Tender the Storm (7 page)

Apropos of nothing, she asked, "Do you play the piano?"

"What?"

"You have the hands for it —long fingers, like mine," and she flexed her fingers as she always did before embarking on a difficult piece of music.

He shook his head. "The thought processes of children were ever beyond my ken.
Fleur?"
His eyes held a glint of steel. "Did you hear what I said?"

She felt like laughing, but managed to look shamefaced. "I heard you."

"And?"

"I'm to keep my hair covered and my eyes on my shoes. I must never, never smile at strange gentlemen or permit them to address me if you are not present."

"Good girl. You
have
been listening to my words."

"Yes, but . . ."

"What?"

She was playing with him and was rather taken with her own temerity. "Why must I keep my hair covered?
Maman
never once forbade me to take off my bonnet."

The question seemed to discompose him. "Just take my word for it. Hair like yours is more than most men —
" He
broke off and stared at her wide-eyed look with something like suspicion. "Just do as I say and don't ask questions."

It was an answer she had heard often enough in her young life. She shrugged philosophically and ate the last morsel on her plate.

"I thought you were an orphan," said the deputy conversationally.

Startled brown eyes flew to his face.

"You mentioned your mother. Twice, as I recall," he pointed out.

Zoë's expression became guarded. "I . . . I am an orphan. It's just that . . . sometimes . . . I remember happier days."

Rolfe drained the tankard of ale he held in his hand. "I understand. Just be careful of what you say before others.
All right?"
There was a smile in his eyes.

Zoë nodded, and silently questioned the young man's concern. Any deputy worth his salt ought to pursue the blunder she had stumbled into. He was like no deputy she had ever heard of. She stared at him wonderingly.

"Time for bed, little one," he said, scraping back his chair. "We have an early start in the morning."

"Are we . . . are we going to sleep here? Together?" She looked around the confines of the small room with growing alarm. Apart from a table, two upright chairs, and the bed, there was no other furniture.

Between exasperation and cajolery, he explained patiently, "Not together. You shall have the bed, and I shall curl up on the floor like your faithful hound. No one will attack you as long as I'm with you. Does that satisfy your sense of propriety, your ladyship?"

She recognized that he was employing the tone of voice he would reserve for a favorite niece. For a moment, fleetingly, Zoë wished that he could see her as she really was, or as she would like to be —a young lady of fashion who was worthy of his attention. Her eyes came to rest on the bed and she wisely banished that rash thought.

He left her, then, with a stern admonition, and a very telling look, to see to her ablutions. Zoë lost no time in following his instructions to the letter. When he returned, she was in her shift, under the covers.

"Good night,
ma petite fleur,"
he said and doused the lantern.

She listened to his movements in the dark as he stripped out of his clothing. "I don't know your name," she said after a lengthy interval. Her voice was heavy with drowsiness.

Rolfe stilled with his shirt half over his head. He shook off the thought that the child had the voice of a temptress, low and sweetly seductive. "It's Rolfe," he answered more harshly than he intended, and struggled out of his shirt.

Zoë smiled to herself. Between wakefulness and sleep she murmured, "That's a good name for a hound."

The darkness enveloped her like a warm blanket. She felt safe and strangely protected, as if the night had not held terrors for her these several months past. She yawned and turned over to her side. Words whispered inside her head —"kitten," "little one,"
"ma
petite fleur"
"your ladyship" — lovelier, more romantic by far than any endearments she had ever heard. She wondered how her name, her
real
name, Zoë, would sound on his lips. "Good night my faithful hound, Rolfe," were the last words she said before she succumbed to sleep.

Rolfe merely grunted in answer and adjusted his long length to the hard floor.

Zoë awoke the following morning to find her nose pressed against a pillow of something soft and, at the same time, scratchy. Her nose twitched. By slow degrees, she lifted her lashes. She blinked rapidly, trying to drag herself from the last vestiges of her dream.

She was cuddled up to her faithful hound, she was thinking. She smiled softly and combed her fingers through Rolfe's thick mat of hair.

Her hound growled deep in his throat. The sound did not deceive Zoë for an instant. It was a pleasure sound, much like the purr of a lazy, replete lion. She stroked her faithful hound again.

"Fifi," said Rolfe, and tightened his arms around the soft, feminine form in his embrace. He did not waken.

Fifi!
Zoë's sleepy smile instantly departed. She raised her head and tried to make sense of the mat of dark gold hair which seemed to have sprouted on her pillow overnight. The pillow rose and fell in a regular rhythm. Gradually, she became conscious that her pillow was a man's hairy chest. She went as stiff as a poker.

Rolfe groaned a protest at the implied rejection and dragged her closer. Fifi —or was it Mimi?—had
never seemed more desirable than she did at that moment. By some trick of the light, her guinea gold curls had converted to a rich mahogany, darker than the strongest brew of coffee. Her coarse features were sculpted in finer lines. Her eyes were huge, with the look of a faun, dark and hinting of feminine secrets. And the pout of those full lips promised a ripe sensuality. The pressure of his arms tightened, bringing her warmth closer.

Zoë did not panic. To do so could prove disastrous. Though every instinct urged her to force the man to release her, a deeper fear prevailed. To waken him might provoke those distressing masculine attentions of which Claire had spoken.

"Fifi," muttered Rolfe, and nestled closer.

Zoë took stock of her position. The deputy was insensate with sleep, that and the jug or two of ale he had consumed over supper. It did not take much imagination to recognize that his slumber was not without its dreams. Her fear left her. "Fifi," she mouthed soundlessly, her brow knit in a mulish frown. She glared at his sleep-softened features.

Gently, so as not to wake him, she wedged her hands against his hard, muscled chest, trying to gain herself some breathing space. At her touch, the deputy emitted another soft sound of pleasure. Zoë held her breath. Rolfe dreamed on.

It took a moment or two before it registered with Zoë that Rolfe was in his pantaloons and was lying on top of the covers whilst she was trapped beneath them. She deduced, correctly, that, finding the floor too hard for comfort during the night, he had risen without really wakening and had sought a more agreeable pallet.
Hers.
Or
Fifi's
.

Slowly, carefully, Zoë inched away from the powerful masculine frame. When she had gained a space of several inches, she took her first deep breath. It was a mistake. The covers slipped to her waist. A faint recollection of having removed her shift during the night was confirmed by the sight of her naked torso. She jerked. Rolfe, feeling the provocative feminine movement, rolled on top of her. Bare skin met bare skin.

Zoë's eyes went as round as saucers. Her most pressing fear was that the deputy would waken and discover that the little girl who he had put to bed had developed breasts during the night. She damned herself for a fool for removing the binder which flattened her shape, and she promised the fates, if they would give her another chance, that she would never do anything so rash again.

Several minutes were to pass before Zoë's confidence returned. The deputy was a dead weight, but he had made no threatening moves. She decided it was safe to breathe. Soft feminine contours grazed hard masculine muscles. Zoë stopped breathing. The sensation had not been unpleasant, she decided. With slow deliberation, experimentally, she inhaled and exhaled. Her heart started to pound against her ribs. The sensation was more than pleasant. It was . . . delectable.

She'd never felt the press of a man's weight before. She had no notion how her senses would be stirred by the fit of his hard planes to her soft curves. His warm breath on her shoulder heated her skin all the way to her toes. And the scent of him, like a forest after a fresh fall of summer rain, was the headiest, most alluring perfume she had ever inhaled. She'd never smelled a man this close to her before.

Rolfe's dream was beginning to fade. "Mimi," he said plaintively, trying to lure the girl of his dreams back into his orbit.

"Mimi!" mouthed Zoë, thunderstruck. So now there were two of them, were there?
Fifi?
Mimi? She gritted her teeth. Libertine, she was thinking, and she brought her knee up smartly.

Rolfe let out a howl of pain. He jerked to his side. Zoë rolled to her stomach and feigned sleep.

"What the hell?" Disoriented, holding his groin, Rolfe looked about him, trying to get his bearings. The woman in the bad was snoring softly.
Fifi?
Mimi? Oh God no! It was the child, Fleur. What the hell had he done to her?

He leapt from the bed as if he had been scalded by boiling oil. Reaching for his shirt, he shrugged into it, and slowly, reluctantly, turned to face the bed. He took several, deep shuddering breaths as his eyes anxiously scanned the inert form beneath the covers. The girl in the bed turned over.
The snoring resumed but, this time, more stridently.

Relief washed over Rolfe in waves. He sank onto the nearest chair. It was all a dream. The child was beneath the covers. He knew —oh God, he hoped — that he had been lying on top of them. Nothing could have happened, could it? He combed his fingers through his hair.

He'd never had a dream like that before. The reality of it was stunning. Even the smell of the woman still filled his nostrils — vaguely reminiscent of field lilies after a spring rain. Oh God, he hoped it wasn't the girl's scent. Damn him to hell for all eternity if he had so much as laid a finger on the child!

He dressed quickly and quit the room.

Zoë heard the grate of the key in the lock. She pulled herself to a sitting position, clutching the bedclothes under her chin. She'd had a lucky escape and thanked God for it.