Guarded Heart

by Jennifer Blake

  His reaction to her presence, so unwary, so unprotected there at his atelier, had been predictable but no less stupid for all that. Now the scent and taste of her was embedded in his mind. It was a dangerous distraction.

  He had come so close to taking her in blind, searing passion and a welter of crushed velvet and wrinkled skirts, like some street walker. Was it the conscious testing of her resolve which moved him, as he had thought, or sheer blind concupiscence? He wished he knew, wished as well that he could be certain he would have released her short of rutting consummation if she had not made that small sound of distress.

  He could not be at all sure.

  More than that, the mind-cracking effort it had taken to force himself away from her still sang in his blood like some ancient war chant. With luck, it might give him the edge necessary to face death while mounted on an animal whose most certain instinct was to avoid it. His one consolation was that Novgorodcev's horse, a big gray gelding with a white blaze, was unlikely to be better trained. Duels such as this one were not so common as to fill the stables of New Orleans with steeds trained to stand while someone tried to hack off their ears.

  It was Caid who had supplied Gavin's mount from the selection he and his wife, Lisette, kept for their private use. The black stallion was a mixture of stock horse, plains pony and Arabian from the look of him, bred for stamina and speed, and trained to knee commands. Gavin had put him through his paces the afternoon before and thought he would do.

  The dawn was gray and dripping, an introduction to yet another wet day. It made for uncertain conditions here under the oaks that splattered the ground with heavy droplets every time the wind stirred the branches overhead. How much difference that might make could well depend on the length of the meeting, which would dictate how much muck the churning of the horses' hooves created. Gavin was not inclined to prolong it and suspected the Russian would favor a fast outcome as well.

  Novgorodcev wore gray to match the day and his mount, an excellent choice in the morning's uncertain light. What Nathaniel had laid out for Gavin included buckskin pantaloons and a double-breasted coat of royal blue with gold buttons so highly polished they seemed designed to invite a round-house slash from his opponent. Though Gavin deplored the boy's continued determination to act as his servant, he could only approve the choice. Flamboyant defiance suited his mood.

  Nathaniel stood at Gavin's knee at the moment, in his role as second. Biting his lower lip, the boy watched the Russian circle the field at a fast clip as if to shake the fidgets out of the gray. It was an impressive performance if you were easily taken in by ramrod posture and military form allied to a horseman's bulging thighs under gray-dyed doeskin. Since the occasion was not a military review, Gavin reserved judgment.

  The chief seconds huddled in the middle of the field in deep discussion. After a moment, they broke apart, each moving to rejoin his principal at opposite ends of the field. Novgorodcev trotted out to meet his man, while Gavin waited for Denys Vallier and Kerr Wallace to reach him.

  The American's face was grave as he came to a halt. "The rules we're agreed on are basically the same as for any other meeting, as you may imagine," he said, keeping his voice low. "You will meet with Novgorodcev in the center of the field where you will exchange the usual salute. At the on guard command, you will stand ready. The signal to begin will be a dropped handkerchief, and this will start the first charge. Touches will remain above the waist. Any deliberate injury to a mount will be called as a foul and reason to end the meeting. The man who rides beyond the marked boundaries will forfeit the match. If one of you is unhorsed, the other will dismount at once and the fight will continue on the ground. Understood?"

  "It's to be cut and thrust with the aim of brutal slaughter," Gavin said in agreement. "Though never let it be said it was unfair."

  "You did challenge him." The reminder was spoken in even tones, though sympathetic understanding lay in the smokey gray of Wallace's eyes.

  "With the utmost pleasure, and would again. So let us go trippingly toward this dance and the partner whose name is on our card."

  He waited for no reply, but saluted Kerr, Denys and Nathaniel then put his heels to his mount and trotted out to meet the Russian. When the black's head was close enough to his opponent's stocky gray that the two horses seemed to blow into each other's nostrils, he stopped. Nov-gorodcev sat stiff and correct on his European saddle, his hair like silver spikes, his face a superior mask with his stiffly pomaded mustache hiding his upper lip and his eyes glittering like ice under his brows. Gavin swept up his blade in whistling salute, to which his opponent replied in kind. A moment late, the en garde command rang out, and they tightened their reins to the same tensile stretch as their nerves.

  The handkerchief dropped, a white flag that plummeted, then caught a breath of air and settled slowly to the wet grass. Before it touched the ground, they came together, the horses shoulder to shoulder in a thudding impact that threw them back on their haunches. The Russian swung, a blow that would have severed Gavin's neck from his head had it struck. Gavin ducked, caught his opponent's blade with a heavy clang and rasping spurt of sparks, parried, thrust and was repulsed. Then they settled into the fight.

  Novgorodcev was no weakling; of that there was little doubt. He depended on his strength, however, scorning finesse in favor of powerful moves of mechanical perfection. Instead of allowing his mount to aid his movements, he controlled it with rigid force. Grim as a blacksmith at his anvil, he hammered away, seeking to overcome with sheer rote labor. In less than a minute, Gavin could predict with minute accuracy exactly how he would attack, and when. By watching his opponent's eyes, he could also tell where the Russian would aim.

  A fight with sabers, so it had been said, was like war. And in any battle, the man who used his brain had the advantage over one who depended on brawn. Gavin was inclined to put this ancient wisdom to the test.

  He capered around the Russian on his lighter black, keeping his movements easy yet precise, as if in the dance that he had labeled this match. The tactic forced Novgorodcev to expend his strength in useless swings of his heavy weapon and tested his ability to maneuver the gray. It also gauged the Russian's grasp on his temper. The last was not without limit, Gavin discovered, and set himself to see that he surpassed it. An opponent who let his rage overcome him was a man half-defeated.

  Their blades chimed and beat while they twisted and turned in their saddles, pulling their mounts hard around time and again, reaching with grunting effort. Gavin's muscles burned and sweat poured in runnels to thread through his brows, wilt his collar and soak his coat. His palm grew slippery upon the saber's hilt, and he snatched time while wheeling away from a particularly brutal slash to dry it on his pantaloon-covered thigh. Lather flew like spume from the horses, dotting the grass, flecking their boots. The ground churned beneath their hooves, becoming a green-brown morass underfoot, a pig-sty of mud in which the horses slipped and had to be held in to prevent them from falling.

  Gavin could feel the boiling of blood-lust in his veins, hear the thunder of his heartbeat in his ears as a counterpoint to the rhythm of his blows against his opponent's sword. He saw the same half-crazed urge to kill in the feral stare of the Russian, felt it in his attack. In some distant part of his mind, he knew he should have a thought for how Madame Faucher might feel if he should kill her favorite, but he was too intent on preserving his own hide and pride to care what she might think.

  Novgorodcev did care, or so it seemed, cared what his lady love might feel if he were defeated, cared that his pride might be tarnished. It animated his every stratagem, surged to the forefront when he saw, finally, that the match might be a draw. If neither man could be touched, then the seconds would call quits and the thing would be at an end.

  The only way to change the outcome, the only path to victory, appeared to be by default, using cunning and deceit. Novgorodcev, desperate for the end he desired, chose that road without hesitation.

  Gavin ma
rked the pivotal moment by the narrowing of the Russian's eyes, his speculative glance in the midst of clamorous attack, his unconscious telegraphing of where he meant to strike the crippling, prohibited blow. He saw, and kicked the black stallion into a hard turn, dragging him away from the whining descent of that viciously misdirected sword.

  It was not enough.

  The Russian's saber point flashed as it cut into hide and muscle, laying open the black stallion's flank. The horse screamed, pain-maddened, as he erupted in kicking fury, bucking, side-hopping, leaping toward the boundary line which marked certain forfeiture.

  There was only one thing to be done. Kicking free of the stirrups, Gavin sprang from the saddle.

  The ground came up to meet him and he stumbled, slid in green slime, felt his feet fly out from under him. His breath left his lungs as he slammed down, landing flat on his back. His sword bounced from his grasp, turned end over end out of his reach.

  By specific rules of the engagement, Novgorodcev should have come to a halt and dismounted to fight on foot. Instead, he spurred the big gray toward Gavin at a pounding run. His sword swung high in a glittering arc before beginning to fall, reaching, reaching. Shouts and yells rent the tree-shadowed sky. The seconds sprang forward at a run, their pounding footsteps lost in the earth-shaking thunder of the gray's hooves.

  Timing was an instinct, not a thought. Gavin waited, trying to catch his breath. At the last second, he wrenched over with a hard contraction of muscles, diving into a roll that carried him out of the gray's path. He felt the wind of the horse's hooves inches from his head, heard the singing whistle of the saber in the Russian's fist as Novgorodcev leaned forward and down for the blow, felt the tug as the blade sliced his coat at an angle across the back and to the side.

  Novgorodcev flew past, began to turn mere yards away. The gray sidled, whinnying from the cut of the bit as he was jerked into a too-tight turn. Gavin leaped erect with the burning, reckless strength that flares up when rage and purpose merge. As Novgorodcev thundered toward him again, he side-stepped and lunged to grab his long coat-skirt. Swinging on it with his full weight, Gavin dragged the Russian from the saddle.

  Novgorodcev came down in a flailing of arms and legs and unwieldy steel. Gavin caught his sword hand and twisted, jerking the saber free. Then he brought the heavy hilt down in a quick blow behind his opponent's ear with all his power and anger. Novgorodcev grunted, slumping to the ground in a sprawl while blood stained his white hair a sickly pink.

  Gavin swayed where he stood. A trickle of something hot and wet was running down his back and over his left hip. He felt on fire from his neck to the backs of his knees. Pain colored his vision in shades of red, gathering in livid intensity as it burrowed into him. He saw Nathaniel coming closer, his face twisted and raindrops standing on his cheeks. Kerr Wallace was behind the boy though he seemed to be fading, moving in a ground mist of gray fog.

  The mist reached out then, taking him down with it to muddy grass that had turned soft and warm. Yet amid the storm in his ears, Gavin caught the powdery sweetness of woman's scent, felt the brush of a cool, smooth hand on his forehead while the low music of a woman's voice fell on his ears, chiding in tearful anger threaded with the husky rasp of horror.

  Ariadne, he would swear it. Ariadne had come after all.

  "Stupid, stupid men," she whispered for him alone, "to bleed and die for so little cause and be so damnably noble with it."

  Eighteen

  Gavin lay in somnolent peace, watching the bright track of the winter sunlight as it fell through the French doors beside his bed. It pooled on a carpet of purest cochineal, red as blood and woven with a design of palm fronds in teal and viridian, fell across a duvet covered by cream and red calico, and reflected pink light into the shirred cream canopy of the tester above him. Warm in spite of the season, it made nothing of the small coal fire which burned under a mantel of sculpted rose marble.

  He lay propped on two pillows while another raised one shoulder to take the pressure from his back and side, and covered in abnormal decency by a white linen nightshirt. The stitches in his side pulled with a vicious ache and the sheets on which he reclined had been starched and ironed to the point of irritation, but he made no complaint. He had been bathed, mended and bandaged, and was waiting for Nathaniel with his afternoon ration of red wine to rebuild his blood, a vintage straight from Maurelle's cellar as the sheets were from Maurelle's armoire. To find fault would be the rankest ingratitude. He was not ungrateful in any degree.

  What he was, he recognized, was infernally curious.

  It had not, at first, seemed at all strange to be installed in one of the best bedchambers of the Herriot town house with Nathaniel at his right hand and ladies in various stages of déshabille coming to hover over him at odd hours. He had been weak from loss of blood and so sunk in fever that he dwelled in some netherworld where dreams and reality swirled around each other, so entwined that it was impossible to pull them apart. Now that he was awake, he wasn't sure he wanted that separation. Some aspects of the dreams seemed worth keeping.

  One in particular featured Ariadne in a nightgown and peignoir of lace-edged white lawn, her hair streaming down her back. She had leaned over him so he caught the scent of violets. The back of her hand had been smooth against his hot cheek and the concern in her eyes soothed some half-formed distress in his mind. She gazed down at him for what seemed a lifetime, her dark tresses shimmering with rainbow highlights as they spilled around them. Then she brushed across his lips with her fingertips, let them trail down his neck and over his chest until she pressed her palm to his heart as if counting its steady beats.

  "Touché," he whispered.

  Her lips parted on a gasp and her eyes turned liquid. He let his eyelids fall to close out the sight. When he looked again, she was gone. Gone, but the place where her hand had pressed burned like a brand.

  Oh, but afterward, he had floated in a nightmare of being back at Maison Blanche once more following the duel with Francis Dorelle. Phantom pain throbbed in the jagged scar under his collarbone caused by a broken sword. He wanted to get up to see about the young man he had stabbed with his own blade in that freakish accident on the dueling field, but he couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't escape the fear that his opponent was dead and that he had killed him. It was a relief when sleep came down to smother the paralyzing anxiety.

  It would be as well if he let the dreams go, after all.

  The door on the opposite side of the room creaked open, and he turned his head toward the sound. It was Ariadne, as if he had summoned her by his thoughts. She was well and fully clothed in a day gown of unrelenting gray, with her hair coiled in a tightly braided coronet on top of her head and a few stray spirals at her temples. A doubtful frown lay between her brows while she studied his face, allowing the silver salver holding a glass of wine which she carried in her left hand to come perilously close to tipping. He smiled before he could prevent the movement of his lips.

  "You are awake."

  It sounded like an accusation, he thought. "I can, if you like, pretend otherwise."

  "Why would you do that?"

  "Convenience? You could put down that glass, supposing it's still unspilled, and leave without having to speak to me."

  "I can do that anyway." She glided across the room and deposited the salver on a small table within his reach. Her movements were swift, as if spilling the wine was not a concern, though he noticed that she checked for stray drops.

  "It would not be a kindness—supposing, of course, that kindness matters to you. But no, you directed that I be brought here, which must have been well intended. It was you at the dueling ground?"

  "You remember."

  "It's the mystery that lingers, you see, almost as great a one as waking in your care."

  "If you are trying to discover why I intervened, I do have an interest in the affair. Besides, all the rooms and wards at Charity Hospital and the Maison de Sante were taken by victims from t
he Bluebell."

  He studied his hands where they lay, pale and lax, on the sheet. "A matter of charity then."

  "It seemed little enough after the way you were.. .betrayed by someone who felt he was acting in my interests."

  She moved to the window as she spoke, adjusting the draperies so the sun's rays did not strike across his pillow. Her face in profile appeared grave, with all expression carefully masked by perfect reason. The warm light shaded across her mouth, illuminating its perfection, reminding him that he had kissed those lips not so long ago and felt his world tilt on its axis. And would like nothing so much at this moment as to do it again. The vividness of that desire and unruly response of his body were ample proof he had begun to mend.

  "The black I was riding, how does he fare?" he inquired after a moment.

  "He will recover so your friend Caid tells us, though with a considerable scar. Now I think of it, that's the same diagnosis your physician for the duel, Dr. Labatut, applied to his rider."

  "No kindly coup de grace for man or beast? We are both to be congratulated. And Novgorodcev, what of his fate?" Gavin kept his voice even, though these were questions that had plagued him since he had awakened an hour ago.

  "He lives, though he might prefer otherwise. He is contrite beyond imagining for his loss of temper. That does not absolve him, of course, or prevent him from being scorned by all who hear of the duel. When the concussion you gave him will allow, he plans to take ship for Paris."

  "Leaving you behind? A dire punishment for a moment's madness."

  She swung to face him with a frown between her eyes. "You can say that when he almost killed you by as dishonorable a trick as can be imagined?"