Chapter Sixteen #3
“When he died and his protection, such as it was, ended, I went to my old friends, Augustine and Amber. Lady Ashley and Lady Ramsey now. They were as opposed to the new regime as I, and they devised a way for me to contribute to the cause of Bonaparte’s defeat.”
“How long have you been doing this for them?”
“Working for Scarlett Hawthorne? More than two years, first as a runner, then later doing drawings. I took an old map I drew for a French travel book and approached one of Fouché’s men.”
“Vaillancourt?”
She shook her head. “No. His assistant. I had heard too much from Gus and Amber about the canny nature of Fouche’s deputy, and I did not wish to tangle with him. My husband had dealings with Vaillancourt and lost. So I thought if I could influence one of his subordinates, I would do better. I did.”
“I don’t understand why you would take such a risk.”
She rose and paced before him. “What had I to lose?
My parents were dead. My father killed for politics.
My sister gone. My brother gone, too, for his own views.
Sent to prison by none other than Vaillancourt.
My livelihood was gone, the vineyard fallow.
My staff killed by those who would have total power.
“I had to leave France. I could not bear the fear that they would come for me. They had taken my older sister and abused her. I heard many gruesome stories of how guards in the prisons used women and destroyed them. I’d had enough of that rash and cruel behavior from my husband.
I could not bear the thought of going to a cell or guards or rape. Call me a coward.”
He cursed softly. “Never are you that.”
“Still…still…” She crossed her arms and shuddered. “I could not live every day with the possibility they would take me away to starve me or…or rape me. I nearly lost my mind at home, awake each night in terror. I could not go on.” She hung her head. “I would have gone mad if they took me.”
She whirled to face him, her eyes envisioning horrors he could not see.
“I had one skill. I could use it. So I fled to Paris.
I approached a man, an Italian, who still works there for Scarlett Hawthorne.
When Lord Ashley lived in Paris during the peace, this man was his majordomo.
He helped Ashley keep order and expand his network of spies.
“I knew Corsini well. He helped me escape the country, pointing me toward a man who smuggles people and goods in and out of France.”
Clive inhaled, satisfied finally to have the fuller explanation of her life.
He’d take up this matter of her abusive husband in another way, another time.
He’d not let her live with that as the template of how a man and woman should treat each other.
He would move to his conclusion. “So now you have finished these last renderings of Brighton. We are here. So how did you plan to get them to your French smuggler?”
Her blue gaze dwelled on his, her hand clutching her diaphanous robe to her throat. “I would one day find a way to escape from you.”
His heart thundered in his chest. “And run where?”
“Back to Brighton. To the hotel. To wait for a message from someone who would place a few in French agents’ hands here in England or smuggle them back to France.”
“You had a man following you.”
“Hired by Ashley. He was my guard.”
“I hired another to follow you.”
“And there may have been yet another…” she said with a frown.
“You did not recognize any of them?”
“One man, ugly he was. With a beak nose, quite noticeable. Otherwise, I saw no one with any consistency. I was befuddled.” Triumph flashed across her face. “But that man who appeared in east Brighton at just the right moment was yours. Thank you. I have not thanked you. I should have.”
“You have no need to run from me.”
She raised her head to examine the wooden rafters.
“I wish that were so. You’ve heard my tale.
You know I must deliver these last drawings and paintings.
It is my satisfaction. My revenge on them all.
That is if, of course, the French take them all to heart and calculate incorrectly how to land here. ”
He rose and went to her. Lifting her chin with two fingers, he traced her lower lip with his thumb. In his hands she turned sweet and soft. “You and I will return to Brighton. We’ll take two suites at the hotel, but I will be with you night and day.”
Acceptance had her swaying into him, and in her gaze stood joy in equal parts with fear. “I don’t want you hurt.”
“You know that the French will not stop hunting you.”
“Whoever it is that suspects what I do, they can try to stop me. But my work is done.”
“If Fouché and Vaillancourt know what you do for us, they will not stop.” He would not reveal what he knew about the amphibious land craft.
He had no confirmation from Langley or Halsey that the French calculations of the landing levers were made because of Giselle’s art.
If he told her, he’d frighten her more. “I want you with me every moment.”
She flowed into his arms of her own accord, and Clive folded her close. “I want to be with you.”
“Do you, my darling?” He crushed her near. “I am so very glad to hear that. I want you with me always.”
She shook back her hair and gazed up at him. “You are too kind. I am no woman to match the valiant promise of you.”
*
“I say you are more than that.”
He growled and seized her lips in a kiss so hard, so deep, so fierce, she had no breath, no will but to claim more. She ran her fingers up through the soft hair over his ear, her other hand clutching his open shirt collar.
He broke away, catching air and considering the wall behind her. For a moment, she thought he’d stop.
But no. He cradled her head in his palms and, with some inscrutable words, took her mouth again.
This kiss was tender. The next wild.
She whimpered at the beauty of his claiming.
He crushed her closer, picking her up off her feet to match her frame to his torso.
With a shake of his head, he bent, then caught her up in his arms and strode like a conqueror to her bed.
He laid her down as if she were light as air and climbed over her. Up on his elbows, he hovered above. “Tell me to stop and I will.”
How rare to find a man so considerate that he would offer to leave her. She cupped his cheeks. “I cannot. Tonight, I live for this. For you.”
“For you,” he murmured as if he said a prayer.
With one kiss of hard agreement, he rose on his knees and stripped his shirt over his head.
In the flickering flames of the great room candles, she noted the breadth of his shoulders, the bulging muscles of his arms, the sharp ridges of his ribs.
She traced them, drawing him in her heated mind.
One day, she would paint him, sketch him, dashing man that he was.
But tonight, she would love him as he deserved to be.
Her fingers slid to the buttons of his flies. She undid one, and he shot up and away, peeling off everything, even his boots, and pulling her to a sitting position.
Done in a second with her negligee and silly muslin gown, she lay naked before him. He ran his open palm from the hollow beneath her chin to her throat, her cleavage, and the point of one hard nipple and the other.
He swallowed so hard that she heard him as he returned to loom above her. She did the same to him as he had her and learned the contours of his shoulders, chest, and hips with her fingertips.
“Come to me,” she whispered, arching her hips to his in invitation. “I need you. I have for all my life.”
He gasped, his eyes at once full of tears. He dropped his head to catch her nipple in his mouth and suck her hard.
She bucked and dug her nails into his back.
He captured her other nipple and licked her until she keened.
This, from him, was what love was like in heaven.
Never had she had such on earth. And so she rose, one arm flung around his neck, one hand open, stroking the lean arc of his loins to his erect penis.
There she wrapped her hand around him. Her hand was small compared to the enormous size of him, and she stroked him as if in compensation.
He groaned and seated himself so that he ran his long member along her cleft.
His fingers followed, and he opened her folds to murmur, “How wet and warm you are.”
She shifted, and he dropped inside her, filling her with all of his flesh and devotion.
There he simply held.
“You are,” he said, “so soft, so strong. Let me make you mine.”
She gave a laugh that was half sob. “Do. Please.”
At that, he slid his hands under her, one at her lower back, one at her hips. Then, with slow ardor she had known all too briefly weeks ago, he opened for her his gift of ecstasy that only love conveyed.
Nor was it done in a moment, but long, hot minutes of sensation, and at the end, hot, pounding release that shook her and took her far from the night, the bed, and left her with her arms full of him and a joy she’d never conceived that might be hers.