Velvet

by Jane Feather

  He walked on, convincing himself of this logic. A line of black-clad candidates for the post of cook snaked out of the door and down the steps of his house. With a fresh wash of irritation he stopped on the pavement. Surely Gabrielle should have finished this tedious business by now.

  He marched in and entered the morning room, where Gabrielle was conducting her interviews.

  “For God’s sake, the house looks like an employment exchange,” he declared. “Haven’t you found someone suitable yet?”

  “Thank you, I’ll be in touch with the agency,” Gabrielle said to the woman sitting on a straight-backed chair against the wall. The woman bobbed a curtsy and left.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Gabrielle demanded of Nathaniel. “That was so inconsiderate.”

  “What’s going on in my house is inconsiderate,” he said. “There must be twenty women out there.”

  “Well, I can’t send them away without seeing them,” she said reasonably. “I don’t know why there are so many unemployed cooks in town at the moment. I should have told the agency to screen them first, but it slipped my mind.”

  She regarded her husband closely. He was in one of his impatient, preoccupied moods, and it wouldn’t take much to trigger an explosion. “Something’s upset you.”

  Nathaniel ran a hand through his hair in an impatient gesture. “I’ve just seen Simon, that’s all.”

  Had Simon consulted Nathaniel about the information already? She’d expected him to consider the message, consult his cabinet colleagues, and certainly the prime minister, before involving Nathaniel. Was Nathaniel Simon’s first call? The lad couldn’t have delivered the paper much more than a couple of hours earlier.

  “Is that all?” she said lightly. “Seeing Simon doesn’t usually put you out of sorts.”

  “I hate mysteries,” he said. “And I cannot abide the feeling that I’m being used in some way.” His eyes skimmed her face, took note of her hands lying calmly in her lap.

  Gabrieile’s palms dampened. So it was about the information. “Who’s using you?”

  “I don’t know … yet,” he added, beginning to pace the room. “But I intend to find out.”

  “You’re not being particularly informative.” Gabrielle rose and went to the fire, bending to warm her hands, although she was uncomfortably hot. She had the feeling her cheeks might be flushed and the warmth of the fire would offer explanation.

  Nathaniel looked at her, the graceful curve of her tall body, the flickering lights in her hair, caught by a spurting flame, the slenderness of her waist, the flare of her hips, outlined under the creamy beige cambric of her morning gown.

  Gabrielle had nothing to do with the events of the morning.

  A familiar urgent sweep of lust carried all unease and irritations from his mind.

  He approached her softly, encircling her waist with one arm, holding her steady across one outthrust thigh, his free hand molding the curve of her buttocks beneath the gown, slowly drawing up the soft material, revealing the length of her legs inch by inch, the hollow behind her knees, the expanse of smooth thigh, the pale flesh above her stocking tops.

  Gabrielle made no attempt to straighten her body, relaxing into the supporting hold of the arm around her waist, feeling the hardness of his buckskin-clad thigh beneath her belly. His hand slid under the ruffled hem of her drawers, and a shudder of delicious expectation rippled through her as the fingers insinuated themselves into her moistening cleft, searching her out in an ever-spiraling dance of erotic intimacies.

  “This isn’t going to get a cook hired,” she murmured in a desperate attempt to keep herself from sliding too soon into the inferno.

  Nathaniel removed his hand and whacked her bottom. “Not an appropriate response in the circumstances, wife.” He flicked her skirt down so that it fluttered back to her ankles, and released his hold.

  Gabrielle straightened, flushed, her eyes glowing. “That was hardly appropriate behavior in the circumstances.” She gestured eloquently around the salon. “Anyone could have walked in.”

  The idea seemed to amuse him, judging by his complacent grin. “I didn’t hear too many objections, my love.”

  “No, well, you wouldn’t, would you?” she said with feigned resignation. “You know my weaknesses all too well.”

  His grin broadened. “I’ll lock the door and then I can finish what I started without fear of interruption.” He suited action to words and then leaned back against the door, regarding her with hooded eyes.

  “What is it?” she whispered, her voice thick, as if the sounds were coming through treacle.

  “I’m trying to decide how I want you.” he replied.

  Gabrielle glanced around the room at the available props, now so engrossed in their game that she gave no thought to her earlier anxiety. “Chaise longue?” she suggested. Nathaniel shook his head. “Table?” Another headshake. “Chair?”

  “Perhaps,” he said consideringly, pushing himself away from the door. With a swift economical movement he toppled her forward over the back of an armchair.

  “I might have guessed,” Gabrielle said into the velvet cushions, laughter mingling with arousal in her voice. “You’re in one of your dominant moods.”

  “So it would seem,” he said affably, throwing her skirts up over her head and slipping her drawers down over her hips. “Are you comfortable?”

  “Perfectly,” she assured, chuckling, shifting her feet to brace herself.

  His hand moved over her, long, slow sweeps caressing her buttocks and thighs, repeating the voluptuous intimacies of the moment by the fire, and all desire to laugh vanished as they both entered the closed world of passion.

  He drove against her womb in a deep probing thrust, and she reached back, wanting to enclose him totally within her, to lose all sense of their separateness. His fingers curled into her hips in a biting grip that expressed his own need for this knowledge of completion. Her flesh was his. The rhythmic throbbing deep within her grew to envelop her in the crimson-shot blackness behind her eyelids. He had a strong hand on the nape of her neck, exerting warm pressure as he moved within her, and his other hand was teasing, nipping at the exquisitely sensitive bud of her sex. Her climax ripped through her in a devastating, mind-numbing tidal wave. Somewhere in the distance she heard her voice, and then Nathaniel’s hand on her neck pushed her into the cushions, muffling the involuntary sobbing cries of bliss, and his length fell against her back, his hands on her breasts as he held her through his own explosive moment of joy.

  “Sweet heaven!” Nathaniel straightened slowly, leaving her skin feeling cold and exposed as he peeled his body from hers. He ran a hand down her back.

  Gabrielle pushed herself upright. “Tell me it’s eleven o’clock on a Monday morning,” she demanded weakly, fumbling with her clothes as she attempted to put herself back together again.

  “It is,” Nathaniel refastened his britches. “What is it about you?” He shook his head in bemusement. “Devil woman.” He answered his own question.

  “I don’t think I had anything to do with that,” Gabrielle declared, examining her reflection in the mirror above the fireplace. “Look at my hair, it’s all over the place. How am I supposed to show myself outside the room like this?”

  “I can’t imagine,” Nathaniel said with callous insouciance, unlocking the door. “But do something about those women. I want my house back.”

  “Yes, my lord. We are feeling assertive this morning, aren’t we?” Gabrielle stuck her tongue out at him in the mirror as she hastily tucked errant ringlets back into their pins.

  Nathaniel raised a hand in mock threat and left her, unaware of the smile hovering on his lips or the bounce in his stride.

  Gabrielle rang the bell for Mrs. Bailey and asked her to send in the next candidate.

  Nathaniel went into his book room. He sat down at his desk, pulling a sheaf of reports toward him. He had to decide which of his agents could best be sent to Lisbon … or should he go himse
lf? The Portuguese king was a pathetic, childlike individual, unable to govern; his regent was a coward, unfit to govern. They would crumple before a French advance. A British presence in Portugal was now vital.…

  Idly, he picked up his quill, noticing that the end was splitting. He looked for the small knife he used to sharpen his pens, but it wasn’t on his desk and he remembered that Gabrielle had borrowed it the previous evening.

  He didn’t need it right now, but his mind was racing and he was too restless to sit in contemplative silence, so he strolled upstairs, pausing at the foot of the nursery stairs, thinking he would go up and see how Jake’s twisted ankle was progressing. Perhaps he’d retrieve his penknife first.

  Gabrieile’s sitting room was quiet, sun-filled. It had been Helen’s favorite room and the wallpaper and furnishings were distinctively her choice. He wondered if Gabrielle would decide to change anything. It was a very pastel foil for her vibrancy.

  The secrétaire was open, his penknife lying on the blotter. He picked up the knife and his eye fixed on the markings on the blotter.

  Curious marks, back-to-front letters, numbers. He felt an enormous reluctance to pick it up, and yet he did so. He picked it up and held it in front of the mirror on the dresser.

  Gabrielle had been playing with the Voltaire code.

  27

  It wasn’t possible that she was still involved in espionage. She couldn’t be. It wasn’t logical.

  Nathaniel looked across the dining table to where Gabrielle sat in animated conversation with her neighbor. As if aware of his scrutiny, she glanced up briefly, her eyes flickering across the expanse of glowing rosewood, the glistening silver, the puddles of golden candlelight. Her lips twitched into her crooked little smile that imparted a special intimacy among the buzzing voices of their fellow guests. Then she turned back to her neighbor and Nathaniel heard her laugh, that deep, warm sound of merriment that had never failed to delight him even when he was angry with her.

  His own neighbor offered a tentative conversational sally, and he realized that he’d been sitting in brooding silence for the better part of the second course. He went through the motions for a few minutes but was as relieved as his partner when she was drawn into a conversation on her other side.

  Absently, he helped himself from a dish of quail in aspic, remembering too late that he disliked the fiddly little birds and couldn’t abide aspic.

  He’d asked her about the notations on her blotter—a genial, casual question—and she’d responded in the same manner, saying it had been such a long time since she’d exercised her mind in that way and she’d been testing herself to see how much of the code she could remember.

  It was a perfectly reasonable explanation.

  Why on earth was Nathaniel eating quail? Gabrielle frowned, watching him dissect one or the birds and then push it to the side of his plate with an impatient gesture. He loathed aspic and despised quail. And didn’t he realize how discourteous he was being, sitting in morose silence? Poor Hester Fairchild looked as uncomfortable as if she were sitting next to a hungry tiger.

  But he’d been in an unpredictable mood for the past ten days, ever since his meeting with Simon. As luck would have it, he wasn’t satisfied, with merely receiving and acting upon such valuable information. There was a mystery attached to it, and the need to solve it had become a near obsession. For some reason, she hadn’t considered that possibility.

  He didn’t know that solving it would do nothing for his peace of mind, quite the opposite. And it would do nothing for Gabrieile’s peace of mind either. The prospect of his reaction to the truth filled her with a healthy fear. However useful her information, she was still manipulating him at Talleyrand’s bidding.

  Lady Willoughby rose from her chair at the foot of the table, signaling that the ladies should withdraw, and Gabrieile’s neighbor stood to pull back her chair for her. She noticed that Nathaniel moved a fraction too late for courtesy to render his own partner the same service. Something had to be done … but what?

  Nathaniel lingered in the dining room with Lord Willoughby, long after the other men had left to join the ladies over the teacups in the drawing room. Lord Willoughby was more than happy to find one of his guests prepared to match him glass for glass as the port decanter circulated, particularly when the guest was disinclined for conversation and as content to ruminate in silence as his generally reclusive host.

  “Is Nathaniel still in the dining room, Miles?” Gabrielle crossed the drawing room as Miles came in.

  “Yes, the last one. He and Willoughby are partnering each other in sullen silence. He’s in one of his vile moods tonight. What’s the matter with him, Gabby?”

  “I don’t know.” Miles was ignorant of Nathaniel’s true working life, so she couldn’t offer even a vague explanation about pressure of work. “It’s probably London. You know how he hates all this.” She gestured around the room with a half-smile. “The inane gibbering of a troupe of monkeys …”

  Miles chuckled. “I thought he’d recovered from his misanthropy.”

  “I think it’s an innate characteristic,” Gabrielle said seriously. “But in general he keeps its manifestations in check.”

  “Mmmm. Let me fetch you a cup of tea.” Miles strolled over to where his hostess was dispensing tea and brought back two cups. “So what do you think of your godfather’s new position as Vice Grand Elector? It would seem a position of title rather than power.”

  Gabrielle laughed. “If you believe that, you don’t know Talleyrand, Miles. You can be sure he’s peddling his influence as much now as he ever did as Minister for Foreign Affairs. I’ll lay any odds he was at Fontainebleau last month …. Oh, Georgie, I was hoping to have a word.” She held out a hand to her cousin, who was weaving her way through the knots of tea drinkers toward them. “I need your advice. Should I invite your mama and papa to dinner with the prime minister? Or do you think they would prefer a group of their own friends?”

  Her voice rose and fell, and Nathaniel, who’d come quietly into the room, stood frozen in the shadows behind her. What did Gabrielle know of Fontainebleau? He’d told her no details of the mysterious message, and she’d accepted his refusal to discuss it with what now struck him as unusual compliance.

  If she knew what the message was, then she wouldn’t need to pursue it.

  His head felt as if it were about to burst. Fat grubs of suspicion heaved in his brain. But it still made no sense. There was no logical reason why, if in some extraordinary fashion she’d come across such information, she shouldn’t be honest about it. And it was always possible Simon had mentioned Fontainebleau to her. She was often at the house on Grosvenor Square and he and Gabrielle were great confidants. He talked to her with complete freedom.

  No, Gabrielle couldn’t reasonably be the source of that intelligence. She had no contacts in France anymore. Or did she? Was she still part of the network of French agents in London?

  Suddenly she turned, and the candid gray eyes filled with pleasure at the sight of him.

  She had sworn to him that she loved him, that she forswore all previous allegiances. She had brought him her loyalty as the gift of love. She had pursued him, saved his life, forced him to accept his own love as he accepted hers. She had done nothing to warrant his suspicions. And yet …

  “Nathaniel, there you are. I was beginning to think I’d lost you permanently to the port decanter.” There was a hint of rebuke in her voice, although her eyes smiled.

  “Come, I wish to go home,” he said. He hadn’t meant to say that, or at least not in that curt manner. Why was it that he could dissemble in his work, never show a hint of his thoughts and feelings, and yet in the everyday world he found himself speaking straight from his heart without any mental filtering?

  A slight flush touched Gabrieile’s translucent cheeks and her chin lifted in ominous fashion. Miles and Georgie exchanged glances and stepped backward, blending into the group behind them.

  “Then I suggest you go,”
she said icily. “As it happens, I’m not ready to leave yet.”

  He wasn’t going to leave her there. While the doubts and mistrust swirled in his head, he wanted—no, desperately needed—her under his eye. It was an instinctive but nonetheless compelling reaction.

  “Nevertheless, we are leaving.” He drew her arm through his, and she was immediately aware of the muscular power clamping her arm to his body.

  She had no choice but to submit if this was to be a dignified exit. Nathaniel whisked them through the salons in search of their hostess. Gabrielle glanced at his tight-lipped countenance and struggled for the sake of politeness to keep her own anger from showing as she made her farewells, trying to compensate with her own warmth for Nathaniel’s taciturn mutter.

  They stood in the hall while a maid went in search of her cloak and the footman ran to the mews for their carriage. Gabrielle tapped one foot on the parquet, her eyes blazing. Nathaniel still held her arm in the vise of his own, and when she attempted to pull free, he smacked his other hand over hers so that she was held fast.

  The carriage drew up and the footman bowed them out. Nathaniel released her at the footstep, but instead of handing her in, he put a flat palm on her bottom and propelled her unceremoniously upward.

  She turned on him before the door was shut behind him. “Just what the devil was that all about? How dare you drag me out of there like some misbehaving child! And how could you behave so badly yourself?”

  Nathaniel said nothing, just leaned his head against the leather squabs, his face turned to the window. Light from a night watchman’s lantern flickered momentarily over his set countenance and Gabrielle could see a muscle twitching in his cheek.