Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Giselle was not awoken by a noise, but by a light. It was a drifting light, one the moved over her eyelids like a breeze, and when she finally gave in and opened her eyes, she looked lazily over to the curtains.
Thin as gauze and fluttering in a warm breeze, lazy sunlight was pouring through the window and straight onto the bed where she lay.
Reaching out an arm, Giselle moved to embrace the man who had changed her life, who had made her feel more than she was, more than he could be – and found the bed empty.
She stiffened. Sitting up rapidly, Giselle’s eyes flashed around the small whitewashed room, and saw éduard seated at the table in the corner, completing a letter.
Every muscle in Giselle’s body relaxed. “Come back to bed, mon amour, there is an emergency.”
éduard did not turn around, but she saw his shoulders shake as he chuckled. “An emergency, is it?”
Giselle nodded, a charming smile appearing on her lips as he glanced behind him for a moment. “I am dangerously in love you, mon prince, and I need rescuing.”
Keeping her eyes on her husband’s, she lowered herself back into the bed, and moved the sheet slightly to invite him in.
“I am sure that the emergency will not require my attendance immédiatement,” éduard smiled, and turned back to his letter. “Can it wait but two minutes, Princess Giselle?”
Giselle sighed and rolled her eyes. “Ah, éduard, we have been in Rome too long! The Italian way of doing things has gone to his head!”
And yet in all other respects, and she would have heartily admitted this, they had barely been in Rome long enough.
Their wedding had been small, admittedly, but beautiful at the Castle Aviroux, and they had intended to spend almost a year travelling around Europe, taking in the sights, the sounds, the smells – and the tastes of local cuisine and each other.
éduard laughed, and smiled wryly as he turned back to look at her. “Giselle, mon amour, you are completely right.”
In one swift movement he strode across the bedroom, threw himself into the bed, and kissed Giselle hard on the mouth, a kiss that she welcomed by entangling her legs around his own.
“I was about to wake you up anyway,” éduard murmured into her hair as he kissed her neck.
“Mmm?”
“Not for that!” He laughed again at her disappointed face. “There will be plenty of time for that later – do you not remember? We have a rendezvous to attend, Giselle, and the time is almost upon us.”
He was gone from her arms as soon as he had finished his statement, and Giselle felt a sense of loss that she could have not imagined before she had met the true partner to her soul. The mere thought of losing him, of not having him …
“If you not increase your pace, we shall be late.” éduard’s voice broke into her thoughts as he pulled on a waistcoat over his linen shirt.
Giselle made a face. “Perhaps I want to be late. Perhaps I do not wish to go at all!”
Her husband, the Prince of Aviroux, paused in the buttoning of his shirt to stare at her, and she could not help but laugh.
“You are far too content with being a spy, and living outside the law,” she said matter of factly, rising finally from the bed and reaching for her lightest muslin gown.
éduard nodded as he passed her a pair of shoes, thrown carelessly to the side of the room the night before when they had succumbed to the pleasures that their bodies could give each other.
“Anything that brings me closer to you,” he said softly.
Instead of taking the shoes proffered with thanks, Giselle grabbed at his wrist and pulled him towards her, capturing his lips with hers and placing her hands tantalising close to the hardness that she knew would come, if she could just –
“That is enough!” éduard caught her hands and pinned them to her side, pushing her slightly against the wall by the window.
Giselle’s heart quickened, and she could feel the warmth starting to grow between her legs. “I do not think it is?”
His hands were strong, stronger than her, but she revelled in the feeling of attempting to free herself, and she was well rewarded. éduard moved forward, pinning her against the wall with his body. Giselle arched against him and saw the desire in his eyes, saw the stiffening of his body, and –
A clock chimed somewhere in the square outside the window.
“Eleven o’clock!” Giselle stared wildly at her husband. “éduard, we are going to be late!”
“That – that was what I said before…” éduard stared at her in disbelief, but a smile soon returned as he released her, and she quickly placed her favourite diamond earrings into her ears and smiled at him. “Ready?”
Giselle nodded.
As they left the small townhouse that they had rented for the last six weeks, Giselle picked up a small envelope from the table and slipped it into her reticule.
“Florence,” she said, in way of explanation, and her husband immediately understood.
“How is Miss Capria?” He asked as they wended their way down the tight staircase. “I hope that you have thanked her for the good advice about living in Rome?”
Giselle nodded as they passed through the parlour and to their front door, locked with two secure bolts top and bottom. “I have, and what is more, I have invited her to visit us here.”
éduard raised an eyebrow as he unbolted the door. “England no longer suits?”
She shrugged, and smiled as they passed through the door and into the delicious Italian sunshine.
“I do not think England ever suited, pour être honnête. I think that the call to return home, wherever home is – you know, I never asked, how disappointing of me – has grown stronger. I believe that it will not be long before she attempts to find a ship. We may see her in a few weeks.”
The walk to St Mark’s Square was not a long one, and they knew it so well now that they barely had to think about their feet as they walked, leaving their minds free for other things.
“I…I was going to ask,” said éduard hesitantly, and Giselle smiled at him for encouragement, marvelling that a prince of France would be so gentle, and so respectful of her. “About your brother. Have you heard from him?”
Rome was only just awakening in the heat of the summer, and so there were few people out and about their business, but there were still a few stalls offering sweet meats and delicious fruit. Giselle approached one and paid for six lemons before she answered her husband.
“I have not heard from him, no,” she said finally as they entered St Mark’s Square, and found a small coffeehouse to sit and drink tea in the shade, waiting for their contact to make the rendezvous.
“But I know now that he is in England. He made a mess of it, really, he should have swum like so many, but I digress.”
“He is in England?” éduard’s eyes were wide. “Who helped him, whose protection is he under?”
Giselle sighed with a tired smile. “As ever with my little brother, he never does things the easy way. He did not wait for protection, nor invitation, but just sailed there. My sources are not complete yet, but he definitely did land. I am not concerned. Our friend James, Viscount Paendly, is on the case for me, and I trust his abilities far more than I trust Pierre’s, mon petit frère. ”
The tea was sweet and hot, and it was a relief to cut a slice of lemon with her penknife and add it to the boiling liquid.
éduard was watching her, concern across his face. “You miss him.”
She shrugged, but it hid the pain that she could not hide from herself. “He is my flesh and blood – the last of it, I think. I care for him greatly, but I have ensured that the next best thing will meet him on the shores of England. He will be cared for when James finds him.”
“And you are sure that he is alive?”
Giselle’s heart twisted slightly and the pain was, for a second, almost unbearable. But it passed.
“I just know,” she said softly.
éduard opened his mouth as if to argue with her, or at least ask for more details. As an only child, Giselle knew, there were elements of family that he just did not understand.
But he did not get the words out before the shot was fired.
Screams echoed across St Mark’s Square as the other café patrons, visitors to Rome, local sellers, and priests passing through all run away from the origin of the sound, diagonally across the piazza from where the Prince and Princess of Aviroux were seated.
Giselle threw éduard a quick look.
He shrugged. “You know mon amour, it would not be a life with you without a little peril.”
She grinned back at him. “As long as I have my prince, I do not care.”
And without another word, the two lovers pulled out their pistols and ran towards the noise.
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