Hearts Beguiled

by Penelope Williamson

  Slowly her hands went to the ribbons of her chemise.

  His eyes watched her. His harsh breaths thundered in the room. Through the veil of her lashes she thought she could see his heart beating against the brown skin of his chest.

  He made a sound, almost like the hiss of a cat and, shoving her hands roughly aside, he grasped the delicate material of the chemise and ripped it down the middle. "You were taking too damned long," he said, and she shuddered violently as if it was her flesh he had rent.

  His arms went around her waist as he fell onto the bed, bringing her with him. He lowered his head to her breast, opening his lips wide around the nipple, sucking it hard into his mouth, and so he missed the look of triumph that flared in her purple eyes.

  He pinned her to the bed with his weight. Mine, he thought. Goddamn you, you are mine.

  He felt like a starving man suddenly confronted with a banquet of food. His mouth went from her breast to her lips to the pulse in her neck and back to her mouth again. His hands were everywhere, stroking her soft slopes and firm curves. He was gorging himself on her, trying to possess all of her at once.

  His hand went around her back, crushing her tighter against him as if he could merge their flesh, and pain lanced through his arm. Perversely he welcomed it, as if he should suffer, deserved to suffer, for this weakness of the flesh, for needing her so desperately.

  He reminded himself that he could possess her body without surrendering his soul, and forgot it instantly when she fastened her mouth onto his to kiss him hard and hungrily. He entangled his fingers in her hair and pulled her head back so that he could probe deep into her mouth with his tongue. Her hand pressed against his stomach, pulling at the waistband of his breeches, and his muscles clenched as tight as a fist.

  He rolled off her and sat up.

  He had trouble getting his boots off—they were wet and slippery with mud, and he was in a hurry. He felt her move against his back and her leg swung around—

  "Stay," he said. He hadn't meant for it to sound so much like a command, but she took it as one, straightening her legs and lying back down.

  At last his boots and stockings were off. Standing up, he kept his back to her as he peeled down his breeches. The muscles in his buttocks tightened, for he could feel her eyes on him.

  He kept forgetting to breathe, until his lungs began to burn for air, and his jaw throbbed from the pressure of keeping his teeth clamped so tightly shut. Never had he felt so big, so hard. He felt enormous. He was near to exploding, and if she so much as touched him he would spill his seed.

  He turned and looked at her.

  She lay fiat on the bed, her arms at her sides, her legs spread slightly apart. The sacrificial virgin, he thought; it didn't make him smile. Her hair was spread over the pillow, a pool of fire. He had seen skies at night over the ocean that were the purple of her eyes. I would die for you, he thought. I would grovel at your feet. How could he worry about the loss of his pride when with her he'd never had any pride to lose?

  Her eyes glowed; her voice was a tiger's purr. "Come here," she said.

  He knelt between her legs. He kept his eyes riveted onto her face as he lifted her thighs, bringing them up over his shoulders, raising her pelvis off the bed. He hung poised above her for the space of a heartbeat, and then he drove into her.

  A harsh moan burst from her throat, and her legs tightened around him. He pushed in deeper and her slick inner muscles enveloped him. He pulled out again, almost immediately, until only the tip of him was still inside her. He watched her face, and she watched him, as he plunged his length in again, then out, again and again, until he saw her eyes flare wide and her mouth go slack, and she arched her back as the tremors shook her.

  He throbbed inside her, letting the passion course through him, draining him, emptying him, consuming him. Mine, he thought in triumph. And through his clenched teeth the words were torn from him in a harsh cry.

  "Christ, Gabrielle ... I love—!"

  ❧

  He lay facedown, one leg flung across her thighs. She relished its heavy weight, the warmth of his skin, slightly damp with sweat. Her heart thundered in her ears, keeping tempo with the beat of the rain against the window. The skin of her face and breasts tingled where it had been rubbed by his whiskers.

  His leg moved off her. Unconsciously she held her breath, waiting to see what he would do, what he would say. Would he admit to the words that had spilled from him during the peak of his passion?

  He leaned over her. She opened her mouth to breathe and he slid his tongue over her lips. He pulled back and surveyed the length of her body.

  "Merde. There's blood everywhere."

  Tension made her laugh too loudly. "Look at us. We're painted with red stripes like one of those savages from America."

  He sat up and peeled off the blood-soaked shirt. He examined the wound. The flesh was red and pulpy, gaping open like a slice of raw meat, and she felt the gorge rise in her throat.

  "Oh, Max . . . I'm so sorry."

  "Hell, I deserved it." He looked up, giving her one of those adorable damn-it-all smiles. "No one likes being laughed at."

  "Perhaps we should summon the doctor."

  "So that I can be drained of even more blood? No, thank you. It's only a flesh wound. There's some brandy on that chest over there. Will you get it for me, please?"

  She scrambled off the bed and ran to fetch it. She had started to pour some into a glass when she heard him laugh.

  "Silly idiot. I'm not going to drink it."

  "Oh." She hurried back to the bed with the decanter.

  The ball had left a deep crease in the fleshy part of his muscle. He pulled the cut as far apart as he could stand it. "Pour it in there."

  The room began to darken and spin before Gabrielle's eyes. She sucked in a deep breath and tipped the mouth of the decanter, pouring the brown liquid into the wound.

  His arm jerked spasmodically. "Jesus God Almighty!" he roared, falling back against the headboard. Sweat filmed his face, his breath coming in hash pants. After a moment he opened his eyes. "That's good, ma mie. Now do it again."

  "Oh, no, I couldn't ..."

  "Just do it. Before I lose my nerve."

  He didn't curse again, but his lips turned white. After she had finished, he took the decanter from her trembling hands and poured a hefty measure of what was left down his throat. He looked at her and smiled, reaching up to wipe the tears from her cheeks. "What are you crying for?"

  She gulped back a sob. "I—I can't bear to see you suffer."

  He stiffened and his eyes flared with sudden anger. The words hung in the air between them, like raindrops caught fast in a web.

  Then he turned aside and pulled a linen slip off one of the pillows, ripping it in two. He tried binding his wound one-handed and using his teeth until she took the makeshift bandage away from him and did it for him.

  "Max . . ."

  "Leave it, Gabrielle."

  "I can't. I can't bear loving you and having this . . . this great wall between us."

  ' 'What do you want from me? I can't make things the way they were before."

  He flung himself off the bed. He paced the room, magnificent in his nakedness. A strong, lusty male animal—and she felt a primitive stirring in her loins.

  "You could try to forgive me."

  "It's not that simple." He gave a hollow laugh. "Do you know, in those hot, miserable nights after you first left me, I would lie in bed and dream of you crawling back to me, begging to be forgiven. Even the thought of revenge tasted sweet."

  "I've begged, Max. I'll beg some more if that's what it takes to tear down the wall." She got up and went to him. His back was to her, and she pressed her face against it. "If it's revenge you want, my love, then take it."

  He pulled away from her. For an eternity he said nothing, then he turned, and her heart broke at the anguish on his face.

  "I no longer want revenge. But the hurt is still there, Gabrielle. It's like a ca
nker. It aches and festers, and the only time I can forget it is when my yard is buried deep inside you."

  She would settle for that. For now. There was some hope that if she loved him hard enough, long enough, he would love her once again.

  "You're my husband," she said. "And I love you."

  A muscle ticked in his jaw, and a corner of his mouth turned down. She thought he was going to say something, but he was interrupted by shouts and the jangle of harness coming from below.

  He went to the bedroom window. "It's Percy!"

  Grabbing his, breeches off the floor, he struggled into them. "Better put some clothes on, ma mie. If Percy saw you in that utterly delightful state of nakedness he'd do something foolish and I'd have to fight another duel."

  Before she could ask him what he meant by that remark about a duel, he had bounded from the room. She heard his feet thundering down the stairs, the bang of the front door, and his voice bellowing, "Percy, you whoreson! What the hell are you doing here? Was Paris too boring for you without me around to lead you down the pathways of sin?"

  Shielding herself behind curtains of embroidered muslin, Gabrielle peered out the window to see Percy Bonville in a coat of purple velvet and a flowered waistcoat descending from a traveling chaise pulled by mud-splattered horses with dripping trace chains. The two men embraced and thumped each other on the back, then Max led Percy up the chateau's steps and into the great hall.

  ❧

  "Paris is boring and Versailles is even worse. The peasants are starving and surly and about ready to revolt, and the marquise de Tesse pines for you. Are you going to give me something to drink or do I have to sing for it?"

  Percy stood in the middle of the library, leaning on his cane to look around the room. Only the French, he thought, could take opulence to the point of decadence and get away with it.

  Max pressed a snifter of brandy into his hand.

  Percy gestured at the bandage around Max's arm. A spot of fresh blood was already seeping through the thin linen. "Did you fight another duel and lose this time?"

  "Gabrielle shot me."

  "Gabrielle!"

  Percy studied his friend's face. He saw the clear eyes, the smiling mouth. He laughed. "If she shot you then, by God, you probably deserved it. Where is she?"

  "Here. Upstairs."

  Percy laughed again. Then he suddenly noticed that Max was standing before him in nothing but a pair of breeches. "Did I, er, interrupt the reunion?"

  Max's mouth tilted up in a crooked smile. "No. We'd finished. For now."

  "Finished! And it's only the middle of the morning. You must be wearing down in your old age." Percy chuckled and took a sip of the brandy. "That's wonderful about Gabrielle being back. Is she going to stay this time?"

  The gray eyes clouded and the dark, handsome face stiffened, and Percy cursed his careless tongue. "I don't know," Max said.

  Percy limped over to the fireplace where a thick, gnarled log burned invitingly. He set the glass of brandy on the mantel and held his hands before the flames. He looked up at the portrait above his head.

  "I ran into your father the other day. I can see where you acquired that cutting tongue of yours." He turned to grin at Max. "I offered him a friendly hello and tried to strike up a harmless conversation about the weather, and he told me that if it was French I was trying to speak, I needed to be given lessons. I get the feeling he doesn't like Americans."

  "He doesn't like people who like me. Why are you here? Has Tesse died?

  "No. He's going to live. That's why I rode all the way out here in that miserable chaise, freezing my ass off. I've come to tell you you can come back to Paris if you like—we all miss you." The smile left Percy's face and he gave Max a hard, assessing look. "I can't pretend to have ever liked Tesse but he's pretty much the invalid now, can't leave his bed for more than an hour at a time. And you've scarred him for life."

  Max gave Percy his cold, lazy smile. "My heart bleeds ... He pimps for the marquise his wife, did you know? He encourages her to take lovers and he makes her tell him all about it in great detail. Then when he tires of the game he kills the man in a duel. The bastard deserved everything he got."

  Percy stared at Max in astonishment. Then he laughed. "By God, you do have a knack for knavery if nothing else. You made Tesse pay dearly for the privilege of watching you make love to his . . . wife." Percy's voice trailed off as he caught sight of the woman standing in the doorway.

  She was wonderfully deshabille in a quilted dressing gown of blue silk, her hair hanging loose around her shoulders in fiery disarray. She looked stunning. And furious.

  "Oh shit," Percy said.

  ❧

  Max found her standing with her back to the door before the big tester bed. It was in a shambles, the counterpane stained with his blood and their lovemaking, pillows and clothing strewn around the floor.

  "Gabrielle—"

  "No! I will not listen to your lies!" She flung her head around. Two bright spots of color stained her cheekbones. Her eyes were hot with fury. He had never seen her angry like this before.

  A lock of her hair had fallen across her face. She brushed it back with a shaking hand. "How could you have made love to another woman?"

  "I wouldn't call what Claire and I did making love."

  She sucked in a sharp breath. "She has a name!"

  He almost laughed—except that it wasn't at all funny. "Of course she has a name."

  She cradled her elbows with her hands and turned away from him again, but she couldn't hide the pain in her voice. "Do you love her?"

  "No."

  He thought of himself as he had been then—drunk half the time and hurting so bad he wanted to die. How could he ever explain the complicated feelings of pain, loneliness, and anger that had driven him into the all-too-willing arms of the marquise de Tesse? The final irony was that he'd had to close his eyes and imagine it was Gabrielle's lips, Gabrielle's hands, Gabrielle's body opening to him before he could even come.

  He stared at her rigid back and felt his own anger building as he remembered all over again the misery she had put him through. "You left me, Gabrielle, remember? As far as I

  knew, you were never coming back. It's a little hard being faithful to a memory." There came to him suddenly the thought, Had she been faithful to him?

  Her shoulders shook, and he thought she was crying. Then she whipped around to face him, and he saw she wasn't crying at all.

  "That night you found me in the ditch," she said, "you were on your way here straight from that woman's bed."

  "Yes." He gave her a tight, angry smile. "After a little detour to the Bois de Boulogne, where I shot her husband."

  "She was your mistress."

  "Yes. For a while."

  "Then what you have done was utterly despicable. You let me humiliate myself, begging to be forgiven for making you suffer when you never suffered at all, did you? You had this Claire to comfort you. Were there others? Was there any night during the past year that you spent alone?"

  "She was the only one," he said. He could feel his face hardening into the mask of indifference he always wore when he was hurting. "Although if you're going to damn me for it, then I'm sorry there weren't a dozen others. Sophie Restonne offered me a different girl for every night of the week. I should have taken her up on it."

  Gabrielle sucked in a ragged breath and at last the tears came, falling in gentle drops, like dew, onto her cheeks. "Oh, God . . . I'll never forgive you for this."

  He bowed mockingly. "Then it seems, madame, that we are now even."

  Chapter 19

  The hunt thundered across the road, the baying of the hounds and the mournful wail of horns rending the air. Percy Bonville leaned out the window of his traveling chaise to watch it pass.

  The dogs, following the deer scent, led the purebred horses with their purebred riders through a small group of clay-and-wattle farms. The horses' sharp hooves slashed through the moist earth, ruining the newly plowed
fields. One nobleman, for sport, fired his musket at a cow, and the beast fell dead face first into the turf. The peasants cowered within the doorways of their cottages, a mixture of terror and anger on their faces.

  One man, braver than the rest, stood beside a tottering hen roost and raised his fist in the air, shaking it. A horse and rider veered toward him. The rider swung out one brightly polished boot and kicked the man in the chest, driving him to his knees, and the horse's powerful shoulders knocked against the hen roost, toppling it. There was a flurry of squawking chickens, and feathers filled the air.

  Shaking his head, Percy pulled back inside the body of the chaise. "You French aristocrats are an arrogant lot. It costs more to buy a loaf of bread than a man can earn in a day, the people are simmering on the edge of revolt, the philosophes are crying for liberty—and you all behave as if things will continue as they have for the next thousand years. Can't you see what's happening beneath your own haughty noses?"

  "No doubt," Max said, obviously not listening. Gabrielle, sitting as far from Max as she could get, didn't bother to respond at all. The boy Dominique was asleep between them, his head leaning against his mother's arm. The tension between husband and wife was stretched so tightly it could almost have been plucked, like the strings of a violin. Percy reflected that for all the company he was getting he might as well have been traveling back to Paris alone, and he smothered a yawn in his scented handkerchief.

  With the hunt having cleared the road, the chaise resumed its journey. As they passed the group of farms, Percy again looked out the window. He started to raise his hand to wave, then let it fall. Mistaking his carriage for that of a nobleman's, the peasants stared at it with hatred plain on their thin faces. Once, they would have cheered and doffed their caps. Now they stood insolently straight, their hands stuffed deep into their pockets.

  "The trouble with France today," Percy said aloud, amusing himself, "is that ninety percent of the population is dying of hunger and the other ten of indigestion."