The Bride Wore Scarlet

by Liz Carlyle

  Anaïs considered it. “And she goes to where?”

  “To St. Nicholas,” said the butler.

  “Ah,” said Anaïs. “Perhaps it is time I, too, went to confession.”

  Geoff straightened from the telescope, and looked at her a little oddly. On one side, much of his hair had slithered from its cord.

  Bernard merely bowed. “I shall go now, and get your personal servants situated. Also, sir, Monsieur DuPont has sent an envelope for you. He says it is not urgent. Shall I leave it on your desk?”

  “Yes, of course.” Geoff had returned his eye to the scope. “Thank you, Bernard.”

  As the attic door closed, Anaïs restored the rapier to its place, sliding it home with a metallic zing!

  “No one appears to be at home across the way,” said Geoff, giving up and unfolding his long, lean form from the chair.

  “Yes, we’re going to have to go over and make new friends soon,” Anaïs murmured, taking down one of the épées. “I confess to being a tad anxious about it.”

  She turned from the rack to see that Geoff was eyeing the weapon in her hand. “Well, you look like you know what you’re doing with that, at least.”

  With a grin, Anaïs snapped into stance, and lunged. “En garde!”

  Geoff did not so much as blink. “Oh, trust me, my dear, I have been on guard since the moment I laid eyes on you,” he said, wandering toward her with his usual loose-limbed grace. “But I did wonder if old Vittorio hadn’t taught you a trick or two.”

  Anaïs felt her grin fade. “Yes, he was a master swordsman in his day,” she said softly. “He was . . . amazing. And renowned throughout Tuscany. Indeed, did you ever hear—”

  “—about that secret assassination attempt at the Congress of Vienna?” Admiration warmed Geoff’s brilliant blue eyes. “Now, that exploit made Vittorio famous within the Fraternitas. As I hear it, the knife was intended for Cardinal Consalvi?”

  “Yes, the assassin drew his weapon, but never got the chance to strike.” Anaïs thrust her blade forward with a flourish. “Vittorio ran him through blind like so—”

  “—whilst standing behind the dais drapery,” Geoff finished.

  “Yes, yes, for that was his Gift, you see!” Lowering her left hand, Anaïs dropped her gaze to the épée’s intricate basket grip. “Both his Gift, and his curse. He could sense the . . . the very being of a person; the life force, if you will. And he knew evil for what it was. He could smell it, you see, like the scent of death. He tried to teach me a little . . . but I . . . I think perhaps I did not wish to learn that particular lesson too well. Indeed, I do not envy anyone with so strong a Gift.”

  Some inscrutable emotion passed over his face, like an instant of pain, too swift and too raw to be acknowledged. Immediately, he changed the subject, lightening his tone. “So, Mrs. MacLachlan,” he said, “what’s your weapon of choice?”

  Anaïs dropped her point. “The rapier with dagger.”

  “Ah, the traditional school!”

  “Vittorio was nothing if not traditional,” she acknowledged, “save when it came to me.”

  “No, you are decidedly untraditional,” he murmured. “What else did Vittorio teach you—besides that smooth lunge and blind sight?”

  “I don’t have the gift of blind sight.” Her voice was perfectly emotionless as she drew one finger assessingly down the flat of the blade. “An eventually, yes, he hired a Florentine fencing master for me. Vittorio said he’d grown too old to do a proper job of the faster, more complex moves. That such a job wanted a younger man.”

  She glanced up to see Geoff was watching her hand as if mesmerized. “Did he imagine you’d ever have to defend yourself with a sword?”

  Anaïs shook her head. “I think he just wanted me to learn grace and speed,” she said. “Clarity of thought under pressure. And the whole sensory thing—well, my instincts are better than average, I’ll grant you. Maria says I’m like a cat in the dark. But I’ll never be Vittorio.”

  Geoff’s gaze had softened. “And I wonder what that poor fencing master thought,” he murmured. “Such a lethal beauty you must have seemed. He was probably half in love with you by the time it was over.”

  Anaïs felt heat rush to her cheeks. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, hastily turning to rehang the weapon. “He thought I had a knack for blades, and nothing more. He tried to teach me the spadone, just for the balance work, but I couldn’t heft the cursed thing with any accuracy.”

  Geoff was staring at her with a sudden intensity when she turned round. “Why do I get the impression, Anaïs,” he said quietly, “that you focus far more on your failures than your successes?”

  She shrugged. “Doesn’t everyone?” she returned. “Everyone, I mean, who hopes to make something of themselves?”

  For a time, he merely looked at her, his head set at an assessing angle. “I think you already have,” he said quietly. “Made something of yourself, I mean. But I get the sense that you push yourself—even to serve other people’s wishes. Your being seasick is a perfect example of that.”

  “So you are suggesting I what?” she demanded. “Stay home to avoid a little queasiness? Give up entirely my great-grandmother’s dream?”

  She saw his jaw twitch tellingly, just the faintest of movements. “I’m suggesting that you had as bad a case of mal de mer as ever I’ve seen—and I’ve seen grown men weep.” Geoff’s voice was suddenly gruff. “And I’m suggesting that perhaps you ought to live your own dream, if you’ve ever taken time to decide on one.”

  She lifted her chin a notch. “And what of yourself?” she returned. “Are you doing precisely what you wish? And remember, I saw your face that night when you talked about your work with your stepfather.”

  For a moment, he looked away. “My life changed when Alvin died,” he said. “Until then, yes, I had a career doing something I loved. I knew, of course, in the back of my mind that I could be called by the Fraternitas into service at any time, but the organization had become so fractured—”

  “That in the end, you took it upon yourself to repair it,” she interjected, stepping nearer. “And thereby altered your life forever.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I daresay that’s one way to look at it.”

  On impulse, she touched him gently on his cheek, and turned his face back into hers. “And thank God you did,” she said, “for it breathed new life into the Fraternitas.”

  “I am not sure it was begun quite so unselfishly,” he murmured, glancing away. “Looking back, I think it was done out of anger. For Lazonby.”

  “For Lazonby?” Anaïs’s brow furrowed.

  “We had fallen in together in Morocco, he and Ruthveyn and I,” said Geoff quietly. “Partners in dissolution, you might say. I had just finished a project for the French government, Lazonby was on leave from the Foreign Legion, and Ruthveyn—well, he was just smoking his way through the opium dens of North Africa. It was all one great bacchanalian orgy until the gendarmes hauled Lazonby off and handed him over to England. So Ruthveyn and I followed.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “We bought a house, and founded the St. James Society,” he answered. “We made good on all our high talk of resurrecting the Fraternitas. What good is a Brotherhood if it cannot protect its own from false imprisonment?”

  “And was Lord Lazonby falsely imprisoned?” asked Anaïs. “It was a murder following a card game gone wrong, the newspapers said.”

  “He did not kill the man he was convicted of murdering, no,” said Geoff. “But was he guilty of bad judgment? Yes. A man with a Gift such as his cannot play at cards. All manner of things can turn sour. But Lazonby was little more than a boy then—and even now, he denies that what he has is a Gift.”

  “But he has been marked as a Guardian by his family,” she murmured.

  “As have you, or so Lazonby says.” For an instant, the ice returned to Geoff’s eyes.

  “Yes, as I told you that night in the Temple,” she respond
ed. “That was Nonna Sofia’s instruction to Vittorio—that once I was trained, I should be marked and given to the cause.”

  “Why?” he pressed.

  Anaïs shrugged. “I do not know,” she said. “Toward the end of her life, my great-grandmother said only that there was something I was meant to do, and that fate would reveal it to me. And yes, I understand one can be a Guardian without metaphysical abilities. It requires only good sense, determination, and a certain amount of bravery. But Lord Lazonby’s Scottish line is a strong one—most of the Scottish lines are, you know.”

  “Oh, aye,” said Geoff tightly. “I know it well.”

  “And some of the French, too,” she said musingly. “But truly, in parts of Europe, the Fraternitas had become almost ceremonial. One might as well have been joining the local Masonic Lodge—or even the Beefsteak Club—for all the good it did. But I don’t need to tell you that. With all their research and documentation, the St. James Society has begun to put things to rights.”

  Geoff made a faintly dismissive sound. He had taken her hand again, and turned it up to trace his index finger over the lines, as if he might read her palm.

  Anaïs instead folded her hand over his. “Listen to me, Geoff,” she said a little fiercely. “Why do I get the feeling that you’re now the one selling your good deeds short? You diminish all of us when you do that. And whatever you think of me—whether the Fraternitas wants me or not—I will always believe in what the St. James Society has done.”

  “Ah, such kind words, Anaïs!” he said softly.

  “They aren’t just words.” Her voice trembled a little. “So often I heard Vittorio praise the work of your society. He believed it would eventually identify and keep safe all those with the Gift. Especially the most vulnerable amongst us. Like Giselle Moreau.”

  “Did he?” Geoff caught her hand almost roughly as she tried to draw it away.

  Anaïs nodded. “I only wish that my great-grandmother could have lived long enough to see the Fraternitas rise from its ashes,” she said. “To know that it would once again be more than just an old wives’ tale. That it would resume its place as a secret society committed to doing good.”

  “It sounds so noble when you put it that way,” he murmured, lifting her hand a little, almost as if he might brush his lips over it. “Perhaps we were just tired of feeling different, Ruthveyn and I. Perhaps we just wanted something to keep ourselves busy—busy enough that we didn’t have time to look inside ourselves and question what we had become.”

  “I simply don’t believe that,” she whispered. “Perhaps, Geoff, I . . . I don’t have much of a Gift. But I see you. And I think perhaps you know that.”

  She looked up to catch his fierce, cold gaze, only to realize he had pulled her almost effortlessly toward him. It was as if he’d drawn her across time and space instead of the glossy attic floor. An energy—a sort of tangible emotion—seemed to shimmer in the air about them, and every logical thought went skittering like marbles from her head.

  They stood chest to chest beneath the rack of swords. Slowly, as if he moved under water, Geoff’s opposite hand came up, his fingers stroking over her cheek. If waking yesterday morning with her dress unbuttoned and her corset laid open had felt intimate, this felt a thousand times more so.

  “Ah, Anaïs, this is so unwise,” he murmured. “Tell me . . . tell me we both know that.”

  Chapter 8

  Know thyself, know thy enemy; a thousand battles, a thousand victories.

  Sun Tzu, The Art of War

  She swallowed hard, her gaze ensnared by his. “Very unwise,” she whispered. “But . . .”

  Her words fell away.

  Oh, he was not the one for her. Anaïs knew it. And yet the moment felt inevitable.

  He must have felt it, too. Sliding his left hand into the hair at the nape of her neck, Geoff settled his lips over hers, warmly and firmly. Purposefully. As if she’d surrendered her chance to gainsay his wishes, and he now meant to take his time at it.

  Oh, yes, please, God, please let him take his time at it . . .

  His mouth was soft, but with a strength that made plain his intent. His intent to possess her, at least in this fleeting moment. And on a whispered sigh, Anaïs gave. She melted her lips and her body to his, tipping her head fully back. Geoff bent over her, his hair a curtain of shimmering bronze as it fell forward to shadow his face.

  She knew, of course, that she’d regret it—and he would, too. But when Geoff made a sound in the back of his throat and wrapped one arm low, banding her to him, Anaïs forgot about regret. Instead, she lowered her lashes and opened her mouth, nibbling lightly at the lush swell of his lower lip.

  That might have been a mistake. Certainly it was an invitation, one that Geoff accepted by plunging inside her mouth with his tongue.

  “Umm,” she whispered, her hands going up—far up—to twine about his neck as she molded to him.

  On a groan of pleasure, he delved deep, sinuously sliding his tongue along hers and rhythmically thrusting until her knees began to soften like so much warm butter. His right hand settled over her buttock and began to make warm, firm circles, inching up the muslin of her dress.

  Suddenly breathless, Anaïs plunged her fingers into the luxuriousness of his hair, and sucked his tongue deep. As if in response, Geoff slid one hand beneath her hip, lifting her firmly against the unmistakable ridge of his erection. It was as if she could feel the hard length, the thickness, and even the throbbing hunger that lay unslaked deep inside him, and Anaïs felt herself swamped again by that profound sense of inevitability.

  Scarcely aware she did so, Anaïs lifted one leg and twined it round his, then hitched it high over his hip. Geoff deepened the kiss, trembled a little in her arms, and urged himself against her in a motion that should have seemed vulgar but simply didn’t. And for the longest of moments, she was simply lost in the wanting, her entire body aching for his as she pressed herself to him and felt him throb against her softness.

  On a bone-deep shudder, she pulled her mouth from his. “Geoff,” she whispered. “The—the mat. We could . . .”

  Geoff’s eyes shied toward the thick mat, and she could feel him trembling. “Good God, Anaïs,” he rasped.

  He closed his eyes, still holding her hips to his. Against her belly, she felt his erection twitch insistently. She could see his throat working up and down, and smell the sensual heat roiling off his skin in waves.

  “You want me,” she whispered.

  He gave a harsh laugh, and opened his eyes. “That’s an understatement,” he whispered. Slowly, he began to let her slide down his body. “You’re like a flame to tinder.”

  Anaïs felt her foot settle onto the floor, and let her opposite leg slide down his until she was once again firmly planted in reality. Lowering her face into his shirtfront, she drew in the scent of laundry starch and unslaked lust. Geoff set his hand to the back of her head in a tender, almost protective gesture.

  “I don’t think,” he said quietly, “that it would be wise for me to kiss you again. Ever.”

  She tried to feel grateful for his good sense.

  She was grateful—or would be, as soon as her breathing calmed and that awful throb between her legs ceased.

  Just then, the door hinges squealed tellingly. Bernard made another of those little sounds in the back of his throat.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said as they sprang apart.

  “Ah, newlyweds!” said Geoff good-naturedly. “You must pardon us, Bernard.”

  The butler merely bowed stiffly at the neck. “But of course,” he murmured. “Mrs. Janssen wishes to know what time you wish to dine?”

  That evening, Anaïs locked both the bathroom doors and wandered about the small, delft-tiled chamber, taking in the strange signs of male occupation; the shaving soap upon the washing table, the gilt-handled toothbrush and matching razor upon a nearby shelf, and a small leather dressing case atop the linen chest, folded open to reveal only the most basic of g
entlemen’s toiletries.

  So. Not such a preening peacock after all.

  On impulse, she lifted a bottle from the case and pulled the stopper. The tantalizingly familiar scent of spice and citrus drifted up. Hastily she rammed it home again, then splashed a little cold water on her face. It did her no good to think of Geoff in such a way. She had come here on an important mission. She could ill afford to let her treacherous heart become her own worst enemy again.

  Sanity somewhat restored by the bracing water, Anaïs set her hands wide on the washing table and stared at herself in the mirror. The truth was, she had been lucky. Dinner tonight should have been awkward, but the arrival of Petit, the footman, had saved them. Over the course of the meal, he had presented the rough schedule for the occupants of the house across the street, and told them all that he and Mrs. Janssen had learned of the household.

  Lezennes, it seemed, spent most of his day at court or at various diplomatic offices within the capital. Madame Moreau’s schedule was more fixed and, as Bernard had explained, consisted primarily of church and shopping. Little Giselle was barely allowed from the house. The family seemed to have formed no outside connections.

  So tomorrow, they would begin in earnest. Madame Moreau would likely make her Saturday morning trip to confession, then visit the market in the Grand Place. Anaïs meant to be there ahead of her.

  But when she had said as much, Geoff had looked rather pointedly down the table at her. “You will take Petit along,” he had ordered. “I wish you to exercise every precaution.”

  With his unfashionably long hair drawn back, the candlelight had cast his lean cheeks and strong jawline in an even harsher relief, and he had looked like some imperious medieval prince upon his throne, commanding his lesser mortals. His hair looked darker, too; his nose a little more aquiline than usual.

  Anaïs had merely lifted her glass of wine to her lips, and said nothing. A nonsensical order did not require a vast deal of consideration. If Geoff was angry with himself for kissing her, he would simply have to stew in it. If he was angry with her for kissing him—well, that made two of them. The man was hardly another rake intent upon seducing his way into the bed of an unsuspecting female. But that did not make her laxity any less stupid.