Lady of Intrigue

by Sabrina Darby

  “I grew up in Paris,” he repeated, starting the story again. “I was raised the first few years by my mother, but then on my sixth birthday a man showed up. I thought he was my father at first, but I found out that he was to be my tutor, sent by a distant grandfather. Father to my own father.”

  He had said as much already, but he linked it together now, thawing, the way she was thawing, discovering how she felt about the simple facts she knew.

  The curtain was open to let the moonlight stream in, and she could see her arm, bare beneath the short shoulder of her rough chemise. She could see him, too, lying on his side next to her in a foreign bed, talking companionably as if there were nothing strange about any of this at all.

  “In many ways,” he said, “my tutor was my father and I took his name when I came of age to do such a thing.”

  The first name he had taken for himself. Then he created numerous identities, but not one satisfied the void of birth: he could not take his father’s name as his brother had done. The message beneath his words was clear, yet Jane suspected Gerard was still unaware of that significance.

  “I was flattered at first that my grandfather took notice of me. I longed to meet him. Dreamed of a day he would bring me to live with him. I dreamed of fields and open space and horses.”

  She listened to his words, but even more she listened to his voice, to the rhythmic cadence of his speech, the way it slipped every so often from the clipped English to the hint of an accent, and then, on very rare occasions, into French.

  “You are half English, then?”

  His lips twisted.

  “Your accent,” she said with a shrug that then made her gasp from the pain.

  “I never knew my father, but I knew of him, and I knew how he died. This noble father of mine died like any other rutting fool—ill of disease.”

  “You said the pox.”

  “Syphilis.”

  He looked at her, waiting for shock or judgment, and then it didn’t come, just as he should have known it wouldn’t, because this woman was unusual. Was as perfectly chosen for him as much as the tutor who had appeared on his birthday, only this time, it wasn’t his grandfather who had arranged the gift. It was almost enough to make Gerard believe in a god.

  “I had a very different childhood than you,” Jane said softly. “My mother died at my birth. I was raised by my nanny, well, by a succession of nannies until finally I made my father realize I wasn’t just a girl. I was his child and his heir, at least, of whatever will not go to my cousin, James, who stands to inherit…” She stopped herself. There were only so many earls in England. She coughed to try and cover the mistake but he was watching her so intently and from the way his lips thinned, she knew he knew and was displeased. Her own lips twisted before she continued in a bit of a rush. “And when I was fourteen, finally he treated me that way. We’ve been inseparable ever since. I’ve learned so much from following him, listening to his friends.”

  “The men you admired.”

  She laughed. Of course, he would remember that. “Are you jealous of them?”

  “Yes.”

  He grabbed her face as he admitted to it. She was surprised at his honest vehemence and her pulse raced at his sudden proximity, at the heat that grew between them. In the dim light, his eyes were dark pools.

  “I would be jealous of any man who came before me,” he said.

  His lips claimed hers. The way he had said he wouldn’t, that he hadn’t for some four nights, even as he slept beside her, often with her head on his shoulder as they drifted to sleep. But this was the opposite of sleep. Firm and demanding, he awakened her skin. Sensation radiated, vibrated throughout her. His body pressed against hers, pinning her against the mattress and between his hot mouth and the wonder of what he would do next, her breath caught. If he moved his hand lower, what would she do? If he moved his lips?

  She would stop him, because her virginity would go with her to the marriage bed, but there were many points between a kiss and a deflowering, and inexperienced as Jane was, she was not ignorant.

  With her left hand, she grasped the bare skin of his upper arm, ran her fingers over the flexed muscles. She parted her legs and his hips settled between hers, his weight welcome, the stiffness of his arousal fascinating and hot, separated only by her chemise. His hips rocked against her and then with a groan he pulled away, rolled onto his back and rested his forearm against his head. Cold and empty, she reached for him, and he pushed her hand away.

  “Not yet,” he said.

  “Not ever,” she corrected with a nervous laugh.

  “Not yet,” he returned, lowering his arm and turning his head to look at her. “This is inevitable.”

  Deep down in her body she understood him, knew his words to be true. But only true in this strange world they had created between them. Once she left, once she was back in England, the spell would be broken.

  “You would ruin me? What is it you intend to do with me?”

  He was not ready to answer that question because he did not yet know what he would do with her. What would come of his foolish intuition?

  He was still wondering when they arrived at his small apartment in Frankfurt on Main. It was one he knew well. Owned under an alias, he stopped there several times a year as he crisscrossed the continent. Over the years he had discovered that there were benefits and dangers to inns just as there were to private residences, but at least at a residence he would find a change of clothes, his own belongings, even if he arrived in the dead of night with no valise or trunk. In fact, the only trunk within had been sent shortly after he acquired the flat, along with simple furniture befitting a man of business who traveled frequently.

  The woman who lived below him opened her door and greeted him, stared pointedly at Jane until Gerard introduced her as his wife. Jane chatted with the elderly woman as if she were not traveling under duress and Gerard was only able to break the conversation by agreeing that Jane and he would join his neighbor for dinner that night.

  “Think of it as a test,” Jane said when they were alone.

  Of her loyalty or of her stealthiness. Would she be able to unlock the chains with which he had bound her?

  “You frighten me.” Yet he was pleased, and he looked forward to seeing what Jane would do. The last several times that they had stayed at inns she had been exhausted by the time they arrived. Yes, she could have sounded the alarm at any time but he trusted in Jane’s good sense not to put herself in a potentially more dangerous situation when she was at her weakest.

  Trust.

  That he had any sort of trust in her was nothing short of miraculous. That he used a word such as miraculous to describe it was even more confounding. But as tired as she was, the dark circles under her eyes pronounced, her lips thin with barely concealed pain, it was as yet early afternoon. She would have time to rest, to formulate her thoughts or a plan.

  A test, she had said. Just as she had guessed he would make an attempt to run when he described his first day with Badeau, so he knew she would not be satisfied unless she had as well. Unless he could convince her to stay. If that was what he wanted.

  She kept asking what he intended and he kept refusing to say, but that was because he was uneasy with the answer bubbling at the edges of his thoughts. That he liked her company. That he liked being able to share parts of himself, share the shadows. That he wanted to drag her into them fully and make her his own. Yet she was almost surely the daughter of some nobleman or someone else of some importance in English society. What would make her satisfied to stay with him?

  Next to him, Jane looked around the barren rooms. It was a modest apartment—he saw no reason to keep the dozen some homes he had all at the same level of ornate furnishings.

  “I know enough to be the death of you,” she said softly. He stiffened, tension coiling in his muscles. He would have to leave these rooms, this identity behind, and clean up everywhere else he used this identity as well, but she could make no connection
to Badeau. And yet, he knew she was right. Deep down in his bones he knew, as he had known when he first spared her life. More than anything, he was no longer the immovable fortress he had been. She had seen his weaknesses. He had been the one to make them visible to her.

  “Come sit,” he said, brushing the warning of her words aside. “We shall freeze in here sooner than that.”

  He moved to the cold, empty fireplace, pulled wood from the stack beside the mantle and set about coaxing out the warmth-giving flames. The tinder crackled as he worked. He could hear the creaking of wood as she shifted, settling more fully on the sofa.

  “Why did you first kill?”

  He hissed and pulled his thumb back from the hot ember that had scalded him.

  “The first time I killed a man,” he repeated slowly. “Why do you wish to know that?”

  This was the story he would not tell her. Not yet, perhaps not ever. He could not share the numbness that had made him see the world coolly, logically. That had made him impervious to the work that needed to be done.

  “Because I need to know if I should hate you.”

  The statement hit him in the gut. He was shocked that she cared, and not shocked at all.

  “Don’t you?” It would only be natural for her to do so. Yet, he wanted—the words all whispered in his brain, competing for precedence—salvation, love, desire, hope, joy…this woman.

  The embers blossomed into flame. He added another log and then sat back, brushing his hands on his trousers. She looked troubled, and her usually forthright gaze did not meet his.

  “You are exactly who I thought you were in the moment I first saw you. But I did not realize I would also come to…admire you.”

  Nausea struck him again, low and thick. He wanted to void himself of everything he was that was not worthy of this woman, that she would not accept. And he wanted her in a way he had never desired anything before in his life. With a sense of permanence. Of future. A sense that he did indeed have something to lose.

  “And why did you kill Powell?”

  “Why is any man targeted for death?” he shot back. “Greed, money, power. Love, lust, faith, have your pick.”

  “Which one was Powell?”

  Greed, money, and lust. A trifecta of sin, but to give Jane even that much was to open the door to more questions.

  “Did you care for him?” he finally demanded, frustrated by the same challenging persistence that he admired.

  “He amused me.”

  Jealousy shot through him, startling him with its force.

  “As did his wife,” she said. “But I was not one of his many lovers.” He raised an eyebrow at that. Powell had not been the most discreet but neither had he been terribly indiscreet, other than in bed. “Oh, don’t look so shocked that I know of that. He confided in me that he meant to seduce me before we even boarded the carriage.”

  The jealousy turned into a rage. If he had not killed the man, he likely would have then. To try and seduce a young woman with his wife in the same carriage took enormous gall.

  “You look so fierce. He only half meant it,” she said with a thin laugh. Her face was pale and drawn. She looked tired and he wanted nothing more at that moment than to hold her and protect her, to give her some of his strength. “You know how these men are, they flirt and seduce but it is all to while away the time. I take none of it seriously.”

  “The man was a bounder,” he said, his voice tight and low. He stood up and retrieved a blanket from the cupboard where they were stored. He paid a woman to come by monthly to dust, wash, and launder, make certain the woodpile was full and the larder had enough provisions to last him at least a night or two. He usually took his meals at the inn down the street, but he liked to be prepared for every eventuality. He spread the blanket over Jane. “I am going to light the fire in the bedroom, too, and then you can sleep.”

  She rested her head back on the arm of the sofa. The image of her sleepily waiting for him stayed with him as he readied the bedroom. But when he returned her eyes were fully closed in slumber. He wavered for a moment. He needed to go into town, conduct business while he was here, buy food and other supplies. After hesitating, he lifted her up, blanket and all. She snuggled against him, her eyelashes fluttering.

  “I’m moving you to the bed, Jane,” he said softly. “I shall undress you so that you are more comfortable.”

  He wasn’t certain why he felt he needed to tell her of his intended actions. He had undressed and tended to her body dozens of times, and yet, as she grew stronger, everything was changing. She nodded her head against him and that consent satisfied him. He pulled down the coverlet on the bed and laid her down on the cool sheets. The fire in the hearth would soon chase the chill from the room.

  He undressed her as dispassionately as possible, focusing on her still healing injuries to distract him from the woman he desired. Finally, he tucked the coverlet around her, and then laid the blanket above that.

  She reached for him, and he bent over, pressed a kiss to that hand before tucking it back under the covers. How many times had he lain beside her to lend her his warmth? That was all she wanted. Yet, as he left her, slipped quietly out of the bedroom and locked the door, his chest was full with tenderness, with the dream that she reached for him for something more.

  The bed was empty, the sheets tangled up, but he found her in an instant, stretched out before the fireplace, wrapped in a blanket. One bare leg stretched out, one knee bent and tucked toward her chest. All that careful awareness, all that sharp intellect, softened in sleep, melted into a simple beauty.

  He felt dizzy, oddly buoyant. How quickly his world had turned over, sideways, inside out and unrecognizable. How swiftly this one woman had become the center of his new existence. When he thought of returning home, he had thought of returning to her.

  She awakened the fullness of both his desire and his more tender emotions—emotions he had long ago discarded as weakness. But he did not feel weaker for them now. Instead he was invigorated. He was…

  In love.

  As quickly as he thought the words, he heard Badeau’s voice in his head.

  Do not be fooled by love, my son. It has been the undoing of too many good men.

  Gerard had never thought to ask his mentor if love had been his undoing. Certainly he could see the dangers here. Already he had broken his code, strayed from his path. Already he was entertaining a life vastly divergent from the one he had known, one in which he and Jane could be together, away from the darkness. He had not known the depths of the dark in which he lived until she had come into it, illuminating everything.

  He shrugged out of his coat, undid the simple cloth at his neck and then lowered himself to his knees by her side. How difficult would it be to start a new life? To walk away from his clients, from even his grandfather’s requests, to be a husband. To be, perhaps, a father.

  A dark tendril of unease threaded through him, but he pushed it away. He didn’t need to think so far ahead. Although painstakingly planning and designing multiple iterations of the future were elements of his success and the reason he had not only survived thus far but also amassed a respectable fortune, he did not want to look beyond the next day.

  Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…

  He had never been a coward and yet now he refused to consider any iteration but the one he wanted most: Jane to be his. She shifted, her head lolling to the side. The creamy expanse of her neck called to him but he satisfied himself by imagining his tongue licking down its length, his lips coaxing sighs of pleasure from her lips.

  His gaze trailed down to where the skin of her shoulder revealed by the blanket was still bruised. The reason he would not yet make her his own the way he wished to, body to body, inside of her. That uneasy, foreign sensation of guilt slithered through him again. A casualty, but Jane should never have been one, and yet she wouldn’t be in his life if she had not. Could he regret that injury?

  Did she?

  She must know what t
hey had been doing these past few days as they recounted stories and shared their truths. Even as they struggled to hide some part of themselves, they were seducing each other’s minds. Each touch built on the foundation created with words. Not the way love was described by troubadours but the very unusualness of its nature made him doubt it less, made him doubt Badeau’s warning more.

  She shifted again, lifting her chin, her eyelashes fluttering, her back arching slightly, and then those pale blue eyes were gazing at him.

  “How long have you been back?”

  “Long enough to imagine every way I wish to make love to you.” But that was not true. He had only barely scratched the surface of his desire.

  She flushed, and the pink glow pleased him. He reached for her outstretched leg, took her foot in his hand, studied it. Not a dainty foot but well formed, strong. He kneaded the muscles with his fingers as he explored this small part of her body that he dared to touch.

  She let out a sigh and he looked up to catch an expression of absolute pleasure on her face. The sight fascinated him, enticed him, made him want to give her every sort of pleasure, to see her undulate with climax, melt with post-coital languor.

  “I did not know a foot could feel so…” She rested her head back against the stone of the mantle again.

  He laughed. He did not know how it felt. No one had ever touched him so. But he knew well that pleasure came in unexpected forms. He moved his exploration to the soft skin of her ankle, fingers gliding firmly over the flesh and bone.

  “Where were you?” she asked.

  “Business,” he said simply. But he wanted to tell her more, share the details of his movements. That he had visited his banker here in Frankfurt, that he had sent correspondence to his man in Paris, to his client in Vienna. Tied up threads that needed to be tied.

  “I suppose I must accept that very unsatisfying answer. I was terribly bored in your absence. I could not find a single book other than the Bible in this room.”