Lady of Intrigue

by Sabrina Darby

  “Come with me, in any event,” he urged. “We’ll go to Switzerland.”

  “And rusticate?” She said the word with such derision that he understood immediately. Neither of them would want a safe life, away from society, hiding simply so they could be together. Yet, he wanted her more than anything he had ever wanted in his life.

  “There will be a way.”

  He hooked her leg over his arm, then unfastened the falls of his breeches with his other hand and pulled aside the voluminous material of his shirt to free himself. He rocked against her, naked flesh to naked flesh.

  She felt so good. And it was Jane in his arms. Jane, who knew him like no other, who listened to his stories, connected disparate strands and challenged his understanding of the world. Jane, who made him want to be the honorable man that a young Gerard had once thought he would become before he’d ruthlessly stifled every softer emotion he had ever had under the very need to survive.

  “I didn’t tell anyone about you.”

  He shook his head. His world was focused on her damp heat parting around him as he placed himself where he wished to be most.

  “I didn’t think you would,” he managed to say, and lowered his mouth to her neck, breathed in her scent. He wanted to be enveloped in Jane, in her touch, her scent, her mind, in this woman who had become a symbol of everything good to him.

  “This will ruin me.”

  He paused. She was wet and hot against him. Temptingly soft.

  “Do you care?” He waited for her answer, holding back despite the deepest urge to push forward, drive himself up into her. He had never wished to force her to be his. That was where the comparison with Badeau’s actions broke down. Badeau had wanted Gerard to learn the futility of running, to recognize the power and greater cunning of the tutor. While Gerard did not intend to let Jane go, he would not force her to leave with him, to do anything that made a return to her old life impossible. Despite the manner of their meeting, he wanted her with him willingly.

  “No.” Her hips rocked against him, the invitation he wanted more than anything, and triumphant he surged forward. He sucked in his breath at the feel of her parting for him, surrounding him, muscles gripping him. He grasped her hips tighter and pulled her down to meet him. Her own sharp inhale sounded in his ears. He’d hurt her. Of course he had.

  He’d been first.

  Blood thundered in his head, surged through his body, with the primal satisfaction of claiming her with his body. He didn’t stop. There was no need to with her clasping him between her thighs, pulling at him with her hands. He heard nothing except the rushing of blood in his ears, the pounding of his heart, her breathy little cries against his ear and the slick suction of his flesh and hers coming together and parting again and again.

  “Jane,” he said, his voice a guttural exclamation against her neck. She cried out again, and he found her lips, took the sound into his mouth even as his body trembled with his release. The world, sight, everything was lost except the scent of her. The scent of them.

  He moved against her more slowly, savoring the feel of her around him. He didn’t want to move, to step away and admit reality. “I’ll find a way.”

  She didn’t speak, but he felt the touch of her lips against him, and he shivered with renewed sensation. Too much. Yet he still didn’t move, even when the exploration of her tongue brought all of his sensitized skin to something more overwhelming than climax. Her touch pierced through his armor.

  “You won’t want for anything,” he said. She was the daughter of an earl, one who was not in impecunious circumstances. He had not the wealth of kings but certainly he could provide her with the comforts to which she was accustomed.

  “Other than my position in society and the respect of my friends. You are nobody, Gerard.”

  Cold slithered down his chest, coiled around his heart. He resisted the truth of her words for a moment, focusing on her heat, on the pleasure that still thrummed through him. Then, slowly, he slid from her body. Her words were matter-of-fact and in her world they were true, but not in his. He held the lives of men in his hands. Whether as courier, spy, negotiator or assassin, he’d changed events countless times, as much as any one of these diplomats did with the ink of their pens.

  He refastened the falls of his trousers, aware that he was sticky not only with their pleasure, but also with her blood. Blood. His memory flashed with the image of her nearly crushed under the carriage, despite the obvious pain, staring at him with that same matter-of-fact expression. This was the Jane he wanted. Strong and assured. If she ran away with him so easily, he would doubt her.

  Her gown dropped between them, the curtain closing on this act. He knew well what he must do next. He would win her for his own, and in doing so…in doing so he would prove to her that he could exist in her society as much as she did.

  “You care so much for the approbation of society.”

  “Perhaps I do,” she said, lifting her chin slightly. The movement made him smile.

  “Then I shall simply have to find a way for you to have society and for me to have you.” Easier said than done, but not impossible.

  “You think Lord Landsdowne will help you?”

  Gerard stilled, the cold spreading. He ran through the stories he had shared, hundreds of thousands of words chattering in his head as he tried to sort them, to find where he had failed in his attempt to share his life without revealing his identity.

  “My father and he are great friends,” Jane said. “The story of his scapegrace son and his seven bastards is not unknown to me.”

  He had been careless. Of course, he had been careless to let her live, and to let her escape. This was what she had meant that night in Frankfurt. The stories had all come together for her more than he had realized. He had not imagined that she would have enough prior information to decode the disparate knowledge. His carelessness was yet another way in which she had changed him, made continuing in his life of shadows impossible. Carelessness led to death. But Jane would not be the death of him, despite what she had said. She was light and life. The life he wanted for himself.

  He considered her words. His grandfather was the reason Gerard’s work was what it was. There was a cool respect between them. Gerard had valued it more before he had met his half brother, the heir. Still, it was not impossible that the Earl of Landsdowne would officially take him under his wing and introduce his wealthy bastard grandson to society. The purchase of an estate, perhaps the procurement of a baronetcy or something more…

  “My grandfather owes me,” he said, leaving the details for later thought. His words were an understatement. The scales were tilted far in Gerard’s favor.

  “He owes no one. If you think he would acknowledge any debt then you don’t know him as well as I. Of course, I’ve been sharing a table with him every other week for the last three years.”

  This he had not known, as even once he had determined her identity, he still had known nothing about her other than that she was the daughter of Lord Langley, friend to his grandfather. He did know that Lord Langley was well versed in the history of the German states and principalities and related to at least one dynastic family.

  “The only thing I do not know…” Her voice was a pained whisper. “Is he the one? Is he responsible for Lord Powell?”

  “No,” Gerard said. It was more than he should admit but he could give her this much. She was silent, her expression inscrutable.

  Then she reached around him, opened the door slowly. Light seeped in around the edges. She peeked through the opening, but he did not look, did not care. Tumultuous thoughts and emotions ravaged him. He had never known less who he was.

  “There is no one there,” she said. “I think it best if we part now.” She tried to move around him but he wrapped his hand around her waist, blocking her way, clinging to her and ashamed of his weakness.

  “This is not over, Jane,” he said roughly.

  Not over. Of course, it wasn’t over. He was writte
n indelibly on her skin, on her mind. He was a part of her soul now, had awakened that part of her that she had long ruthlessly ignored. It was not over but she could not be with him.

  “Why did you kill Lord Powell?” she asked, clearly startling him with the question. But she needed to know.

  “I cannot tell you.” Frustration stiffened her at his words. “To do so would place you in danger. As it is, I am loath to leave you. If anyone suspects…and they will suspect, out of an abundance of caution.”

  She had thought of this but it seemed ridiculous that anyone might consider her a threat. She was a British subject in the middle of delicate negotiations. Assassinations conducted here would be closely scrutinized, might cause war anew.

  “No one would dare assault me. Not here with my father, with half the courts of Europe in attendance.”

  “This is exactly where they would. When the death of an unimportant woman would barely take notice.”

  “You flatter me.”

  “You are important to me.” Liquid warmth coursed through her body and she wanted to push away from him, push away the desire to hold him close and be with him forever, go wherever he wanted. If by some miraculous method he managed to make it possible for them to be together— She stopped the useless, heartbreaking thought. Instead, she forced words out that had nothing to do with emotion, that were exactly the sort of statement the logical and reasonable Lady Jane Langley would utter. “It would be an incident of international importance.”

  “These people do not care about borders.”

  A frisson of fear added to her confusion. Who were these people for whom he worked?

  “Tell me at least that he deserved his death.”

  His low laugh mocked her. “I am certain Powell would think not, but those who wished him gone thought he did. I am no hero, Jane. You cannot make me one.”

  “But I cannot believe—”

  He cut her off. “You asked how I felt when I first killed a man. Then I did it believing I was doing something good. But death is merely a tool to an end. When we kill, we kill ourselves.”

  A deep pain constricted her heart. She did not need to know the specifics of the story of his first kill to understand the significance of its effect. Damn Landsdowne! Gerard had never had a chance. Given to an assassin to raise and tricked into committing an unjust murder in the name of honor, bit by bit Gerard had lost any sense of his own.

  He wanted her to run away with him because he wanted a way out of the life he led. But she had said no, because she had been thinking only of herself, of her comfort, of reality.

  She choked back a sob, pressing her fist to her mouth, blinking rapidly to stop the wetness from falling to her cheeks.

  He reached out, brushed his thumb across her cheek, wiping at the tears.

  “I want your love, Jane, and I want you. But I cannot change the man I have been, only the man I will be.” His lips pressed against hers briefly, his breath warming her face. “Consider it. Us. It is not impossible.”

  Then his hand was gone from her cheek, and he was gone from the room, and she was alone. Far more alone than she had ever been in her life, because she’d had a glimpse of what it would be like to be with him. She wanted to run after him, draw him back, and tell him she would love him. She would run away with him. She would—

  No. As he had said, he could not change the man he had been. It would be one thing if she knew fully who that man was, so she could make a decision based on facts, on knowledge. Instead, he was asking her to go against everything rational and to make a decision steeped in emotion.

  The way she was still steeped in his scent.

  Chapter Ten

  The year was 1799. Gerard was sixteen and Venice had lived through two tumultuous years, first losing its independence to Bonaparte’s France and then enduring the ignominy of being transferred as a possession to Austria. Gerard, though French by birth, had begun to identify firmly with the elegant City of Water.

  It was more a part of him than any other. Its narrow winding passageways that opened up into bustling squares, the terra firma and the islands connected by bridges and canals, shadowy corners and life that paralleled the respectable life of day, all echoed inside of him.

  The only admirable benefit of the brief French rule had been the end to the gates of the Ghetto, the corner of Venice that he had sometimes secretly visited, seeking an understanding of that part of his ancestry that had rejected him in Paris. He never admitted to any of the Jews within that his mother had been a Jew, but he learned of their ways, studied their language and scripture, held a certain sympathy for their concerns.

  In 1799, the French were gone and the Austrians who replaced them were laughable, and from the first Badeau was involved in the resistance. Secretly, of course.

  And Gerard, full of youthful passion and idealism, latched on to the cause as well. Despite centuries of intrigue, not very much came of the secret meetings. Until the day Badeau took Gerard into a windowless interior room and explained his dilemma. An Austrian was arriving the following day. The man knew Badeau or he would never impose on Gerard in such a way.

  A simple matter of slipping powder into his drink at the inn. Anyone could do it, but he trusted Gerard most, and once the man was unconscious, Gerard could retrieve the important papers the man carried with him that were perhaps on his person, or in his room. Badeau depended on Gerard to discern.

  A seemingly harmless exercise and one that would help the resistance, as the papers were supposed to reveal Austria’s plans for the city. It was easy to do as Badeau wished. But when Gerard was upstairs in the man’s room, the leather satchel with the papers in his hand, there was a commotion downstairs. A thundering of footsteps. The Austrian slammed open the door to his room and fell at Gerard’s feet in a pool of vomit.

  Dead. Because of him.

  He stumbled out of the room, down the backstairs, past the maid scrubbing sheets who stared at him, and out into the night. He knew even as he went that he was being careless, that his haste would tie him to the death more surely than proximity. But he needed to escape the bulging eyes that had stared at him out of a terrified mask of death.

  That had been Gerard’s first kill and he had been horrified. Something had gone wrong. The Austrian was not meant to die, only to be inconvenienced long enough to obtain the papers. For hours, Gerard could not return to the house he shared with his tutor, could not reveal what had happened. Could not come to terms with the death he had perpetrated, with the images that snapped through his mind.

  But he slunk into the house in the wee hours of morning, and in the darkness through which he had tried to tread silently, a hand shot out, grabbed him by the shirt and pinned him against the wall.

  “Where have you been, boy?”

  Gerard still remembered the harsh staccato of Badeau’s demand, the angriest he had ever been. Had he found out somehow? Of course, he must have. Badeau knew everything that happened in Venice.

  “I…I didn’t mean to kill him.” His voice had shaken with the words and tears on his cheeks had unmanned him. It was dark but Badeau would miss nothing.

  Badeau slid his hand down and pulled the satchel from Gerard’s shoulder.

  “Did you get the papers?”

  Gerard nodded, and then, unsure if his tutor could see the gesture in the darkness, sputtered, “Yes.”

  “Good. Next time you will not tarry. You will report immediately to me. And next time, you will intend to kill.”

  Badeau stepped away, his breath the only indication that he was still in the room. But leaving.

  The meaning of his last command hit Gerard all at once with the force of a punch to the stomach, knocked the wind out of him. Gasping for breath, he reached back to the stone of the wall to support himself. Surely he had misunderstood.

  “Sir!”

  The impatient swivel of Badeau’s leather-clad heel on the floor sounded loudly in the room.

  “Don’t be tiresome, son. This is not a
game. He had to die.” Badeau confirmed the worst with those three short sentences.

  “And the papers?” Gerard asked, desperately, needing some proof that what he had done had been for a just cause.

  “We shall see. Go to bed.”

  Red tinged his sight, and he charged across the room blindly, trusting his senses and instincts, the ones he had trained, to find his tutor in the dark, at the foot of the stairs. He pulled his fist back to strike and then the impact of Badeau’s knee, his arm, his hand brought the ground rushing up to meet Gerard’s face. He slammed into the floor painfully, his teeth pressed hard against his lips. His arm wrenched hard behind his back, his left leg pressed up toward his back.

  “Learn,” Badeau hissed, “to fight only when you can win.”

  “You tricked me!” Gerard pushed the words out despite the pain, wanting some explanation if he would not have the satisfaction of bruising Badeau’s face. “Was it even for the cause? Did his death accomplish anything honorable?”

  “It is time to lose your missish ways. There are things in this world a man must do. After tonight, you are no longer a boy. Be a man.”

  Badeau bent down, pressed a paternal kiss to Gerard’s temple. He could smell the scent of the older man’s exertion, the leather of the satchel, and taste blood in his mouth. Then the pressure of Badeau’s hold was gone, and Gerard was left alone, collapsed on the floor.

  That was Badeau’s second betrayal. But everyone Gerard had ever loved had betrayed him. It was a reminder to be wary, to trust no one. After that night, it did not matter if Badeau was forthcoming or not because Gerard never performed a task he had not researched. He refused to be a puppet, to be manipulated so completely. If this was to be his life, then he must be the master of it.

  Powell had been killed because the man who had hired Gerard could no longer trust him. He had fallen prey to that all too common trap of whispering secrets while in bed with his lovers. And his loose lips had cost them deeply.

  It was a side matter that his newest mistress was an Austrian spy who had seduced him purely to have access to the English side of the negotiations at Vienna. His employer had not known about that, nor would have cared if he had known. Gerard did not particularly care either. After all, he was not English. He had no loyalty to that nation despite his paternity. But it was the sort of detail Jane would cling to as proof that Gerard was an honorable man. As if he needed to be in order for her to love him. Yet to give her that would be wrong twofold. First, it would be deceiving her, manipulating her to secure her affections. And second, he was a man of honor in his own way. He was discreet. Did not reveal the secrets of those who employed him. Did not take on jobs he did not feel he could keep secret. And he gave each employer that respect, regardless of country of origin. Not that Szabo deserved respect, but he had paid his debt to the man. He owed no one else on this earth.