Velvet (43 page)

He reached beneath her skirt. At the brushing touch of his fingers, she leaped beneath him, and he knew it would take but a whispering breath to carry her over the edge of bliss.

Why? he wondered. Why this desperate passion tonight? But the questions were fleeting as his own body responded to Gabrielle’s urgency.

He drew back long enough to pull down her lacy undergarment, to release his own body from confinement.

Gabrielle’s eyes held his, and they were filled with the wonder of anticipation.

He gathered her against him, crushing her to him as the turbulence raged around them, swallowed them, then receded, leaving them stranded on the sands of fulfillment.

Nathaniel let her fall back on the table and slowly straightened, his breathing ragged, his head whirling. Gabrielle lay unmoving in an abandoned sprawl, her rich skirts rucked up around her waist, long, bare thighs gleaming pale against the dark wood beneath her, diamonds glittering in the lamplight, the dark red hair tumbling loose, the black feathers escaping from the securing pins.

She looked like some wildly exotic bird come to rest after a long and exhausting flight. Leaning over, he stroked the curve of her cheek with one finger. “Come back, sweetheart.”

Her eyelashes fluttered and her eyes opened. She looked up at him, her expression dazed, then she smiled. “I think I just died again.”

“You were possessed by some madness,” he said, taking her hands and pulling her into a sitting position. “How dare you come here, Gabrielle.” But there was little force behind the statement. Shaking his head, he pulled up his britches. “Do you have any idea how you’ve compromised us both?”

Gabrielle struggled to regain her senses after that explosion of sexuality. How could she ever have been afraid she might have to feign a response?

“Nonsense,” she said after a minute. “This kind of thing is going on all over Tilsit. People are crisscrossing the town, hopping from bed to bed—”

“How do you know that?”

“I heard,” she said loftily.

Nathaniel examined her with a puzzled frown. She seemed completely unaware of her semi-nakedness, and the contrast of that dishevelment with her elaborate dress and those priceless diamonds. “Just what, in the name of goodness, brought that on so suddenly? Or don’t you know?”

“I’ve brought you a present,” she said. “You might find it strange … but—”

“I don’t think I can concentrate until you tidy
yourself up.” Nathaniel picked up her discarded drawers and slipped them over her feet, then he lifted her off the desk and pulled them up over her hips. “Straighten your skirt.”

Gabrielle shook down the crumpled silk and put her hands to her head, where unruly ringlets escaped in a cloud. She plucked out the feathers and tossed them onto the table, then released her hair from its pins and shook it free to her shoulders, combing her fingers through the tangles. The routine process calmed her and gave her time to collect her thoughts.

“Any better?”

“Some,” he said. “I think the problem really lay with the feathers. They were more than a little incongruous.” He picked one up and ran it through his fingers. “You’re going to need the attentions of your maid again before you go to the Prussian residence.”

“I don’t think I’m going,” Gabrielle said. “Do you have a glass of wine?”

“I managed to persuade Tolstoy to part with some of his precious supply of port.” Nathaniel opened a cupboard in the dresser and took out a bottle and two thick, rather dusty glasses. “This place lacks for amenities, I’m afraid.” He wiped the glasses with his handkerchief before filling them.

“The bed’s a little small,” Gabrielle observed, taking the glass from him.

“But the table compensates,” he observed with a half-smile. A tumult of speculation was going on behind his eyes, but there was no indication on his face. What strange gift lay behind this wild visit? Gabrielle was deeply disturbed, and by a lot more than the exigencies of lust.

“So?” he prompted. “Where’s my strange present?”

Gabrielle sipped her port and then said, “It’s a gift of information.”

A great stillness entered Nathaniel, but his eyes remained calmly on her face.

“There are some secret articles to be appended to the treaty. One of them commits Alexander to mediate a peace between England and France. If the English refuse, then Russia will declare war on England and join France and her allies in the Continental Blockade, bringing Denmark and Sweden with her.”

Nathaniel said nothing for a long time. Napoleon had forced all the nations subjected to France to join a naval blockade designed to starve England into submission. Her prosperity, indeed her lifeblood, depended on overseas trade. With all the ports of Europe closed to her, she would be unable to trade, and the nation of shopkeepers, as Napoleon referred to them, would be brought to their knees. The blockade was already biting deeply into the nation’s economic foundation, but while Russia was at war with France, the Baltic ports had remained open to English commercial shipping. If the Scandinavian nations in hegemony to Russia were forced to join the blockade, then they could close off the Baltic and there would be no outlets for British trade. She would indeed starve to death.

Nathaniel also knew that no amount of Russian mediation would convince the English government to make peace with Napoleon, so war with Russia and the closing of the Baltic ports was inevitable under the terms of the secret articles.

Gabrielle had just given him a piece of information of such outstanding value that for a minute he couldn’t fully comprehend its consequences.

“Why would you tell me this?” he asked finally.

“It’s a gift, I told you.” She twisted the stem of her wineglass. “A lover’s gift.”

“You would betray your own country?”

She shook her head. “I told you once I didn’t believe Napoleon was good for France.”

“But you spied for France.” It was a flat reminder.

“I spied with my lover for France. Now I give you the lover’s gift of a piece of priceless information.” Was
he believing her? He should; it was only the truth. She didn’t want to look at him, to read his expression, but she forced herself to do so.

So the lover
had
also been a spy. He’d wondered about that in the brothel in Paris, Knowing Gabrielle as he did, it seemed inevitable that she would have embraced every aspect of her lover’s life.

Nathaniel leaned back against the table, his glass in his hand, his eyes resting unwaveringly on her face. “A gift of love?” he asked.

“I love you,” she said simply. “I know now that I can’t endure to be separated from you. And I can’t be with you when we’re on opposite sides in this war. I’ve always been torn between two allegiances. Now I have chosen.”

Nathaniel drew a deep shuddering breath. The power of that simple declaration shook him to his core, and for the moment he was unable to absorb it, to see how it affected them both. “How did you discover this?” he asked as if she hadn’t said what she’d said.

Gabrielle gave him her explanation.

“You’re very fond of your godfather,” Nathaniel probed, still unable to accept the simplicity of her declaration. “Why would you choose to betray him?”

“I don’t believe this does,” Gabrielle replied steadily. She wondered absently if Nathaniel had heard what she’d said. He wasn’t reacting to it in any way.

She kept her voice calm and matter-of-fact as she offered an explanation as close to the truth as she could get without revealing Talleyrand’s true goals. “He too believes in a strong, united Europe. I have no idea what deep plans he has, except that he’s not in favor of an alliance between Russia and France. He’s attempting to circumvent the Russian negotiators—I know that for a fact—and from what I do know of Talleyrand, I’d lay any odds that he’s no more in favor of the secret articles than England would be.”

Gabrielle’s reasoning was devious, but from what
Nathaniel knew of Talleyrand’s reputation and ambitions, it was sound. Whatever reasons she had had for bringing him this information, the information itself was pure gold and only a fool would debate its authenticity. From his own observations during this meeting of the two emperors, it was clear that Alexander was willing to court Napoleon as assiduously now as he’d been prepared to fight him before.

“I must leave for England immediately.” He pushed himself away from the table.

“Now?”

“By dawn.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“Don’t be absurd.” He dismissed her statement with a brusque gesture.

“I told you I loved you,” Gabrielle said quietly. “Will you give me nothing in return?”

Nathaniel looked at her in silence, allowing her declaration to replay in his head. When he spoke, his voice was unusually hesitant, as if he was feeling for words. “It’s a gift so precious that I don’t know if my own love is sufficient return,” he said. “I don’t have your generosity of spirit, Gabrielle, and I’m afraid, terrified, that I’ll hurt you in some way.”

Gabrielle shook her head. “You won’t,” she said. “You didn’t hurt Helen.”

“I was responsible for her death,” he said bleakly. “I didn’t think about her, I thought only of my own needs, and those needs killed her. I don’t feel entitled to another chance at that happiness.”

“But that’s silly,” she said, reaching for his hands, holding them tightly. “You can’t pay forever for one mistake. I’m not afraid you’ll hurt me.”

When he said nothing, merely let his hands lie in hers, she said, “Do you love me, Nathaniel?”

“Oh, yes,” he said softly.

“Then I see no difficulty.” She smiled her crooked smile.

“Let me deal with this information first,” he said, drawing her tightly against him. “I have to go to England at once and I can’t give us the attention I must. I’m overwhelmed. It’s something I want more than anything, but I can’t get my mind around it. You have to give me time.”

Gabrielle heard the sincerity behind the plea, and she knew she could push him no further. “Very well.” She kissed him lightly. “I understand … I think.” She moved away from him, and he stood still, his hands hanging at his sides as if he’d just dropped something.

Gabrielle picked up her feathers. “How do you intend to travel?” she asked cheerfully.

Some of the intensity left Nathaniel’s face at this ordinary, matter-of-fact question and her easy tone. “Ride to Silute and take ship from there to Copenhagen, if possible. The sea is safer than the land, and generally quicker.”

“Then I’ll wish you godspeed.”

He ran his hands through his hair in a gesture of frustration. “This isn’t right, Gabrielle, but I don’t know what else to do. Will you come to England?”

“Yes, of course,” she said. “Very soon.”

She blew him a kiss and left him, closing the door quietly behind her.

Silute, on the mouth of the Neimen where it opened into the Baltic Sea. A few hours ride. Nathaniel intended to leave by dawn; presumably it would take him until then to make his preparations, construct appropriate reasons and farewells. He wouldn’t want to destroy such a useful cover by acting in haste. She, on the other hand, could be away within the hour.

Gabrielle sat impatiently on the edge of her seat as the carriage took her back into the French zone and home.

Talleyrand had already left: for the Prussian ball, so she scrawled him a note explaining what she’d done and what she intended to do. She put the note on the desk in his study and then rummaged through the pigeonholes until she found the imperial seal that Talleyrand used for all his official documents. She wrote herself a suitably officious set of instructions, folded the document, and sealed it with the imperial eagle. It could well prove a useful passport or protection as she journeyed through Napoleonic Europe.

It took her a few minutes to change into her britches and throw a few necessities into a cloak bag.
She dropped her pistol into the deep pocket of her cloak. A leather purse with a substantial sum of money went inside her shirt, close to her skin. Brigandage was rife among the disaffected population in the small towns of invaded Prussia.

She slipped quietly out of the house and round to the stables, where a sleepy lad saddled her horse. He was Prussian, a native of Tilsit, and regarded Gabrielle in her strange costume with scant interest.

It was still an hour to dawn when she left the town and turned her horse toward the sea, following the river to its mouth.

As dawn broke, the hamlets and villages she passed came to life, women opening doors, shooing out dogs, plying brooms. Children ran with buckets to the river and men appeared in the fields, anxious to start work before the blistering heat took hold.

No one took any notice of the black-clad rider. Prussia was an occupied land, and the peasantry plodded about their daily business, hoping only to be spared a ravaging column of French infantry who would pick them clean, chop down their woods for their own braziers, and trample the fields so that they were fit for nothing but to lie fallow for several years. If a lone rider offered no threat, then he could pass among them without hindrance.

The second rider, following an hour on the heels of the first, engendered the same lack of interest.