Lady of Intrigue

by Sabrina Darby

  “They were seduced by Mozart and Bach,” Gerard suggested and she nodded in agreement.

  “He was very popular among the local society. Did good works when he was not conducting lessons. Played concerts at the church. Everyone admired him.”

  Gerard shifted, settled down, one arm resting on his raised knee and his chin resting on that. His hands were long, his fingers elegant and skillful and deadly. Yet so different from the pale, elongated hands of the music master that now, years later, she could remember down to the bluish veins.

  Suddenly she couldn’t bear to keep thinking about the story. She finished the tale in a rush, the words running together. “I walked in on him compromising Alice, my oldest cousin, by force. He had been careless. Locked the door to the hall but forgot that the music room shared a door with the library, where I had been sitting when I heard Alice’s brief muffled cry. I assumed she’d found a mouse or some other sort of thing.

  “He didn’t realize I was there until I hit him on his arm with the bow of the violoncello, and then he grabbed me”—she could still see his shirt hanging down over his sagging breeches, his forehead beaded in sweat—“twisted my arm until I dropped the bow, and told me that he and my cousin were in love and I wasn’t to speak of what I had seen to anyone. But Alice did not look as if she was in love and the force he used on me did not inspire me to believe him. To Alice, he said in what I perceived as a menacing voice although he had a smile on his face, ‘I shall leave you to handle your cousin, my dear.’”

  “He thought to convince you of your mistake.”

  “He had threatened her, convinced her that if she told anyone of the incident, she would forever be ruined. After he left the room, she threatened me in turn. She picked up a letter opener, waving it around as she gesticulated. I know she didn’t intend to hurt me, but in the altercation, I fell on it.” She rubbed idly at her stomach, over the scar that remained. “I didn’t tell anyone how the injury occurred, but I forced him to leave our town, told him I would keep silent only for Alice’s sake and only if he left immediately.”

  “A brave act for a young girl.”

  She snorted. She was glad of the scar. It served as a reminder that beneath a pleasant exterior could lie evil intent. “I was angry at myself for not doing more, but Alice was devastated. Why did I tell you this?” She wiped at her forehead, trying to remember the point she had intended to make but caught up in emotions that had long been dormant.

  “That is not the end of the story,” Gerard said, and startled she met his intent gaze. “What did you do?”

  She laughed nervously. He was right, and a part of her was pleased that he understood. “Years later, in London, I hired a man to inquire about the music teacher’s whereabouts. He still taught young women and who knew how many others he had hurt. I knew what I wished to do, to ruin him and force him into exile. He is in New South Wales the last I heard.”

  She’d sold her soul to do so. The elderly Earl of Landsdowne had seemed diabolical enough to know how to enact a financial ruin. As she had expected, he never questioned the why of her request nor revealed that request to her father or anyone else. Alice’s secret remained her own.

  “A woman after my own heart,” Gerard said with a laugh, unfolding himself.

  His words did a funny thing inside of her, as if someone had tickled her. Even more, she remembered the purpose of her story.

  “All of that is simply to say that I know what it is for a woman to be taken advantage of and you did not take advantage of me. Perhaps I did not wish to be here with you, would never have considered such a thing if it were asked of me, but I do not regret that kiss.” She studied his face, the lips that had claimed hers parted, his laugh stalled. “And yes,” she added, before she could formulate any more Lady Jane Langley style unfortunate thoughts, “I want you to kiss me again.”

  He shook his head. “All that strength, all that wisdom… You think you are in control of the world.”

  She didn’t understand what he meant but at the first caress of his hand on her cheek, she leaned into his warmth. Wakefulness and sleep blurred. Perhaps the kiss could wait. Perhaps, just now, to simply be touched was enough, as she fell back upon the bed, eyes drifting closed with a deep, overwhelming exhaustion.

  When she stirred against him, the first light of day was breaking in the sky. Over the hours he’d watched her shiver under the thin blanket, then again under the double layer of a blanket and his coat. Only when he’d lain next to her and pulled her body close to his, did she finally relax into a deep sleep. In those hours that he’d been awake, he’d sat against the cold hearth, waiting. Thinking.

  The rain of the day before had likely erased any tracks he had inadvertently made and yet discovery was still a threat. Descending from the shelter of this mountain with Jane held its own dangers. However, they could not stay here. Even if he wanted to linger, to watch the early light reveal the curve of her neck, her earlobe. Wanted to lick each place the light touched.

  He was hard against the soft roundness of her bottom, his trousers the only barrier between them, as the cloth of his shirt that she wore had risen up between them. With each passing moment it was easier to accept his desire and fascination for her, to accept that in these few short days something had kindled between them, something that transcended the prevailing codes of morality and society. Not that he adhered to those codes in the usual course of things.

  The gray light brightened to yellow, illuminating them both, and her eyelashes fluttered, then parted. She shifted, turned toward him, and for one moment, he had a glimpse beneath the loose shirt of the bruised, distended skin of her injured shoulder.

  His arousal fled and unease settled in his gut instead. It was easier to hide from truths in the darkness.

  “You look very fierce,” she whispered and he met her questioning gaze. Of course she was questioning, wishing to know his very thoughts. The bed was no proper bed and distinctly uncomfortable, and yet he wished to laze here longer, to enjoy the challenge of her conversation and the intimacy of the space.

  Such a domestic desire. What was it he wanted from her? What was it that he thought she could bring him? He watched her arm move and he was still stunned by her hand on his cheek, the pads of her fingers running over the rougher texture of his jaw.

  “In half an hour we will begin our way down the mountain to the main road,” he said, catching her hand in his and holding it there against his skin. “Each step will bring us closer to the rest of the world. You will think of how you can escape, with whom you can beg shelter and protection—it is only natural. But remember this. You are drawn to me as much as I am to you. Your life, for now, is with me.”

  “For now,” she said.

  He turned his head to press his lips to her palm. The skin was so soft. It was the hand of a woman who was protected and cosseted, even if her upbringing and education were slightly more unusual than the average young lady of society.

  As they dressed, he said more. The story he had concocted as he first tended to her. She was his wife, Beatrix, and had suffered a fall from her horse. The horse had not survived. They were traveling to see family in Hesse because his father was on his deathbed and thus they needed to travel with the swiftest speed possible, made slower by her injuries. He was tempting fate by trusting her to stick to the story. Once they were traveling, he would not be able to control all the variables. But remaining here was a greater risk.

  It was clear within the first half an hour of traveling that Jane’s pain was magnified by the movements of the horse. Instead, they walked side by side, and as they did, with the dust of the road and the sound of the horse’s breath heavy in their ears, words flowed.

  “Thanks to my father, I have seven half siblings of which I know,” Gerard said. “I met the legitimate heir this past winter.”

  “You envy him.”

  He laughed at her statement. “I am far richer than he is. I have land in Venice, in the Alps, Paris. I want for n
othing.”

  “But your life is in the shadows. I assume his is not.”

  She had so easily named what Gerard could not. Yes, his life was in the shadows, but he had always taken pride in it, understood that he was skilled and necessary, that there were few who could do the work that he did. While death was sometimes required, more often than not his work was the gathering of information and the couriering of documents across borders.

  “There was this night in Florence when my brother thought he was saving a man’s life and instead he put both of ours in danger.”

  “He thought you intended to kill a man and you did not?” Jane asked.

  Gerard nodded. That night Gerard’s work had not been simply about acquiring information. Rather, he had needed to keep information from reaching other hands. As a result of his brother’s interference he had had to hunt down the thief once more.

  “What a fool he was,” Jane said, and Gerard smiled. This woman would never do anything so foolish. She was cool and collected, even under duress.

  “What of your other siblings?”

  “What of them?”

  “Are they, too, trained as you?”

  “I should not know. My grandfather told me of them as a cautionary tale against the excesses of my father. I hunted them down.”

  Of course he had.

  “Three still live. Marie, she is married, her life settled. Giana, I found her in Florence working in a brothel as a maid. I placed her in a convent. She was not grateful.” He laughed. “Thomas is not grateful for my interference either. I am told he runs away from his school regularly. But I pay well for them to hunt him down and drag him back.”

  “Thomas…”

  “Born to an English mother, yes.”

  “Then your grandfather—”

  “As best I know cares nothing for him. I was the fortunate one.”

  Fortunate. Raised to be a man’s lackey, his dagger. His poison. But Gerard seemed so confident in his power. Though he had power over her life for now, there were men who made laws, strategized, planned…and then used men such as Gerard to further their purpose. She had spent her life amongst these men.

  “Once I became my father’s unofficial factotum, a new world opened up to me,” she said. “Instead of reading about politics in the daily papers, or waiting months after the fact for a decent analysis, I listened and conversed with the men who were making the important decisions and were manipulating events in order to achieve the outcomes they desired. There were women, too, of course. The occasional wife or mistress who hosted a dinner or a salon. But more often these were gatherings for men only. If I was quiet and spoke only when spoken to, I was forgiven my female nature.”

  Gerard laughed. “Women have as much an interest in politics as men. Some day they shall have an equal say.”

  “How radical of you.” And it was. His statement was more in line with Mary Wollstonecraft and women of her ilk, women with whom Jane had never identified. Hearing him speak in such a way unnerved her.

  “What? An intelligent woman such as yourself does not believe you could govern your nation as well as a man? I will admit to superior strength, and perhaps I would not place the fate of a nation in that of most women, as poorly educated as they are, but you…”

  He said nothing she would not admit to without a blush, and yet, the words felt like a compliment.

  “I am practical,” she said with a shrug. “Certainly a woman can govern, as did our Elizabeth, but…” She trailed off. Perhaps it was simply that she had been surrounded by men for most of her life, had been molded by their points of view. Men who were conservative in their approach to governance.

  Gerard was different. He had nothing to lose.

  She shook her head. As much as she could try to dismiss his point of view because it made her uncomfortable, she was being closed-minded and unreasonable. In this matter, had outside forces other than her own reason shaped her vaunted practicality? By inertia rather than momentum? Exhaustion struck her and she stumbled over a pebble. Ridiculous, she thought, even as she caught herself.

  His hand on her upper arm startled her, and though its intent was to steady her, she wavered where she stood. Her vision wavered as well before she realized that the movement she saw was of a cart pulled by a lone horse, rumbling over the road toward them. Exhaustion fled as every sense focused. She had not seen another person other than Gerard since the wreck.

  “A farmer transporting his wares,” Gerard murmured. “Don’t risk his life because you feel you must make some futile attempt to escape.”

  Jane’s stomach twisted and cold dread slid down her back at his casual threat. One moment they were exchanging intimacies as if they were friends but then the outside world intruded. How could she have forgotten for a moment that assassin was not some word to describe a man with a tragic past? Gerard was a man who had and would kill.

  The farmer rumbled past with the briefest of nods. She looked over her shoulder to watch him disappear down the road. Had her silence been practicality or cowardice?

  “You made the right choice,” Gerard said quietly.

  Anger flared within her, making her forget her exhaustion. “I made the choice you wanted me to make. This may be your life but I wish to return to mine.”

  “This is your life now,” he said, before sweeping her up off her feet. He had done such so many times over the past few days that it almost felt normal and natural. Yet, she wanted her own strength; she needed to rely only on herself.

  “For now,” she said, as she had earlier that morning. Soon she would be recovered, and an escape would not require endangering anyone else.

  “For now,” he said, and with that tacit acknowledgment that someday she would leave, tension fled from Jane’s body and she curled against his body in relief.

  Chapter Seven

  They traveled in small stages, alternating between companionable silence and conversation. She didn’t try to escape the first night they took a room at an inn, pretending to be husband and wife on the way to visit relatives, or the next night, or the next after that. Jane’s injuries were not so visible if one did not watch how carefully she walked, how she barely moved her arm. Gerard conversed easily with nearly everyone they met, and she understood much of what they said, but the subtleties of the different dialects and variations of the German tongue eluded her. She had studied the language from books, supplemented by an Austrian tutor. With England at war for much of her adult life, she had rarely traveled beyond England’s shores.

  Gerard, however, had traveled as far east as Moscow and as far west as Dublin.

  “At sixteen, I was sent for my first employment from Venice to Berlin to collect a parcel, a locked box. It was easy to discover its hidden contents. I avoided the trap of attempting to open its lock and instead dismantled it from the bottom, revealing the hidden compartment. However, the papers within were relatively unimportant.”

  “It was a test,” Jane said, shaking her head at the world in which he had grown up, one in which intellectual games were translated into physical tasks, in which wit was a matter of life and death.

  “Yes.”

  “And did you pass? Was it a test of your loyalty and discretion or of your skill?”

  Gerard laughed. “Both, I believe. I was roundly scolded, but imagine I would have been equally scolded if I had not successfully opened it.”

  The stories overlapped sometimes, so that she’d heard parts of one then folded up with other years of his life, and so she found herself doing the same. She understood what they were doing, recounting their histories, forging them for each other. Histories were more real when told, shaped through current perspectives. This story of his life he was molding just for her, leaving out the smallest details that would reveal his identity. She did the same. But despite the small omissions, this room, the burnt out cottage and the other shelters they had found in the last days had become wellsprings of truths. She knew deeply that here they were their most open
and their most fragile. That he was to her the most deadly, and she to him. They could entrust only so much.

  By most accounts, Jane’s life had been easy. She had her father’s hard won respect and society beamed upon her. There had been the slight tremble when she had befriended the slightly scandalous new Lady Templeton, but even then few had judged Jane. After all, Lady Jane Langley would never act outside of reason, would never debase herself for love, and her weakness in championing a once courtesan was chalked up to her mannish upbringing.

  She would never do anything as shocking as chase after a man, demand he love her after he had made clear to all society that he scorned her. Equally, she would never admire a man who did the same to her.

  “It is very important to you that no one think you weak,” Gerard said one afternoon.

  The words troubled her, as if Gerard were pointing out just how weak she was. “I don’t care what people…” A lie. She would not lie to him. Or to herself.

  “You care what your father thinks.”

  She nodded. “But society? Whose opinion should I consider?”

  “No one’s.”

  She met his gaze. Of course, this man with his shadowy life would care for nothing. Except…

  “Your grandfather.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “You try to please him.”

  Gerard laughed, and Jane’s stomach tumbled. Apparently she cared about Gerard’s opinion as well. She swallowed hard.

  “You do,” she insisted, standing her ground despite his dismissive laugh. “In your stories, he stands as this mysterious benefactor. He’s the reason you do anything you do.”

  “Ah, yes. As a boy, I suppose I did try to please him. As I tried to please my tutor.” He rubbed his chin and then dropped his hand, shaking his head. “But a man learns that he can only please himself. None other matters. Your father, he does not matter. And, as you say, society’s opinion is insignificant. All that matters is you.”

  That night, at yet another inn, she lay a hand’s breadth away, warm enough between the clean sheets but craving his heat. In that shared bed, they returned again to his grandfather, to his past.