Velvet

Chapter 13

Several days later, a day filled with the intimations of spring, when crocuses and daffodils pushed through the lawn under the ancient oak trees and the weak sun brought a sparkle to the wide gray river, Gabrielle came into the house with a nosegay of snowdrops she'd picked in the orchard. She was smiling unconsciously as she inhaled their delicate fragrance.

Jake suddenly raced past her. His head was down and he bumped against her as he ran for the open front door behind her. He didn't stop to greet her, or even apologize for knocking into her, but flew down the steps of the house.

"Jake!" Gabrielle dropped the snowdrops on the console table and ran to the door, calling the child. But Jake's pace didn't decrease as he headed down the driveway. He was hatless and coatless, a condition not ordinarily permitted by his oversolicitous nurse or the zealous Miss Primmer.

"Jake!" Nathaniel came out of the library, scowling ferociously. "Where the devil has he gone? He has absolutely no manners! What has that ineffectual governess been teaching him?"

"He ran outside," Gabrielle said, turning back to the hall. "He seemed distraught. What have you said to him?"

The accusatory note in her voice was clear for both of them to hear, and Nathaniel's scowl deepened. A man appeared in the doorway behind him, a thin man with a lorgnette and lank, greasy hair, wearing dusty topboots and a morning coat of olive drab that had clearly seen better days.

"He'll become accustomed to the idea, Lord Praed," the man said with an unctuous smile.

Gabrielle took an instant and limitless dislike to the stranger. She stared at him with undisguised hauteur and raised an inquiring eyebrow at Nathaniel.

Nathaniel looked slightly and most unusually discomfited. "I beg your pardon, countess," he said stiffly. "Mr. Jeffrys is to be Jake's tutor. He comes most highly recommended."

"How comforting," Gabrielle said. "When did you arrive, Mr. Jefffys?"

"This morning, my lady." The tutor-to-be inclined his angular frame from the waist in an inelegant and unpracticed bow. "Lord Praed's request for a recommendation for a tutor reached Harrow on Monday, and I came immediately. I am always the master's first choice when such requests are made. I pride myself on being able to prepare the sons of the nobility for entrance into our hallowed portals." His obsequious smile revealed yellow teeth.

Like moldering tombstones, Gabrielle thought. "How gratifying for you, Mr. Jefffys," she said. "I trust you're well qualified to prepare mere babes for the rigors of such an establishment. They must perforce learn to withstand the severity and privations of such a life."

Mr. Jeffrys looked at her uneasily. What she'd said was nothing but the truth, of course. It was what he did best. But something about her tone and manner confused him. He tried another smile. "I pride myself on my successes, my lady… some of the noblest families in the land…" The smile hung in the air, as if it couldn't find a home.

"If you'll excuse us, countess. We have some further business to discuss," Nathaniel said frigidly. He turned back to the library. "Jefffys…"

"Oh, yes, my lord… the details… of course, my lord."

And where the hell did Primmy fit into all this? Gabrielle thought furiously. Nathaniel had said nothing about the progress of his plans for a tutor, not to Gabrielle and she presumed not to Primmy, who treated her as a confidante and would most certainly have told her. Indeed, the governess had been cherishing hopes that his lordship had changed his mind, since he'd never mentioned the matter again. And now this. Jake presented to his new mentor without preparation, and Miss Primmer out on her ear.

"Just one minute, my lord." She put out an imperative hand. "I'd like a private word. I'm sure Mr. Jefffys will excuse us." She turned toward the dining room without waiting for a response from Nathaniel, who hesitated for a second before waving the tutor curtly back to the library and following her.

He slammed the door behind him. "Well?"

Gabrielle was trembling with rage. What did the man have for empathy and insight? Cloth, presumably. As dark and impenetrable a material as could be found.

"Forgive me if I'm mistaken," she said in tones of icy incredulity, "but did you just spring that-that… odious creepy creature on Jake? Of course you didn't! Of course you explained what was going to happen a long time ago, didn't you? It's just that he hasn't mentioned it to me. But children do have short memories and-"

"Hold your tongue!" Nathaniel ordered with low-voiced ferocity, a dull flush spreading to his forehead. "This is no concern of yours, as I've told you a dozen times. Jake is my sonand how I handle him is my business."

"So you just summon him one morning, inform him that that odious man is going to rule his life from now until he's sent away to school, and that Primmy is going. Oh, when is she to leave, by the way? Is she packing her bags now?"

"Don't talk to me in this fashion-"

"I'll talk to you any way I like, Lord Praed," she interrupted, her pale complexion now whiter than milk, her eyes dark pools of molten lava, the skin around her mouth blue-tinged with fury. "Of all the crass-"

"Stop this at once!" Beside himself, he seized her upper arms and in unthinking reaction Gabrielle swung her flat palm against his cheek. The ugly crack hung for the barest instant in the air before it was repeated and Gabrielle spun away from him, her hand pressed to her own flaming cheek.

There was a terrible silence. She gazed sightlessly out the window, tears as much of shock as pain filming her eyes.

Nathaniel drew a deep shuddering breath. "I'm sorry."

"So am I," she said, her voice shaking. "How ugly… I don't know how it happened."

"I think we have to learn to be very careful," Nathaniel said wearily.

"Yes," Gabrielle agreed. She still couldn't turn to look at him, and he made no move toward her.

The silence elongated, grew leaden, and then Nathaniel turned and left the dining room, closing the door quietly behind him.

The raw violence of the encounter left Gabrielle feeling drained and sick. She sat down at the table, resting her still-stinging cheek on her palm, and waited until the shock had dissipated somewhat and she could think clearly.

Nathaniel was wrong-headed in his dealings with Jake. But that didn't give her the right to speak to him as she had. She could have said the same things reasonably, without hurling insults and sarcasm at him. A few days ago she'd thought she'd been making some headway, but matters between father and son seemed to have reverted to the old bad ways, and somehow she'd lost the patience for subtle teaching by example.

Perhaps it wasn't the patience she'd lost but Nathaniel's attention. Since he'd agreed to employ her in the network, his attitude had changed toward her. They spent hours in his office constructing a code she would use to pass on her intelligence, and she had to pretend the incompetence of a tyro while her mind leaped three steps ahead of his painstaking tutorial. They studied maps of Europe and discussed the kind of intelligence that the English spymaster would find invaluable, and she offered suggestions as to how she could acquire it.

They made love every night with the same wild passion and slept until morning in each other's arms, but a different dimension had entered their relationship. The natural equality had vanished. Nathaniel was instructor, director, employer. He wasn't cold in these roles, but he was businesslike and distant and Gabrielle followed his lead because it was what she was there to do.

But all the rational thought in the world didn't diminish the sense of loss over the days when they'd sparred and loved as if nothing else could ever concern them.

And how on earth were they to recover from that vile encounter?

A cloud of depression settled over her as she stood up and left the dining room to go in search of Jake.

She ran the child to earth behind the boathouse. He was huddled on the narrow jetty, shoulders hunched, chin pressed into his chest.

Gabrielle dropped a coat around his shoulders and sat down beside him, drawing him into the curve of her arm. He snuffled and swallowed a sob.

"I want Primmy. I don't want her to go away."

Gabrielle let him cry, offering soothing murmurs and the warm comfort of her body until he'd exhausted his tears. Then she tried to explain why his father had decided this was best for him. It was hard to be convincing when she was so far from convinced herself. But Nathaniel was such a distant authoritarian figure in the child's life that she felt she could at least impress upon Jake that his father had only his best interests at heart. And she did believe that. Nathaniel simply didn't know what those best interests were.

Jake was not to be persuaded, and he trailed dolefully after her as they returned to the house.

She accompanied him to the nursery, where a resolutely dry-eyed Miss Primmer told her she'd been given two weeks notice by his lordship and a most generous settlement. His lordship was all kindness, all consideration. But the governess hugged her wan charge convulsively as she made these vigorous protestations, and Jake's tears began to flow again.

There seemed nothing useful she could do, nothing comforting to be said at this point, and Gabrielle left them together.

Mr. Jeffrys passed her on the stairs. He was fussily directing the footman to be careful with his trunk of books and globes. He gave Gabrielle yet another ingratiating smile that she ignored, even as she wondered what interpretation he'd put on her presence. Nathaniel hadn't introduced her, although he'd referred to her as "countess." Presumably, he expected the same discreet acceptance from the tutor that he did from the rest of his staff.

Mrs. Bailey came out of the drawing room, feather duster in hand, as Gabrielle reached the hall. She bore the air of one attending at a deathbed.

"Did you wish me to put the snowdrops in your boudoir, ma'am?" The housekeeper gestured to the bunch of delicate flowers that Gabrielle had abandoned on the console table in the earlier flurry.

"Oh, yes, thank you."

"Miss Primmer will be sadly missed," the housekeeper observed, picking up the flowers. "And I don't know what to make of that tutor. All smarm and smiles, he is, but you mark my words, once he gets his feet under the table, he'll be giving orders left, right, and center. I know the type."

It was an extraordinary speech from the discreet Mrs. Bailey. Gabrielle was hard pressed to know how to respond. She wanted to agree, but couldn't without seeming to criticize Nathaniel to his staff. She offered a vague smile and satisfied herself with agreeing that Miss Primmer would indeed be missed, then she made her escape into the garden in search of privacy and tranquil surroundings.

There was a stone sundial and bench in the middle of the shrubbery, and she made her way there, knowing she would be invisible from the house.

She leaned back against the seat and raised her face to the pale sun, closing her eyes, allowing the feeble warmth to caress her eyelids. A fresh breeze carried the scents of the river and marshes and a chaffinch chirped busily from a bay tree.

She was so deeply immersed in her meditation that she didn't hear the footsteps on the gravel path behind her. When the hand fell on her head, she jumped with a startled cry.

"Penny for them," Nathaniel said quietly, keeping his hand where it was.

Gabrielle shrugged. "I was just musing."

His hand slipped to clasp the back of her neck. "May I share the muse?"

She arched her neck against the warm, firm pressure of his hand. "How did that happen, Nathaniel? Civilized people don't get into those kinds of fights."

"No, only excessively passionate people who both know they deserve to be flogged for such disgraceful lack of control," he agreed with a wry, self-mocking smile. Still holding her neck, he moved around the bench and sat down beside her.

"How about a pact of mutual forgiveness?" His fingers tightened around the slim column of her neck.

"Done," she said.

They sat in silence for a while. It was a companionable silence. Gabrielle was acutely conscious of his hand on her neck, of the moving blood beneath his skin, of his even breathing, of the warm proximity of his body. She realized suddenly that she'd become accustomed to such moments, and they'd been absent in the last days. Only now did she realize how much she'd missed these periods of silent and effortless communion in the turbulent seas of passion.

"I want you to go to Paris." Nathaniel's startling announcement broke the silence.

"When?" She turned on the bench to look at him.

"In three days time." He let his hands fall from her and leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. "I need a courier to take a vital message to my agents in Paris. I told you I was having problems with the network in Toulouse?"

"Yes?" Her mind was in a ferment. It was what she'd been working toward, but she hadn't expected him to send her into the field so soon-or so abruptly.

"I'll give you your instructions just before you leave. Your papers are in order, I assume?"

"Yes, I have a laissez passer signed by Fouche, no less."

"Good." He stood up. "There'll be a fishing boat sailing from Lymington to Cherbourg in three days. You'll sail on her and be put ashore in a small village just along the coast. From there you'll be able to make your own arrangements."

“I see.”

A silver eyebrow rose quizzically as he regarded her. "For some reason I'd expected a little more enthusiasm. It's what you've been wanting, after all."

She summoned a smile. "You just took me by surprise, that's all."

"Well, having made the decision, I can see little point in waiting."

"No, neither can I," she agreed, injecting firm confidence into the statement. "But you will tell me exactly what to do?"

"To the letter," he said. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to meet with the bailiff. I'll see you at nuncheon."

Gabrielle nodded and watched him stride off down the gravel path toward the house. So it was the end of the passionate interlude. Once she was working in the field, there'd be few opportunities for lustful encounters between the spymaster and his agent. In fact, Nathaniel would probably consider them dangerously out of bounds in a working relationship. Perhaps that lay behind the distancing of the past few days. He was preparing them both for the inevitable separation.

Well, in many ways it would be a relief. Vengeance would become relatively simple again. Apart from him, she would manage to overcome her addiction to Nathaniel Praed's lovemaking. She'd have to, wouldn't she?

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The courier bearing Gabrielle's letter caught up with Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Pengord in an inn in a small village in East Prussia, where he'd stopped for the night on his way back to Paris. He was in no cheerful frame of mind. His crippled leg ached unmercifully from the cold and the violent jolting of the carriage along the broken, ice-covered roads of a part of the world he was rapidly considering totally benighted, and not even the prospect of his comfortable house in the rue d'Anjou could truly compensate for the miseries of the journey.

Napoleon's victory over the Russians at Eylau on February eighth had finally given his Minister for Foreign Affairs the opportunity to leave the emperor's side. Napoleon had correctly described Eylau as "not a battle but a slaughter," in which the Russians lost nearly twenty-six thousand men, and the French casualties were almost as disastrous. It was moot which side could truly claim victory. Alexander had congratulated his own General Bennigsen on defeating "the one who has never yet known defeat." However, since Bennigsen ordered his troops to fall back on Kaliningrad, technically Napoleon remained master of the field.

Poor consolation for the widows and orphans on either side! Talleyrand reflected, gazing morosely into the clear liquid in his rather smeared vodka glass. But now the emperor was marching the army to Osterode to make winter quarters, and Talleyrand was free to shake the dust of Eastern Prussia from his boots. With luck he'd reach Paris by the end of the week.

He stared into the meager fire and sipped his vodka, nothing more civilized being offered in this wayside halt. Absently he rubbed his aching leg and reexamined the decoded message within the letter. Gabrielle had become an expert at this means of communication during her work as a courier, and she had the kind of mind that lent itself to the construction of cryptic yet nonetheless informative messages.

But something niggled at him. Not in the coded message but in the letter that enclosed it. It was a somewhat formal communication, as her role demanded. For public consumption, she held no brief for her godfather and wouldn't therefore engage in anything other than dutifully courteous correspondence. Should anyone happen to look over her shoulder while she was writing the letter, they would read only the tone they would expect.

But Talleyrand was sensing something awry in the relationship between the spymaster and Gabrielle. The vengeful seduction had gone exactly according to plan, and she expected to gain the spymaster's total confidence very shortly, but she was withholding something… there was a sense of uncertainty, a slight ambiguity in her expressions that caused her godfather considerable speculation. Only someone who knew her as well as he did would have been aware of it, and Gabrielle probably hadn't been aware of it herself. But something had occurred that might well muddy the waters of the minister's perfect plan.

Talleyrand kicked at a slipping log in the grate. Gabrielle knew that his goal was not the destruction of Nathaniel Praed, but quite the opposite. The spymaster was to be the recipient of selected information that he would pass on to his government, and thus Talleyrand would be in a position to manipulate the war to his own desired end: the defeat of Napoleon. Only thus would peace and stability return to Europe without the destruction of France. Napoleon had served his purpose in stabilizing the country after the postrevolution chaos, but now he no longer spoke for France. He was a megalomaniac and he had to be stopped before his territorial ambitions ruined his country by creating a coalition of vengeful powers headed by England that France would be unable to withstand.

But Gabrielle had her own overriding personal motive for manipulating Nathaniel Prard. It was that that made her a perfect partner in her godfather's scheme. It something was going on that would eradicate Gabrielle's own motivation, how would that affect her willingness to play Talleyrand's deep game?

Talleyrand sighed and examined a plate of pickled cabbage and fat sausage with a disgusted twitch of his thin, aristocratic mouth. Peasant food! It was a far cry from the gourmet chefs in Warsaw, let alone Paris. But he had to endure only a few more days.