The Courtesan (8 page)

Gabrielle slipped from her crouching place beside the wall and circled behind him. Her footsteps whispered across the grass as she raised the sword and brought the point to bear directly in the center of his back.

“Don’t move a muscle,” she growled. “Or I’ll run you through where you stand.”

Gabrielle saw him tense, flexing his shoulders. She experienced a fraction of alarm as she realized he was taller and more muscular than she had first assumed. She also noticed too late that he had a weapon strapped to his side.

She had some skill with a blade, but no idea how she’d fare against some strange cutthroat in the dark. It occurred to her that perhaps she’d been a trifle rash to attempt to capture this spy alone. But she had him now. She had to do something with him.

“Raise your hands,” she said fiercely. “Unbuckle your sword and drop it.”

“I can hardly do both, Gabrielle,” he murmured. There was something familiar about the voice that caused her heart to miss a beat. He chose to obey her first command, raising his hands in the air.

Gabrielle recovered from her shock at hearing him use her name so intimately. She infused her voice with hauteur. “So you know who I am, do you, sirrah? I should like to know who the devil you are and why you’ve had the impertinence to spy upon me. Turn around, but do it carefully. One move toward your sword and I vow I’ll slice your hand clean off.”

“I verily believe you would, mademoiselle.” She heard his voice more clearly this time, deep, a little hoarse like a voice that had permanently roughened from roaring out commands over the smoke of a battlefield . . . Nicolas Remy’s voice.

Gabrielle’s heart skittered and then seemed to stop entirely as her captive swung about to face her. Moonlight etched a gaunt visage all but lost in a wild tangle of hair and beard. The only things soft in that hard face were his eyes of rich, melting brown. Remy’s eyes shining down at her. What madness was this? As he lowered his hands, Gabrielle felt far too stunned to try and prevent him.

“If you were bent on capturing an intruder, why didn’t you go summon your servants? Do you have any idea how easily I could have disarmed you? Only you would be this rash, Gabrielle Cheney.” He was scolding her, but his teeth flashed in a smile of rare and unexpected sweetness. Remy’s smile.

Dear God, she was losing her mind. She had to be. Gabrielle’s hand trembled. Her sword wavered and he attempted to come closer. She sprang back with a terrified cry, bracing her weapon again.

He froze in his tracks. When his voice came again, it was soothing, gentle. “Please, Gabrielle. Don’t be afraid. Don’t you recognize me? It is me, Remy.”

“N-no,” she choked. “Y-you lie. You can’t be Nicolas Remy. He—he’s . . .”

“Dead? I swear to you I am not. Please don’t look at me as if I were a ghost.”

Gabrielle backed away, trembling. A ghost was exactly what she was looking at. A phantom with Remy’s voice, Remy’s eyes, Remy’s smile. But he could not be Remy, this rough-looking man with his wild, unkempt hair and haggard face. Not unless he’d marched to her across the plains of hell or back from the depths of the underworld. The mad thought seized hold of her that Cass’s séance had worked after all, dragging Remy’s tormented spirit from the recesses of his grave.

Gabrielle shook so badly she could no longer hold the sword. The weapon slipped from her fingers, tumbling to the ground with a dull thud. The stranger with Remy’s eyes took a hesitant step toward her.

“I am sorry that I have alarmed you. I never meant to reveal myself to you this way, but you rather forced my hand. I had hoped to choose a better time.”

“A better time?” Gabrielle stared up at Remy, still unable to credit the evidence of her own senses. “Is that why you did not come when I called for you earlier?”

“You called for me? I never heard you.”

Gabrielle bit down hard on her lip to still its quivering. “I cried out to you in the mist, but you wouldn’t come. I thought you had rejected me and turned back to the land of the dead.”

Remy looked rather confused, but he cast her a gentle smile. “Gabrielle, I would never turn away from you, even if I was no more than a ghost, but I promise you I am not. If I were, your sword would have gone straight through me. Please let me get close enough for you to touch me and you’ll know I am real.”

Gabrielle wanted to beg him to stay away, but she could not seem to find her voice. She didn’t want to touch him. She had an irrational terror that if she did, he’d evaporate like Nostradamus, vanish in a hiss of steam.

Remy kept coming closer. When his fingers curled around her wrist, Gabrielle couldn’t summon the will to resist him. He raised her hand and pressed her palm against his chest, over the region of his heart. He was not a man made of mist, but solid rock. The plane of his chest was all hard muscle and beneath his worn jerkin, she could feel the steady thud of his heart.

The hand that held hers was strong, callused, and warm. So was the other one that Remy used to caress her cheek. Gabrielle reached up and caught that hand, trapping it against her face.

She closed her eyes, savoring the rough texture of Remy’s palm against her skin. She could almost feel the blood pulsing through his veins. The truth struck Gabrielle with all the force of the earth heaving beneath her feet.

Nicolas Remy was alive.

Her eyes fluttered open. Remy was gazing down at her.

“There. You see?”

Gabrielle nodded, her breath escaping her in a strangled half-sob. Still hardly daring to believe, she ran her hands wildly over him, his chest, his sinewy arms, his broad shoulders. Her fingers roved upward, feverishly caressing his hair and beard, his brow and his cheeks.

She heard Remy’s breath quicken and she reveled in every rise and fall of his chest. When she traced her trembling fingers over the outline of his mouth, felt the warm rush of his breath, Gabrielle gave a broken laugh that bordered on hysteria.

“You are really not dead,” she whispered.

“No,” he replied huskily. Catching her hand, he pressed his lips fervently against her palm. “And for the first time in three years, I am actually glad about that.”

She lifted her face, gazing straight into Remy’s intense dark eyes. Her own misted with tears. By some miracle, she knew not how, the fates had brought Remy back to her. Not as a ghost, but wondrously, gloriously alive.

With a glad cry, Gabrielle flung her arms about his neck and she did something she realized she should have done years ago. She buried her fingers in Remy’s hair and crushed her mouth eagerly to his.

She felt Remy stiffen in astonishment, but only for a moment. Then he was kissing her back, ravaging her lips with a hunger and passion that left her dizzy. Gabrielle clung to his shoulders, returning his kiss just as greedily, seeking his mouth again and again, unable to get enough of him.

“Remy . . . my dearest Remy,” she breathed. Her lips parted before his, giving him deeper access. Gabrielle moaned low in her throat as she felt the heat of his tongue against hers, tasted the vitality flowing through him. Her pulse seemed to thunder the wondrous tidings in her ears.
Remy is alive . . . alive.

Gabrielle’s heart swelled with such joy, it was painful. When their lips parted, she was panting hard and so was Remy. He gave her the uncertain smile of a man who could scarce believe his good fortune.

Gabrielle attempted to return his smile, but the full shock of Remy’s return from the dead overcame her at last. Remy’s features blurred before her eyes and she felt her knees tremble and begin to give.

Then Gabrielle Cheney did something she had never done before in the entire course of her life. Her head falling back limply, she swooned in a man’s arms, sinking into a dead faint.

Nicolas Remy had walked the paths of nightmare ever since the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Eve, but tonight he felt as though he had strayed into a dream. His thick boots sank into the luxurious Turkish carpet of a bedchamber fit for a princess, with a high vaulted ceiling, tall latticed windows, and magnificent paintings adorning the walls.

A stately bed carved of mahogany and hung with pale cream-colored silk curtains embroidered with roses dominated the room. Gabrielle seemed all but lost in the middle of that vast bed, her blond hair fanned across a large feather tick pillow. Gold-tipped eyelashes rested against her cheeks, her face so white and still that Remy’s heart wrenched with a fear he’d never known on a battlefield.

“God in heaven, I—I’ve killed her,” he muttered hoarsely.

“No such thing,” the brisk voice of Gabrielle’s maid replied. Bette was a buxom young woman with a competent air about her, her face completely calm beneath her lace-trimmed cap. She elbowed Remy aside, bending down to chafe Gabrielle’s wrists.

He should have thought of that himself, Remy reflected, but both his mind and his limbs seemed to have gone numb. The quick reflexes that had enabled him to leap to the aid of many a fallen comrade seemed to have utterly deserted him. He felt completely helpless before the pale slip of a woman stretched out on the bed.

Remy was only galvanized into motion when Bette ordered him to fetch some water. He carried an ewer over from the washstand, sloshing half the contents onto the carpet in his haste.

Bette dampened a cloth, which she applied to Gabrielle’s brow. As she started to loosen Gabrielle’s bodice, she said, “You’ll have to leave now, Captain Remy. Wait out in the hall.”

“No!” Remy protested. “I can’t just—”

“You can and will,” Bette said. “When mistress comes round, she’d hardly thank me for displaying her teats to you.”

Remy flushed at the maid’s blunt words. “By God, madam, I would never look—”

“Out!” Bette splayed her hands against Remy’s chest and propelled him firmly back toward the door. He allowed her to do so, but only because it was Bette’s goodwill that had permitted him to remain with Gabrielle in the first place.

He had alarmed Gabrielle’s entire household with his sudden arrival on the doorstep and Remy could scarce blame them for that. Such a desperate vagabond as he must have appeared, bellowing for help, bearing their unconscious mistress in his arms.

It was a miracle he had not been overpowered, Gabrielle wrested away from him while he was arrested and hauled off to face the nearest authorities. He had Bette to thank for the fact that he was not even at this moment clapped in irons.

She had been one of the serving girls at Belle Haven. Bette had grown up and filled out considerably, changed into the very semblance of an elegant lady’s maid, so much so that Remy had scarce known the woman. He was fortunate that Bette’s memory of him was far clearer and that she had not been as overwhelmed by his return from the dead as Gabrielle.

Remy craned his neck for one last glimpse of Gabrielle before Bette shut the bedchamber door in his face. Gabrielle still had not stirred and Remy tried to not let his mind leap to such dire things as heart failure and apoplexy. Gabrielle was young and healthy. Despite her resemblance to the fair and helpless damsel of folklore, Remy had long ago detected a strength and resilience in Gabrielle.

She would be all right. All he had to do was wait, not the easiest thing for a man accustomed to action. He forced himself to lean back against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest when what he really wanted to do was march restlessly up and down the hall. But he thought it less than wise to draw any more attention to himself. He was aware that he was being watched from the landing below by Gabrielle’s footmen, the servants regarding him as warily as if he’d come to steal the silver plate. Their supercilious stares made Remy all the more conscious of his disheveled state.

He supposed that under normal conditions a vagabond such as himself would not even have been permitted inside the kitchen door of a grand establishment such as this. At this hour, most of the building was left in shadow, but when he’d carried Gabrielle up to her bedchamber, Remy had glimpsed enough of the place to discern this was a town house of opulent proportions.

He wondered how Gabrielle came to be living here on her own in Paris, so far from her sisters and the Faire Isle. When her father, the Chevalier Louis Cheney, had been lost at sea, it was said that the knight had sunk most of the family fortune with him. So how then could Gabrielle afford to maintain this costly mansion?

Remy knew what he had heard murmured in the streets about her, lies that even now caused him to grit his teeth and long to cut out someone’s filthy tongue.
The most dazzling courtesan to descend upon Paris in many a day,
the old woman in the wine shop had cackled about Gabrielle.

Courtesan . . . a fancy name for a whore. If that hag had been a man, Remy would have run her through. By damn, he’d always hated Paris and this was but one of his many reasons. It was a viperous den of gossip from the palace to the backstreets, all scandalmongering and deceit. Small wonder that a woman as lovely as Gabrielle would become the target of such cynical and envious small minds.

If they had but known Gabrielle as he had that summer, none would dare to slur her honor. A woman-child, striving so hard for sophistication and yet so touchingly innocent in the ways of the world. Warm and cold, kind and cruel by turns, her moods came and went like the wind. Her blue eyes could sparkle with laughter or be haunted with melancholy, but only when she thought no one was looking. He’d often glimpsed a sadness shadowing her face, an expression that had gone straight to Remy’s heart, the more so because he had never been able to discover the root of her sorrow.