Enchantment & Bridge of Dreams (24 page)

He offered her a mocking smile. “One tries.”

“Let me go.”

“Not just yet, I think.” He eased her backward until the mantel brushed her shoulder. “Not until I've had my fill of that honeyed mouth of yours.”

“But I don't want to—”

“You will,” he said silkily. And then his mouth hardened, fell, joined to hers. In conquest it began, but in silken exploration it grew. Geneva put one hand to his chest and shoved, but her strength was as nothing against his. She felt the cold metal at her fingers and remembered the pistol. She would use it, she swore. This time he would not escape her. But only if she had no other choice. Only if he continued to mock her, to tease her.

To run his lips so hotly, so sweetly across hers, until she wanted to cry out in wonder.

Heat spiraled through her. Inside her satin slippers her toes curled. Never before had she felt such a touch, such perfect skill that left her thoughts reeling. If only her head weren't suddenly so muddled, and her knees so weak.

On a sigh of breath, she rose to her toes and brought her fingers to his shoulders. Only for stability, she told herself.

Her forgotten pistol lay balanced precariously beside Gabriel's head.

He didn't even notice.

Geneva's eyes closed as his tongue touched the soft center of her lips and teased an entrance. She shivered beneath his heat and raw power, driven by a wild curiosity. What would he taste like? What would he do if she, too, tasted his heat?

Still holding the pistol, she brought her hand to his neck and ran her tongue gently over the hard curve of his lower lip. He muttered a curse and brought their bodies together, thigh to thigh, working her backward until her shoulders were crushed against the mantel.

His heat surprised her, as did the shudder that tore through his angry muscles. She had expected power and confidence and ease, but not that betraying moment of shock, nor the lash of his own desire. He wanted her, she realized. At that moment his body told her he wanted her very badly.

Geneva felt a wild surge of triumph. She had thought to tempt him, to yield to whatever price he wished to extract for his services in saving her sister. But never had she thought to taste such heaven in the process.

He muttered hoarsely, his fingers molding her soft hips, his lips pure velvet.

Geneva's hands trembled. Her pistol dropped forgotten from her fingers. An instant later the barrel discharged and a bullet cracked through the silence, sending a rain of plaster from the hole that now marred the damask-covered wall.

Somewhere a door creaked open. The butler's voice rose in panic from the corridor. “My lord! You cannot—the pistol—”

“Get out, Stanton. I'm busy.”

“But the wall!”

Gabriel spun about. “Out!” he ordered.

“Yes, my lord.” The door slammed shut.

The sound was like cold water hitting Geneva's face. She stared at Gabriel, her face pale, her eyes amber and gold in the firelight. “It meant nothing,” she said hoarsely. “Nor did I feel anything.”

“On the contrary,” Gabriel said silkily. “You felt everything I did, and that was vastly more than I had expected.”

She gave a calculated laugh, which broke slightly at the end. “La, my lord, how easy you are to fool.” Her voice rose in a titter. “'Twas all an act, I vow, just to entrap you. And you have fallen for it.”

His fingers bit into her shoulders. “It was no act, my sweet. And no pretense of passion. I felt it in the heat of your body pressed against me, and in the drum of your blood.”

“A lie,” Geneva gasped, shoving at his chest.

His fingers settled on the pale curve of her cheek. “A lie, you call it? No, by heaven, I'll have the truth.”

“Does it matter?” she said bitterly. “You've had your sport with me, and now it's over. For myself, I don't choose to waste words on a man with no heart and no scruples.”

Gabriel laughed grimly. “You're right in that, for I have neither. But I have a great curiosity about this mission you've been so busy tossing in my face.”

He watched pride war with need in her face. She turned away. Picking up a poker, she nudged a log in the grate and watched sparks shoot up the chimney. “It's my sister, you see. She is married to the duc de Verney, whose estates run along the Garonne Valley in France. She assured me that she and the children were fine, but last month I received a letter written in desperate haste. She wrote that the villagers were in turmoil and she feared for her life.”

Gabriel's jaw hardened. “Am I supposed to find this story interesting?” He lifted his glass and tossed down the fine wine as if it had no taste at all, wishing she would leave him, wishing he could forget the sight of the blood he'd seen darkening the
Place de la Concorde the week before. “Besides, I'm foxed. I'd like to enjoy my inebriation in peace.”

“I do not believe that you are cup-shot,” Geneva said softly. “I think that you are tired and very sad.”

Ashton felt impaled on the clarity of those fine gold eyes. He cursed silently. How did she see so much, things that no one else even suspected? “Well, you're wrong,” he said, pouring himself another glass. “I'm three sheets to the wind and I mean to stay that way till morning. If you have any sense of self-preservation, you'll get yourself gone while you still can.”

“I'm not leaving. Not until you hear the whole tale. It is the children that my sister fears for most.”

Always it was the children who suffered. Ashton frowned as he remembered three dark-eyed children he had lost in Paris. His coachman had been an accomplice of long standing, and Gabriel had never had reason to doubt his loyalty.

But he'd been wrong, and three innocent children had died because of it.

Never again.

He pulled the poker from her hand and raised her face to his. “It's no good, Miss Russell. The valley of the Garonne is impossible to enter. I know from personal experience that the peasants are rioting there. No foreigner would get a mile before they stopped him.”

“But for you
anything
is possible.”

Ashton tried to ignore the hope and admiration in her eyes but found he could not turn away. Suddenly he wished that he were all she thought him. He wished he could see the people she loved spirited away to freedom. But he had failed too often of late. He had been forced to watch the prisoners fall, one by one, as the new leaders in Paris offered a bitter example to all who offered any hint of opposition. Now even women and children were murdered under the ruthless tyranny begun by Marat.

No, he could not help her. The plan was impossible. He turned to the fireplace and stared down at the red embers. “Go home, Miss Russell,” he ordered. “Go home to your balls and your beaux. You've come to the wrong place and you've found the wrong man to play at hero.” He was exhausted from three weeks of continual travel and the endless horrors he had endured on France's muddy roads. But Gabriel knew he was sick of life as well. Perhaps he'd seen too many things that no man should ever have to see. “I want nothing to do with you and your schemes.”

But even as he spoke, her scent assailed him, all sweetness and summer lilacs and the infinite innocence of youth. He knew she must be close behind him, for he heard the faint rustling of silk.

In the small, still room it was a damnably intimate sound and it sent a wild stirring through his blood.

“I fear I have not made myself plain enough, Lord Ashton. I do not ask you to risk your life for nothing. I would of course be beside you to help in every way I can. In addition I offer you anything among my possessions—or myself. All this I give freely and willingly, if only you will aid my sister and her children.”

A muscle flashed at Gabriel's jaw. She was too damnably close, her scent a torment. The little fool could have no idea what she was saying.

Yet her offer lingered, haunting him. He wondered how it would feel to hold her and hear her breathless little sigh when he sank deep inside her. “Damn it, don't you understand English?” he said harshly. “Be gone.”

“Then I shall simply find someone else,” she said flatly.

“There is no one else. It is hopeless, and the sooner you accept it the better.”

“I thought I'd found a hero. I thought I'd found a man who would risk all for honor. Instead I've found a man with no heart at all.” Her voice held a mix of fury and despair.

Though Gabriel had thought his softer sentiments long since dead, her scorn cut deep. “You have found exactly what I warned you you would find, a man without principles or honor.”

Her eyes shimmered gold with fury as she studied him. “So you did. But I thought it was simply a test of my determination. How you must have laughed at my worthless offer of my body.”

The man beside her did not look up, keeping his gaze on the fire.

“Look at me,” she challenged. “Or is even that task beyond you?”

Gabriel's hand tightened on the mantel. He didn't turn. It was dangerous to look at her when he was so susceptible. “Go away.”

“One look. Can it be so very difficult?”

The man in Gabriel refused to ignore such a challenge.

As if in a dream he turned. And his breath fled.

She was haloed in the light of the candles. Her eyes were dark with shadows and some other unnameable emotion. “I would have given you anything you asked.”

Ashton closed his eyes, trying not to see her vibrant face, trying not to smell that haunting scent of lilacs. “Damn it, begone.”

He heard the rustle of lace. Her fichu slowly came free and slipped from her shoulders. “I would have been glad to come to you, glad to render any price you named.” The pale fabric slipped to the floor, bright against the shadows.

Gabriel closed his eyes, trying not to see the curves suddenly revealed, pressing against the lustrous folds of blue satin. But he found that imagining them was even worse.

“It would have been my pleasure, in truth. When our parents died, Isabel raised me as a mother, putting every other interest behind mine. Now I must do the same for her.” She laughed bitterly. “I am only glad that I discovered your true measure before it was too late.”

Gabriel shrugged. “Consider yourself lucky.” It took more effort than he would have imagined to keep his voice steady before her scorn. “And now that you've discovered my villainy, perhaps you'll leave me in peace.”

“Peace?” She laughed grimly and Gabriel knew the sound would haunt him forever. “For such a man as you, there will be no peace, not in this world or the next.”

She was right. He was honest enough to admit it. But her accuracy only fueled his fury. “My peace will begin the first moment I am rid of you.”

She turned in a swirl of satin skirts and wrenched her domino about her shoulders.

“Haven't you forgotten something?” Gabriel said icily. A moment later her silver-mounted pistol went hurtling through the air.

She caught it deftly. “So it would seem. My only regret is that my bullet hit the wall instead of your black heart.”

Gabriel was still standing before the fire when Stanton opened the door long minutes later. He did not turn. “Is she gone?”

“Yes, my lord.”

Regret tightened his throat, but Gabriel ignored it. “Very good. She is not to be admitted again. Now you may go, Stanton. I shall need nothing else tonight.”
Nothing, at least, that he had any hope of obtaining.