Guarded Heart (25 page)

It was later, while dressing for dinner, that it came to Ariadne what this night might portend. The advantage in this match would be hers. At the moment, while Gavin was still recovering from his injuries, she could move faster than he, was possibly just as strong. She had been looking for a weakness of personality or habit. It had not occurred to her that she would ever have a chance of physical equality.

Gavin had known. That was why he had hesitated earlier, she thought. What did that suggest? Could he suspect her purpose after all?

No, surely not. It need only mean he knew she had been angry and remembered her penchant for attacking in a temper. Why should he think anything more than that? Their foils would be blunted and bodies protected by padding, after all.

Was this finally the culmination of her plans? Could she abandon all scruples in order to best him?

Women were said to have no honor in their dealings with men, but that was because they were unequal in most encounters. They could not afford to be choosy in the measures they used to even the odds. Even so, she was reluctant to take the way which lay open to her. That instinctive aversion was the most troubling aspect of the coming contest.

The rain began once more in earnest as night fell. Endlessly drumming on the rooftop, it poured down as if it meant never to stop. It streamed from the eaves into the courtyard in silver runnels as Ariadne left her bedchamber just before midnight and walked down the gallery toward the
garçonnière
chamber that had become their fencing salon. Lightning flashed, white tinted with gold, showing the courtyard paving below running ankle-deep in water that channeled in a millrace toward the entry passage and along it into the street. Windblown mist swept in upon the gallery floor so she walked close to the interior wall. Regardless, the moist freshness was welcome against her skin.

She felt on edge, already overheated in spite of the freedom of her body in her man's shirt and pantaloons. Her shirt grew damp and limp, and she felt her nipples tighten with the contrast between her warmth and the night coolness, yes, and something more that she would not name. For an instant, she had an almost overpowering urge to turn back to the quiet safety of her bedchamber, to her corset and petticoats.

Too late.

Gavin lounged in the doorway ahead of her, one shoulder propped against the frame as he watched the storm. He straightened, sketched a bow as she came closer.

“A wild night,” he said. “We will be lucky if the candles stay lit.”

His voice held some minor note that, like the pure sound of a violin, raised echoes inside her. It was infuriating to feel her nipples tighten still further, becoming almost painful as they pressed against the linen of her shirt.

“I'm sure we shall manage,” she said in clipped tones.

“And if all else fails we can proceed in the dark,” he answered, backing away a step, indicating with a brief gesture that she should enter the long room before him.

The glance she gave him was searching as she brushed past. Whatever he meant to imply was hidden behind the polite cast of his features. Still it lingered, disturbingly, in his smile.

He did not look incapacitated in any way. He appeared, in fact, remarkably hale and hearty. If she had not known about the long red line that stitched its way down his back before curving around toward his waist, she would never have guessed. Nevertheless, she did know.

“You are quite certain you are capable of this lesson?”

“Your concern unmans me,” he said with a lifted brow. “We might, if you prefer, find other ways of passing the time.”

She could feel the flush that mantled her throat mounting to her forehead. To conceal it, she began to don her mask and padding that lay ready. “So you hinted before. I'm not sure that would be wise.”

“Wisdom being something to be desired? I had not thought it.”

His mood of irony was catching, or so it seemed. “The inclination,” she said with precision, “comes and goes. At the moment, it is in ascendancy.”

“Spirit over flesh, I do see. You will tell me, I hope, if there is a shift.”

“I'm not sure I will,” she said over her shoulder. “You are far too sure of yourself already.”

“A fallacy. Where you are concerned, I am not sure at all.” He went on with the barest of pauses caused in part by the need to assume his own protective covering. “Will you choose your weapon?”

He had stepped to the table where the foils were laid ready, she saw as she turned to face him. “I have no preference. You choose for me.”

“Trust indeed, or perhaps depend on chivalry to give you the better blade of the two.”

The smile she gave him held real amusement since something of the kind had crossed her mind. “Fairness, rather.”

“Oh, I am always fair.”

That seemed to suggest that he was not always chivalrous. “I am forewarned.”

“So you are,” he murmured as he tried the blades in turn before swinging around with one in either hand. “So you are.”

She caught the foil he tossed her because she was expecting it. Immediately, she turned away from him toward the long stretch of canvas that appeared a dirty gray in the uncertain glow of the fluttering ranks of candles on their stands. Her movements deliberate, she donned protective gear, as he was doing, then took her place on their makeshift piste.

How familiar it had become to face him there with the prescribed distance separating them, to salute him, then cross his blade, letting steel kiss steel in a first touch like two lovers meeting. If he was less strong than before, it was not readily apparent in the feel of his foil against hers. That contact was as powerful and as certain as ever.

In that instant, she was reminded of his lesson in control meted out not so long ago. A deep drawing sensation assailed her at the memory, and she tightened the muscles of her abdomen against it. Such things could not be allowed to matter. She forced it from her mind, forced everything away from her except the glittering tip of the blade before her and the rampant will of the man who held it. That last she must not forget, now or ever.

Was she ready? Doubt of her skill assaulted her. She was a relatively new pupil of this ancient art, when all was said and done. But if her skill was lacking, it meant nothing more dangerous than another defeat at his hands.

They began, as always, at Gavin's signal. It was like a dance, a centuries-old
pavane
of advance, parry and riposte in measured rhythm. Each movement called for its counter; each step matched and mated, as graceful as any set of movements between a man and woman. Their shadows moved over the floor, met and parted on the walls. The smoky air currents in the room shifted with their swift lunges, joined with the wind that swirled in the open French doors to make the candle flames sway and flatten before either dying away or leaping high again. The bell-like chiming of their blades echoed against the walls, music with a marked beat that broke now and then into a passionate counterpoint, sliding down a grating scale of steel into attunement.

Abruptly a gust like a small tornado swirled into the room, shivering the candle flames burning nearest the door. They hopped, fluttering on their wicks an instant before several of them went out, leaving black tails of smoke. That left only a half-dozen to guide their movements.

Gavin raised a hand to signal a halt and stepped out of position. He said nothing about the diminished light, however.

“You're holding back,” he said, the words hollow from behind the mask that concealed his features.

“No more than you.” Her answer was a trifle breathless from exertion. She could barely see his eyes through the metal grid. Across from the door, a silver-branched set of six candlesticks had only two candles left burning. Their acrid smoke drifted in the air along with the scent from the courtyard of rain-drenched tea olive. She coughed briefly as it caught in her throat.

“Don't.”

“Don't?” For an instant, she thought he meant her attempt to clear her breathing.

“Don't hold back.” He indicated with a flick of his foil tip that they would resume the guard position.

How could she not? The question plagued her as they began again. The foils in their hands, though neither as heavy or lethal as the sabers used in the dueling field match between Sasha and Gavin, were jangling reminders in the back of her mind. That bout had ended in blood. She could not stop thinking of the moment when Sasha's sword had flashed down, slicing across Gavin's back. She had expected he would be decapitated, maimed, crippled for life. Every move he made now, every lunge, must cause him pain. How could it be otherwise?

He was no less powerful for it, that much she was forced to admit. Still he was not the same. His timing was off, lacking the effortless coordination of body and mind he had shown before. His recoveries were slower, more a matter of driving intelligence than instinct. He kept to his set position as much as possible, and he did not take the advantage he might have of her mistakes. He seldom attacked at all, letting her come to him, letting her set the pace while he defended, always defended.

She could strike. The means was at hand. They were alone and the house was quiet around them. All she had to do was surge into an attack, using the blunted end of her foil to rip through his padding. It could be done.

Gavin would retaliate in kind; she could expect no less. No matter, her greatest chance of besting him was here, tonight, and she could not be sure it would ever come again. She had suspected it before and was doubly certain of it now.

It was impossible. Something inside her rejected that devious victory. There could be no satisfaction in defeating him under such circumstances.

Defeating him?

She meant to kill him, not just to best him. Yes of course she did. Her aim had not changed.

Had it?

Where was the burning hatred that had sustained her for so long? What had become of it?

Her closeness to Gavin Blackford might have been a costly error. Before, he had been a fiend in human form in her mind. Now he had taken on the guise of a man with all the attendant possibilities for good as well as evil. He had shown himself kind and caring and eminently honorable as well as proud; he viewed the world with as much tolerant amusement as cynicism.

What was she to do? Her arm ached, and her mind was weary. This fight was going nowhere, gaining nothing, proving nothing beyond the grim endurance of the man who faced her. The shuffling of their feet and snick of their blades were slowing. They could barely see in the flickering gloom.

Another candle flame sputtered and died in a curling plume of smoke. Ariadne raised her hand, said quite clearly, “Stop.”

“Madame?”

He stepped back and stood watching her through his mask, the point of his foil trailing on the floor. She wondered briefly if it was because he could no longer lift his arm. “You are not fit enough for this, I think. I should not have suggested it.”

“Generous of spirit as well as valiant—though I wonder what I can have done to make you think me unfit.”

“It was you who taught me to read my opponent.”

“And if I say I was holding back for other reasons?”

She tested the timbre of his voice but no shadow of purpose or emotion layered it. “What could they be?”

“To see what you have learned, perhaps, or what you would teach me.”

Surprise shook a laugh from her. “Teach you? That doesn't seem likely.”

“You have shown me that the female of our species, unlike the male, is selective when she hunts, and retains the ability to reason in the heat of pursuit.”

“I can't think how you came by that revelation.” Or at least she chose not to.

“You could have taken me in these last few minutes. The puzzlement of it is why you refrained.”

Thunder rolled in the night beyond the open door, followed by a flash of lightning that painted the courtyard in shades of blue and silver. Wind whipped into the room, lifting the edge of the canvas strip on which they stood, swaying the draperies at the window, extinguishing the last of the candles.

Darkness closed around them. Outside, the banana and palm trees thrashed and clattered. Blown rain spattered onto the gallery floor. The clash of fretted impulse and need inside Ariadne was no less violent. She dropped her foil so it thudded to the canvas then rolled onto the hardwood floor with a hollow clang. “I still can,” she said, and began to walk toward him while dragging off her mask and tossing it aside, removing her chest padding and letting it drop. Her footsteps were almost soundless in the windswept night.

“No doubt,” he answered, “if your weapon is ancient wiles flavored with sacrifice, irrational but glorious. And I could well allow it. But will you be glad in the morning?”

“I don't know. Shall we see?”

When she did not falter, did not turn back, he dropped his foil, divested himself of mask and padding in his turn, then set his feet. White-faced in the dark, with silver lightning reflected in the blue of his eyes, he watched her come ever closer. When she was a mere step away, he opened his arms and gathered her to him.