Guarded Heart (23 page)

Surely he was incapable of it? It was impossible to be certain, of course, but she could not imagine that a man unable to shift in his chair without pain could take a woman into his bed.

He couldn't.
Could he?

She must redirect her thoughts before he challenged her on them, picking them from the air in that unnerving habit that seemed his alone. It would be as well, too, if she could control her gaze which skimmed far too often over the firm, flat planes of his belly under its covering of brocade.

“You are so very English in your accent, your outlook and attitudes,” she said in a rather desperate search for a change of subject. “How is it that you came to New Orleans?”

“I have a brother here, if you recall.”

“Oh, yes.” Nicholas Pasquale was his half brother. She had almost forgotten. It seemed vaguely possible that Gavin's attitude toward love affairs might stem in part from his father's wayward history in that area. “You came to visit him.”

“My travels took me to where he was born, on the trail of a rumor that he existed. Eventually it led me here.”

“What of your other travels? I mean, you can't have been so very old when you parted company from your grandfather, otherwise you would never have been expected to see after a younger brother. Where did you go from there?” She had no idea that he would answer the query, but it didn't hurt to ask.

“To London first, then on to Paris, Wiesbaden, Vienna, and finally to Rome and Rhodes before coming here. It was a grand tour, if you will, just of greater duration than most.”

“Not so terrible an exile if you had the means to travel.”

“My grandfather might have been inclined to favor Thomas, who must be considered a paragon of honor as the future heir to his titles, but he was not so lacking in charity as to send me off without a shilling. Second sons are usually destined for the church or the army, you know. An officer's commission was purchased for me. My father, in a belated show of responsibility, saw to it that I was posted to a ceremonial position with the Queen's Guard. Clattering through London, riding on parade in bearskin shako and polished boots bored me to the teeth. I resold my commission to finance the rest of my journey.”

“At least you were not abandoned completely.”

“No, though their generosity may have been because they guessed the truth. I would have preferred exoneration.”

“Yes, anyone would,” she said slowly, her gaze on the mask-like planes of his face that were glazed in red and blue light from the coal flames under the mantel. “You were in Paris. We might have met there.”

“Unlikely.” His lips curved in a self-deprecating smile. “My association with the correct and respectable of the city was not great.”

“The bourgeoisie, you mean.”

“Since that is the most imminently respectable segment, yes. I meant no insult, nor to suggest that I moved in more exalted circles. I did not.”

She let that pass. “I expect you honed your swordsman's skills there as well.”

His smile was brief. “Not on the overtly arrogant, though the temptations were many.”

“But in the
salles d'armes,
perhaps?”

“There and elsewhere, notably Italy where the art of the foil and épée began.”

“I did wonder how you came by the extra skill it takes to set up here in a
salon d'assaut.
”

“An accident, really, gained out of boredom, restless hardihood and youthful habit. As a pastime between bouts of dissipation, exercise with a sword had more appeal than gaming.”

He was attempting, as before, to discourage her with outrageous claims. At least, she thought they were exaggerated. “So you came finally to New Orleans where you joined the select few.”

“If by that you mean the
maîtres d'armes.
”

He made as if to reach for the wine carafe then halted with a wince. She forestalled him with a small gesture, leaning to lift the carafe and splash white wine into a crystal stem. She handed it to him while laying the fingers of her free hand alongside his to make certain it was in his grasp before she released it.

His skin was so warm, the tracery of gold hairs on his fingers crisp yet silken, their ridged calluses both fascinating and repellent. She could almost feel the turbulent flow of life inside him, feel it alter its rhythm to beat against the pulse in her own fingers. She was still, transfixed by the onslaught of fiery need. Lifting her lashes, she met his eyes and was lost in their crystalline blue depths.

He was so different from any man she had ever met, so hidden away behind a barricade of words and attitudes, so armored by skill at arms and intellect that it was impossible to tell who or what he was inside. And yet he was there, like some dragon in his castle, some beast in his lair. He was there, and he invited her inside. The question was whether it was to be protected or devoured.

A shiver ran down her spine, spreading chill dismay into her midsection. Before it could reach her fingers, she released the crystal stem and drew back. It was a relief to see that his grasp was firm enough that there was no accident. It was also oddly gratifying to watch him sip the wine, then turn his attention to the bread and chicken she had given him.

What ailed her that she should care?

With hands that were not quite as steady as before, she poured wine into the second stem on the tray and brought it to her lips. It was an excellent vintage, as was only to be expected of anything from Maurelle's thick-walled cellar in the raised basement below the town house, but she was more in need of its restorative effect.

To cover that small, confused moment, she reached for a chicken wing, taking small bites and following them with wine. In the quiet while they ate, she could hear the distant murmur of voices from the dining room, which indicated that others had joined Maurelle and Nathaniel, and the sighing of wind around the eaves.

Before the quiet could grow too uncomfortable, she dredged from her mind a comment that promised to be fairly safe yet might be productive. “One hears much of a Brotherhood among the sword masters these days.”

“One can hear anything.”

“Yet you are very close, are you not, particularly those of you who are Maurelle's friends?”

“We have our small coterie, our circle within the larger circle of the Vieux Carré's social order. As Madame Zoe told you, it is Lisette, Caid's wife, who sees to it. If we are brothers in any sense, then she is the cause.”

“It sounds as if she enjoys special affection.”

“And is held in it by us all. Caid is fortunate in the lady he took to wife, though I could say the same of Nicholas, also of Rio de Silva, his friend who makes the fourth in our circle.”

“But you do not seek to emulate them?”

“Remiss of me, isn't it?”

“Why would you say that?”

“Because,” he said with a faint twist of his lips, “I am told it with great regularity by all I have mentioned. It seems the happily married require all their friends to join them in that state.” He sipped his wine then sat staring into the glass. “What of you? Have you no thoughts of taking another husband?”

“Not at the moment.”

“But one day you will, possibly for the sake of children if nothing else.”

She had thought the same thing not long ago, still she gave a small shake of her head. “It seems a strange thing, to wed a man for the sake of his seed.”

“No stranger than marrying a woman for the use of her womb.”

“Someone spoke of my marriage in your hearing, I suppose?”

“It was a matter of passing interest.”

What did he mean by that? Nothing in the quiet repose of his face or gleam of his eyes behind his lashes gave her any indication. “I won't ask who it may have been, but will say that those who are not intimately involved can have little idea of what passes between a husband and wife.”

He watched her for a long moment. “Oh, granted,” he said, the words so soft they barely stirred the air. “And we all have our secrets.”

She glanced up, her gaze sharp, but he had turned away to stare into the fire again. Not a trace of emotion showed on the fire-bronzed planes of his face.

Nothing was there. Nothing at all.

G
avin watched the flames dancing over the coals behind the curling wrought iron grate while he considered the situation. It was bizarre to sit beside a woman who smiled and made conversation, poured his wine and appeared all solicitude, yet wanted him dead.

It was also strange to be alone behind a closed door with a woman who considered him harmless. At least, he would swear that was what was in her mind. She seemed so relaxed, as if she had no thought whatever of any designs he might have upon her. He was not used to being dismissed so easily.

More than that, he was not certain how many opportunities would be provided for the purpose he intended. His time here was limited after all, and the lady's charity toward him was unlikely to survive his recovery. It was doubtful it would last beyond the moment when she realized he was able to move about on his own.

He had not intended that she should know he could leave his bed. Another visit from her today had been unexpected.

Why was she here? He had been reasonably certain he knew her purpose which was to see him hale and hearty again so she might annihilate him herself. He did not make the mistake of thinking that her anger with Novgorodcev was any indication of concern for his welfare; it was almost certainly for the Russian's treachery in usurping her prerogatives. If anyone was going to kill him, it would be she.

He was perfectly willing to allow her to try. He only reserved the right to defend himself in any way that seemed likely to serve. That included exploiting the sensual awareness that hovered in the air around them, a current that seemed to both fascinate and repel the lady who attended upon him. He wondered what it might take to make it more evident.

His fingers opened without conscious direction, allowing the glass he held to fall. It struck his brocade-covered thigh, tumbled over the edge of his chair toward the floor.

Ariadne moved so quickly that it was almost as if she had been waiting. Sliding from her chair in a silken billow of skirts, she went to one knee to catch the crystal stem before it struck the floor.

“Brava,” he said with unstinted admiration as he met her dark gaze where she knelt at his feet. “I thank you for the rescue, and Maurelle will thank you as well.”

“It was luck, I assure you,” she said on a low laugh.

“You didn't think but only acted. I feel sure you could now catch any sword thrown your way.”

A flush rose in her face though her smile was crooked. “Do you? How very…kind of you to say so,
monsieur le maître.
”

“It should be interesting to see when our sessions resume.”

“Let us hope that's before I forget everything I've learned to this point.”

She shifted a little, as if preparing to rise. He prevented it by putting out his hand to take hers. Removing the glass from her cool fingers, he set it on the table then reached to cup the soft plane of her face in his hand. “You will be a swordswoman extraordinaire. I only wonder what you will do with what you have learned.”

If he had ever doubted her intentions, the color that flooded her face at his words would have convinced him. The ludicrous thing was the answering surge of heat in his groin. Or was it really so extraordinary that the fillip of danger should draw him like a wasp to honey, to this woman, this moment, this sublime chase? The risk of the game was what attracted many to the life of a
maître d'armes,
himself among them. Hazard as an aphrodisiac was not that different, when all was said and done.

He should resist; that much was clear. It would not benefit him to succumb to whatever she intended.

Merely to benefit was not his purpose, however. He wanted to know—could not be denied knowing—just how far she would go. Would she give herself to him in pursuit of her perfect vengeance or would she draw back before the final sacrifice? Did she intend some betrayal while his guard was down? Or was her purpose to weaken his resolve, making it more difficult for him to protect himself against her when the time came?

That last was not so far-fetched, he knew. It was a hard man who could harm a woman in a match with swords, an even harder one who could even think of killing one who had just left the warmth of his bed.

He couldn't do it. That being so, he most certainly should end this here, now, before it really began.

Too late.

It had been too late from the moment he had turned and looked into Ariadne's angry black eyes on the evening of
Réveillon.
She was a challenge he had no wish to resist, even if he had the resolution for it.

If it was a duel she wanted, then she would have it. The rules would not be standard, nor the weapons. Conduct for it would be as honorable or dishonorable as she chose since he would follow her lead. The battle was joined from this moment, and would not end until one of them was defeated.

She wanted him dead. What he wanted was her capitulation, her admission that she had no cause to hate him, no will to strike the final blow. He wanted her warm and willing in his bed, wanted her to want him—to want him
alive.

Drawing her to himself, he lowered his mouth to her lips. How tender they were in their generous curves, and how temptingly sweet with their flavoring of wine. He remembered their taste, yet something inside him ripped open at their merest touch, sending pure and desperate longing racing through his veins. Their delicate line opened on her swift, indrawn breath and he swept inside, gathering impressions and flavors as if addicted to their precious elixir. He wanted to drown in her, spend countless hours learning these gentle surfaces, teaching her to open to him as a flower unfurls its petals to the sun, to join him in offering homage to the heated rays of desire.

There was no time, no time.

Instead, he allowed his fingers to drift down the turn of her jaw, feather across the pulse that throbbed in her throat before seeking with his thumb the small hollow at the base of her neck. Her skin was soft, so warm with its ellusive hint of violet scent. Soft, too, was the fichu she wore of finest lawn.

The urge to pull the fichu from her neckline, exposing the gentle curves it hid from his sight, shook him with its strength. To be denied when he was so close was almost insupportable. But he would not startle her with the desire that beat in his blood, hammered in his heart, flooded the lower part of his body. She was, he thought, untried in many ways concerning the passions of men, and especially of her own; he could sense it in her hesitancy even as he felt her arousal. How could it be otherwise when she had her knowledge of such things at the hands of an older, sickly husband?

Such limited experience was what made her think his injuries rendered him harmless. He would not deny her the comfort of that misjudgment. At least, not for the moment.

Still, her tiny forays between his lips were intoxicating, as if she would take the lead, become the seductress. And her hands…she had placed one on his thigh for balance while grasping his shoulder with the other. Did she have any idea what she was doing to him, the least guess at what the proximity of her warm fingers mere inches away from the hard heat and weight of him did to his control?

The muscles across the back of his neck tightened into iron bands. A red haze gathered at the edges of his vision. The palm of his hand burned as he spread it over the fullness of her breast, feeling the tight budding of her nipple while cursing conventions and the past, the lack of true privacy and too, too many layers of cloth and restrictions.

Dear God, but she was like a flame in his grasp, searing in her heat that purified his very being even as she threatened to destroy him. He wanted her as he had never wanted anything in his life, wanted to sink with her to the floor before the fire, to cover her with his hot, shivering flesh while she moaned, nude and immodest, beneath him, around him. He wanted eons in which to seek out every sensitive plane and hollow of her body and make it his, to find the sites of greatest pleasure and lavish them with caresses until she cried out for more, for surcease, for him.

He wanted to be absorbed in her in a tumult of the senses, hot, tight, and silken as they rode with gliding ease, meeting and parting, twisting with fervid joy and desperate friction, in an endless pummeling of heart and mind and body that mounted to oblivion and beyond.

Impossible, impossible for now. Still, there was one thing he could do, for her, for himself. Leaning back in the depths of his chair, he drew her with him so she came, awkwardly, to rest across his lap.

“I'll hurt you,” she whispered against his throat.

“Pain, they say, is necessary to school an intelligence and make it a soul.” He smiled into her hair while stray wisps tickled his eyelids, smiled to think she should care, even as a matter of politeness. “It doesn't hurt so much as letting you go would rend me at this moment.”

“If you are sure…”

He was, and so he gathered her close, fitted their mouths together once more. That she came to him, shivering as she accepted his tongue, sliding one hand to the turn of his neck, made his heart swell in his chest even as he pushed from his mind all question of her purpose, of methods, of reason.

The glide of her fingertips delving under the rolled collar of his dressing gown and open neck of his nightshirt, skimming down along his collarbone, was an incitement. That she wanted to touch him scattered thought, so he almost forgot what she would find. Until he felt the catch in her breathing and her tentative exploration stopped.

“You've been hurt before,” she whispered against his throat.

Her fingertips lay upon the puckered scar where the broken blade of her foster brother's sword had plunged into him in their twice-damned duel. It burned under her touch, throbbing as it had not in years. “I am sometimes unlucky in my meetings.”

“I'm sorry,” she said, and turned her head to press her lips to the tortured flesh.

She didn't mean to absolve him. It felt that way regardless, a kiss of benediction that banished pain. His throat ached, and his heart swelled so his rib cage could hardly contain it.

Reaching for her skirt hem, he lifted it, gathered its fullness, piled it and her petticoats in her lap. He ran his palm over the silk of her stockings and the firm contours they covered, brushed over the lace of her garters and higher, until he could slip his fingers between the open edges of her feminine split pantaloons, until he could brush the skin of her inner thighs that was more silken still. Invading with exquisite care, he sought the small, hidden triangle of curling hair and the soft folds within that were silkiest of all.

Warm and moist, swollen and tight, her flesh was like the holiest of grails, her fine curls the most amazing of treasured fleeces. Gently questing, he captured the center of her with the heat and firmness of his palm, plundered it with delicate thoroughness yet near mindless need, fingering the small bud of her femininity that swelled under his ministrations while she moaned into his mouth.

His breath rasped in his chest, his back and side burned with the strain he placed upon them; the stitch line stung with the perspiration that seeped to the surface of his skin. Still he would not stop, could not until he had probed deep inside her moist heat, until he felt her stiffen, shuddering on a gasping cry before she turned boneless in his arms.

Resting his forehead against hers, breathing in ragged difficulty, he held her until the tripping, stumbling rhythm of his heart grew calm again and sanity came to mock him with the crucial question of just what he had done. Yes, and who was more the victim, the lady or himself?

He released her with the creak of reluctant muscles, then straightened her crumpled skirts, brushing them into place again. “Forgive me,” he began.

“No. There is nothing which requires…”

“I don't regret the past few minutes,” he said, his voice not quite even, “only the need to end them. Nathaniel will be returning. Who he may bring with him, not even I can guess.”

“Oh. Indeed.”

She stirred, uncurled her fingers from the tight grasp she held on the lapel of his dressing gown, making a small, oddly touching attempt to smooth the brocade she had crushed. She sat up then. Her eyes met his for a long instant while wild rose color bloomed across her cheekbones. Such vulnerability, such doubt and confusion lay in their depths that compunction washed over Gavin in a hot wave. He touched his tongue to his lips. “Perhaps we should talk,
chérie,
about these secrets we all keep.”

“No, don't. I'm not sure I can, not now.”

Her lashes flickered before she turned her head away. Grasping the arm of his chair, she levered herself erect without touching him any more than was necessary. She shook out her gown while he watched, touched her hair, tucked in a few stray hairs. Gathering her dignity around her like a beloved shawl, she stepped away to what must seem to her a safe distance.

What had just happened changed nothing for her, he saw that clearly. Why he had expected that it might, he could not have said, though he was still disappointed. “I am grateful,” he said evenly, “for the company at dinner. You must come again.”