Velvet

Chapter 3

Nathaniel flung himself from his horse and ran to the inert figure.

"Gabrielle! Dear God!" He dropped to his knees beside her, tearing at the snowy cravat to bare her throat, his fingers feeling for her pulse. It was strong but fast beneath his fingertip. He sighed with relief and then frowned. The black lashes formed half-moons on the pale skin, her lips were slightly parted, her chest rising and falling with each regular breath.

Her pulse was far too vibrant for an unconscious person.

"Gabrielle," he said in a near whisper. "If this is a trick, so help me, I'll make you sorrier than you've ever been in your life."

"Try it," she said. Her eyelids swept up, revealing utterly mischievous charcoal eyes, and in the same moment she sat up. Her arms went around his neck before he realized what was happening, and he could smell her warm skin tinged with the freshness of the winter air. Her mouth found his and he could taste her sweetness as the pliant lips opened beneath his and her tongue ran lightly over his mouth. Her body was pressed to his, her gloved hands palming his scalp. He could feel her heart beating against his chest.

And a wildness swept through h m. His arms went around her, and his hands spread over her back, feeling her supple slenderness, the rippling play of her muscles as she obeyed the pressure and reached against him. For a minute their tongues fenced, half in play half in war, and then he moved his hands to grasp her head, holding it strongly as he drove deep within her mouth on a voyage of assertion that in some faint part of his brain seemed long overdue.

Gabrielle had believed she could fake sufficient response to satisfy him. She had been prepared for revulsion and had trusted she would be able to control it sufficiently for her purposes. She had expected to take her pleasure in the satisfaction of fooling him, of achieving her goal.

She had not been prepared for what was happening. She had not expected to find herself responding from some deep, passionate well within herself as the red mist of arousal engulfed her and she could smell him and feel him and taste him… and she wanted him. She wanted him as vitally as she had ever wanted Guillaume. She wanted him in the same way, wanton and unthinking, the visceral responses of her body overtaking, suppressing any possible restraints of the brain.

It wasn't supposed to happen. But it was happening. And Nathaniel Praed was matching her every of the way. The knowledge was in herblood, transmitted from his skin to hers.

And it was going to play merry hell with schemes of revenge.

At long last his grip on her head slackened, his flat palm passed in a soft, caressing motion over her hair, and he raised his head. Her mouth felt bereft, and she knew her face was open and vulnerable, the truth of her responses naked in her eyes, but she could no more dissemble than she could cut her own head off.

Nathaniel's expression was as bewildered and as open as her own, his eyes no longer hard and flat but deep and luminous, desire burning like a candle in their misty depths.

"How the hell did that happen?" he said softly, touching his own mouth with a wondering finger before running the same finger over Gabrielle's lips.

"It seemed… seems… as if it had to happen," she said with much the same bemused wonder.

Nathaniel hadn't kissed a woman for six years. He'd had women, fly-by-night encounters for the most part, satisfying a sharp bodily need and then forgotten, not the kind of encounters to include lingering, passionate kisses.

Sitting back on his heels, he regarded Gabrielle with a puzzled frown. She returned the look with a slight quizzical smile in her eyes, no hint of the mockery he was accustomed to. Then he shook his head in an abrupt irritable gesture of dismissal. The grass beneath his knees was unpleasantly damp and cold, and he'd just indulged in a piece of flagrant idiocy, allowed himself to be manipulated by a spoiled woman who had nothing better to do with her life than play silly games. Or so he told himself.

He stood up, brushing at the damp patches on his knees, just as the huntsman's horn sounded from the far side of the orchard.

"Merde!" exclaimed the countess inelegantly, springing to her feet. "After all that, they've reached Hogart's Wood ahead of us. Help me to mount, please. I can't manage Simon's hunters without a mounting block."

"It'll serve you right to walk home," Lord Praed declared unhelpfully. "I'm damned if I'm going to encourage you to play any more tricks." With which unfriendly statement, he swung onto his own mount and cantered toward the gate out of the orchard.

"Well, of all the-" Gabrielle swallowed the expletive. It was of no practical use in her present predicament. She'd have her revenge on Lord Praed in her own good time. She looked around the orchard for a substitute mounting block. Dismounting from the black had been a simple operation, and she'd been so fired with her plan that she hadn't thought about the logistics of the reverse maneuver. But then, it hadn't occurred to her that Nathaniel Praed would be so bloody-minded.

She picked up her hat, crammed it on her head, led the black back to the wall, found a toehold made by an uneven stone a couple of feet off the ground, and scrambled somehow into the saddle, thankiul that there were no witnesses to the undignified process. She took a minute to adjust the plume of her hat on her shoulder, smooth her skirts over the pommel, and retie her cravat. She remembered the rough haste with which he'd pulled it free of her throat, and for a second her fingers touched her skin where Nathaniel had touched her and a shiver crept down her spine, her skin tingling with memory.

Dear God! Fate had really stirred the pot with a busy hand. But maybe it could be turned to good account. If he found the attraction as hard to resist as Gabrielle knew she did, then matters could well proceed apace.

It hadn't occurred to Nathaniel that Gabrielle would be defeated by his own lack of assistance, and he wasn't surprised when she trotted into the wood some five minutes after he'd reached the hunt. The hounds were making a cast, trying to pick up the scent of the fox, and the field milled around, waiting for something to happen.

"It's not like Gabrielle to turn up in the rear of the field," Miles observed, unscrewing the silver cap of a hip flask and offering it to Nathaniel.

"Isn't it?" Nathaniel managed to sound indifferent as he took a swig of the cognac and handed back the flask.

"You really haven't taken to each other, have you?" Miles observed, drinking in his turn before returning the flask to his pocket. "It's funny, but I'd have thought her spirit might have appealed to you. She's unusual, and you're always bored by the conventional."

"She's trouble," Nathaniel stated without compromise.

Miles's eyebrows shot into his scalp. His friend's reaction to the Comtesse de Beaucaire was clearly far from indifferent, even if it wasn't warm. However, he only said lightly, "She's always been something of an enfant terrible, I grant you."

The hounds caught a scent and with a great hue and cry set off after it, the field following with rather less enthusiasm than they'd shown at the beginning of the morning.

"The problem with hunting," Miles observed as he and Nathaniel cantered side by side, "is that it alternates frantic bursts of energy and excitement with long periods of boredom and idleness in the cold. How about peeling off here for some sustenance? There's an inn across the next field which does a very tolerable shepherd's pie. And an excellent stilton."

Nathaniel shook his head, his eyes on the black horse and his black-clad rider ahead of them. He realized with a sense of the inevitable that he had no intention of leaving the field before Gabrielle de Beaucaire. "I'll see what this run brings, Miles."

"As you wish. I'm for a tankard of ale and some nuncheon. My toes are frozen." Miles turned his horse aside and galloped away from the hunt.

A few minutes later the fox broke cover and the hounds were in full cry. Nathaniel gave his horse his head and came up with Gabrielle as they charged hell for leather across a plowed field. She shot him a quick sideways glance as he reached her and he called, "This time, Madame Reckless, I am going to give you a lead."

Her laugh was rich and exultant. "You won't lose me, Lord Praed, I can assure you."

"Oh, I know that," he called back, his eyes glittering. And neither of them missed the underlying meaning of their words. Something had been started that would not soon be finished. But neither of them was as yet prepared to put a name to what it was.

The chase took them across four fields and Gabrielle was at his heels throughout. They sailed over hedge and stream and he could almost feel her breath on his back. The frigid January air whistled past their ears; the hooves crashed over the hard-ridged furrows of the plowed fields; they plunged into a copse and he heard her laughing curse as a branch whipped her cheek and she dropped low on the horse's neck.

And at the kill she sat her panting horse steadily, with no sign of flinching from the swift and bloody slaughter.

Nathaniel felt again the power emanating from the tall, taut figure. He was responding to the wildness, the passion, the force that drove her, and he couldn't help himself. Fearless and unconventional, Gabrielle de Beaucaire spelled a form of trouble he didn't think he could resist, not if he stayed in her vicinity.

He waited for her to show some fatigue as the day wore on. Or at least to say that she was hungry. But she stayed at the head of the field, unflagging and uncomplaining. He was famished and knew she must be too, but he couldn't bring himself to admit a need that his indomitable companion ignored. They exchanged few words but their paths never veered. Sometimes Gabrielle took the lead, sometimes he did. And Nathaniel began to feel they were engaged in an unspoken competition. Which of them would call a halt first?

In the end it was Gabrielle who said, "We'd better turn back. We're about ten miles from Vanbrugh Court and we'll be lucky to make it home before dusk."

"The horses are tired," he offered in assent.

Gabrielle shot him a quick glance at this bland observation and her lips twitched. "So am I."

"Oh, are you? I feel as fresh as I did this morning."

"That's a Banbury story if ever I heard one," she said, refusing to rise to provocation. "If we go this way, we can clip a mile off the ride." She gestured with her whip across a style.

"And how many times do we risk breaking our necks 7"

She seemed to consider the question. "Twice." Chuckling, she turned her horse and jumped the style.

It was nearly dusk when the weary horses trotted up the drive of Vanbrugh Court. A postchaise with the Vanbrugh arms on its panels was being driven away from the front door. "Simon must have just arrived," Gabrielle observed.

Nathaniel made no comment. Once he'd spoken his mind to his host, he would be free to leave the trouble and temptation resident in Vanbrugh Court before matters became any worse. He'd be on the road by dawn.

Gabrielle swung down from her mount without assistance, but Nathaniel's sharp eyes noticed that she wavered for a second as her feet touched solid ground and the straight back curved slightly, her shoulders drooping.

So she wasn't completely invincible. It was a small satisfaction. He put a hand lightly under her elbow as they went up the steps to the open front door. The touch was electrifying, and he heard her sharp indrawn breath.

"Oh, there you are!" Georgie came out of the library. "You're the last to come back. I was beginning to worry."

"Gabby's always the last to return from a hunt.” her husband commented, following her into the hall.

Simon Vanbrugh was a rotund man with a genial expression enlivened by a pair of very shrewd gray eves. His assessing gaze ran over the new arrivals. Had Gabrielle managed to win over the prejudiced spymaster? It was hard to tell, but they'd presumably spent the day together and there was a promising informality to Nathaniel's supporting hand beneath her elbow.

"Did she wear you out, Nananiel?" He laughed lightly as he bent to kiss his wife's cousin. He and Georgie had grown up as neighbors and had been childhood sweethearts, so Simon had known Gabby almost as long as his wife had.

"Did I, Lord Praed?" Gabrielle turned to look at her escort with a cool arch smile.

"I don't believe so, madame," he said, suddenly stiff and formal. His hand dropped from her elbow. "If you have a minute, Simon, I'd like a word with you."

"Georgie, will you come and talk to me in my bath?" Gabrielle asked as the two men disappeared into the library. "Or must you play hostess for the next hour?"

Georgie shook her head, interest sparkling in her eyes. "Everyone's dressing for dinner. Besides, nothing can take precedence over an account of your day with Nathaniel Praed."

Gabrielle laughed, linking her arm through her cousin's as they mounted the stairs. "I've a tale to tell, Georgie."

In the library Nathaniel flung himself onto a leather sofa with an audible sigh. He stretched out his legs to the fire and examined his mud-splattered boots.

He came to the point with customary lack of ceremony. "What the devil do you mean by foisting that wild woman on me, Simon?"

"Wild? Gabby?" Simon turned from the sideboard, a cut-glass decanter in his hand. "She's not wild, Nathaniel. Oh, a trifle spirited, I grant you, but she's got as cool a head on her shoulders as anyone I know."

"Oh, is that so? And it's a cool head that leads a woman to climb through my bedroom window at one o'clock in the morning? It's a cool head that leads her to jump a ten-foot stone wall as if it's a stack of firewood?"

"Claret?" Simon inquired, a chuckle in his voice. "Did she really climb through your window?"

"Thank you." Nathaniel took the proffered glass. "Yes, she did, presenting me with that ridiculous scrap of velvet… of all the absurd, fanciful notions. Obviously she thinks the business of the service is some great game of secret signs and amusing clandestine ex-cursions. I tell you, Simon, you had no right, no fight at all, to compromise me by revealing my identity to a headstrong, reckless, wild woman."

Having thus unburdened himself, Nathaniel drank deeply of his claret.

Simon sat down in a wing chair opposite him and thoughtfully sipped his own wine. "You're not compromised, Nathaniel. You should know better than to imagine I would reveal your identity without good cause."

He leaned back in his chair and took a pinch of snuff. "Gabby came to me some weeks ago. You remember that interesting piece of information we received about Napoleon's intention to attack Sicily?"

Nathaniel nodded, his eyes sharp with attention. The piece of intelligence from a hitherto unknown source had enabled the government to strengthen the British fleet protecting the Bourbon king in Sicily. The show of strength had changed Napoleon's mind somewhat abruptly.

"Well, it came from Gabby." Simon permitted himself a satisfied smile as he saw his companion's reaction. "She learned it from Talleyrand and brought it to me as an indication of her ability and her desire to act as an intelligence agent for England. I discussed it with Portland, of course, and we decided you should make the decision. Even if you decide against her, I will vouch absolutely for her discretion. I've known her since she was eight years old. She's unusual. She's clever. She has wit and courage. And she most desperately wants to be of service to England."

"Even if I grant she has some of those qualities, you know I do not employ women." Nathaniel stood up and went to refill his glass.

"There are exceptions to every rule," his host reminded him. "Tell me where you would find another agent so perfectly placed, so impeccably qualified? She has entrees into every diplomatic, political, and social circle in Paris. Talleyrand is her godfather, man!"

"And she's prepared to betray him?" Nathaniel looked skeptical.

"She grew up in England," Simon explained. "When Talleyrand insisted she return to France, she was very unhappy. But he was in essence in loco parentis, and she really had no choice but to obey him. But she's always been clear where her true loyalties lie. They lie here."

Simon leaned forward and kicked a fallen log back into the grate. "After her husband's death, she became very depressed… listless. Her letters had none of the usual spark and vitality. Georgie was worried about her. She invited her to stay for a while and Gabby came to me with the suggestion that she use her position and contacts in France to work for England. She was very convincing." He shrugged lightly. "Her information was most convincing."

He looked across at his now-silent companion. "She's always had a political mind, unlike Georgie, who most of the time couldn't tell you the members of the cabinet. It doesn't interest her. But Gabbv's very different. Her upbringing, perhaps. Losing her parents to the Terror. Talleyrand's influence-whatever. But she knows a great deal. She can sift the wheat from the chaff when it comes to information. And she needs something to absorb her mind." He examined his friend shrewdly as he hammered the nail on the head. "You've been looking for an insider in Paris. Gabby's the best placed."

"I don't deny that." Nathaniel, as Simon knew, could never resist logic and fact. Even his prejudices gave way before such potent persuaders.

Simon sat back, crossing his ankles, his eyes narrowed as they assessed Nathaniel's reaction.

"It won't do." Nathaniel got to his feet again. "Even if she is what you say, I can't see a way to working with her. She's not disciplined and I'll not jeopardize my other people by taking on an unknown quantity."

"Very well." Simon inclined his head courteously. "The decision was always yours. We know you know your own business best."

"Oh, in this respect, Simon, believe me, I do."

There was something about the way Nathaniel said this that struck Simon as a little curious.

Nathaniel put down his glass. "I must change for dinner. I'll leave first thing in the morning, since my business here is done." The door closed behind him.

Andwhat of friendship? Simon thought sadly. Is that done too? Nathaniel saw everything these days in terms of business, and the dictates of friendship meant nothing to him. It hadn't always been the case. Like Miles Bennet, Simon Vanbrugh hoped for the day when the old Nathaniel would emerge from this cold, distant carapace. He'd had the faintest hope that Gabby might have some effect. Few people could come within her orbit and remain unaffected by her personality or her outlook on life. But it seemed he'd been indulging himself in wishful thinking.

Upstairs, Gabrielle embalmed her weary muscles in hot water before a blazing fire in her bedchamber and told Georgie the details of her day with Lord Praed.

Her cousin was too worldly to be shocked at the picture of two near strangers locked in an ardent embrace in a deserted orchard. She did, however, somewhat tentatively question Gabrielle's taste.

"I thought you didn't like him. You said his eyes were like stones at the bottom of a pond."

"So they are sometimes." Gabrielle raised one leg and soaped it languidly. "But they can also be warm and merry… and verypassionate," she added with deliberation, switching legs.

"And you're in the market for passion?" Georgie took a sip from her sherry glass, watching her friend closely.

"In the market and in the mood," Gabrielie said calmly. "I've played the grieving widow long enough."

"Gabby!" This did shock Georgie. "You were desolated after your husband's death."

"No, I wasn't," Gabrielle said. "Roland was a deeply unpleasant man who managed to hide it until our wedding night. When he died, I was not desolated in the least. It seemed to me I'd suffer a lot fewer bruises as his widow than as his wife."

"Oh." Georgie was silent, absorbing this new light on her cousin's past. "But your letters were so depressed… so listless."

Gabrielle sat up and picked up her own glass of sherry from the carpet beside the hip bath. Frowning slightly, she traced a pattern in the condensation on the glass. "I was depressed, not at Roland's death, but at the thought that I'd allowed myself to be treated as badly as he treated me. I'd misread him, fallen for the facade. I felt a fool… and worse." She sipped and put the glass down again. "It's humiliating to be ill-treated, Georgie. Not the kind of thing you want people to know about. You begin to think you deserved it in some way."

"Oh, Gabby, I wish you'd said something…" Georgie stumbled in inarticulate sympathy. Such situations were not uncommon, but that didn't make them any less horrifying.

Gabrielle looked up and gave her a reassuring smile. "It's over and done with, and I'm my old self now. And I find the prospect of a little dalliance with Lord Praed very enticing… or do I mean challenging?" Her damp shoulders rose in alight shrug. "Either way, I want to go into dinner with him, if you can arrange it."

Georgie laughed, only too glad to let go of the disturbing image of her strong and self-determining cousin suffering beneath the thumb of a violent husband. "Of course I can. But I must say, I don't see what you see in him."

"But you don't like rocky roads," her cousin pointed out. "Whereas I've always chosen them over the smooth path."

Andloving Guillaume was the rockiest road she could ever have chosen. Rocky, wonderful, desperate-no middle ground ever. He was either in her bed or facing death and danger somewhere. There was either love or fear. Nochance for the contentment of ordinary happiness, the possibility of boredom, no time to learn the irritating little habits as well as the glorious.

"That's true, I suppose." Georgie stood up. "Simon's avery smooth path. I'd better go down to the drawing room. Lady Alsop always appears well before the other guests and feels very slighted if I'm not there to look after her and see she's immediately ensconced by the fire, protected from the blaze by a screen, with a glass of ratafia beside her."

"I don't know why you let yourself be bullied by the old besom," Gabrielle said irreverently.

Georgie shook her head. "She's Simon's great-aunt. And anyway, I don't mind."

No, of course you don't, Gabrielle thought affectionately as the door closed on her friend. Georgie had the sweetest nature.

It was decidedly unpleasant to deceive her friends, Gabrielle reflected, but the cause was too important to let personal scruple get in the way. She'd had to produce some credible reason for her willingness to jump into a liaison when she was officially supposed to be a grieving widow. Georgie would tell Simon the real reason for Gabrielle's apparent depression and neither of them would question subsequent events.

Subsequent events. She stood up. dripping, and wrapped herself in the towel. First she had to maneuver herself into Nathaniel Praed's bed. Guillaume would understand, she knew. He'd approve of the reasons behind her actions; they belonged to the world of dark secrets that he'd made his own. But how would he feel about the other thing, about the sexual current between herself and the man who'd ordered his death? She thought he'd understand it. He was a man of such passions himself and he knew her own. But Gabrielle wished with all her heart that she felt only revulsion for Nathaniel Praed. To go willingly-no, not just willingly, eagerly and filled with excitement-to his bed was a betrayal of Guillaume, however pure the motives.

But Guillaume was dead. She was twenty-five and the years ahead stretched into a bleak wasteland.

She reached for the bellrope and rang for Maisie to help her dress.

Nathaniel was waiting for her to enter the drawing room. He tried to tell himself he wasn't, but his eyes were constantly on the door. When his vigil was rewarded, he was again breathless at the bold statement of her appearance. Black velvet fell open over a flame satin underdress. Her hair was piled high on her head, held by a diamond-studded comb. A diamond pendant nestled in the deep cleavage of her gown. They were her only adornment.

She walked directly across the room to his side as if she saw no one else, as he saw no one but her. Heads turned, but Gabrielle appeared unaware.

"Good evening," she said softly, reaching him.

"Good evening." He smiled at her and brushed a fingertip over her cheek where the faintest scratch marred the pale translucence. "The tree branch scratched you."

"Yes," she said. "Battle scars."

They were alone in the crowded room, oblivious of the startled looks, the whispers, the nudges.

"We have to do something," Georgie whispered urgently to Simon, who, having heard the details of Gabrielle's bath-time confession, was watching the encounter with amused fascination. "Everyone's staring at them."

She crossed the room swiftly, her husband at her heels. "So what do you think of our hunt country, Lord Praed?"

Her voice broke the charmed circle, but Nathaniel's eyes were glazed for a split second as he turned to respond. "Rough on occasion, Lady Vanbrugh," he said, recovering smoothly.

"Georgie doesn't hunt," Gabrielle said, recovering her own senses as swiftly and smoothly. "So when she talks about hunting, you have to realize that she's only being polite. She trots out the terms but doesn't have the faintest idea what they mean."

"Oh, unjust," Georgie said, laughing. "I've listened to you and Simon most of my life. Of course I know what they mean, don't I, Simon?"

Her husband smiled down at her. "It doesn't matter, my love, one way or the other. Why should you need to know what they mean?"

"Well, I own I dislike hunting excessively," Georgie agreed. "I feel so sorry for the fox."

"There is that," Gabrielle agreed.

"Oh, come now, countess," Nathaniel put in. "You made absolutely certain you were in at the kill, and I'll swear you didn't flinch."

"I'm not squeamish," Gabrielle said. "But that doesn't mean I can't feel sorry for the fox."

The conversation rapidly became general, and when Gabrielle went into the dining room on Nathaniel's arm, the strange and disconcerting moment of intimacy was forgotten by most of the guests, if not by its participants.