Guarded Heart (19 page)

G
avin lay in somnolent peace, watching the bright track of the winter sunlight as it fell through the French doors beside his bed. It pooled on a carpet of purest cochineal, red as blood and woven with a design of palm fronds in teal and viridian, fell across a duvet covered by cream and red calico, and reflected pink light into the shirred cream canopy of the tester above him. Warm in spite of the season, it made nothing of the small coal fire which burned under a mantel of sculpted rose marble.

He lay propped on two pillows while another raised one shoulder to take the pressure from his back and side, and covered in abnormal decency by a white linen nightshirt. The stitches in his side pulled with a vicious ache and the sheets on which he reclined had been starched and ironed to the point of irritation, but he made no complaint. He had been bathed, mended and bandaged, and was waiting for Nathaniel with his afternoon ration of red wine to rebuild his blood, a vintage straight from Maurelle's cellar as the sheets were from Maurelle's armoire. To find fault would be the rankest ingratitude. He was not ungrateful in any degree.

What he was, he recognized, was infernally curious.

It had not, at first, seemed at all strange to be installed in one of the best bedchambers of the Herriot town house with Nathaniel at his right hand and ladies in various stages of
déshabille
coming to hover over him at odd hours. He had been weak from loss of blood and so sunk in fever that he dwelled in some netherworld where dreams and reality swirled around each other, so entwined that it was impossible to pull them apart. Now that he was awake, he wasn't sure he wanted that separation. Some aspects of the dreams seemed worth keeping.

One in particular featured Ariadne in a nightgown and peignoir of lace-edged white lawn, her hair streaming down her back. She had leaned over him so he caught the scent of violets. The back of her hand had been smooth against his hot cheek and the concern in her eyes soothed some half-formed distress in his mind. She gazed down at him for what seemed a lifetime, her dark tresses shimmering with rainbow highlights as they spilled around them. Then she brushed across his lips with her fingertips, let them trail down his neck and over his chest until she pressed her palm to his heart as if counting its steady beats.

“Touché,” he whispered.

Her lips parted on a gasp and her eyes turned liquid. He let his eyelids fall to close out the sight. When he looked again, she was gone. Gone, but the place where her hand had pressed burned like a brand.

Oh, but afterward, he had floated in a nightmare of being back at Maison Blanche once more following the duel with Francis Dorelle. Phantom pain throbbed in the jagged scar under his collarbone caused by a broken sword. He wanted to get up to see about the young man he had stabbed with his own blade in that freakish accident on the dueling field, but he couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't escape the fear that his opponent was dead and that he had killed him. It was a relief when sleep came down to smother the paralyzing anxiety.

It would be as well if he let the dreams go, after all.

The door on the opposite side of the room creaked open, and he turned his head toward the sound. It was Ariadne, as if he had summoned her by his thoughts. She was well and fully clothed in a day gown of unrelenting gray, with her hair coiled in a tightly braided coronet on top of her head and a few stray spirals at her temples. A doubtful frown lay between her brows while she studied his face, allowing the silver salver holding a glass of wine which she carried in her left hand to come perilously close to tipping. He smiled before he could prevent the movement of his lips.

“You are awake.”

It sounded like an accusation, he thought. “I can, if you like, pretend otherwise.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Convenience? You could put down that glass, supposing it's still unspilled, and leave without having to speak to me.”

“I can do that anyway.” She glided across the room and deposited the salver on a small table within his reach. Her movements were swift, as if spilling the wine was not a concern, though he noticed that she checked for stray drops.

“It would not be a kindness—supposing, of course, that kindness matters to you. But no, you directed that I be brought here, which must have been well intended. It was you at the dueling ground?”

“You remember.”

“It's the mystery that lingers, you see, almost as great a one as waking in your care.”

“If you are trying to discover why I intervened, I do have an interest in the affair. Besides, all the rooms and wards at Charity Hospital and the Maison de Santé were taken by victims from the
Bluebell.
”

He studied his hands where they lay, pale and lax, on the sheet. “A matter of charity then.”

“It seemed little enough after the way you were…betrayed by someone who felt he was acting in my interests.”

She moved to the window as she spoke, adjusting the draperies so the sun's rays did not strike across his pillow. Her face in profile appeared grave, with all expression carefully masked by perfect reason. The warm light shaded across her mouth, illuminating its perfection, reminding him that he had kissed those lips not so long ago and felt his world tilt on its axis. And would like nothing so much at this moment as to do it again. The vividness of that desire and unruly response of his body were ample proof he had begun to mend.

“The black I was riding, how does he fare?” he inquired after a moment.

“He will recover so your friend Caid tells us, though with a considerable scar. Now I think of it, that's the same diagnosis your physician for the duel, Dr. Labatut, applied to his rider.”

“No kindly coup de grâce for man or beast? We are both to be congratulated. And Novgorodcev, what of his fate?” Gavin kept his voice even, though these were questions that had plagued him since he had awakened an hour ago.

“He lives, though he might prefer otherwise. He is contrite beyond imagining for his loss of temper. That does not absolve him, of course, or prevent him from being scorned by all who hear of the duel. When the concussion you gave him will allow, he plans to take ship for Paris.”

“Leaving you behind? A dire punishment for a moment's madness.”

She swung to face him with a frown between her eyes. “You can say that when he almost killed you by as dishonorable a trick as can be imagined?”

His lips curved in wry acceptance. “A duel is not always a model of politeness and decorum. Besides, his incentive was great. He thought he was saving you.” That was cutting a little too close to the bone, but he had a great wish to know how she would answer the unspoken charge.

“From social ruin, you mean,” she said with tilt of her head that caused the curls trailing down beside her face to shimmer in the light behind her. “I am not certain his motive was so exalted. He is a man who likes to command those around him.”

“And you are not to be commanded.”

Her smile was brief and tinged with self-knowledge. “A failing, but there it is. As he had no means to compel me to his will, he thought to remove my ability to disoblige him by removing you.”

“Short-sighted of him, given the number of other sword masters in the Passage.”

“Thinking ahead has never been his strong suit. Unlike some.” The words were abrupt as she turned away from him, moving toward the door. “I must go. Your strength should not be taxed by too much conversation.”

“Unlikely,” he said, his voice dry. “Though too much time spent with your patient behind a closed door might not be wise.”

She paused with her hand on the door handle. “I am not some young girl who knows nothing of the sickroom. My husband was ill for some time before his death. I seldom left his side since he preferred me to any other nurse.”

“He was fortunate in his wife. But that was not my meaning.”

“I am aware. Having brought you here for convalescence, I cannot think it matters how much or how little I come and go. The tattle-mongers will have us in bed together in any case. That is if they can be brought to cease talking of my part in your duel. If there is no freedom to be gained by being notorious, what's the point of it?”

She went from the room without giving him the opportunity to answer. It was just as well, since he could think of nothing to say. His brain was too engaged with the words she had spoken and the images they sowed like dragon's teeth in his mind, a score of new ones popping up for every one vanquished.

In bed together…

Her dark eyes holding his, her long legs wrapped around his hips while he plunged into her wet softness…

The sweet, hard berry of her nipple against his tongue as she moaned…

Her eyes glazed with passion, her skin like dew-kissed pearls…

She would be the death of him with her pronouncements and daring, her midnight visits and men's pantaloons. But that was, of course, her intention.

She wanted him dead.

It was not enough that he should die in some chance meeting or design ordained by others, no, not at all. She wanted to kill him with her own hands. So determined was she to have that pleasure that she was willing to nurse him back to perfect health in order to achieve it.

He was not inclined to allow it. Other pleasures, yes, but not that one.

Delirium, that had to be his trouble. He could not be right about her intentions. They could not be so deadly while she smiled with sweet reason and brought him wine and surcease for the doubts and fears in his mind.

Could they?

He had to be certain.

What better way than to play upon her sympathy and her sense of fair play? What better time than in this halcyon period of his recovery when she thought him too weak to be a threat?

He would test her resolve in the many ways that febrile imagination, lying quietly on starched sheets, could devise. It would be his pleasure and his pain. Mercy was something he could ill afford since the outcome was so vital. And if he was correct, if her purpose was as lethal as he supposed, then he would consider what to do about it.

He preferred not to be her enemy, but he could be, easily, if that was what she required.

Gavin had drunk the wine and lay turning the glass in his hand, watching the last drop roll around the rim as if seeking a way out, when the door opened again. He looked up, every sense tingling with alertness.

“Madame Faucher said you'd come to your senses.” Nathaniel closed the door behind him and slouched across to stand at the foot of the bed. His face was flushed and earnest and doubt hovered in his eyes. “Are you all right? Anything I can get you?”

“I am, for the moment, swaddled in bandages and bemused by what I suspect was laudanum in fine Bordeaux so want for nothing.” Gavin summoned a smile. “And you? You have been given a pallet somewhere?”

“In the room next to this one, a mighty fine bed with a whopping great roof thing overhead that looks like it might smash down on me in the middle of the night and a china piss-pot under it that's painted with pheasants.” The boy grinned. “And I don't have to empty the pot.”

“Your happiness is complete, I see. Have you any idea how long I've been here?”

“Two days as of this morning, and the sun looks to set before long. You slept right through your back being sewed up. Madame Maurelle said it was a mercy you didn't deserve after making her heart stop the way you did, but I don't think she meant it.”

“Let us hope,” Gavin replied in light agreement. “Was Madame Faucher similarly concerned?”

“I'd be hard put to say. She mostly seemed mad.”

“Mad? You mean angry?”

The young man nodded. “At you, for starters, and at the other idiot, as she called him, meaning the damn bastard who sliced you. At the sawbones for being so ham-fisted with his needle he was like to sew skin to backbone so she took it away from him. And at me, because I wouldn't let her strip off your clothes.”

“I did wonder who accomplished that last part. Since it was you, I shall look about me for some reward, however inadequate it may be.”

“No need. 'Twasn't her place.”

“No. I agree most heartily. But if you managed to thwart an ambition held by that lady, you may aspire to anything.”

“Oh, I don't think she really wanted the job. She just thought the rest of us would let you bleed to death before we got it done.”

“Ruining no end of linens in the process. I do understand.” Gavin's smile was self-deprecating and secretly amused. “I will allow that the lady is above reproach. Or suspicion. You like her?”

Nathaniel's flush grew darker. “Happens as there's a bunch of ladies I like.”

He referred to Lisette, Caid's wife, Gavin knew, also Juliette who was married to Nicholas, both of whom had earned his silent devotion. Not that it was difficult to achieve. Having been orphaned and put out on the streets at a young age, he revered all women, particularly those who smiled upon him. “But you may always add another.”