Velvet (18 page)

“Hey! Who said anything about three?” Miles exclaimed hastily.

“You don’t think I’d go without you!” his friend demanded. “Oh, no, dear boy, we’re in this one together.”

“I’m not married to a DeVane,” Miles pointed out.

“Nathaniel’s as much your friend as he is mine.”

“But this isn’t about Nathaniel, it’s about Gabby’s reputation. And she’s your kin, not mine.”

“And you’re my cousin and therefore connected to that
enfant terrible
too.”

“Oh, that’s outrageous! Of all the spurious, tenuous threads of connection …”

“Nevertheless, my dear fellow, you’re coming with us.” Simon pushed back his chair and rose from the table. “I can’t permit Georgie to go alone. Two women under a bachelor roof is simply doubly scandalous. Her father would visit me with a horsewhip!”

“And you’re unable to rule your wife,” Miles observed.

“’Fraid so,” Simon agreed with an accepting shrug, his hand on the doorknob. “We’ll say we’re passing through and thought we’d ask for a night’s hospitality. With any luck, one evening with Gabby should satisfy Georgie’s inveterate curiosity.”

“And you think that’ll fool Nathaniel?”

“No, of course it won’t. But he’ll not turn us away even if he refuses to speak two words all evening. It wouldn’t be the first time, would it?”

“No,” murmured Miles moodily as the door closed behind Lord Vanbrugh. “Far from it.” He put up his eye glass and examined axe chafing dishes on the sideboard,
but for some reason his appetite for breakfast had diminished.

“Oh, it looks as if you have a stack of work to do,” Gabrielle observed, entering the library in the bright sun of relatively early morning.

Nathaniel looked up from the desk and ran a hand through his crisp dark thatch of hair. “Yes, dispatches,” he agreed. “You’ll have to amuse yourself, I’m afraid.”

“I’m perfectly capable of doing so, sir.”

Nathaniel nodded, then abruptly pushed back his chair. He took a sheaf of papers off the desk and strolled casually to the bookshelves.

Gabrielle wandered over to the window, looking with apparent idle interest across the stone-flagged terrace to the frost-tipped lawn beyond.

The fine hairs on the nape of her neck were prickling as she heard his movements and visualized his hands removing the volumes of Locke, his fingers manipulating the lock of the safe, his eyes searching for the telltale hair.

Nathaniel glanced over his shoulder at Gabrieile’s averted back. He’d waited for her to be in the room before he checked the safe for signs of tampering.

Turning back to the safe, he began to manipulate the lock. Before opening the door, he looked behind him again and swore loudly. “Hell and damnation!”

“What’s the matter?” Gabrielle said calmly, turning from her contemplation of the garden. Her eyes were calm, her ivory complexion as translucent as ever. “Have you forgotten the combination, Sir Spymaster?” One of her crooked little smiles accompanied the teasing question.

No revealing reaction there, Nathaniel decided. Not a flicker of anxiety in her gaze. “No, but I caught my fingernail in the lock,” he said, sucking his index
finger for the sake of verisimilitude, before gently easing open the door of the safe.

“Oh, there’s Jake,” Gabrielle said loudly, flinging open the window and calling the child’s name in echoing tones.

Startled, Nathaniel looked back at her for the barest instant, the door of the safe in his hand. He returned his attention to the safe in time to see the hair fluttering to the floor.

Gabrielle was talking to Jake through the window, apparently oblivious of Nathaniel as he bent to pick up the hair.

“What are you up to this morning, Jake?” She pinched the child’s nose.

“Primmy and me are going for a nature walk,” he said solemnly, peering around her with an anxious twitch of his mouth at the dark shape of his father in the back of the room.

The governess stood behind him, smiling nervously, twisting her gloved hands. “Now, don’t disturb her ladyship, Jake.”

“He’s not disturbing me,” Gabrielle reassured. “What do you collect on your walks?”

“We don’t collect things,” Jake said. “We only look.”

“Oh.” Gabrielle could think of no response to this. The DeVane children had taken the business of collecting very seriously and competitively—insects, tadpoles, flowers, butterflies—and she’d discovered its appeal soon enough herself. Just looking at things seemed rather dull work for a six-year-old.

“We don’t like to bring dirty things into the schoolroom,” Miss Primmer explained.

“No, I suppose not,” Gabrielle agreed.

“An’ Nurse doesn’t like anything in the nursery.” Jake added his mite. “She says it’s bad enough with all the flies and things that come in on their own.”

“Come along now, Jake.” The governess took the
child’s hand. “We have to be back by eleven o’clock for your lesson with the globes. His lordship will want to know this evening how well you’ve learned about the oceans.”

Jake’s expression lost some of its liveliness and his eyes darted anxiously beneath Gabrieile’s arm as she held open the window. There was no reaction from his father, so he dutifully took his governess’s outstretched hand and bade Gabrielle good-bye.

She closed the window again, watching the woman and child walk briskly across the grass to the driveway. They wouldn’t see much of interest if they kept up that pace, Gabrielle reflected.

She turned back to the room, the cheerful smile still on her lips, no sign of the violent turmoil in her head.

Nathaniel closed the safe with a snap. For a second his eyes rested on her, brown and unreadable.

“How very fierce you look,” she said lightly, her pulses racing. “Is something troubling you? Did you object to my talking to Jake?”

“No,” he said, and sat down again behind his desk, pointedly sorting through the papers.

“Don’t let me disturb you,” Gabrielle said. “I realize you have work to do.” Had
she
given
herself away?
It was impossible to tell from his demeanor.

Nathaniel merely grunted and dipped his pen in the inkstand.

“I was wondering …” Gabrielle began. “Oh, but I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you.” She moved around the room, straightening cushions, tidying the periodicals on the side table, humming to herself, trying to decide how best to resolve her uncertainty. Maybe if she broached the subject of espionage directly, he’d give her some clue.

“I was wondering if you have agents in every city on the Continent?”

“Most.” He didn’t raise his eyes and answered with brusque impatience.

Gabrielle ignored the tone. “I suppose you must have people placed strategically in all the royal courts too. I wonder if you have anyone close to Talleyrand? Or in Madame de Staél’s salon in Paris, perhaps?”

Nathaniel’s lips thinned. “Have you had breakfast?”

“Not yet. Have you?”

“Yes.”

“Mmm. It doesn’t seem to have improved your conversational skills. I thought you were averse to conversation only at the table.”

“I am never averse to conversation, only to prattle.”

Gabrielle whistled appreciatively. “Now, that’s a home hit, sir.”

“I doubt that, ma’am,” he said aridly.

Gabrielle persevered in the same musing fashion. “Do you ever go to work in the field yourself, I wonder? Or does a spymaster just sit in the middle of the web, masterminding machinations? I wonder what it must feel like to send people into danger without exposing oneself occasionally.”

“It seems to me you do all too much wondering, madame. Go and have your breakfast.” Nathaniel kept his eyes resolutely on his papers.

“It really is very difficult to find an acceptable topic of conversation,” Gabrielle observed, shaking her head. “Children and childhoods are taboo. Your work is absolutely forbidden. Any speculation as to why you’re such an irritable bastard is equally prohibited. It really makes a body wonder how to fulfill the social duties of a polite guest.”

For a moment there was no response, then Nathaniel raised his head. He seemed to be considering something, and then one of his rare smiles spread slowly from his eyes to his mouth. “There’s one perfectly
acceptable topic, Gabrielle. I’m surprised you haven’t come up with it.”

“Oh?” She had the sudden absolute conviction that all was well. She had escaped his trap. She could ‘ feel her own smile responding involuntarily to his, even as she wondered if he knew the power of a smile that he hoarded with such care.

“Sex,” he said succinctly. His eyes narrowed but the smile remained. “Did you know that you have a delicious little cluster of freckles under your right breast, shaped rather like a daisy … and what’s really delicious is that you have almost the identical configuration on the curve of your backside? Definitely worth closer inspection, I think …”

“Nathaniel!” she said, the soft protest belied by her chuckle and the gleam in her eye.

“I wish it were strawberry season,” he continued.

“I’m sure I shouldn’t ask—at least not before breakfast—but why?” Her knees were unaccountably quivery and she hastily perched on the sofa arm.

“Oh, I have a fantasy,” he said in the same matter-of-fact tones. “I want to fill your navel with champagne and dip strawberries into it.”

Gabrieile’s limbs turned to melted butter and her loins throbbed.

“Will you be working all day?”

“Not if you leave me alone now.”

“Is that a promise?”

“It could be … now, go!”

“Yes, sir.” She wrestled with her tumultuous body for a minute and then managed to offer him a mock salute as she went to the door.

“Gabrielle?”

“Sir?”

“See if you can think of a January substitute for strawberries before this afternoon.”

“And the champagne?”

“I’ve several cases of a very fine vintage in the cellar.”

Gabrielle smiled at the crisp dark head still bent over his papers as if they were discussing the menu for dinner. A difficult, irascible, reclusive man was Nathaniel Praed, but it didn’t seem to diminish his sensuality one iota.

“Until later, then, my lord.”

“Until later, countess.”

She closed the door behind her and, still smiling, went toward the small breakfast parlor behind the stairs. At the foot of the stairs she paused, and then, without forethought, went up until she was on a level with the portrait of Helen, Lady Praed.

The sweetly smiling eyes looked across at her, the gentle mouth curving softly. What had Helen known of her husband’s vibrant sensuality? Of his unerring touch and instinct? Of his arousing hand?

Gabrielle inhaled sharply as desire again jolted her belly with the force of a lightning bolt. There had been no words of earthy passion in the letters she’d seen last night. Nathaniel had written tender, loving words describing Helen’s smile, the sweetness of her eyes, of how he could barely endure the waiting until they should be together. They were the thoughtful words of a man deeply in love, careful not to say or do anything that would frighten or injure his beloved.

And Helen’s responses … but Gabrielle hadn’t read those. It was bad enough that she’d been unable to tear her eyes from Nathaniel’s writing, let alone that she would dig into the private feelings of a woman long dead whom she’d never met.

She turned abruptly from the portrait and went back downstairs to the breakfast parlor. Nathaniel’s relationship with Helen was dangerous territory best left well alone. And the same applied to his relationship with his son.

It became hard to keep to that resolution later that
day when Miss Primmer came out of the library just before nuncheon, her face screwed tight, lower lip trembling, a handkerchief held to her mouth.

Gabrielle, coming in from a walk around the shrubbery spent contemplating a substitute for strawberries, stopped in concern. “Why, Miss Primmer, what is it? Something’s upset you.” Her eyes flicked to the closed library door. Presumably the governess had just had an interview with her employer.

“Oh, dear, countess … too kind of you … it’s just … I knew it had to happen, of course … and his lordship is being most generous … excellent character and a month’s wages … but, oh, dear, I can’t help worrying …”

She pulled herself up short, dabbed at her eyes, and straightened her bowed shoulders. “Goodness me, how I do run on,” she said with pathetic dignity. “Take no notice of me, my dear countess. It’s just such a shock, coming so soon … I had thought maybe another two years … but his lordship knows best, of course.”

“I wonder,” Gabrielle murmured. Not when it came to his son. “Come up to my sitting room, Miss Primmer, and take a glass of sherry with me. Then you can tell me all about it.” She linked her arm with the governess’s and urged her upstairs, ignoring the feeble protests.

Miss Primmer allowed herself to be put in an armchair, a glass of sherry pressed into her hand even while she demurred faintly.

“His lordship told me he was considering employing a tutor for Jake,” Gabrielle said directly, sitting on the broad window seat.

“Yes … and, of course, I know it has to happen … but I did think it wouldn’t be so sudden. Jake is such a shy little boy … it would be so much better if I could stay with him for a little while until he becomes accustomed to someone else.”

“You mean Lord Praed is turning you out as soon as
the tutor arrives?” Gabrielle couldn’t keep the shocked disapproval from her voice even though she’d told herself it was none of her business.

Miss Primmer nodded, sniffed, dabbed at her nose with her handkerchief, and took a rather large gulp of sherry. “His lordship is all generosity, I mustn’t complain, countess, but I do think Jake needs some time.”

“Yes.” Gabrielle leaned back against the wall of the window embrasure, turning her head slightly to look out over the river. Miss Primmer might not dwell upon her own misfortunes, but it was no pleasant matter to be turned out in middle years after long service, an excellent reference and a month’s wages notwithstanding. A governess’s life was not to be envied.

“I have a married sister,” Miss Primmer was continuing, as if divining her companion’s thoughts. “I’ll be able to stay with her for a little while until I find another situation. I can be useful around the house and with the children. It gives Nurse a rest, you understand.”