river, heedless of the sharp edge to the wind gusting off the water, ruffling the feathers of the mallards as they clustered among the reeds on the far bank. A flock of geese rose from the water at his approach, and the vigorous flapping of their wings and their mournful cry of warning echoed his bleak fury.

As he strode along the bank he fought to defeat the images, to banish emotion, to rediscover the cold pragmatism of the spymaster. He’d unmasked a double agent. Gabrielle de Beaucaire was a French spy as intent on betraying Nathaniel Praed’s country as he was on betraying hers. He must see just that simple fact. There was only one issue: What was he to do with her?

He could hand her over to the people who knew how to extract information. They would wring every last scrap of knowledge from her and then they would hang her. Spying was unprotected by the civilized laws governing the treatment of prisoners of war. Gabrielle knew that. She knew what she risked in this venture.

Or … or he could use her as she had tried to use him.

There would be little personal satisfaction in condemning her to the dungeons and instruments of the interrogators and the hangman’s rope. It would relieve none of his own wounds and would do nothing to salvage his shattered pride. But to turn the tables … to outwit Talleyrand and Fouché with their own tool!
Now, that was a plan that carried the deepest satisfaction. He would spin his own web. Gabrielle would carry false information to her masters in Paris, and that information would entrap the French network.

The evening mist rolled in over the river and Nathaniel paused under a willow tree. He bent to pick up a smooth round stone and sent it skimming over the wind-ruffled water. His features were etched in granite, his eyes hard and flat as he stared sightlessly across to the mud-furrowed fields along the opposite bank. Somehow, he would have to behave with Gabrielle as if nothing had changed. In fact, he must deepen their intimacy, allow her to feel that he had relaxed completely with her. When he told her he had changed his mind and was prepared to bring her into the service, she must believe her seduction had succeeded.

As it so nearly had. By God, she’d made a fool of him with her charcoal eyes and the rich curves of her body and the uninhibited glories of her sexuality.

Enough!
He spoke the word aloud, a fierce and desperate attempt to halt the swiftly spiraling fury and self-disgust that threatened to engulf him again.

Slowly, cold pragmatism overcame futile passion. He shivered under the blast of bitter wind racing across the tidal marshes from the sea. It seemed to penetrate his skin, lodging deep in the marrow of his bones, an icy shaft stabbing his heart.

It was time to go back, to face what had to be faced. He returned to the house, arriving just as the curricle drew up before the house. He stood in the hall and waited for them to enter.

His son’s eyes were shining and he had a smear of something sticky around his mouth. He was talking to Bartram, who’d opened the door for them, and instantly included the hovering Mrs. Bailey in a convoluted account of his excursion. His eyes darted toward his father, and he offered a timid smile as if to include him in the telling.

“I had two pink ices and Gabby bought some new gloves, and there were these puppies in a basket that some little girl was trying to sell, an’ some men got into a fight on the quay an’ Gabby said we’d better keep out of the way because they were rough sailors ….”

Gabrielle was smiling down at him as she drew off her gloves. She cast a glance toward Nathaniel, her eyes warm as she invited him to share in Jake’s delight.

She was using his son
. Bitter bile filled his mouth and his fingers flexed. He could feel the slender column of her throat between his hands, the pulse beating in frantic fear as his fingers tightened … squeezed ….

Again he fought the crimson tide of passion until his head was a cold, clear space.

“That’ll do, Jake,” he said curtly. “It’s almost your suppertime. It’s to be hoped you can eat something after stuffing yourself with ices all afternoon. Go up to the schoolroom.”

Jake’s face fell and the bubbling words died on his lips, the light faded from his eyes. Without another word he ran to the stairs and scampered up them.

Gabrielle frowned slightly and Mrs. Bailey with a murmur of excuse returned to the kitchen.

“That was a little harsh, wasn’t it?” Gabrielle said quietly, going ahead of Nathaniel into the library. “He wasn’t doing any harm.”

“You kept him out far too late, and I certainly don’t want him witnessing sailors’ brawls on the quay. I’d have thought you’d have had more sense.”

“I’m sorry,” she said simply. The Nathaniel of the breakfast table raillery seemed to have disappeared. She couldn’t imagine throwing a roll at the man who stood before her now, but then, she was becoming accustomed to his changes of mood. It was hard for little Jake, though. One minute his father unbent toward him and the next reverted to his old manner. However, she knew enough about Nathaniel now to realize that
she’d achieve nothing by pursuing the issue at this point.

“I’ll go and dress for dinner.”

Nathaniel pulled himself up sharply. He offered a conciliatory smile. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap. I was a little worried because you were out so long. Would you like a glass of sherry before you go upstairs?”

“Thank you.” Gabrielle took the glass with a smile that she felt could have been more animated. Nathaniel’s greeting had certainly doused the pleasantness of her afternoon with Jake, and there was a strange atmosphere in the house. Rather empty and bleak, but that was probably because Georgie’s vibrant presence had departed.

The anticlimax of their visitors’ departure seemed the only logical explanation for the slight constraint throughout the evening. Gabrielle tried to shake off the tendrils of depression that clung to them both, but Nathaniel was abstracted and failed to respond to her various sallies.

“Is something troubling you?” she asked as they got up from the dinner table.

“I have a problem with one of my agents in Toulouse,” he said. “It’s distracting me, I’m afraid.”

“Oh,” she said casually. “Not a problem you’d care to share, I presume.”

“No,” he said. “At least not at the moment.”

Gabrielle raised an eyebrow at this. Could she be making headway at last? She’d originally given herself two weeks to persuade him to change his mind, but was beginning to accept that the way things were going, she was going to need more time before the English spymaster threw in the towel and accepted her in his network.

“Well, I’ll leave you to your cogitations,” she said. “I should reply to my godfather’s letter.” She turned to the stairs and then paused, one hand on the newel post. “Anything you’d like me to tell him?”

Treacherous whore!
“Not at the moment,” he repeated, smiling. “I’ll frank the letter for you when it’s written.”
And read it too, with the aid of the code, once I’ve broken it.

Gabrielle composed her response to Talleyrand with great care. Hidden within the chatty, innocuous text was a brief factual account of her activities so far; what she had learned from the spymaster’s diary; and her belief that if she persevered, he would eventually accept her in the network.

She sanded the paper, folded it, and sealed the envelope with a wafer before taking it downstairs and leaving it on the hall table for Nathaniel to frank before the carrier collected the mail.

Five minutes after she’d returned upstairs, Nathaniel came out of the library, picked up the envelope, and dropped it in his pocket. He would decipher its real message in the privacy of his bedchamber later.