Velvet (51 page)

“A few months, as I said.”

“Two … three … four?”

“I’ve no idea. You know how hard it is to be precise.” He sounded impatient.

It’s a question of how pregnant I’ll be when you get home
. “Yes, I know,” she said with another shrug. Damn the man! How could she possibly tell him, when he was being so hostile and distant?

“I’ll miss you, though.” She tried to inject some warmth into the conversation.

Nathaniel’s eyes softened. “I’ll miss you too, Gabrielle.” He meant it. Even when she was twisting him into knots, he couldn’t bear to be away from her. “But it’s something that I have to do.”

“I understand.”

Maybe it was time for a separation, she thought. Maybe when he was away from her, whatever suspicions lay behind this estrangement would be put to rest.

He left early the next morning, driving his curricle. Gabrielle stood at the window, watching as he disappeared down the street. Her body felt bereft, as if she’d been abandoned in the middle of making love. And perhaps that wasn’t an inaccurate analogy.

Two days later another letter arrived from Talleyrand. It was short and terrifying. Fouché had arrested an English agent in Calais. The man had been broken and the Minister of Police believed he was now in possession of vital facts that would endanger the entire English intelligence network in Europe.

Most particularly, he knew the names and types of the boats used to transport agents across the Channel, and he knew most of the safe landing spots they used along the Brittany and Normandy coasts.

Gabrielle read the letter twice. Black spots danced before her eyes and she couldn’t think. It was as if her brain were paralyzed. Her hand was numb, she was clutching the letter so tightly, and she forced herself to breathe deeply, to relax her fingers. The letter fluttered to the carpet.

She stared down at the lines at her feet. Ingenuity! Did he know what he was asking …
demanding
. But she knew that he didn’t. Talleyrand had no understanding of the complexities of emotional relationships. He had no time for them. Oh, he loved, he was fond, he was capable of affection. Why else had he sent her this intelligence? But individuals and the whole labyrinthine maze of feelings could never be allowed to come between the man and his purpose.

Gabrielle bent to pick up the letter. The movement made her head spin and her gorge rise into her throat. She straightened rapidly, one hand stroking her throat, praying that the wave of nausea would recede. The sensation never left her except when she was nibbling on some plain and undemanding food, but she dreaded the times when it would sweep over her in an invincible wave and she’d have to run for the commode.

Mercifully, it faded from an acute presence to normal queasiness, and she read the letter for the third time. But now her head was clear and alternative courses of action tumbled and sorted themselves in her brain.

There was only one possible course of action. She had to warn Nathaniel before the
Curlew
sailed from Lymington. He’d said they would sail at the end of the week. Today was Friday. Did he mean today or Saturday?

No point speculating, or worrying. She had to leave immediately. If she rode, she could be in Hampshire by early evening. It would be hard riding. She touched her belly. Dear God, she couldn’t deal with the nausea on horseback, at least not in its acute version. But she’d noticed that fresh air seemed to help, and she had a feeling that panic might well keep a lesser problem at bay.

She couldn’t leave the house without a word. She needed to take someone into her confidence—Primmy. She’d listen to what she was told, would ask no questions,
and would ensure that no one was alarmed. And a fuller explanation to Simon, just in case something went wrong.

Don’t think like that Guillaume had taught her never to anticipate the worst until she needed to. She didn’t need to yet.

She wrote at length to Simon, telling him everything except the source of her information. He could make what guesses he wished. If anything did happen, if she and Nathaniel didn’t return, then at least the intelligence would be in the hands of someone who would know what to do with it.

Primmy, as Gabrielle had expected, accepted that Lady Praed was going into the country for a few days. She didn’t question the directive that she was to consult Lord and Lady Vanbrugh in the event of any difficulties.

Jake grumbled a bit that he wasn’t to go with her, but was easily reconciled when reminded that it would mean forgoing a promised excursion to the lions at the Exchange.

By mid-morning Gabrielle was on the road to Kingston. She had a groom with her who, when she changed horses halfway, would take her own tired mount back to London by easy stages.

They rode into the yard of the Green Man in Basingstoke in the early afternoon. Gabrielle’s back was aching, as it did after a long day’s hunting, but she ignored it. She was ravenous but stayed only to select a fresh mount. The inn provided a picnic of bread and cheese wrapped in a checkered napkin, and she rode out of the yard ten minutes after entering it, leaving the groom thankfully resting his weary bones before the fire in the taproom and addressing a substantial mutton chop.

Gabrielle now rode harder than she’d ever ridden in her life, pressing the fresh horse to its limit, and
delving deep into her own physical resources to find the last vestiges of endurance.

It was six o’clock when she rode up the driveway of Burley Manor. The front of the house was in darkness and her heart sank. If Nathaniel was in residence, there would be some light, in the library at least. The weary horse stumbled on the gravel and came to a halt as she reined him in at the front door. He stood hanging his head, sweat glistening on his neck.

Gabrielle pounded the door knocker, trying to keep the rising panic at bay. Perhaps he was on the estate somewhere and hadn’t yet returned. But she knew that was wishful thinking.

A bolt scraped back. “Why, my lady, we wasn’t expectin’ you.” A startled elderly retainer, one of the skeleton staff left to take care of the house, stared at her in the light of the lantern he held high. The hall behind him was in darkness, just a glow of lamplight coming from the open door into the kitchen regions.

“His lordship … where is he?” She offered no explanations, clinging to the doorjamb as her legs threatened to give way.

“He be gone, m’lady, two hours since. Said ’e wouldn’t be back for a few months.”

“What time is high tide?” The sea was such a factor in the lives of these people of the tidal marshes along the Hampshire coastline that most people knew the tide table as they knew the days of the week.

The man stepped outside and looked up at the sky, where a crescent moon swung low over the river. “Ten o’clock, I believe, m’lady.”

The relief was so great that Gabrielle almost sat down on the step. But she knew that once she stopped moving, she wouldn’t be able to get up again for hours.

“Take this horse to the stable and saddle me another,” she commanded. “Quickly!”

“Aye, m’lady.” The old man shuffled off with infuriating
slowness, and Gabrielle dug deep for a strength she didn’t think she had, but found something.

“Never mind, I’ll do it,” she said, taking the horse’s bridle. “Just follow me and look after this one.”

Fifteen minutes later she rode out of the stableyard, one of Nathaniel’s hunters moving eagerly beneath her. Her fatigue now enclosed her in a mind-numbing grayness, and she could feel herself swaying, her thighs barely exerting any pressure on the saddle. If the hunter decided he didn’t have a master on his back, he could well charge off on frolics of his own and she’d be helpless to prevent him. Fortunately he was a well-mannered animal and cantered easily down the lane, responding to the barest guiding nudge of her thighs or flicks of the reins.

Lymington Quay was quieter than Gabrielle had expected, but her blood sang with relief when she saw the Curlew tied up in her usual spot at the quayside. She was dark with no sign of her crew, but the sound of raucous voices, laughter, and singing came from the Black Swan. Maybe Nathaniel was in the tap room with the Curlew’s crew. It would be like him.

High tide was an hour away. She slipped from the hunter’s back and leaned against him for a minute, resting her forehead against the saddle, smelling the rich leather and the pungency of warm horseflesh. Curiously, it seemed to soothe the nausea.

Should she go into the inn and seek out Nathaniel?

But the thought of confronting him in her present weakness in the midst of a crowd of probably inebriated strange men was more than she could manage. She would go aboard the Curlew and wait for him there. It was going to be a grim encounter at best; at least it would be relatively private there, and there’d be no fear of her missing him.

She beckoned a yawning lad standing in the light spilling from one of the inn’s windows, and handed the
hunter over to him, to be stabled until she collected him later. Then she went aboard the
Curlew
.

Immediately the combined odors of tar, fish, and the crude oil they used in the lamps swamped her, and she retched feebly over the side until the spasm passed. She dug into her pocket and pulled out a hunk of bread from her picnic. Breaking off a piece, she chewed it slowly and it had the usual soothing effect.

She stumbled down the companionway into the small, well-remembered cabin, the scene of Jake’s hideous sickness. The cot beckoned, and with a groan she tumbled onto it, heedless of the rough ticking of the straw mattress beneath her cheek, or the smelly wool of the thin blanket that she dragged over her ….

She awoke to a dimly lit, moving, alien world that made no sense. Her sleep had been so heavy that for minutes she couldn’t move her limbs although her brain was giving the right orders. Finally she was able to turn her head and open her eyes.

Nathaniel was sitting at the small table in the middle of the cabin, a glass of cognac in his hand, watching her with a face of granite, and everything rushed upon her in a dizzying flood of memory and panic. She tried to sit up and the nausea hit her. With a groan she fell back again.

Nathaniel spoke, every soft word weighted with lethal menace. “You were warned. And by God, Gabrielle, you’re going to pay for this. Get up!”

She couldn’t get up, not yet, not without throwing up. “You don’t understand—”

“Get up!”

Oh, God! She thrust her hand into her pocket and found the last piece of bread.

Nathaniel stood up in one swift, angry movement, sweeping the glass to the floor. It crashed against the metal bolt of the table and broke.

“If I have to put you on your feet, Gabrielle, you are going to wish you’d never been born!”

Gabrielle crammed the bread into her mouth as he advanced on her, and with one desperate, fervent prayer that her stomach would behave, sat up, swinging her legs over the edge of the cot.

“On your feet,” Nathaniel stood over her, his face a mask of fury, his eyes deadly.

She swallowed the bread almost whole. Her head was spinning and she was suddenly more frightened than she had ever been in her life. If he was like this now, when he believed she’d merely defied his prohibition, what was he going to do when he learned the truth?

“Listen,” she said, her voice thin. “You have to listen to me … why I’m here.”

“On your feet,” he repeated with the same soft savagery.

Gabrielle stood up slowly as the words tumbled in desperate explanation from her lips. “Fouché … Fouché has broken one of your agents in Calais. He knows all the landing places in Normandy … the boats you use … I came to warn you.”

Nathaniel face was bloodless in the dim lamplight, his eyes now dark holes in his ghastly complexion. “So you
are
working for Fouché,” he said in a voice devoid of emotion.

“No!” Gabrielle shook her head vigorously. “No, not Fouché, never Fouché.”

“Then you’re working for Talleyrand,” he stated in the same flat voice.

“Yes. But—”

“Whore!”
He hit her with his open palm, and she fell back on the bed, her hand pressed to her cheek, her eyes stunned.

“Whore,” he repeated. “I trusted you. I believed in you. I loved you, God forgive me.” He bent and grabbed her arms, pulling her up.

He was submerged in a rage so wild, Gabrielle couldn’t recognize him. This was not the Nathaniel
Praed she knew—father, lover, husband, friend—a man of humor and great passions, abiding loyalties and deep privacies. This man had moved into a world where ordinary rules didn’t apply and where ordinary human sensibilities were suspended.

Somehow she had to bring him back before something dreadful, irrevocable, happened.

“Please, Nathaniel,” she cried as his fingers bit deep into her arms and his unseeing eyes blazed with a ruthless rage. “Please. I’m having a baby!” It was a desperate plea, and for a minute she thought he hadn’t heard. And then his hands dropped from her arms and Nathaniel reinhabited his eyes.