Velvet (10 page)

“I may need to keep him for a few days, Bert. Lord Vanbrugh won’t need to ride him himself?”

“Don’t reckon so, my lady. ’Is lordship’s got the new geldin’ to try out.”

Gabrielle nodded. “Do you know which direction Lord Praed’s chaise took? I have an urgent message for him.”

“The driver said they was goin’ into ’Ampshire, my lady. To ’is lordship’s estate. Reckon they’d take the Crawley road.”

Gabrielle frowned, picturing the route. “How long ago did they leave?”

“’Alf an hour, ma’am. The chaise was ready at five, but ’is lordship didn’t come fer it until ’alf five.”

“I see.”

The lad brought Thunderer, saddled, into the stableyard and Bert gave Gabrielle a leg up. She settled in the saddle, waiting while Bert adjusted the stirrup leathers for her and fastened her bag behind her. If the head groom thought there was anything strange about the countess’s unheralded crack-of-dawn departure, unaccompanied and dressed as she was, he kept it to himself and behaved as if this were just another of her lone early morning excursions to be over by breakfast time.

Gabrielle trotted Thunderer out of the stableyard and down the long driveway to the road. The Crawley road lay to the left, and if she cut across country, she could join it about five miles along, where, if she remembered aright, there was a small stand of poplar trees beside the road. It would be perfect for what she had in mind. At a good gallop across the fields, Thunderer would gain on the slower road-bound chaise with ease.

Her crooked little smile lifted the corners of her mouth as she imagined Lord Praed’s surprise. He would probably be enraged, of course, but unless she had read him wrong, and after such a night how could she have, he would find her unorthodox approach ultimately irresistible.

Nathaniel sat back against the leather squabs of the light vehicle, his arms folded across his chest, his expression more than usually forbidding. Something about this hasty if planned departure went against the grain. It felt like flight—flight from the enchantress.

His body sang with the memory of her. Her scent lingered on his own skin, her taste was on his tongue, her exultant laughter ringing in his ears. Who was she? What was she? Apart from what Simon had told him, he knew nothing about her except the furthest reaches, the deepest intimacies of her glorious body.

How was that possible? How could one plumb the erotic depths of another’s body and yet know nothing of the personality, the spiritual makeup, the motivations, fears, and hopes of such a lover?

Frowning, he tried to put together what few facts he had. But they added little to the sum. Gabrielle was a widow, a grieving widow according to Simon, desperate for some activity to take her mind off her grief. But the woman in his bed had shown none of the reservations one would expect of a grieving widow. But then, he had exhibited none of the reservations of a grieving
widower, and he knew himself to be that. The grief and remorse ran so deep, it flowed with his blood in his veins. It hadn’t stopped him … had put no brake on the sensual excesses of the night.

She was reckless, and always had been according to Simon and Miles. She followed impulse and went after what she wanted. She climbed walls and rode like the devil. But why? What had made her like that?

He rubbed his eyes wearily, suddenly tired of this exercise. It was over. He wasn’t interested in who or what she was. He wanted nothing more to do with her. Simon would have to reinforce the message that there was no possible way the spymaster was going to change his policy and bring a woman into the network, and she’d find some other game to play … and some other lover.

Such a woman couldn’t remain without a lover for very long.

The reflection had the same effect as sucking on a lemon. His mouth dried, his lips pursed, his nose wrinkled, and his frown deepened. It was thoroughly unpalatable. But time and distance would have its usual effect. The sharp edges of memory would be smudged, the piercing knowledge of joy would be blunted.

Abruptly he changed the course of his thoughts to good purpose.

Jake. He had to make some decisions about his son. It was time for the governess to leave and a tutor to take her place. In two years time the boy would be going to Harrow and he had to be prepared. A childhood spent in the exclusive soft company of nurses and governesses was no preparation for the rigors of school. And Jake was all too timid as it was. He was frightened of any horse bigger than his Shetland. He hated to see a fish gutted or a rabbit in a trap. He quailed at the slightest reprimand.

And he shrank from his father.

Why? Nathaniel hunched deeper into his coat,
turning up the collar against the early morning chill. Why did Jake always regard his father with wide, tremulous eyes? Why did he find it near impossible to construct a complete sentence in response to a civil question? Why was his voice barely above a whisper when he spoke with him?

The boy had spent too long hiding in women’s skirts. It was the conclusion Nathaniel always reached. There could be no other explanation. Oh, he’d frowned on the child occasionally, scolded him once or twice, required his presence in the library before dinner whenever he was at home, examined him regularly as to his progress with his lessons, but he’d never done anything to warrant fear from his son.

Or love either.

He pushed the thought aside as irrelevant. He hadn’t loved his own father—in fact, Gilbert, sixth Lord Praed, had been a chilly, distant man who ruled his household and most especially his only son with a martinet’s severity. Nathaniel had good reason to fear him, far more reason than Jake had to fear the seventh Lord Praed. But a son owed his father respect—love was not an appropriate emotion between fathers and sons. It was different for daughters. They had fewer responsibilities ahead of them and could safely be reared with the softer emotions. Indeed, tenderness equipped them for their adult roles as wives and mothers. A mother could lavish love and tenderness on a child of either sex and it was right and proper. It was a foil for the necessary distance between a father and his son. But Jake had no mother ….

Nathaniel muttered a soft execration. It always came down to the same issue. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. God knows he needed it after a night with Gabrielle de Beaucaire. He didn’t think she was a woman with too much softness and tenderness in her makeup. But then, she’d lost her parents to one of the bloodiest tyrannies since the Inquisition.

The crack of a pistol, the violent lurching of the coach, brought him upright out of momentary oblivion with his hand on his pistol, his senses alert, his eyes wide open. He’d yanked down the glass panel at the window, his pistol resting on the ledge, his eye squinting down the barrel faster than he could have thought through the sequence of actions.

“Your money or your life, Lord Praed.”

The voice so filled with laughing mockery was unmistakable, even if his body hadn’t surged with recognition as his eye fell on the tall, slender figure astride the chestnut stallion. She had a pistol in her hand, aimed in businesslike fashion at the coachman on the box. A hood concealed her distinctive hair and a black loo mask covered her face.

“What the hell!” Lord Praed exclaimed, but his own weapon remained unwavering, his eye steady. “Put that damn pistol away now!”

“Oh, I’m not about to fire it by mistake,” she said with an insouciant shrug. “You need have no fears on that score, sir.”

“Put it
away!”
For a second, flaring brown eyes held her calm charcoal gaze in a battle of wills and his finger remained on the trigger.

Would he press it? Gabrielle found herself considering the possibility with a curious detachment. He had said he didn’t play games and she had no reason to dispute the statement. He didn’t have the air of a playful man at the moment.

With what she hoped was a casual gesture, Gabrielle shrugged again and thrust the pistol into the waistband of her britches.

“Beggin’ yer pardon, m’lord, but what the ’ell’s goin’ on.” The coachman swiveled on the box and leaned out around the corner to address his master. “Is this an’ ’oldup or not. I’ve got me blunderbuss.” He gestured with the ugly weapon.

“Oh, it’s a holdup, all right,” Nathaniel said dryly. “But not one that need involve a blunderbuss, Harlan.”

He laid his own pistol on the seat beside him and swung open the door of the chaise. He kicked the lever that let down the footstep and balanced easily on the top step. It put him on a level with the chestnut’s shoulders.

Before Gabrielle understood what he was about to do, she’d been hauled unceremoniously from her mount and found herself bundled into the interior of the chaise rather in the manner of an unwieldy parcel.

“Pass that bag in here and tether the horse to the back of the chaise,” Nathaniel instructed his coachman. “Then get moving again. I want to change horses at Horsham in an hour.”

He waited while Harkin unfastened the cloakbag from Thunderer’s saddle and handed it into him. The coachman was accustomed to obeying strange orders without question. Lord Praed demanded discretion and sharp wits from his servants and paid well for both. If he chose to accommodate a somewhat unusual highwayman in his chaise, it was no business of Harkin’s.

Nathaniel tossed the bag onto the seat, closed the carriage door with a restrained slam, and turned to survey Gabrielle, who had scrambled up from the floor and was gathering herself together on the seat.

“Take that ridiculous mask off,” he snapped. “I am sick to death of your games, Gabrielle.”

He did look somewhat exasperated. Actually, that was an understatement, Gabrielle decided, but at least his eyes weren’t brown stones at the bottom of a muddy pond anymore. In fact, they were positively lively, passionate even, although not exactly the type of passion she preferred. However, one mustn’t cavil too much. She was skating on the thinnest ice, and anything short of complete withdrawal had to be a plus.

Obligingly, she threw back the hood of her cloak and untied the strings of the loo mask. “Why shouldn’t
we play this game, Nathaniel? An interlude of passion without promises … What harm could it do either of us … or anyone else for that matter?” She ran her hands through her loosened hair and leaned her head back against the squabs, regarding him with a quizzical lift of her eyebrows.

In dawning disbelief Nathaniel realized that he couldn’t think of a logical reason to say no. Looking at her, he saw the invitation, the promise, and he remembered how she fulfilled such promises. She wasn’t a woman to be judged by ordinary standards, or to be treated by such.

“What are you afraid of?” she asked. Leaning forward, she touched his knee.

The sexual current jolted him to his core.

“Not of you,” he declared.

“Good.” Smiling, she leaned back against the squabs again. “I’m famished. Must we wait till Horsham before we stop for breakfast?”

Nathaniel’s eyes narrowed. “You,” he said with soft deliberation, “are a brigand, Gabrielle de Beaucaire.”

He sat down opposite her as the coachman’s whip cracked and the chaise lurched forward again.

Gabrielle chose to take the characterization as a compliment and smiled her crooked smile again.

Nathaniel leaned forward, hooking a finger into the clasp of her cloak, pulling her toward him. “I do not intend breakfasting with a brigand.” His mouth met hers in a hard kiss. Then he unclasped the cloak and pushed it off her shoulders. His hands cupped the swell of her breasts under the white lawn shirt and her nipples sprang upright in instant gratifying response.

“A shameless, wanton brigand,” he murmured. “Take those damn clothes off.”

“But it’s cold,” she protested with a mischievous chuckle.

“Serves you right.” He leaned back, folding his arms across his chest. “I refuse to be seen in public with
a shameless hussy, so if you want breakfast, you must change your clothes.”

“Oh, well, if it’s that serious,” she said amiably, unbuttoning her shirt, pulling it out of the waist of her britches.

Nathaniel stretched and jerked the pistol loose at the same moment. “You won’t need this either.” He examined it with an expert’s eye. It was no toy for all its small size and delicate mounting. He cracked the barrel. It was primed.

“Why do you carry a pistol?”

“One never knows when one might need protection,” she said, unfastening her britches, lifting her hips to push them down. The full swell of her breasts shifted sensuously with the motion of the coach and her own actions. Then she was naked on the seat of a swaying carriage on the road to Horsham. The dark red hair tumbled over her shoulders and her long legs stretched across the narrow space between them.

A monk couldn’t have resisted. Nathaniel reached for her, pulling her between his knees. Her skin was warm despite the winter morning and the unheated vehicle.

“You’ve a mind to play again?” Her black eyebrows rose. “It could prove something of a challenge in these circumstances.”

“I’ve never been afraid of challenges,” he replied, unfastening his britches with one hand. “And I know full well how you view them.”