Lady of Intrigue

by Sabrina Darby

  She was eminently practical and the reality had not bothered her. Additionally, she had found intellectual satisfaction in the work for her father. Yet, Lady Powell’s last words had been a warning to Jane that if she continued to live her life as it was, she would become irrelevant.

  There were too many thoughts in her head, images of the past creeping in, of wanting love, of wanting approval, wanting her father’s respect. Because respect was what he had to offer instead of love. But it was entirely possible that she was now in this predicament because of some intrigue that involved her father and the little political games he and his friends liked to play. Her father included her in so much of his work, and yet there were still secrets he would not entrust to her.

  A cold awareness seeped under her skin, made her shiver again from more than just the cold. There was so much beneath the surface. She had always taken everything emotional at face value. Life was easier that way. People like her father, men in politics and trade, were Machiavellian. The logic of business and manipulation was quite easy to understand. Emotion was not. It was messy and weak, and she had always thought that wanting something one did not have and had no way to attain was impractical and the road to dissatisfaction. But here, where she existed without past or future, only in the present with the desire and aim to survive, there were things she wanted.

  Odd things. Things she shouldn’t even acknowledge to herself: the comfort of this stranger’s touch, even though he was her captor and threatened her life, and his conversation, even though they threw questions at each other and withheld answers. It was so strange to be living moment to moment, acting on needs more than cold reason. To have the pain of her injuries unearth trembling emotions she couldn’t yet name. Perhaps it was weakness, but it felt more like a door opened to a different way of living life, to all the feelings that brimmed beneath the surface. To how much she craved tenderness and comfort. How much she craved love. And it had taken the shadow of death to bring her to the edge of revelation. Perhaps her father loved her, but he had never said so much, had never shown her as much tenderness as this strange man who had upended her life.

  Surely an assassin was a cold, emotionless creature. Surely the tenderness of his touch was a figment of her imagination. A question formed inside her head and for a moment she dismissed it as too personal. Then anger surged. At him. At herself.

  He was the one who had pulled her from a different life. She could ask what she wished. It was strange to have this silent intimacy without any knowledge of him, and if he wouldn’t answer any questions that revealed his purpose, who or where they were, he could at least answer this.

  “Have you ever loved?” Her voice croaked around the words. He did not move and she coughed to clear her throat so that she could speak more loudly.

  She focused on the back of his dark head, on the hair that curled around the smooth skin of his neck above his coat, and repeated herself.

  “Have you ever loved?”

  He had heard her the first time, but the question was so unexpected from a woman who was essentially his prisoner that he thought at first to ignore it.

  This time he turned and surveyed her with amusement. She lay on her back, her head turned to the side, her light brown hair pillowed beneath. Even in the ignominious position of being clothed only in a blanket, of being injured and helpless, she looked composed, certain of her right to ask intimate, probing questions.

  Though by birth he was an outsider to society, he knew such a question would not ever be asked in the parquet-lined floors of ballrooms and sitting rooms. It was a question that could only be asked here, apart from the world, from time even. That she was asking of him.

  They had tossed questions back and forth at each other, and as she had suggested, had reached an impasse. Unless he wished to use harsher means, he was unlikely to get the information he desired from her by direct questioning. As for him, he could not reveal anything that might compromise his identity at a later date. But this question had little to do with names and identities, and there was something tantalizing about indulging in the past, in those luscious days of his youth when women were a mystery and flesh a bountiful faire.

  He stalled for time as he warred within himself.

  “I heard you, but there are many types of love. Which do you mean? Agape, Eros, Philia or Storge?”

  She laughed, as if he had intended to be witty. “I see your tutor made you learn Greek.”

  Not wit then. The laughter was surprise that a man she considered beneath her was educated as a gentleman, as if he had been attempting to impress her when what he had intended was to deflect out of habit. But hers was such an innocuous question. Yet no question, and certainly no answer, was ever harmless.

  “Among other things,” he said simply.

  “Eros then.”

  Of course. It was what his mind had turned to first as well.

  “Thus your question is have I ever loved a woman?”

  She nodded, her gaze even, expectant. The tension he had felt dissipated. He could fall into that gaze, study the light blue irises, the dark pupils, try to discern what lay behind. To anyone else he would continue to deflect the question or would obfuscate, speaking of his wife, a fabrication he often used to confuse his identity. But to this woman who stared at him, into him, with such knowing, he felt compelled to speak the truth. As if speaking that truth to her might set him free, a beguiling idea that manifested inside him with a buzzing intensity, an energy that hummed inside him, which meant he needed to be even more careful.

  “Yes, of course. I was once a boy and boys…love passionately.”

  She tilted her head to the side. He laughed, half surprised at an odd buoyancy, the delight in her silent challenge. She would not let him leave it at that, not this woman who wished to know the world.

  “I was fifteen. I was supposed to be studying but I had taken my book down to sit by the water. The air was thick that day, the sort of thick that sticks to one’s skin.”

  He never indulged in reminiscing about the past. If he thought on past events it was to analyze them for information and insight. But now, letting himself fall into the flow of those long ago moments, it was odd the details that he remembered, though he hadn’t thought of that day in years. He could almost smell the air, the sense of anticipation that had come with life each day all those years ago. All of it tinged with an odd sadness, as if watching someone he knew vaguely, but who was nearly a stranger now.

  “Not England. Not France.”

  He laughed again in surprise, enjoying the speed with which her mind worked despite the pain she surely felt. For a moment it was as if the past and the present were all entangled, and this woman before him was the one he had stumbled upon all those years ago, the first and only recipient of a youthful infatuation. But Jane was far different than the young girl he had romanced in the summer heat. There had been very little of the intellectual in that affair.

  “Venice,” he said, and Jane leaped on that information. He could see the wheels of her mind turning, as if it were the clue to his identity. But the information should be useless to her, as safe as any information could be. It was why he had allowed her to have it.

  His only mistake thus far had been in letting her live. And…he was no longer convinced that had been a mistake. Certainly not a permanent one as, if she ever did present to be a danger, he could still rectify the situation. But turning to death would be a shame. There was something about her that called to him, that cut through every social veneer and touched the part of himself he most thought of as him, as Gerard. Since Badeau’s death, only Gerard’s valet, his grandfather, and perhaps his half brother, Templeton, had ever come close to bridging the chasm that separated him from society, from an honest conversation. Each conversational exchange with Jane created an intimacy so oddly based in truth, and he wanted more. He wanted to be surprised by what she said next and then to delve deeper.

  He had always subscribed more to the deism of the p
hilosophes, but her presence in his life was perhaps the active hand of a higher power. If his half brother’s appearance just a few months earlier had been the herald of change to come, this woman could be that change: his salvation.

  Salvation. When had he decided he needed such a thing? That his life was that of a sinner? Yes, there were times when his work required him to be judge and jury over another human’s life, but during a time of war many men did as much, and then simply because they wore different color clothes. Not that his work was anything as dubiously noble as war. But salvation? Such an odd concept, even if he accepted the premise of his errant thought, how could this woman offer such a thing?

  Letting her live was not some magic key. One life allowed could not negate the ones he had extinguished. But he would not count his sins, would not linger on the past if it were simply to flagellate himself.

  “What ended the affair?” she asked, piercing his thoughts.

  “Naturally, the dramatic. But you jump ahead. Do you not wish to know of the girl? How it all progressed? The stolen kisses and secret meetings?”

  “A story of your love would bore me. It is the meeting and its end that are the most interesting and revealing.”

  He contemplated that. At length, he nodded. “My tutor discovered it.”

  “Aha! You did have a tutor. And he did not approve?”

  Gerard laughed, disliking that his laugh was tinged with a revealing edge. Badeau had been much slyer than that. The wily man had known that to forbid a fifteen-year-old boy anything was to ensure its triumph. Instead, Badeau had planted the seeds of doubt, told cautionary tales of dangerous love in the guise of lessons. Gerard’s bitterness was cut with amusement. The poison had done its work well. It was only later, after Badeau’s death, that Gerard understood what had occurred. But by then it did not matter. His tutor had done his best to prepare his charge for his profession. Gerard’s reason and intellect had dismissed any notion of resentment. Until six months ago when he’d been confronted with the oldest of his half siblings, the only one who carried their father’s name.

  Until the deepest dark of night when his troubled mind matched his troubled soul.

  Yes, soul. That he even countenanced the existence of such an ephemeral thing illuminated his struggle. His chest ached with emotion he would not acknowledge.

  “You are very far away.”

  He let out the breath he had unknowingly held. “I am contemplating my life.”

  Her eyes widened. She looked as surprised as he was at the honesty with which he answered. Yet something like relief or release came with the admission. Into the midst of this struggle had stepped this additional complication.

  Salvation.

  As if he regretted his life thus far and wished to be something other. How weak and pitiful an idea.

  “And?”

  “And nothing,” he said, cutting her probing short. “The past is what it is.” He studied her face. She was watching him equally intently, those pale blue eyes searching. She had a beauty that came together with each new expression, but when her face was still, objectively he could see she had plain features, nothing that would make her stand out. Except that she did. If he saw that, so would other men. “What of you?”

  She quirked an eyebrow in that supercilious way of hers, but she did not pretend to misunderstand his question. “The past is what it is.”

  A flippant answer but she was his captive. He should be the interrogator, the one unearthing answers.

  “Have you ever loved?” It was not a question he had ever imagined himself asking of anyone, and yet he waited for her answer with something bordering on breathless anticipation.

  “My life began pinned beneath a carriage.”

  He frowned. Flippant again. A dismissal. But he shrugged and turned from her as if he didn’t care. Why should he? He had not shared a fragment of his own story out of any wish to act on the promise of her knowing eyes, to forge a... connection.

  “I was answering you honestly,” she said. “I see now how you misunderstood but I mean that my life until that point…I was sleep-walking.” He turned back again to cautiously study her, to parse the words she offered so freely. She had struggled up to her elbows and the blanket gaped about her, revealing the mottled bruises where the carriage had pinned her. His stomach clenched and he swallowed back the unwanted, foreign sensation of guilt. “No, that’s not right. I was…in ignorance. And then, everything I knew took shape with stunning clarity.”

  “You were bleeding to death. Hallucinating,” he said, his voice cold. She was being fanciful and ridiculous, as was every word exchanged between them.

  “Yet I had never been more alive.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” It was too much to share, so much more than a careless story of the past. Perhaps she didn’t realize that this was the revelation of a woman who wished to be reborn. But he felt that desire deep inside his chest, an aching that needed to be set free. Like recognizing like. God, yes, he understood.

  Salvation.

  “Why did you let me live?”

  The words punched him, robbed him of his breath as his own moment of stunning clarity struck. Not only had he let her live but he had every intention of continuing to do so, come what may.

  “Instinct,” she whispered before he could speak, repeating his previous answer back to him.

  The air was thick, the intensity of the moment too sharp, and he looked away, to the stone walls of the ruined house. Struggling for breath, he turned back to the rain, which pounded more heavily, as if it knew it should underscore the tension between them—the tension within Gerard, whose skin tingled everywhere with anticipation.

  He was silent and in that yawning space, Jane’s thoughts churned. There was room for instinct in the world of logic and reason. She fully believed humans were able to pick up on clues and data imperceptible to their usual facilities. Clues that existed, not the fraud perpetrated by false prophets.

  She, too, had been acting on instinct. Was it wise to challenge him? To risk his ire and that he might decide she was less trouble to him dead? But the threat of death seemed very far away, and despite the shadows of his eyes, the darkness of his life, he was infinitely gentle with her. He had laughed, smiled, and met her honest conversation with truths of his own. Perhaps it was a grand trick, to gain her confidence for some unknown reason, but there were moments she thought he was as affected by her presence as deeply as he had already affected her life. She felt instinctively that she could say anything to this man.

  Despite that, she was nearly silent as he fed her, offered her his coat and took her out into the rain to tend to her needs. Later he examined the wound he had apparently sewn shut with small neat stitches while she was unconscious. An assassin and a surgeon.

  Jane loved the rain, loved the way it played with perception. A mist softened, a downpour blurred, and when a storm finally passed, everything clarified in its wake. Before her kidnapping she had always had the choice of remaining cozily indoors, by a fire, with a hot cup of tea. Now she felt the cold damp that seeped into the bones, chilled one from the inside out. She wasn’t certain anything would be clarified when this rain ended.

  “Keep me warm,” she said softly. Instinct, again. Instinct was perilously close to being ruled by emotion and yet…and yet it was irrational not to heed it in certain circumstances. When under threat…humans did what they needed to survive. She needed warmth now, but there was more to it than that. This was not purely a medicinal desire.

  He lay behind her, pulled the bundle of blanket and body close to his chest and she closed her eyes. Breathed him in. Listened to his breath, his heartbeat. Shivered as his warmth started to penetrate her. Shivered again when his hand stroked idly up and down her arm through the blanket. Pleasure unfurled within her and she gathered it up inside. It was wrong, most likely, to enjoy his touch, to feel safe in the embrace of a dangerous man, and yet she did. Executioner and nurse. But for her the threat was not bodily
death, no longer.

  “We are spending too much time together to remain nameless,” she said as she grew drowsy. “For now, I shall call you François.”

  “What’s in a name?” he quipped, and she silently filled in the rest of the Shakespeare quote by rote: that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But his next words were less sweet. “A sword is still a sword.”

  The implied threat jarred with the sweetness of his touch. Her exhaustion deepened. “Then François it is.”

  The progress of his hand stilled and he was silent. The silence lengthened and the edges of her consciousness softened.

  “Not François,” he said at length. His voice sounded deep and much further away. “Gerard will do.”

  Gerard. He said it the way a Frenchman would, and briefly she wondered if he realized that slip. Then, with the weight of the name repeating in her mind, she gave in to the insistence of his warmth and his soothing touch, and waking thought turned to slumber.

  Chapter Four

  The water was cold and just deep enough to reach her hips. She wanted to sink down to immerse herself completely. She leaned her head back to soak her hair and then reached for the bar of soap and found that the act of washing her hair was one that was beyond her current abilities.

  The sky might have cleared, he may have thought her strong enough for a bath—and yes, she could withstand the cold river water for the chance to no longer smell herself—but he did not have hair that fell past his waist.

  She eyed him where he lay, staring at the sky, ostensibly not looking at her, despite the fact that he had already seen her body in its entirety. It was different now, somehow, with her standing outside, on the path to healing. Embarrassment and something else, some desire to taunt propriety even more now that she was so far from civilization, warred within her.