The Veils of the Budapest Palace (Darke of Night Book 3) (2 page)

I didn’t even mind that he strode directly to my table, although I treated him to my best freezing glance.

Close-to, he was even more breathtaking. Everything about him shouted vitality, youth...and danger. The marred beauty of his face only enhanced this impression, perhaps because alcohol had lent that glitter to his eyes and darkened his cheek with the faintest flush. He was, clearly, used to managing himself in this state.

He smiled, and there was absolutely no slurring in his speech as he said in perfect French, “Good evening, madame. May I join you for a moment?”

“I’m afraid not,” I said, allowing my glance to encompass the table, which had no chairs but mine. It was a polite way of softening the blow, and it had always worked before. Count Andrassy, if that was indeed my soldier’s name, took it rather as assent, merely solving the chair problem by swinging one away from the table next to him and plonking it down beside me.

He sat, large and restless, yet with his entire attention focused on me. “Why does such a beautiful lady sit alone all evening?” he asked.

“Because she wishes it,” I said tartly.

His brow twitched. “You come to a place like this to be alone?”

It was a good question, and, foolishly perhaps, it took me by surprise. “I like to be alone to watch the world,” I said. I closed inexplicably nervous fingers around my coffee cup, discovered it was empty, and pushed it away from me. “And now I have seen enough.”

I made to rise, but he moved quickly, catching my shawl from the back of my chair, where it had fallen.

“Forgive me,” he said. “I don’t mean to chase you away. I’ll go, if you like.”

“That would be best.”

“No. Best would be if you’d talk to me for a little. Or dance with me.”

“I don’t dance,” I said coldly.

A smile curved his lips. His eyes had never left mine. “You come to a place like this not to dance?”

“Exactly.”

“Or to talk.”

“As you say.”

His smile broadened. “Then do you mind if I just look?”

Unexpected laughter tried to catch at my breath. “Sir, you are impudent. A cat may look at a queen, but may do so just as easily from a distance.”

“As you were looking at me?”

Annoyingly, I felt a flush rise at being discovered. Ignoring it, I lifted my chin. “I found you interesting,” I said frankly. “I find a lot of people here interesting.”

“Just not interesting enough to talk to.”

“Exactly.” I rose to my feet. I’d already been drawn into more conversation with him than with anyone since I’d arrived in Lescloches. “My shawl, if you please.”

Ignoring my outstretched hand, he stood and placed the shawl around my shoulders. Although he didn’t touch me, the act seemed too intimate, brought him too close to me. I risked a glance at him, saw that the sword, or whatever had cut his face, had also nicked his lower lip. I knew an insane urge to touch it. With my own lips.

Determinedly, I raised my eyes to his. “Good night.”

He stirred. “It would be a better night if you’d dance with me. What do you have to lose but five minutes of your time? Time you appear to be here to waste anyway.”

I blinked, because of course he was right. I hadn’t come to make friends but to alleviate unendurable boredom that had its roots in loneliness.

More than that, I
wanted
to dance with him. The orchestra was playing a waltz.

An instant longer, I tried to talk myself out of it. After all, we hadn’t even been introduced. And I was entirely alone.

I let my shawl fall back on the chair arm and inclined my head. He smiled, taking my gloved hand in his warm, bare fingers. There were scars crisscrossing his knuckles. Placing my hand on his arm in a gentlemanly manner, he led me onto the dance floor and swept me into his arms.

It was not the faster, more dizzying Viennese waltz, but he seemed to dance in something of the same abandoned style. I didn’t know if that was due to the alcohol or his natural exuberance or simply the custom of his country. Whichever, it was to his credit that at least he didn’t hold me too close or try to maul me.

“What’s your name?” he asked me.

I considered. But I had nothing to hide now and would have no more later. “Caroline Jordan.”

He inclined his head. “Mrs. Jordan. You are English.”

“Lady Jordan,” I corrected mildly. “And yes, I am.”

“I’m Hungarian. Zsigmund Andrassy.”

“I’m sorry for the late troubles in your country.”

“There are still troubles in my country. The Austrian government strangles us. But I thank you.”

“Is that why you don’t go home?”

He managed to shrug and make it part of the dance. “I can’t go home. I don’t care. I would much rather be here dancing with you.”

His words were those of a practised flirt. The apparent sincerity, the sheer force of his concentrated attention must have been devastating to a more susceptible woman. Even I felt more than a faint flutter in my heart, a stirring of unwanted excitement I recognised as desire.

I felt compelled to say dryly, “You’re very kind, but you mustn’t waste your flattery on me, Count Andrassy. I have been in the world rather too long to succumb.”

He didn’t appear to mind the set-down, for he only smiled. “You think I’m drunk.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Only a trifle. In the morning, I’ll be sober.”

I stared at him. “What does that mean?”

“That I’d like to call on you in the morning,” he said patiently. “When I’m sober. Don’t turn me down,” he added outrageously. “There is usually only a small window of sobriety, especially after a win, and I would dedicate it to you.”

“I’m bowled over by your kindness and respect.”

He grinned. “No, you’re not. You think I’m insolent and dissolute, and you’re right. But I was joking—mostly— about my window of sobriety, and I would like to see you tomorrow.”

His leg touched mine through my skirts, dancing me backwards, and a fresh flush of heat washed through me. As if he sensed it—God knew he was close enough now—he said softly, “I would like to see you tonight too, but I doubt you would permit it.”

“You’d be right,” I said faintly.

“Because of Lord Jordan?”

I ignored the mis-title. “No. Because of me.”

His eyes were clouded, almost black, with unmistakable lust. He was undoubtedly a young man used to pursuing his desires and getting them. My own desire to let him took me by surprise.

“I hold you in my arms,” he said, huskily, “and I want more. Don’t you feel it too?”

My nipples rubbed achingly against my clothes. The moist heat of arousal was pooling between my thighs, shocking me.

I swallowed. “No.” What was the matter with me? He must be several years my junior. He was a
boy
to me.

He didn’t have a boy’s eyes or a boy’s body. Dissolute or not, sober or not, he had the hard, lean figure of a fighting soldier, and the arm holding me seemed strong enough for anything. He was undoubtedly a man, and, physically, a very tempting one.

He turned his head on one side as the music came to a close, considering me. “I think you lie. But I press you too quickly. Do you like champagne?”

Although his single-mindedness was beguiling, I wasn’t completely stupid. Not yet.

“No, thank you,” I said firmly, stepping back from him just as his friends arrived, sweeping him up in their hurry.

“Come on, Zsiga! We’re off to Maurice’s!” someone said jovially in French.

I laughed tolerantly, but it seemed I’d misjudged him, for even as I turned away, he broke impatiently from his friend’s hold.

“Later. Go on,” he said shortly, and pushed them towards the door to return to me.

“No, sir, go with them,” I said. “I am returning to my hotel to sleep.”

“Then let me escort you.”

“No, thank you,” I said. “I would rather go alone.”

For an instant, he hesitated, but I gave him no time, merely turned and walked away from him. And yet, when I lifted my shawl from the chair, he was still there with me. His hand covered mine, brown and weathered over the whiteness of my glove.

I straightened, withdrawing my hand, and allowed him to place the shawl on my shoulders for the second time. Half-afraid now, I raised my eyes to his.

He said, “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I would do nothing to distress you.” And then he simply bowed and walked away.

I sank into my chair, pretended to drink the remains of my long-gone coffee, just to give him and his friends time to leave. Even so, when I finally walked out of the room, through the foyer and into the street, my heart thundered with anticipation.

I wondered if he’d meant it to be that way.

But there was no sign of him.

I walked across the square to my hotel and retired to my room alone. Even then, I was aware that something had changed, that something momentous had happened.

F
or the first time since his death, I didn’t fall asleep silently weeping for Neil. Instead, I lay awake, thinking about the difficulties of enforced exile and unaccustomed poverty until sleep finally claimed me. And yet I arose the next morning strangely refreshed and looking forward to the day. My encounter with the young Hungarian nobleman seemed to have reawakened me to the joys and the possibilities of life. For one who’d understood at the age of eighteen that romance was over for her, it was strange to rediscover the dormant desire for it at the age of thirty-one.

Not that I seriously considered Count Andrassy in this way. Undoubtedly, he stirred me, excited me, but he was quite definitely not for me, the reasons so many and so obvious that I didn’t even trouble to recite them to myself. But I had a life to look forward to without the husband who had become my best friend and wise companion, and I was grateful to the count for showing me that.

So when I breakfasted alone as usual, the dining room seemed just a little brighter, the view beyond the curtained windows more appealing. I smiled when I returned the greetings of other guests, and returned to my room to fetch my bonnet and a shawl.

Since I could argue that it was working, I decided to begin my day by walking to the pump house and taking the waters. The stuff still didn’t taste any better, but I imagined myself glowing with health and drank my cupful down. Outside once more, I saw the arthritic old gentleman sitting on his usual bench in the sunshine. My attention was caught because he had a companion for once and was actually wheezing out a laugh at whatever had been said. The sound made me smile, for he suffered constant pain and he deserved a moment of lightness.

His companion sat on the bench beside him, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, looking up at the old gentleman with a faint smile on his lips.

My heart lurched, for he was unmistakably Count Andrassy.

Before I could slip quietly away, his gaze moved upward and found me. Immediately, the smile broadened and he rose to his feet. “Lady Jordan.”

“Count. No, don’t get up, monsieur,” I added quickly to the old gentleman who was trying to rise. “I’m just leaving, but it’s good to see you looking better today.”

The old man raised his stick and gave Count Andrassy a gentle poke. “The boy makes me laugh.”

“The boy” murmured something that made the old man wheeze again, and bowed to him while I hurried on, my heart beating ridiculously fast for such a mundane encounter. I knew that Andrassy would follow me, though, and he did, catching up in time to open the gate for me. He carried a rough leather satchel over one shoulder.

“I thought I might find you here,” he observed.

“I do not wish to be found, monsieur.”

“I know. But since you don’t know me and I know nothing about you, it’s more of a meeting than a finding.”

I couldn’t resist an amused glance at him. “An engineered meeting. You were waiting for me.”

“I was,” he admitted with disarming honesty. “They told me at your hotel you were probably taking the waters. What exactly are the waters supposed to do for you?”

“Refresh and revitalise me,” I said lightly.

“Then you are not ill?” he asked, his eyes steady and serious.

“Not in the slightest.”

He smiled. “Then why do you need to be refreshed?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“A bucket of water over the head usually does the trick for me,” he said. “It’s less expensive too.”

“Perhaps,” I said wryly, “but I rarely find it necessary to force myself a window of sobriety.”

“One glass of wine,” he said, “and one cup of coffee, always alone, before returning to your hotel and retiring early.”

I stopped in my tracks, actually angry with him for the first time. “You dared to ask about me?”

He stopped with me, his eyebrows raised in surprise and absolutely no repentance. “I didn’t have to ask. The assembly room is a hotbed of gossip, even if there’s nothing to say. I just listened.”

“Kindly desist,” I said coldly and walked on with my most repelling air.

“I can’t unhear things,” he said reasonably, still walking along beside me. “You must have learned more than you ever wanted to about the people surrounding you in that place. What did you hear about me?”

I shouldn’t have answered. Or if I did, it should have been with a cold
Nothing. Excuse me
, before I walked away. But perhaps his own honesty influenced mine.

I said, “That you are wild to a fault, came here to avoid being arrested in Paris, and can’t go home because you will be imprisoned or executed.”

His lip twitched into a deprecating half smile. “No more?”

“You were not the only person who interested me.”

“Ouch,” he said, clutching his stomach as though I’d punched him. “You are ruthless.”

“Good day, Count Andrassy,” I said dryly, nodding my dismissal.

He refused to take it. “It
is
a good day,” he agreed. “Which is why I wondered if you’d ever walked as far as the lake.”

“There’s a lake?” I said in surprise before biting my lip with consternation. Why could I never get myself out of conversations with him?

Because at heart, I didn’t want to.

“There is. And it’s rather beautiful on a fine day like this. I’ll show you the way, if you like, and then leave you.” He patted the satchel at his side, and his lips quirked. “Or I’ll offer to share my lunch with you.”