Velvet

Chapter 5

Nathaniel sat back against the leather squabs of the light vehicle, his arms folded across his chest, his expression more than usually forbidding. Something about this hasty if planned departure went against the grain. It felt like flight-flight from the enchantress.

His body sang with the memory of her. Her scent lingered on his own skin, her taste was on his tongue, her exultant laughter ringing in his ears. Who was she? What was she? Apart from what Simon had told him, he knew nothing about her except the furthest reaches, the deepest intimacies of her glorious body.

How was that possible? How could one plumb the erotic depths of another's body and yet know nothing of the personality, the spiritual makeup, the motivations, fears, and hopes of such a lover?

Frowning, he tried to put together what few facts he had. But they added little to the sum. Gabrielle was a widow, a grieving widow according to Simon, desperate for some activity to take her mind off her grief. But the woman in his bed had shown none of the reservations one would expect of a grieving widow. But then, he had exhibited none of the reservations of a grieving widower, and he knew himself to be that. The grief and remorse ran so deep, it flowed with his blood in his veins. It hadn't stopped him… had put no brake on the sensual excesses of the night.

She was reckless, and always had been according to Simon and Miles. She followed impulse and went after what she wanted. She climbed walls and rode like the devil. But why? What had made her like that?

He rubbed his eyes wearily, suddenly tired of this exercise. It was over. He wasn't interested in who or what she was. He wanted nothing more to do with her. Simon would have to reinforce the message that there was no possible way the spymaster was going to change his policy and bring a woman into the network, and she'd find some other game to play… and some other lover.

Such a woman couldn't remain without a lover for very long.

The reflection had the same effect as sucking on a lemon. His mouth dried, his lips pursed, his nose wrinkled, and his frown deepened. It was thoroughly unpalatable. But time and distance would have its usual effect. The sharp edges of memory would be smudged, the piercing knowledge of joy would be blunted.

Abruptly he changed the course of his thoughts to good purpose.

Jake. He had to make some decisions about his son. It was time for the governess to leave and a tutor to take her place. In two years time the boy would be going to Harrow and he had to be prepared. A childhood spent in the exclusive soft company of nurses and governesses was no preparation for the rigors of school. And Jake was all too timid as it was. He was frightened of any horse bigger than his Shetland. He hated to see a fish gutted or a rabbit in a trap. He quailed at the slightest reprimand.

And he shrank from his father.

Why? Nathaniel hunched deeper into his coat, turning up the collar against the early morning chill. Why did Jake always regard his father with wide, tremulous eyes? Why did he find it near impossible to construct a complete sentence in response to a civil question? Why was his voice barely above a whisper when he spoke with him?

The boy had spent too long hiding in women's skirts. It was the conclusion Nathaniel always reached. There could be no other explanation. Oh, he'd frowned on the child occasionally, scolded him once or twice, required his presence in the library before dinner whenever he was at home, examined him regularly as to his progress with his lessons, but he'd never done anything to warrant fear from his son.

Or love either.

He pushed the thought aside as irrelevant. He hadn't loved his own father-in fact, Gilbert, sixth Lord Praed, had been a chilly, distant man who ruled his household and most especially his only son with a martinet's severity. Nathaniel had good reason to fear him, far more reason than Jake had to fear the seventh Lord Praed. But a son owed his father respect-love was not an appropriate emotion between fathers and sons. It was different for daughters. They had fewer responsibilities ahead of them and could safely be reared with the softer emotions. Indeed, tenderness equipped them for their adult roles as wives and mothers. A mother could lavish love and tenderness on a child of either sex and it was right and proper. It was a foil for the necessary distance between a father and his son. But Jake had no mother…

Nathaniel muttered a soft execration. It always came down to the same issue. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. God knows he needed it after a night with Gabrielle de Beaucaire. He didn't think she was a woman with too much softness and tenderness in her makeup. But then, she'd lost her parents to one of the bloodiest tyrannies since the Inquisition.

The crack of a pistol, the violent lurching of the coach, brought him upright out of momentary oblivion with his hand on his pistol, his senses alert, his eyes wide open. He'd yanked down the glass panel at the window, his pistol resting on the ledge, his eye squinting down the barrel faster than he could have thought through the sequence of actions.

"Your money or your life, Lord Praed."

The voice so filled with laughing mockery was unmistakable, even if his body hadn't surged with recognition as his eye fell on the tall, slender figure astride the chestnut stallion. She had a pistol in her hand, aimed in businesslike fashion at the coachman on the box. A hood concealed her distinctive hair and a black loo mask covered her face.

"What the hell!"Lord Praed exclaimed, but his own weapon remained unwavering, his eye steady. "Put that damn pistol away now!"

"Oh, I'm not about to fire it by mistake," she said with an insouciant shrug. "You need have no fears on that score, sir."

"Put itaway!" For a second, flaring brown eyes held her calm charcoal gaze in a battle of wills and his finger remained on the trigger.

Would he press it? Gabrielle found herself considering the possibility with a curious detachment. He had said he didn't play games and she had no reason to dispute the statement. He didn't have the air of a playful man at the moment.

With what she hoped was a casual gesture, Gabrielle shrugged again and thrust the pistol into the waistband of her britches.

"Beggin' yer pardon, m'lord, but what the 'ell's goin' on." The coachman swiveled on the box and leaned out around the corner to address his master. "Is this an' 'oldup or not. I've got me blunderbuss." He gestured with the ugly weapon.

"Oh, it's a holdup, all right," Nathaniel said dryly. "But not one that need involve a blunderbuss, Harkin."

He laid his own pistol on the seat beside him and swung open the door of the chaise. He kicked the lever that let down the footstep and balanced easily on the top step. It put him on a level with the chestnut's shoulders.

Before Gabrielle understood what he was about to do, she'd been hauled unceremoniously from her mount and found herself bundled into the interior of the chaise rather in the manner of an unwieldy parcel.

"Pass that bag in here and tether the horse to the back of the chaise," Nathaniel instructed his coachman. "Then get moving again. I want to change horses at Horsham in an hour."

He waited while Harkin unfastened the cloakbag from Thunderer's saddle and handed it into him. The coachman was accustomed to obeying strange orders without question. Lord Praed demanded discretion and sharp wits from his servants and paid well for both. If he chose to accommodate a somewhat unusual highwayman in his chaise, it was no business of Harkin's.

Nathaniel tossed the bag onto the seat, closed the carriage door with a restrained slam, and turned to survey Gabrielle, who had scrambled up from the floor and was gathering herself together on the seat.

"Take that ridiculous mask off," he snapped. "I am sick to death of your games, Gabrielle."

He did look somewhat exasperated. Actually, that was an understatement, Gabrielle decided, but at least his eyes weren't brown stones at the bottom of a muddy pond anymore. In fact, they were positively lively, passionate even, although not exactly the type of passion she preferred. However, one mustn't cavil too much. She was skating on the thinnest ice, and anything short of complete withdrawal had to be a plus.

Obligingly, she threw back the hood of her cloak and untied the strings of the loo mask. "Why shouldn't we play this game, Nathaniel? An interlude of passion without promises… What harm could it do either of us… or anyone else for that matter?" She ran her hands through her loosened hair and leaned her head hack against the squabs, regarding him with a quizzical lift of her eyebrows.

In dawning disbelief Nathaniel realized that he couldn't think of a logical reason to say no. Looking at her, he saw the invitation, the promise, and he remembered how she fulfilled such promises. She wasn't a woman to be judged by ordinary standards, or to be treated by such.

"What are you afraid of?" she asked. Leaning forward, she touched his knee.

The sexual current jolted him to his core.

"Not of you," he declared.

"Good." Smiling, she leaned back against the squabs again. "I'm famished. Must we wait till Horsham before we stop for breakfast?”

Nathaniel's eyes narrowed. "You," he said with soft deliberation, "are a brigand, Gabrielle de Beaucaire."

He sat down opposite her as the coachman's whip cracked and the chaise lurched forward again.

Gabrielle chose to take the characterization as a compliment and smiled her crooked smile again.

Nathaniel leaned forward, hooking a finger into the clasp of her cloak, pulling her toward him. "I do not intend breakfasting with a brigand." His mouth met hers in a hard kiss. Then he unclasped the cloak and pushed it off her shoulders. His hands cupped the swell of her breasts under the white lawn shirt and her nipples sprang upright in instant gratifying response.

"A shameless, wanton brigand," he murmured. "Take those damn clothes off."

"But it's cold," she protested with a mischievous chuckle.

"Serves you right." He leaned back, folding his arms across his chest. "I refuse to be seen in public with a shameless hussy, so if you want breakfast, you must change your clothes."

"Oh, well, if it's that serious," she said amiably, unbuttoning her shirt, pulling it out of the waist of her britches.

Nathaniel stretched and jerked the pistol loose at the same moment. "You won't need this either." He examined it with an expert's eye. It was no toy for all its small size and delicate mounting. He cracked the barrel. It was primed.

"Why do you carry a pistol?"

"One never knows when one might need protection," she said, unfastening her britches, lifting her hips to push them down. The full swell of her breasts shifted sensuously with the motion of the coach and her own actions. Then she was naked on the seat of a swaying carriage on the road to Horsham. The dark red hair tumbled over her shoulders and her long legs stretched across the narrow space between them.

A monk couldn't have resisted. Nathaniel reached for her, pulling her between his knees. Her skin was warm despite the winter morning and the unheated vehicle.

"You've a mind to play again?" Her black eyebrows rose. "It could prove something of a challenge in these circumstances."

"I've never been afraid of challenges," he replied, unfastening his britches with one hand. "And I know full well how you view them."

His roused body sprang free from constraint. Smiling, Gabrielle touched him and then, obeying the pressure of his hands on her hips, slowly lowered herself astride his lap, guiding his body within her own.

"Ahh," she whispered. "Why do you feel so good… so right?"

"Why do you?" he whispered back, closing his eyes.

The carriage jolted in a rut and his grip tightened, his fingers pressing into the flesh of her hips. The movement of the carriage slowly insinuated itself into the rhythm of their joined bodies as Gabrielle moved herself over and around him and he lifted his hips to meet her.

"I read somewhere that cossacks make love galloping on horseback," Gabrielle murmured, lowering her head to brush his lips with her own in a fleeting caress. "Maybe we should try it later."

Nathaniel groaned. "How much stamina do you think I have, woman?"

"Limitless," she replied with a smile of utter confidence.

"Your faith is touching." Smiling, he gripped her more tightly as he felt the internal movements of her body, the little ripples that told him she was nearing her pinnacle.

Gabrielle drew breath sharply, her head falling back, the pure white column of her throat arched. He thrust upward, his fingers biting into her flesh as she convulsed around him. She fell forward with a moan of joy, her forehead resting on the top of his head, and he held her as he fell slowly from his own peak and the carriage swayed and rocked beneath them.

"MonDieu, I think we're going through a village," Gabrielle gasped with a weak chuckle as she raised her head, glancing toward the window. "Do you think anyone can see in?"

"Don't tell me you're worried about appearances!" Laughter, wonderful and carefree, bubbled in his chest. He couldn't remember when he'd last felt so light-hearted, so unrestrained, so much in charity with his fellow man. Distantly, it occurred to him that the true seductive power of Gabrielle de Beaucaire lay in her ability to create this feeling.

"Get off, you wicked creature." He lifted her off his lap and deposited her on the seat opposite. He shook his head, taking in the wonderful untidy sprawl of her naked limbs, the unruly tangle of that dark red hair as she smiled her crooked smile, her eves languorous with satiation.

"For God's sake, put some clothes on," he directed, his voice a husky rasp. "You'll catch your death."

"And whose fault would that be?" She made no move to obey, just continued smiling at him.

Nathaniel pulled the cloakbag toward him and opened it. "You're not, I trust, going to have the unmitigated gall to imply that I have any say in your actions." He riffled through the contents of the bag.

"Only to the extent that you're the cause of them," she responded. "I seem to find you irresistible. My riding habit's in there somewhere."

Nathaniel looked up, his eyes sharply appraising. Then he shook his head in resignation. "The feeling is reciprocal, it seems. Are there undergarments in here, or do you always go without them?"

"Only when they might be a hindrance," she said with a serene smile. "I couldn't see much point wearing them last night, and your departure was so precipitate, I didn't have time to change my clothes this morning."

There was a hint of reproof in her voice as she said this.

Nathaniel pulled out a silk chemise and a pair of pantalettes. "Put these on." He held them out to her. Then he said with some constraint, "I felt I'd yielded sufficiently to temptation. Perhaps I should have said something-"

"Running off like that was distinctly ungentlemanly… not to put too fine a point on it," Gabrielle interrupted as her head emerged from the neck of the chemise.

"Perhaps so." Nathaniel leaned forward and began to do up the buttons at her throat. "But you made it very clear that you were responsible for your actions. I didn't feel it necessary to tell you of my plans. They were made well before you arrived in my bed.”

She took the drawers he handed her and slipped them over her feet, raising her hips to pull them up. "Well, have you agreed to amend them?" She pulled on the stockings he held out.

Nathaniel lifted her right leg and slipped a lace-trimmed garter up to her thigh, and then served the left leg similarly, his hands smoothing over the muscled roundness of her calves, the satin softness of her inner thighs.

"It would seem so," he said with a wry smile, handing her a clean shirt and the skirt of her habit.

"Good," Gabrielle declared with a nod of satisfaction. She fastened the buttons of the shirt and slipped into the skirt, buttoning the waistband. "We shall have a game of passion… an interlude. No promises."

"And where will people think you are?"

She shrugged into her jacket. "Georgie knows. She's the only person who needs to know. And she's no prude. I'm no virginal innocent, Lord Praed. And I rule my own life."

"I don't question it," Nathaniel said. "My neighbors will look askance, however, at a woman sharing my roof so flagrantly."

Gabrielle grinned. "Somehow, Lord Praed, I don't believe you give a tinker's damn what your neighbors think. And I certainly don't. They don't know me from Eve and never will."

It was perfectly true. Since Helen's death, Nathaniel had as little to do with his county neighbors as possible. He didn't encourage callers, and paid no calls himself. He had a reputation for being a somewhat surly recluse. There would be gossip, of course, but it wouldn't worry him.

But what of Jake? Oh, the boy was too young to hear the tittle-tattle, and certainly too young to speculate on his father's visitor. He'd be in the nursery and the schoolroom most of the time anyway.

Gabrielle said suddenly, "What of your son, though?"

It was as if she'd been in his thoughts. "What do you know of Jake?" he demanded sharply.

She shrugged. "Nothing, really. Miles simply mentioned him in passing."

"And did he tell you of Helen?" His tone was still sharp.

"Only that she'd died." She decided against telling him what Miles had told her of Nathaniel's grief and his difficulties with fatherhood. It was no concern of hers anyway. "It was a word in passing. I wasn't particularly interested, and in fact, I'm not now. Interludes should have no attachments to the past and no strings to the future. Don't you agree?"

"You're an extraordinary woman." Nathaniel frowned. "You have none of the softnesses of your sex."

How could you know? I saw my mother in the tumbril on the way to the guillotine. How much softness can survive in the soul of an eight-year-old after that? And what was left was leached from my soul with Guillaume's blood as he died in my arms. She turned her head away with a sudden movement to hide from him both the grief and the fierce anger in her eyes, and she spoke lightly, revealing nothing in her voice.

"One reason you might reconsider the question of employing me, Sir Spymaster," she said. "Since it's the softness of women you object to."

"Is that what this is about?" His voice was cold and flat as he suddenly suspected manipulation.

She shook her head. "No." She said this with so much conviction that she realized with dismay that a part of herself meant it. The seduction had taken on a life of its own, and she was as much a victim of her plan as Nathaniel.

She rested her head on the squabs and regarded him through narrowed eyes. "No, I'm as much taken by surprise as you are. But that doesn't mean I'm going to give up trying to persuade you to change your mind, sir."

Nathaniel's expression was inscrutable, showing nothing of his thoughts. A wise man recognized when to drop his prejudices. Gabrielle de Beaucaire had courage, ingenuity, nerve, and audacity-everything essential for a good spy-except that she was a woman. For several years he'd been trying to place someone in the inner circles of Napoleon's government. This woman could be the perfect answer.

But was she genuine? She had convinced Simon, but Nathaniel ultimately trusted no one's judgment but his own when so many lives were at risk. She could be a plant. Her contacts in France were every bit as strong as her contacts here. She was as much French as she was English. And seduction and betrayal were the oldest tricks in the business.

If she was genuine, then she was a gift that only a stubborn fool would refuse. At Burley Manor he would have all the time he needed to test her out.

Deliberately, his expression lightened and a glimmer of amusement appeared in his steady gaze. "Your powers of persuasion are fearsome, madame. I can see I shall have my work cut out to withstand them."

"I'll make a small wager that you won't succeed," she said with a mischievous grin.

"Stakes?"

"Oh…" She pursed her lips, considering. "Let's say at the end of two weeks the loser puts him or herself entirely at the disposal of the winner for twenty-four hours."

Nathaniel smiled slowly. "Now, those are stakes worth winning."

"They might even be worth losing," she murmured with a lascivious chuckle that sent the blood coursing hot and swift through his veins.

"You have a wager, my wanton brigand."

Sofar so good. Gabrielle inclined her head in silent acknowledgment as the chaise came to a halt in the yard of the Black Cock in Horsham.