Velvet

Chapter 16

"I don't want this. It's all crust." Jake pushed a piece of bread to the farthest extremity of his plate, his lower lip trembling.

"It'll give you strong teeth," Gabrielle said with determined cheerfulness. "Shall I put some more apricot jam on it?"

"I don't want it!" The child flung out a wild hand to ward her off. "I hate crusts."

"It's French bread, Jake," Gabrielle said, still patient. "French bread has a lot of crust."

"I don't like French bread!" Jake picked up the despised bread and hurled it to the floor, tears spilling from his eyes. "I want an egg. I always have an egg for tea… with soldiers."

"Soldiers?" Nathaniel exclaimed, pushing himself away from the door where he'd been leaning in ever-visible irritation.

"Strips of bread and butter," Gabrielle told him. "To dip in the egg. Surely you had soldiers with boiled eggs as a boy."

"I'm very sure I didn't," Nathaniel declared with disgusted vigor. "I've never heard such whimsy!" He came over to the table and hacked another chunk off the baguette. "I've had enough of this, Jake." He plonked the chunk on the child's plate. "Now eat that, at once."

Jake sniffed, but seemed to sense that he'd pushed to the limits of his caretakers' indulgence. "I want some jam."

"Please," his father demanded.

Jake snuffled again and produced the required courtesy in a barely audible whisper.

Gabrielle spread jam lavishly on the bread and glanced at Nathaniel's grim features. She jerked her head toward the window at the back of the room, and he nodded and accompanied her away from the table and its disconsolate occupant.

"He's dead tired, Nathaniel," Gabrielle said quietly. "He can't help being like this. Can't we stay overnight here? We could leave at dawn."

Nathaniel scowled, staring through the window down at the inn's stableyard. Since landing at noon, they'd bought an ill-sprung gig and undernourished nag from a local farmer who'd been only too happy to exchange these pathetic commodities for an excessive sum of silver. Any questions he might have asked were stillborn when Gabrielle flashed her laissez passer with aristocratic hauteur. The gig had carried them uncomfortably for twenty miles with Jake whimpering in Gabrielle's lap and Nathaniel cursing the scrawny nag along the mud-ridged lanes.

Early evening had brought them into the village of Quineville and Le Lion d'Or, where Nathaniel intended they should dine and exchange the gig for a postchaise that would double the speed of their journey to Paris.

He turned from the window and directed his scowling gaze at the child drooping over his plate at the table. "He can sleep in the chaise, surely."

"He needs a proper bed for a few hours," Gabrielle said, softly insistent. "He's still dreadfully weak after the crossing."

"The longer we hang around on the roads, the greater the danger." Nathaniel slammed one fist in the palm of his other hand and turned back to the window.

"I don't want this milk," Jake wailed. "It tastes horrid."

"For Christ's sake!" his father muttered.

"It's French milk, love," Gabrielle said, going over to the child, struggling to smile through her own weariness. "It will' taste different. The cows eat different grass."

"I hate French milk!" Jake burst into noisy sobs. "I want to go home. I want Nurse an' Primmy."

Gabrielle scooped him off the stool and held him, casting Nathaniel a speaking glance over the curly head.

Nathaniel ran his hands through his hair, disturbing the neat swatches of silver at his temples. "Very well. But we leave at dawn. I'll go and bespeak a bedchamber for you and Jake."

"No, you'd better let me do that. Since I'm here, you might as well spare yourself and take advantage of my native fluency." Her eyebrows rose in a semblance of her old mocking challenge.

Nathaniel failed to respond to this attempt at raillery. "Go and do it, then." He took Jake from her and waved her brusquely to the door.

Gabrielle shrugged and returned to somber reality. "See if you can persuade him to drink some milk. He needs something to line his stomach." The door closed behind her.

"Don't want any milk," Jake whimpered. "It's horrid milk."

"It's perfectly good milk, and you're going to have to get used to it, my friend." His father sat him down at the table and handed him the cup. "I want you to drink half of it."

The child ignored the cup, and his mouth took a stubborn turn that Nathaniel had never seen before. He'd never met with any resistance from his son, only passive compliance, and he'd assumed that was the child's nature. Now he wasn't so sure. There was something about the boy's expression that was uncomfortably reminiscent of himself on occasion.

He held Jake's gaze steadily, exerting his will in silence. If he couldn't win a battle of wills with an exhausted six-year-old, then the world was going to hell in a handcart. To his relief, Jake finally took the cup, and, his nose wrinkled, carried it to his lips. Between chokes and disgusted sips the level in the cup went down to half.

"That's all arranged." Gabrielle spoke as she entered the parlor, clear relief in her voice at the prospect of a few hours of civilized rest and refreshment. "Madame has given me a bedchamber across the passage. There's a truckle bed for Jake, so I'll put him to bed now. Then she's going to bring me dinner." She rubbed her hands with glee. "Saddle of hare with junipers, and a sea bream in parsley sauce. Oh, and a bottle of St. Estephe."

"You certainly seem to have seen to your own comforts," Nathaniel observed with asperity.

This unmerited grumpiness merely kindled Gabrielle's somewhat perverse sense of mischief. She'd invented a perfectly reasonable explanation for the innkeeper of why mistress and servant would be dining together in the parlor, but now she looked at him in wide-eyed innocence.

"I assumed you would eat with the servants. They're having tete de veau, I believe… or was it pig's cheek? And Madame said there's a spare pallet in the loft for you. I'm sure they don't have bedbugs; the inn seems very clean and well managed."

"You relieve me," Nathaniel said. "Your consideration is overwhelming."

Gabrielle hid her grin. "Oh, and also I sold the gig and nag for three livres and ten sous and hired a postchaise for the morning. There are plenty of changing posts between here and Paris, so we should make good time tomorrow."

"Such efficiency, countess. I'm in your debt." Nathaniel strode to the door.

"I'm only trying to help," Gabrielle declared, her eyes now flashing with irritation. If Nathaniel wasn't prepared to be joked out of his irritability, then she was fatigued enough to indulge her own.

"Why are you angry? I don't like it when you're angry." This extraordinary statement from Jake silenced them both.

They looked at the child, who was regarding them both with lackluster eyes.

"We're not angry, love," Gabrielle said cheerfully. "Papa's just jealous of my saddle of hare." She smiled at Nathaniel, inviting him to join in with a response that would reassure the child.

But Nathaniel was not to be soothed. "And you have a most misplaced sense of humor, ma'am." He banged out of the parlor, leaving Gabrielle to deal with Jake.

She stared crossly at the closed door and then shrugged. The strain was telling on both of them; it was probably better if they did keep out of each other's way for a while. She turned her attention to Jake and his need for a wash and bed.

Nathaniel's irritation made his role of reclusive servant even more convincing. When their polite inquiries received only monosyllabic responses, the inn servants left him alone to his dinner. Judging from the empty tray brought down from Gabrielle's chamber, she had thoroughly relished her own repast, he noticed. Not that his own tastes were so overly refined that he couldn't enjoy the hearty peasant fare in the kitchen. He'd eaten a lot worse in his time, and the rough red wine was tolerable.

The pallet in the dormitory loft, however, was a different matter. Nathaniel had no: the slightest intention of spending the night suffocated by the garlic snores of unwashed peasants. Clean straw in the hayloft was infinitely preferable.

Gabrielle, from the parlor window, saw him cross the yard from the kitchen door, the swinging agility of his stride unmistakable in the golden glow. Then the door closed and the yard was in moonlight. At the stable he paused, a lantern dangling from his hand. He looked up at the inn toward Gabrielle's window, where she stood in the shadow. Then he went into the stable. The door closed and as she watched, a soft light appeared in the small round window of the hayloft.

She had little difficulty understanding his refusal to share the servants' sleeping quarters. Had he been expecting her to be watching… hoping she was, even? It didn't take much imagination to interpret that backward look as an invitation. It had been days and days since they'd lost themselves in the glorious maze of passion.

She turned back to the room, nibbling her fingernail as a current of excitement ran through her, chasing away the fatigue of the long and arduous journey. She could go to him when the inn went to bed. Who would ever know? Jake was so deeply asleep, it would take the last trump to wake him.

She filled the bowl with water from the ewer, stripped off her clothes, and sponged herself from head to toe, shivering in the chill but relishing the sensation of washing away the salt and sweat and wretchedness of the previous night's miserable crossing and the day's jolting carriage ride along muddy lanes.

She'd have liked to wash her hair, but that was impractical with present facilities, so she made do with brushing it until some of the burnished luster had returned, then slipped into a nightgown, thrust her feet into a pair of velvet slippers, and threw a hooded cloak over her shoulders, drawing the hood over her hair.

The inn was dark and silent as she left the bedchamber, quietly turning the key on the sleeping child and dropping the key into her pocket. She'd opened the window a crack, and if Jake awoke and cried out for her, the sound would carry across the yard to the hayloft, where Nathaniel would, as always, have his own window open.

A lamp burned dimly on the stairs, and the steep oak steps creaked as she flew down them. Was Nathaniel waiting for her? Her own excitement was such that it was impossible to believe her lover wasn't sharing it a few feet away, across the stableyard.

Nathaniel, however, was sleeping the sleep of the just amid the sweet-smelling hay. Not for one minute had it crossed his mind to expect a visitor hell-bent on indulging an addiction. He was tired himself after the rigors and alarms and excursions of the past twenty-four hours and, since the opportunity for a night's sleep had been forced upon him, he had every intention of taking full advantage of it.

Lust was the last thing on his mind and far from his dreams as he slept lightly under the shaft of moonlight shining through the small round window.

But he heard the faint sounds from the stable below. They were not the ordinary shufflings and shiftings and whickerings of a dozen beasts. He didn't take the time to decide how he knew they were not. Without conscious decision he was out of his straw nest and crouching by the top of the ladder that rose from the stables through a hole in the floor. He had a knife in his hand. Not the pocket knife he'd used to cut veal and ham pie, but a wicked stiletto with a blade so thin and sharp, it would slide between a man's ribs and pierce the heart in one smooth insertion.

A dead body would be hard to explain, so fortunately for Gabrielle he was prepared to look before he acted. The hooded head of a cloaked figure emerged at the top of the ladder.

Nathaniel recognized the set of the head a second before the unmistakable scent of her assailed his nostrils. He held his breath on a wild surge of fury that for a moment knew no bounds as he thought of where they were-in the heart of Normandy with his life, his son's life, and the lives of seven agents in France dependent on his safety or, failing that, his ability to keep his tongue still in the ultimate extremity.

What the hell did she think she was doing? She was a spy. She lived on the edge of danger. She knew about unnecessary risks. But he also knew that she took them. He'd told Simon that she was undisciplined and that if she'd proved genuine, then he'd keep his own rein on her.

If she'd been one of his own agents, he knew exactly what he would would have done. And since she was playing the part, then he'd play his. The rage was replaced with a cold clarity of purpose, more ruthless and infinitely more dangerous than the hot flood of anger.

Gabrielle eased herself into the loft on her knees and looked around. And then a hand was clamped over her mouth with suffocating pressure and she was wrestled to the floor, the hand still across her mouth, her face buried in tickling straw. She struggled violently, twisting her body, trying to get leverage with one hip to throw him off, but he threw a leg across her thighs. Her feet drummed on the floor. It didn't seem to matter that she knew it was Nathaniel, that she believed he wouldn't hurt her. She continued to fight in a red mist of atavistic panic at the petrifying knowledge of her own weakness against the strength of this opponent.

She dried to cry out, to tell Nathaniel it was only her… Gabrielle… only Gabrielle How could he not recognize her?

She felt him grab a handful of her hair at the back of her head, and her face was pulled roughly upward. She opened her mouth on a sobbing breath, and something was thrust between her teeth, a wad of material that filled her mouth and choked off all sound. Then her head fell forward onto the straw again. His knee on her backside held her pressed to the floor as her hands were jerked behind her, her wrists bound with swiff efficiency.

It was all over in a matter of seconds, and she lay bound and gagged on the floor of the hayloft, stunned at the ease with which he'd handled her body, as easily in this assault as he handled her in love.

As instinctive terror receded, she was conscious only of amazement at the strength in Nathaniel's slender frame, the deft competency of his movements, the ruthlessness of it all. Because he did know who she was. He had to have known from the minute he laid hands on her.

And Gabrielle knew what was happening. He believed she'd forgotten the deadly serious nature of their shared enterprise, and the spymaster was punishing an errant recruit in a way that couldn't fail to impress upon her the seriousness of her offense. She lay still and compliant, waiting for it to be over.

She had made an unforgivable error. She'd forgotten for a moment in the uprush of desire the true nature of their business there. She'd unforgivably slipped out of role. She'd forgotten Guillaume and Talleyrand and Fouche and thought of herself only as a private citizen with an eager lover.

Nathaniel removed his knee and stood up. "How dare you!" he said with soft ferocity. "How dare you risk the safety of my son… your own safety… mine… that of my own people?"

Gabrielle, helpless on the floor, winced beneath the ferocious tongue-lashing. She had no defense and resigned herself to justice.

Nathaniel flayed her until he had nothing left to say and then he fell silent, staring down at the prone figure.

"Stand up!" he commanded harshly.

And just how was she supposed to do that with her hands tied uselessly behind her back and her nose pressed into the prickly straw? But compliance struck Gabrielle as the only possible course of action. She rolled onto her side, bent her underneath leg, and levered herself to a half-sitting position with her elbow and knee.

Her eyes spoke rueful appeal as she looked up at him. His expression was less than encouraging, his mouth thinned, the brown eyes hard stones.

"Get up," he demanded as harshly as before, and he stood with his hands on his hips, unmoving as she scrambled to her feet with as much grace and dignity as she could muster.

The tied hands weren't the problem so much as the gag, Gabrielle decided. It dehumanized one in some way. She had no choice but to stand there, mute, under a cold stare that made her feel like a worm. She thought longingly of her bed with its crisp white sheets and feather mattress. Why on earth hadn't she settled for the simple comforts of an uninterrupted night's sleep, instead of reaching for the moon?

"Turn around."

She obeyed, and to her inexpressible relief he unfastened the belt that bound her wrists. She pulled the wadded kerchief from her mouth and ran the back of her hand over her dry lips, trying to moisten her mouth with her tongue. But she kept her back to him, too intimidated by that ruthless display of the spymaster's power to face him as yet.

"Why?" Nathaniel demanded.

"I wanted you," Gabrielle spoke the truth because there was no lie that would be as convincing. "And I thought you probably wanted me too.”

Nathaniel's anger seemed to have exhausted itself, and the reality of the situation now hit him. For better or worse, she was there and so far undiscovered.

Gabrielle turned to face him. Her eyes raked his face and detected the slightest softening. "Iam truly sorry," she said. "Everyone's asleep. Ilocked my chamber door. The window's open, so if Jake did cry out, we'd hear him. It didn't seem such a big risk, not when the stakes were so irresistible."

She had a smudge of dirt on her nose where her face had been pressed to the floor, and a wisp or two of straw in her tumbled hair. The cloak had fallen back from her shoulders, and the white nightgown was streaked with dust.

He could still feel the shape of her body in his hands as she'd fought him. He could feel the curve of her thrusting hip as she'd twisted beneath him, and he could smell the soap on her skin.

He was aware of excitement and his body's arousal, the fullness of his loins. Subduing Gabrielle had excited him in some way that he didn't entirely understand.

Her eyes held his.

"God's good grace, woman," he whispered. "What is it about you?"

"Just that, perhaps," she replied as softly. "That I am woman and you are man, and we seem made to fit each other."

Nothing mattered but the need to take her body into his own, to become flesh with her flesh; to hear her murmured words of need, the hungry, earthy words of passion and demand; to feel her skin, alive beneath his hand; to touch and probe in the way that set her body alight; to explore charted territory and discover the bays and the hillocks that he'd missed before; to draw her essential scent deep into his lungs as his tongue translated the scent to taste.

And as he looked at her he knew that his thoughts were hers… that she was as hungry for his body as he was for hers.

Gabrielle moved toward him, impatiently shrugging the cloak off her shoulders. She reached for him, throwing her head back, lips parted in invitation. He circled her throat with his hands, and her pulse beat fast against his thumbs with the energy of arousal.

Gabrielle waited in a state of suspended animation for him to do something other than gaze at her, his face so close to her own, his eyes narrowed with a predatory glitter that she hadn't seen before. A thrill of almost apprehensive excitement jolted her belly. This was a different mood from any they'd shared before, and she had the sense that almost anything could happen.

"What are you looking at?" she whispered when the tension of their silence became unbearable.

"You," he replied simply. And it was as if he were looking through the glowing braziers in her eyes deep into her soul.

But still he made no move. Gabrelle drew a shuddering breath and palmed his scalp, bringing his mouth to hers. His hands stayed at her throat as she kissed him, pressing her aching loins against the hard shaft of his erect flesh. Her hands moved down his back, down to his buttocks, her fingers biting into the powerful muscles, expressing her need and the demand that he make some response to match her own.

Finally she drew back, breathless, her lips reddened, an almost feral glitter in her eyes. His hands on her throat seemed to be imprinted on her skin, and she could feel the pulse in his thumb beating in rapid time with her own as his own blood flowed swift with passion. And yet he was doing nothing to partner her. He just stood there, clasping her throat, and gazing at her with unreadable eyes and impassive mouth.

"What is it?" she asked, her voice sounding strange and thick, as if it emerged through fog. "What do you want?"

"This," he said. His hands went to the neck of her nightgown, and the flimsy lawn parted as he tore through it and down.

The cold air laved her bared body and her nipples grew small and hard on the crowns of her breasts. Her tongue touched her lips and her eyes grew wide. He pushed the torn garment off her shoulders, and it fell to the floor in a puddle of white, silvered in the moonlight falling through the round window.

"This," he repeated softly but with infinite satisfaction as he touched her, drawing a finger down from her throat, between her breasts, down to her navel, slipping between her thighs. Her feet shifted on the straw as the questing finger probed and found what it sought, and all the while his eyes held hers, watching, gauging, as he played upon her, drawing from her the ultimate response that she knew she couldn't have controlled even had she wanted to.

And Nathaniel knew it too. He was mastering her body as assuredly now as he had done in his earlier anger. And Gabrielle, fierce, independent, challenging Gabrielle, was malleable clay and glorying in it as ecstasy ripped through her, tearing her apart, and she fell shuddering against him, for the moment unable to support herself.

He held her tightly and the linen of his shirt rubbed her nipples, the leather of his britches was cool and smooth against her belly and thighs. This time he kissed her, his mouth hard and possessive, his tongue driving deeply within her. Her head fell back under the pressure of his ravaging mouth, her body arching backward against the hands in the small of her back as she bent like a willow before the wind.

Without moving his mouth from hers, he lowered her to the floor. The entire surface of her body was sensitized, every nerve ending close to the surface, so that the prickle of the straw against her bare back and the sensation of linen and leather rubbing her breasts and belly was intensified.

Nathaniel left her mouth. Kneeling astride her, he ran his hands over her breasts, circling the hard buds of her nipples with a fingertip. That same air of detachment clung to him as if he were discovering something entirely new that had to be absorbed, catalogued, understood.

He looked up and met her gaze, and for the first time he smiled. He unfastened his waistband and his flesh sprang free from constraint.

"Come closer," Gabrielle murmured, moving her hand down to enclose him.

He inched up her body so she could take him in her mouth, and he threw back his head on an exhalation of delight, kneeling up, his hands resting unconsciously on his hips as she pleasured him.

When finally he entered her body with a long, slow thrust that penetrated her core, Gabrielle cried out, curling her legs around his hips, her heels pressing into his buttocks as she pulled him into the cleft of her body with fervid urgency.

Nathaniel shook his head in abrupt denial and resisted the pressure, pulling back to the very edge of her body. He looked down at her, that predatory glitter in his eyes again, the tiniest smile touching his lips.

Gabrielle lay still, her body thrumming with expectation as he held himself immobile, and slowly, inexorably, the sensation built deep in the pit of her belly. Still smiling, he watched her eyes, again gauging the progress of her spiraling climb to ecstasy.

When she thought she could bear it no longer, when she thought her body would shatter like crystal under the tension, he drove into her, filling her, becoming a part of her as she became a part of him.

His mouth covered hers, suppressing her cry of joy the instant before it broke from her lips. His body moved in hers, and they rose and fell in mindless union, flesh and bone and sinew joined as one. And then the climactic explosion tore through them and she clung to him like a shipwrecked mariner clutching a broken spar before falling back, barely conscious, on the hard, cold floor, crushed by his body.

"Sweet heaven!" Nathaniel gasped after an eternity. His breath was still an exhausted sob. "What was that?"

"La petite mort." Gabrielle could barely speak.

Nathaniel chuckled weakly. "The French have an accurate turn of phrase." He rolled sideways and lay on his belly, his forehead resting on his forearm as his heart finally slowed and his breathing eased.

Gabrielle struggled up and sat blinking around the moonlit loft. Her ruined nightgown lay in a heap on the straw. "It seems as if I'm going to have to cross the yard stark naked. Whatever possessed you?"

"God knows," he said, sitting up himself. "The devil in you, I suspect." He reached for her discarded cloak and wrapped it around her damp body. "You'll catch your death of cold."

"I doubt that." She smiled and then shivered. "Then again, it is March."

"I used to think I was perfectly sane," Nathaniel remarked in tones of mild interest. "But I now realize that I'm heading for Bedlam. Stand up." He pulled her to her feet and cupped her face between his palms. "Driven there by a wanton brigand! What the hell am I going to do with you, Gabrielle?"

"You seem to have done a fair amount tonight," she observed judiciously. "You've wrestled me and manhandled me and tied me up and then dispatched me to the outer limits of bliss. What else is there?"

Nathaniel shook his head in mock reproof. "You're an impossible woman, too much for any ordinary mortal to manage. Hurry back now into the warm." He pulled the edges of the cloak tighter around her. "Go on, quickly!" He pushed her to the ladder.

"I'd expected a little more ceremony," Gabrielle grumbled, obeying the hand in her back. "But I can't think why, since this has been a most unceremonious evening, one way and another." She edged backward onto the ladder and grinned at him, blowing him a kiss before the bright head vanished into the darkness below.

Nathaniel stood at the window, watching her run across the yard and slip safely into the inn.

How could someone so open, so gloriously candid in her desires and her needs and her loving, be treacherous? And how could he lose all sense of that when he was within her, when she was a part of him and he of her?

He'd asked himself the question before, and, as before, there was no answer.