Gabriel did not feel inclined to confirm such a statement even if there might have been some truth in it. He was to be married to Miss Clare and hardly wished to begin their union by dishonoring or embarrassing her by admitting to a regard for another woman.
Instead he asked, “Where are Maria and Samir?”
“Sami was getting restless so Maria took him out.”
Gabriel frowned, and Maria squeezed his hand. “He is safe—you look so worried.”
“Did they take—”
She laughed. “Yes, they took Daniel with them.”
Gabriel was anxious at the thought of Samir wandering around the city without him—even if Maria or Giselle was with him. He’d worried about the women going out unattended, as well, although they’d teased him, pointing out that both of them came from the stews of Paris and had survived.
Gabriel might be an Englishman now, but he’d spent his first seventeen years in a place where women and children rarely left the safety of the palace—and when they did, they were never alone. He felt compelled to protect those in his care and didn’t mind if others viewed his concern as excessive.
Maria and Giselle had allowed him to employ Daniel, a brawny footman, and had also agreed to use him whenever they went out. Gabriel slept better knowing that. He wondered if he should hire somebody else—just for Samir. What if Maria wished to go somewhere and—
Soft lips kissed his temple and he looked up.
Giselle was smiling. “Quit worrying.”
He would like to, but did people ever stop worrying about their children? He supposed that must be part and parcel of being a parent: worrying.
“Where did they go?”
“Maria took him to see the beasts—to the show at Astley’s.”
That made Gabriel laugh. “Again?”
“Marie told him she would take him if he stopped pulling Bonbon’s tail.” Bonbon was Maria’s ancient, fat, ill-tempered poodle.
“That little rascal. You know that is where I took him before I went to Brighton.”
She slipped her fingers into his hair and massaged the back of his neck, making him groan with pleasure. Her small hands were remarkably strong.
“He is a clever little boy who knows how to get his way—just like his father, I suspect. How did things go in Brighton?”
Her second hand joined the first, and Gabriel closed his eyes, letting his head fall back.
“I don’t really know. Captain Delacroix of the Batavia’s Ghost told me there was no word of Samir’s family—of his grandparents. He spoke with Sami’s uncle—Fatima’s eldest brother, but—” Gabriel did not wish to share everything Delacroix had told him during their brief visit. Especially when he did not know what he thought about all of it himself.
He opened his eyes and looked at Giselle. “How has Sami been?”
“He still misses his mother, of course, and I’ve heard him cry in the night. But I think he might miss you more, Gabriel—especially when you were gone over a week.”
“I understand why he would miss Fatima, but how can he have become so attached in only a few months?”
She gave a sinuous, Gallic shrug. “Blood calls to blood.”
Gabriel didn’t bother correcting her. Instead he pondered his soon-to-be wife’s reaction to having a five-year-old child living with them.
“Will you send him away now that you are getting married?” Giselle asked, as if she were reading his mind. “Maria and I adore having Samir here—we would love to have him stay.”
“That is kind of you, Giselle. But I know his mother would have wanted him to be with family. Until I can find the rest of Fatima’s family—if I can find them—I will keep Samir with me. I’d hoped Captain Delacroix would have better news, but he is waiting for one of his men to return from Oran. The city is in a state of chaos right now.” A lot of that was Gabriel’s fault, but he had no desire to discuss what had happened in Oran with anyone—not even Giselle, his lover. “If we’re able to find any of Fatima’s sisters or brothers, then Samir should be with them—it was Fatima’s wish. Her family is well respected, and there will be plenty of other cousins for him to grow up with—it is what he is used to.”
“And if your captain does not find them? Or if he learns that all your sister-in-law’s family have died?”
“Then I will bring him to live with me on the country estate my grandfather gave me.”
“When will you hear from this captain again?”
“I don’t know. My guess is that all of Fatima’s family will be hiding in the mountains if they managed to escape the city.” The English navy’s attack on Oran had left thousands fewer casualties than their assault on Algiers. Unfortunately, Gabriel’s brother Assad and his wife Fatima had been among those who were killed, leaving their only son an orphan.
Giselle nodded, gently stroking his nape. “Will you leave him with us until you find out—now that you are getting married?”
Gabriel chewed his lip. Giselle and Marie were taking care of the boy as his bachelor chambers were not the sort of place for a child. He’d been planning to take Samir to the country right after the Season ended and stay there with him until he received word about Fatima’s family. But, of course, that had been before last night. He could only imagine the stern Miss Clare’s reaction when he confronted her with Samir. He would not wish to take the boy if his new wife was cold or cruel to him. At the same time, he would not shun Sami to appease Miss Clare.
Gabriel knew he could tell his mother—indeed, he should have already told her—and bring Samir to her. He’d kept the information from her because he’d wished to make the decision without her meddling. But now . . . ? Well, she would take the boy in an instant.
But he was not yet ready to make that decision.
He kissed Giselle’s hand. “I don’t know what I’ll do, my friend. But he’ll stay with you until the end of the Season as we’ve already decided. He’s already suffered enough upheaval, and I don’t wish to change our plans at this point.”
“I will miss him, Gabriel.” Her eyes glistened with unshed tears.
“I know you will.” Gabriel pulled her to him, holding her familiar body in a tight embrace. “You need a child, Giselle. You and Marie both—you were made to have children.”
She sighed heavily against him, and he heard a delicate sniff. “I would have liked to have yours, Gabriel. But I know . . .” She trailed off.
Gabriel was grateful she’d not completed the thought. He knew the two women desperately wished for children, but he’d never felt right about being a father to a child he could not claim.
She disentangled herself from his arms and moved off his lap. “But what of this duel?” she asked, wiping her eyes with a scrap of lace that mysteriously appeared, before reclining against the plush velvet cushions that spilled over the settee. “It is to be swords, I hope?”
“Hmm?” he asked, hoping his vague response would communicate his unwillingness to discuss the situation.
She shook her head, her lips pursed. “Very well, I see the way it is—it is man’s business and you will not discuss it.”
Gabriel smiled.
“But at least tell me one thing.”
He raised his eyebrows, unwilling to promise an answer before he knew the question.
“Please tell me you are not going to kill him, my love.”
He chuckled and took her hands, bringing them to his lips. “You never know—I might.”
Her mouth puckered into a disapproving moue. “But then you would be forced to flee to the Continent.”
He kissed each of her knuckles. “I could live out my life as a card sharp.”
“But you do not like cards.”
“Then perhaps I might have to make my way seducing the bored wives of wealthy men and living off their largesse.”
“Mmmm, yes—a cicisbeo. Now that I can see you doing.” Her full lips curved, and she brought their linked hands to her mouth, where her tongue darted out, licking th
e sensitive skin between his fingers.
Gabriel’s cock sprang to life at the suggestive gesture and he groaned. “You could make a dead man hard, Giselle.”
She laughed. “Come, Gabriel, you are hardly dead—just betrothed.” She lowered their clasped hands to her lap. He drank in her voluptuous beauty, which masked a sharp intelligence and wicked imagination, before dropping his head against the plush velvet headrest of the settee, closing his eyes as the image of his wife-to-be elbowed her way into his mind.
Giselle fiddled with their joined hands, brushing the sensitive skin on the back of his hand against her silk-covered thighs in a most distracting manner. “I have not seen this Miss Drusilla Clare; is she so ill-favored? Or is it that your affections are with Miss Kittridge?”
Drusilla Clare’s intelligent gray eyes, frowning lips, and generous bosom clothed in an unflattering gown flashed into his mind.
“She is an attractive young woman,” he said, realizing he spoke the truth only after he’d uttered the words. He ignored Giselle’s second question entirely. Miss Kittridge—and whatever there might have been—was no longer a subject he cared to think about. Had he loved her? He did not believe so. But perhaps he could have grown to love her. He had certainly lusted for her—had envisioned bedding her. But that was true about many women.
“Is she stupid—this Miss Clare?” Giselle’s voice pulled him from his thoughts.
“No, she is very clever.” Perhaps too clever.
Giselle brushed her lips over his knuckles yet again, her hot breath making his groin ache. “And she is rich, no?”
“Yes, she is very wealthy.” Gabriel had learned only a few hours earlier just how wealthy his new wife was.
“Mon dieu, Gabriel! I would marry her myself, if she would have me.”
He laughed. “Yes, Miss Clare is attractive, intelligent, and possessed of great wealth, Giselle. It is not the lady herself I have trouble with,” he lied, hardly wanting to cast aspersions on his wife-to-be. At least not anywhere but in the privacy of his own mind. “It is the institution of marriage I was hoping to avoid.”
She made a dismissive sound. “What a fib. You’ve been considering marriage—both Maria and I have heard people talk of you and the Kitten.”
“You never mentioned it,” he said, wishing to avoid the subject.
“Not around you.”
“Ah, so that’s how it is. I’m the one who is left out in the cold. I always suspected as much.”
Her eyelids lowered and her mouth curved into a wicked smile. “Maria and I would never leave you out in the cold.”
Gabriel tried to ignore the swelling brought on by her suggestive stare. He didn’t have time for such things today, no matter how much he might need such things.
He turned the subject. “Anything you heard—about any young lady—was just idle speculation by gossips. Trust me, I had no plans to marry anytime soon.”
“You men—you are all the same, behaving as if marriage is an appointment with the gibbet. I expected more from you.”
“Lord, Giselle, you sound just like my mother.”
“I will take that as a compliment—I understand she is a remarkable woman.”
Talking about his mistress with his mother had been bad enough; he did not want to talk about his mother with one of his mistresses. “Why do you expect more from me, Giselle?”
“Because you are not English. You are a man of the world.”
“I have lived in North Africa and England; that is hardly the world.”
“Yes, but you were raised to expect an early marriage from a young age, were you not?”
He had been, although that changed in an instant when his father died and his betrothed had married his brother. He shrugged, not wishing to discuss the complicated subject of Fatima.
“In any case,” she said, reading his mood correctly and leaving the topic behind, “your experience is enough to know there is more than one way to”—she hesitated—“to skin a cat. I believe that is the English saying?”
“How the devil would I know—it certainly sounds dreadful enough to be an English saying.”
Her hand tightened. “We’ve wandered from the point.”
“What was your point, cherie?”
“You know you are not my first male lover.”
“Nor are you my first female lover, Giselle. Come,” he said, pulling her closer, her lush, responsive body melting against his like hot wax from a candle. “Out with it, my dear. What is it you are trying to say?”
Her expression became serious. “You are the only man Maria and I have met who has accepted what we feel for each other without either being threatened, treating us as unthinking vessels for nothing but pleasure, or acting as if we were depraved.”
Gabriel had nothing to say to that—he had no idea how other men thought about their lovers or what they did with them. It was a private matter that he’d never had any interest in discussing with another man—even with somebody as close as his friend Byer; although he knew his friend was intensely curious about his arrangement with Giselle and Maria.
“I see you are looking skeptical, but it is true. Most men only want a woman like me to open her mouth if I use it for something other than talking. You—” She traced a fine scar on his chin. “Well, you are different, and for the life of me, I cannot understand why. After all, you are the son of a man who kept women by the hundreds sequestered for his pleasure.”
“Well, not by the hundreds.”
“You know what I mean.” She reached up and brushed back his hair before lowering her cool hand to his jaw. “You were raised with the expectation that one day you would have that many women.Yet you have always been a friend to us, the only lover who has asked about us, where we are from, what dreams we have, what we want. I can only assume this is the work of your famous mother—a woman who has lived more in one lifetime than most have in ten.”
“Ha. Infamous is more like.” He flushed under her warm regard, and she chuckled, skimming his jaw with her knuckles, her smile turning impish.
“You are a wonderful lover and friend and we will miss you dearly.” She slid her arms around him, straddling his lap.
“What? Are you tossing me out already?” Gabriel wrapped his arms around her, flexing his hips beneath her spread thighs.
She chuckled at what she felt. “Mmm, I believe your mind is on other things, Gabriel.”
“Perhaps.” He lowered his mouth over hers, and her lips opened without hesitation. For a moment he lost himself and his problems inside her, stroking into her, reveling in her hot, sweet taste.
But then he recalled he’d not come here for this. He sighed and pulled back, smiling into her sky blue eyes. “I have a gift for you, my dear.”
Her brows arched. “Oh? I thought this was my gift?” She stroked his groin, and Gabriel groaned, laying a hand over hers. She was making this hard for him, in every sense of the word.
“Very well,” she said with a shrug, giving him a wicked smile.
“Witch,” he muttered, shifting and trying to adjust himself into a less painful position.
“If you’ve brought me something, I hope you brought something for Maria and Samir.”
“I am not a fool, Giselle. My coat pockets are stuffed like a sneak thief’s. You can give my gifts to the others.”
“You won’t wait for them?” Her eyes flicked upward—toward the bedchamber she shared with Maria, and which they both shared with Gabriel when he visited.
“I cannot indulge myself, as much as I might need and want to.” He shook his head, his regret unfeigned. “I probably should not have come today but—”
She squeezed his hand. “You wanted to tell us in person.”
“Yes.” He gave her a gentle push. “Now go fetch everything from my coat pockets—yours is the inlaid box.”
She returned with the three packages and then sat on his lap to open her gift.
Her eyes widened when they saw what was inside the
box. “Oh, Gabriel, they are splendid.”
“Not as splendid as you. Put them on.”
She removed the earrings already in her ears, looking at him as she did so. “This is a farewell gift, I think?”
Was it? He’d certainly come with that intention in mind. But after seeing his fiancée clutching another man’s hand, he was no longer so sure.
Gabriel frowned at the petty thought. Was that how he would begin his married life? Engaged in an immature and spiteful battle of wills with his wife? He ignored Giselle’s question, instead pulling her toward him and lowering his mouth over the swell of her breast, breathing in her familiar scent. He would miss her companionship and affection even more than her beautiful face and luscious body. “You are a goddess,” he told her in French.
She took his face between her hands and tilted it up to kiss him. “Thank you for the delightful gift, Gabriel. Thank you and—”
“Hush,” he ordered, kissing away whatever it was she was about to say and then gently holding her at arm’s length. “I need to ask you something, Giselle.”
“I know what you will ask—you want me to see that Samir gets back to his family if your ship captain manages to locate any of them . . .” She gave a slight shake of her head, as if rejecting something too painful to consider, and added, “And if you do not come away from the duel.”
“Yes. It is very important to me. I’ve left all the information you will need in a sealed envelope with Byer, to be delivered to you along with instructions if they do not respond.”
“What of your mother?” she asked gravely.
“I’ve written a letter for her, as well.” Because he was too bloody cowardly to speak to her right now. He told himself he did not wish to inflict additional worry upon her when she was so close to her lying in. But that was a lie. He was a coward.
“We shall see to Samir’s well-being, my friend.”
The relief that coursed through him told him that fear for the boy had been no little part of the stress he’d been carrying. “Thank you.”
She squeezed his hands so hard they hurt. “It’s over between us, isn’t it?” Tears spilled down her cheeks, and he kissed them away.
Notorious Page 9
