Bride for a Night (9 page)

How much could she accomplish for those poor orphans?

She heaved a sigh. “You do not fight fair.”

“I fight to win.”

She thrust away his unexpectedly tempting offer and turned to meet his watchful gaze.

“Am I to be held here forever?”

He deliberately lifted his brow, glancing toward the beautiful Rubens’s paintings displayed in gilt frames and the dangling chandeliers made from priceless Venetian glass.

“You disapprove of your lodgings?”

She thinned her lips, battling against his considerable charm.

“I simply wish to know what you intend for my future.”

He reached to straighten the lace at her bosom. “Be at ease, Talia. Once the information I acquired has been used to defeat Wellesley, I will personally escort you back to Devonshire.” He paused. “Although I have hopes that I will have convinced you to remain with me by that time.”

She was far from comforted by his promise. “How can you speak so casually of what you have done? Do you not realize that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of British soldiers might die because of your treachery?”

“And hundreds, perhaps thousands, of French soldiers will be saved,” he readily countered. “It is war,
ma petite.
”

“A war started by your crazed emperor who will not be satisfied until he has conquered the world.” Her scowl shifted toward the marble bust of Napoleon that had been placed on a teak-wood pedestal. “How can you give your loyalty to such a man?”

“I
COULD ASK
the same of you,” Jacques countered, his jaw clenched. “How can you give your loyalty to a mad king and his
imbecile
son who devotes more attention to the gloss on his boots than to his people starving in the gutters?”

She lowered her eyes, unable to deny his condemnation. Not that she was prepared to admit the truth. Not to the man who was willing to betray those who had come to trust him, including herself.

“We shall never agree.”

“You think not?” He waited until she lifted her head to meet his somber gaze. “We are not so different, you know.”

She stilled. “What do you mean?”

He paused, as if not entirely certain he wished to explain himself. Then, with a tiny shrug, he turned his gaze toward the children still darting about the courtyard.

“My father was an artist who caught the attention of King Louis,” he revealed in a soft, rigidly controlled voice. “He was commissioned to complete several sculptures for the
Tuileries
gardens.”

She studied his profile, sensing his long-buried pain. “He must be very talented.”

“He was.”

“Oh.” She cleared her throat. “He has passed?”

“When I was just a boy.” A wistful smile curled his
lips. “Thankfully, I managed to salvage a few of his pieces.”

Her annoyance with Jacques was forgotten as she stepped forward and laid a comforting hand on his arm. She had been devastated by the loss of her mother at a young age. No child should have to endure such pain.

“I would love to see them.”

“Then you shall.” He turned to meet her sympathetic expression. “He would have approved of you.”

She shifted uneasily beneath his intent gaze. “What happened?”

He paused, clearly unaccustomed to sharing his past. Then he heaved a deep sigh.

“My mother had been an actress before wedding my father and she was…” His expression softened. “Exquisite.”

“That I can well believe.” His own beauty was potent.

He gave a dip of his head. “
Merci, ma petite.
Unfortunately, beauty can often be a curse for women.”

“A curse?”

She blinked at his odd claim. Was beauty not an essential quality for a woman? God knew that she had suffered the consequences of daring to be less than lovely.

“My father was invited by the king to visit for several weeks at Versailles,” Jacques explained. “He was, of course, delighted. An artist must depend upon the patronage of those with wealth. He hoped to acquire additional commissions.”

“Did you travel with him?”

“No, I remained at our home in Paris with my tutor, but my mother joined him at the palace.” His jaw clenched. “Within a few days she had caught the eye of the Comte de Rubell.”

Talia bit her bottom lip, a sick sensation forming in the pit of her stomach.

“Oh.”

“Being a member of nobility the Comte naturally assumed that my mother should be honored to warm his bed. He could not accept her rebuffs.”

It was, unfortunately, a too familiar story.

Women without the protection of wealth or powerful connections would always be at the mercy of unscrupulous men.

Of course, even wealth did not necessarily protect a woman from being compelled to obey the demands of an overbearing male, she grimly acknowledged.

“Did he…force her?”

Pure hatred flared through Jacques’s eyes. “That was his intention when my father arrived and stuck the bastard with his sword.”

“Good for him,” Talia said with staunch approval.

His lips twisted. “It was not a fairy tale with my father as the hero,
ma petite.
Although his attack caused no more than a flesh wound, he was taken to the Bastille and condemned to death.”

She sucked in a harsh breath, horrified by the story.

“Jacques, I am so sorry.”

“As am I.” He took a moment, raw emotion tightening his features before he struggled to regain command of his composure. “My father was a hardworking, decent man of honor who was killed as if he were no more than a stray dog.”

“You loved him,” she said softly.

“Oui.”
He managed a stiff smile. “And he adored me.”

“Then you are fortunate, even if you only had him a short time.” She felt a familiar tug at her heart. “The
memory of my mother was often my only comfort after a particularly difficult evening among society.”

He shrugged off her words of comfort. “Remarkably I do not feel fortunate.”

She gave his arm a gentle squeeze. “What happened to your mother?”

“She returned to Paris only long enough to pack our belongings and to flee to England. Her cousin in London was willing to take us in.”

“So that is why you speak English with such fluency.”

“My mother married the youngest son of a baron who was willing to pay my tuition to Eton to keep me from being constantly underfoot.” His tone was matter-of-fact, but Talia sensed that the rejection from his stepfather had only served to deepen his disgust for the aristocracy. “I was a well-polished Englishman until I came of age and was able to return to France.”

“And yet you feel no loyalty at all to England?” she asked, unable to accept that he had made no friends during his years in school.

“I have no loyalty to a country that will allow the oppression of its people by a handful of bloated nobles who remain above the law.”

“But…”

“Enough of this dreary talk of politics,” he abruptly interrupted, pressing a slender finger to her lips. “I have come to request your companionship for dinner.”

Talia rolled her eyes in wry resignation as Jacques retreated behind the practiced charm he used as a shield against the world.

“I should refuse,” she muttered, ruefully aware she was unable to conjure the outrage she should be feeling at being held hostage by a French spy.

With a dramatic motion, Jacques pressed a hand to his heart. “You would not be so cruel.”

“You are my enemy.”

“Never.” Without warning he leaned down to brush his lips over her cheek, then taking her hand he placed it on his arm and firmly led her down the gallery. “Come,
ma petite.
Allow me to prove just how…friendly I can be.”

One week later

D
USK HAD FALLEN
over the French countryside as Gabriel halted near the abandoned conservatory and studied the palace spread before him.

His gaze barely noted the imposing building that loomed over the countryside with rigid grandeur. He concentrated instead on the handful of soldiers lazily patrolling the grounds before shifting to the formal gardens where he could see the shadowy form of a lone woman walking through broken statues.

“Talia,” he breathed, sinking to his knees as a violent sense of relief slammed through him.

The man at his side shifted forward, moving with surprising grace considering his large bulk.

“Are you certain?” Hugo demanded.

Gabriel turned to send his friend a sour glance.

It hadn’t been his choice to have Hugo travel with him to France.

In fact, he had done everything but horsewhip the aggravating man to keep him from following him.

Unfortunately, Hugo was nothing if not tenacious and, ignoring Gabriel’s commands, insults and threats of violence, he had stubbornly arrived at Carrick Park mere hours after Gabriel and then had refused to leave his side.

In the end, Gabriel had been too anxious to begin his search for Talia to battle with his friend. While Hugo made himself useful by carefully interviewing the servants to discover if they could offer any useful information, Gabriel had scoured the countryside.

Thank God the local tenants were devoted to the young Countess of Ashcombe. The moment the alarm had been raised at her failure to return for supper, they had spread throughout the neighborhood to find their beloved Talia. Within hours they had found two strangers who were staying at a local posting inn, each of them carrying far too much money for innocent travelers.

They had held the pair captive at the local gaol, where the magistrate had struggled to prevent the more bloodthirsty citizens from taking matters into their own hands.

Gabriel had found himself struggling to suppress his own bloodlust as he had questioned the insolent creatures, and it was Hugo who had prevented him from choking the life from the bastards when they had grudgingly revealed the truth of Jack Gerard and the fact he had taken Talia to his lair in France.

As it was, he’d managed to crack the ribs of one of the traitorous cowards and knocked the teeth from the other before Hugo had managed to pull him off.

By the next morning Gabriel had been on his private yacht, headed toward the coast of France with Hugo grimly at his side.

“It has been some time, but I am capable of recognizing my wife, Hugo,” he assured his companion.

Hugo narrowed his golden eyes. “She does not appear to be a prisoner.”

Gabriel swallowed a curse. This was precisely the reason that he had attempted to keep his friend from joining
him on this quest, despite the knowledge he could have no more skilled or loyal companion.

“Looks can often be deceiving,” he muttered.

“In that we are in perfect agreement.” Hugo tensed as a soldier strolled along the flagstone path, passing close enough to the conservatory that they could catch the scent of his cigar. Hugo grabbed Gabriel’s arm and tugged him toward the back of the building, his expression hard.

“Dammit, Ashcombe, we cannot linger here. The French soldiers might be as ignorant as they are incompetent, but they will eventually stumble across us. Besides, neither of us is as young as we used to be. Crouching in the bushes is damned uncomfortable.”

Hugo grimaced as he glanced down at his ruined breeches covered in mud and his once glossy boots that were now scratched from the past hour of tromping through the thick forest surrounding the palace. Gabriel was equally rumpled, his jade coat ripped in several places and his cravat wrinkled from the late-summer heat. Even his hair was mussed and the stubble on his jaw revealed he was twelve hours past the need for a shave. A considerable change from the elegant image he was always careful to portray to society.

“I have no intention of leaving here without Talia,” he growled.

Hugo shook his head. “Do not be a fool, Ashcombe.”

“There is nothing foolish in rescuing my wife from the bastard who kidnapped her.”

“You cannot simply charge into that nest of vipers,” his friend persisted. “You would be shot before you ever reached the gardens.”

Gabriel made a sound of impatience. He’d already accepted that he could not reach Talia.

Not yet.

“There will be no charging.”

“Then what do you intend to do?”

“Once it grows darker I will be able to slip past the guards and find her.”

Hugo’s fingers dug into Gabriel’s arm with a punishing grip. “No.”

“This is not open to debate, Hugo.”

“I will not allow you to commit suicide for a woman who is not worth—”

Gabriel barely realized he was moving before he had his friend pinned to the back of the conservatory. The savage fear that had haunted him since discovering Talia’s absence was finally boiling over.

Christ. He’d been through hell imagining the various horrors that his bride might have endured. And now, being able to catch a glimpse of her in the distance, and yet knowing she was still out of reach, was torture.

“I warned you when you insisted on joining me that I would not endure insults to my wife,” he seethed.

Predictably Hugo refused to give ground. The damnable man was one of the few whom Gabriel could not intimidate.

Which was no doubt the reason he was one of Gabriel’s rare friends.

“And I will not willingly allow my friend to walk into danger,” Hugo said between clenched teeth. “I have too few of them as it is.”

With an effort, Gabriel regained command of his frayed temper, releasing Hugo and taking a jerky step backward.

“There will be little danger.”

“Little danger?” Hugo scowled, waving a hand toward the distant gardens. “Perhaps you failed to notice the battalion of French soldiers milling about the palace?”

Gabriel shrugged, catching sight of two soldiers leaning against a broken fountain and flirting with a buxom maid.

“It is obvious that they are more interested in their entertainment than in keeping watch.”

Hugo remained unimpressed. “That does not mean they will not eagerly shoot an intruder.”

“Only if they realize there is an intruder,” Gabriel countered, shrugging aside his friend’s concern. He did not care if Napoleon and his entire army made a sudden appearance. Nothing was going to prevent him from retrieving his wife. “If you will recall, I managed to slip beneath the nose of our headmaster for years without being caught.”

Sensing Gabriel’s determination, Hugo muttered a vile curse. “I do not like this.”

“Neither do I, but there is no choice.”

“There is always a choice,” Hugo argued. “As you have pointed out with revolting frequency, Talia is now the Countess of Ashcombe. All we need do is to locate the closest British troops and they will…”

“I have no intention of leaving my wife in the hands of the enemy another night and certainly not the days, or even weeks, it would take to gather an army,” Gabriel ground out. “Besides, I will not risk Talia in the midst of a battle. We both know it is often the innocents who are injured in the heat of war.”

“If she is innocent…”

“Enough,” Gabriel snapped.

Hugo made a sound of impatience. “Would you listen to me, Ashcombe?” he rasped. “You have only the word of two traitors that she was taken against her will. What if you manage to approach her without being caught and
she refuses to leave with you?” He paused. “Or worse, what if she reveals your presence to the French?”

Gabriel gritted his teeth, refusing to admit that Hugo’s accusations struck a nerve.

In the back of his mind, however, a treacherous voice reminded him that he had sent a young, beautiful woman into the isolated countryside without so much as a companion to keep her occupied. Would it be so astonishing that she would turn to a handsome and charming vicar to ease her loneliness? Or even to fulfill the needs of her body that he had stirred to life on their wedding night?