The Counterfeit Mistress (12 page)

She nibbled at the beef that had been served before the footman left. She waited for Kendale's ill humor to ease at least a bit.

“I still have nothing with me,” she said.

“We will get you a comb, and whatever else you need.”

“I have no garments, Lord Kendale.”

“Then wrap yourself in a blanket,” he snapped. “You have done it before.”

Again an allusion to that day. It seemed to make him less friendly, not more so.

“If you write to Dominique, she will come too, and bring some clothes and such.”

“Is she your ally in all things? Should she be here with you?”

She realized his meaning to her shock. “You are not to arrest her too, if that is what you mean. Do not be more cruel and horrible than you are already.”

He glared at her, then ate his food. When he put down his fork, he sat back in his chair. “I already wrote to inform her that you are safe, as you requested when we arrived. I also made arrangements for her to send you some things, being the cruel and horrible man that I am.”

She regretted the insult, especially since he had considered her comfort even before she had demanded he do so. She also regretted saying something else to make him hard and unmoving. The fullness of her vulnerability overwhelmed her and she held on to her composure with effort.

“My apologies. This is not a situation that encourages happiness or calm. You dragged me here and have now told me that I am under your arrest. I would be a fool not to be afraid, or concerned about the decisions you will make.”

The severity left him. He gazed with different eyes all of a sudden. Their lights were not sparks struck off flint, but warmer ones such as she had seen before. In his chambers. In Brighton. In a London garden. He looked so intently that it stole her breath. The lure of pleasure and the demands of desire rapidly arced between them, creating an exciting, primal understanding.

She expected him to rise up and come over and pull her into a rough embrace. Instead he leaned toward her over the table and held her gaze with his own. “Go upstairs now. Remain there until morning. If you want a book from the library, stop and get one, but do not wander the house tonight. And do not try to leave. The doors will be watched all night.”

She rose. “I give my word that I will not try to leave. You can allow your men to sleep.”

“Thank you, but I have no reason to know if your word is worth anything, do I? And the evidence thus far says that everything about you is a lie.”

K
endale spent long hours that night battling a chaos of anger, desire, and exasperation. Only one rational thought survived it all. Honor required that he learn the truth about Marielle, and be rid of her soon if his worst suspicions were confirmed.

The other thought to survive began with a curse and ended with the fury of wanting a woman he should not have. Never before in his life had his judgment been so compromised and he admonished himself for being weak with her. He should have directed the coach straight to London today, not talked himself into learning the truth before delivering her to her fate. Her face had softened him too much. So had her fear. It was his own hunger that really made the decision, though.

Nor had the resolve he reestablished on that long ride lasted. As soon as he looked at her across that table tonight her sad eyes had him wanting to comfort, to kiss, to caress.

He was a hell of a soldier, wasn't he? One sniff from her pretty nose and he was ready to put aside everything that mattered.

He paced his chambers, his body tight and needing action to relieve the effect she had left in him. The only good thing, if it could be called that, was that as the night passed he finally understood part of that disaster in France.

He had never comprehended how Feversham had been so easily lured into trusting Jeannette. Feversham had sound judgment. He was a damned mountain of rationality. They had all followed his lead on using Jeannette's information regarding the position of French troops around Toulon. Feversham was not a man to have his head turned by a pretty face.

Except Jeannette had an exceptionally pretty face, and a way about her that left men stupid. Even Feversham it turned out. All of them, really. A whole unit had set aside good sense that night and believed what Feversham wanted to believe.

Something similar had happened in the dining room tonight. One more minute and he would have convinced himself to believe anything she wanted him to believe.

He opened his window and gazed out at the grounds below. An enclosed garden stretched for an acre toward woods and farms beyond. The cool air refreshed him as it flowed over the skin of his face and chest. With any luck it would relieve this infernal agitation that had him pacing like a caged animal. If he could avoid thinking about Marielle in her bed down the hall, he might even sleep.

A distant sound reached his ears. He set his ear to the open window. Voices. Then silence.

He looked out again. Someone moved in the garden. Marielle. It had to be her. Men did not walk so soundlessly. The moonlight picked up subtle golden shines off her hair. She aimed directly through the garden toward the far end, probably hoping to find a back portal.

Damnation. He had given orders to his men that she was not to leave the house. He pulled on his shirt and strode out of his chambers. There would be hell to pay for whoever was on duty at the garden doors.

He strode through the house to its back, and first checked the doors in the morning room that gave out to the terrace. A tall silhouette darkened one of them. He walked over and tapped Angus's shoulder.

Startled, Angus spun around, battle ready. He relaxed when he saw who had joined him. “You are still awake, sir?”

“I am. What were you watching out there?”

“Nothing much.” Angus shifted from foot to foot, then took a firm stance and crossed his arms.

“I said she was not to leave the house.”

“That you did, sir. Only she said she felt a little faint and needed air, and the garden has a wall, doesn't it? Not likely she will be able to climb over it.”

If Marielle Lyon decided she wanted to climb a ten-foot wall, Kendale did not doubt she would find a way to do so.

“You must learn to obey orders even when a pretty woman says she needs some air.”

“Yes, sir. I know, sir. I will go and get her.” Angus reached for the door latch.

“No, I will. Go and get some sleep.”

“Are you sure, sir? She may try to leave again after—”

“She will not try to leave the house again. Go.”

Angus walked away. Kendale turned the latch and stepped out into the cool night. Too cool, even for that shawl.

He wandered down the central path, listening and looking. No wind broke the night's stillness. The half moon gave vague form to the plantings and trees, and deep shadows.

One of those shadows breathed. Up ahead, to the right, Marielle sat on a bench beneath the dense tangle of a young elm tree's barren umbrella of branches. He walked over until he could see her clearly. Her bench rested in a river of ivy that churned around the tree in dense growth.

“Do not blame that guard you had at the door,” she said. “He is young and easily flattered.”

“He is no younger than you.” He had no idea how young she was, or how old. She possessed a maturity that made the question insignificant. Yet he found his head calculating the little he had heard, about her flight from France and her loss during the Terror. Early twenties?

“He only tried to be kind. I told him I was feeling faint.”

“Were you?”

“No. It was a lie.”

“You must have been disappointed to learn there was no portal in the back.”

“Isn't there? That is odd. However, I did not look for one. I told you I would not try to leave. That was
not
a lie.”

He walked through the ivy and sat on the bench. She had used a blanket as her shawl. It wrapped her from neck to ankles.

“You have no coat,” she said.

“You have seen worse.” They might be there again, in his chamber, both in dishabille, he in a banyan and she naked beneath a blanket. He angled his head to see if the hem of her dress showed. A bit of white poked out.

Side by side they looked into the night. The silence filled with messages that needed no words. A large loop of rope might have slid down around them and now it tightened, tightened, until he felt her presence more completely than if they touched.

“Who are you?” he asked. “What are you?”

“You know who I am. As for what—I am not a spy.”

He wanted to believe that. With her right next to him and her delicate profile softly outlined by the moonlight, he almost did. She lied when it was convenient, however. She even admitted that she did.

“What was it that you handed off to that man Garrett today?”

She swung her foot up and down, slowly kicking through the end of the blanket. “Engravings. They are made in London, then I send them over through men like him.”

“You pay to send engravings into France? That is an odd trade. No profit and all loss.”

She laughed. “It is a peculiar business. I cannot deny that.” She turned her head and looked at him. “The engravings are to encourage others to investigate crimes against the people. This new order there was born in much blood, but it should not be lawless. France deserves that. Her people do too.”

“Are you using those engravings to denounce the people?”

“We trust the engravings might encourage others to investigate certain crimes, that is all.”

He thought about the engravings in his chambers, the ones he had rescued in the alley.

“It could be dangerous,” he said. “For the engraver and printer, and for you.”

“Not too much.”

“It almost got you killed in an alley, I think.” He knew for certain now that those men would have killed her. Now he had a reason why. If she were telling the truth.

Right now he believed her. In the morning, when her scent did not fill his head and his blood did not burn and the exquisite torture of lust did not preoccupy his body and soul, he might well conclude this had been one more lie, and one more move in a long game played by an expert agent.

“You do not have to believe me,” she said, hearing his thoughts somehow. “Too much is made of the need for trust in friendships. We can never really know who and what another person is. You do not dissemble at all, and yet much of who you are is a mystery to others.”

“I doubt that.”

“It is true.”

The notion was bizarre. Perhaps she thought it flattered him, much as she had found a way to flatter young Angus.

“For example,” she said. “A great mystery to me is why you have been sitting here so long and have not even tried to kiss me a single time. Do you think you would dishonor yourself? Dishonor me?”

“Nothing so noble as that.” Now who was lying? And yet, with her so close that he could hear her breathe, honor retreated as a consideration. “I am not interested in kissing you a single time. I contemplate far more than that.”

“Ah. I see.”

“You cannot blame me. It was you who put the idea in my head.”

She laughed quietly. “Now you are the one who lies. The idea was in your head before we ever spoke. It has been in your head, and elsewhere, for months.”

“You think so, do you?”

“
Oui, m'sieur
. A woman knows these things.” She leaned toward him until her large eyes looked directly into his. “It is good, perhaps, that you have chosen to not be so noble. I will not think that I corrupt a saint when I do this now.” She kissed him lightly. “Or this.” She laid her hand on his face and kissed him again.

The first kiss unlocked the restraints on his desire. The second one threw the door wide.

Raw and real and determined, the want owned him then. He trusted that she invited more than kisses. If she denied him now, he would go insane.

He held her face in his hands and kissed hard, imagining her body vividly, claiming, owning her mouth the way he would do the rest of her. She did not resist at all, but lifted her face in offering, and sighed on the musical gasps she made.

Then her hands were on him, on his chest, under his shirt. She clumsily unbuttoned it while they kissed, her slender fingers finding their way. When it gaped open she broke the kiss and laid her lips on his chest and made hot paths of nips and licks.

She looked up and her warm breath flowed over him and into him.

“You are cold now,” she said. “Share this.” She opened the blanket and embraced him with it.

He felt no cold. He never would again. He joined her within the blanket anyway, so he could feel her body near his, and caress her through the thin cloth of her dress. His fingers sensed no stays beneath the dress. No anything. He kissed her again, on the mouth and neck, on the soft skin of her chest, while he teased himself by slowly unlacing the front of her dress.

H
e felt too good. Strong and firm and confident, he handled her like the man he was, a man not given to false flatteries or pretty words, a man born for command and decision. He made her feel young and small and fragile and safe. So safe. She yearned to stay forever in the shelter of his body and desire.

Slowly, slowly he unlaced her dress. She had to grit her teeth against what it did to her. Her breasts swelled against the fabric, waiting. She swallowed her cries of frustration.

Done, finally. The rest of the fastenings confounded him, so he did not bother with them. He pushed the dress down, off her shoulders and arms so she was naked to the waist. An unexpectedly gentle touch glossed over her. Her tips had turned hard and that soft touch sent a sharp pleasure down her body that made her gasp. His head dipped. He kissed the swell, the softness, then shocked the tip again and again. Hard arms lifted and swung her onto his lap so his mouth had better purchase. His hand caressed one breast while his teeth and tongue tortured the other. She held his head to her and smothered her whimpers against his hair.

She could hardly bear the sensations. They filled her until her hold on herself strained. Delicious and horrible and sweet and cruel, the pleasure awed her but left her hungry with a compelling need that grew and grew until it conquered even the pleasure itself. Tipping into abandon, she squirmed against his thighs to relieve the vacant pulse between her legs. She reached down between their bodies and closed her hand on the hard bulge in his breeches pressing her leg.

He lifted her to her feet and pushed the dress down to her feet until she stood naked in front of him. His eyes blazed while he slid his fingertips all over her and watched his hands move. Along her shoulders and down her arms, over her stomach and to her thighs. Lightly, surely, to that vacant ache. She clutched his shoulders while he stroked. He maddened her worse by sucking on her breast. She wept then. Her body did and her essence too, as desperate pleasure unhinged her mind.

He lifted the blanket and it flew around her and settled on her shoulders like a cape. Firm rough hands circled her waist and he buried his face against her body as if he sought to inhale her essence.

“What do you want, Marielle? Tell me.”

She took hold of his head and kissed his mouth as hard as she could, so he would know.

“Say it. Tell me what you want.”

“You. Now.”

“Then come here.” He drew her forward, back onto his lap, facing him, so that her knees flanked his hips. He loosened his garments and moved her hips closer.

She gasped when she felt him pressing her. Cried out at the hardness both satisfying her need and bruising her body. He stopped, then moved more slowly when he pressed further. He stretched her. Somehow her body accommodated him. She felt him in her in ways she had not thought possible. For a moment the need subsided.

Then he moved. Holding her hips firmly, he withdrew and entered again. And again, and again. The vacancy returned, and the pulse and the need. It all unfolded inside her, down where they joined. Wanting and demanding and crying again. It grew and grew and she moved too, urging more, smiling when he took less care. He thrust deeply and hard and she met him each time and swiveled her hips to beg for yet more.

He pounded into her in the end. He held her body down to his while the consummation tremors shuddered through him.

She collapsed in his arms, against his chest, still joined, still feeling him. He tucked the blanket around her closer and silently held her in the sweet night.