“I can’t answer that, mademoiselle. It wasn’t a sudden event.”
“An approximate date will do.”
His face remained impassive—but his eyes warmed with a look she had seen before, the silvery color melting to hot smoke. “It took place gradually, day by day. I was fighting it for all I was worth.”
She took an unsteady breath. “But when did the words ‘I love you, Marie’ stop being a deception and become ‘I love you, Marie’ in truth? It was somewhat difficult for me to discern the difference between the two versions.”
“Paris,” he said roughly. “The day you disappeared in Paris, when I thought I might never see you again. I had never been so damned worried about anyone in my life. That night when I came to your room…” He shook his head. “I couldn’t leave you alone. Because I cared about you so much.” His voice lost any trace of cool control. “And it’s only gotten stronger every day since then.”
“So it was in Paris. You realized in Paris that you loved me. Then how could you keep deceiving me?” She leveled an accusing glare on him. “You continued lying to me after that, for days. Weeks. Why didn’t you ever tell me the truth? It’s not as if you never had the opportunity!”
“Don’t you think I wanted to? Do you know how many times I almost did? If I had confessed that I was a spy, what would you have done? You would have run. Straight into danger. And you would have despised me as you do now. I couldn’t…” He shut his eyes. “Marie, I couldn’t stand the thought of losing you. I kept hoping—” He hung his head. “Stupidly hoping there would be some way I could make you understand. Some way I could explain. Some way you might find it possible to forgive me.”
“And your mission was important to you as well,” she reminded him. “Your duty. You had to keep me for the sake of England.”
“Yes,” he snapped, his gaze meeting hers again. “That too. Would you want me to be any other way? Could you love a man who could throw over his country for his own selfish reasons?”
“I don’t know,” she replied softly. “All I know is that I can’t love a man who’s capable of lying to me with one breath and telling me he loves me with the next.”
He exhaled harshly. “Marie, even if you believe that everything I told you when we were together was a ploy, don’t you see that I have nothing to gain by saying it now?”
“You have a great deal to gain. If I leave, you might hang for treason. Your brother Saxon told me.”
“Damn it, Marie, I’m not going to—”
“I don’t even care anymore if you turn me over to your government! It won’t do them any good. I won’t give the formula to anyone. Especially now, after…” She glanced at the door, thinking of the agony Julian was going through. “I won’t give it to anyone. Not you. Not your superiors. Not the French military. They can threaten me. They can torture me. I won’t do it!”
Max was silent for a long moment.
When she looked at him again, he had an odd expression on his face. Then he did the oddest thing of all the odd things he could have done.
He smiled, a slow flash of white that broadened until his eyes crinkled at the corners and his face looked even more impossibly handsome than she had ever seen it before.
“You know,” he said quietly, “I think you were right yesterday. I didn’t realize how right until just now. You said I don’t know you. I thought I did.” He shook his head, that smile so brilliant it made her feel like she was melting. “You are compassionate and giving and one of the most incredibly intelligent women I’ve ever met—but I didn’t realize until this moment that you’re also damned gutsy. I didn’t think it would ever be possible for me to say this…” His eyes smoldered with that smoky warmth again. “But I do believe I love the real you even more than the you I’ve been in love with all along.”
Marie turned away, afraid to even look at him. Afraid of the impulsive urge she felt to run across the room to him and fall into his arms.
So afraid to believe.
“The third point we need to discuss,” he said gently when she remained silent, “is the possibility that you might be carrying my child.”
She spun and stared at him, startled. Her knees suddenly went weak.
She sank into the chair behind her as all the breath left her body. God help her, she hadn’t even considered that…
A baby. Max’s baby.
Her hand drifted to her midsection. Heat flushed her cheeks. “I-I don’t…I can’t…I’ll…”
“You’ll what, Marie? How would you survive on your own? On the run, with men hunting you and a child to care for?”
She shook her head, trying to think, her heartbeat and her emotions rioting. “I’ll…I’ll go somewhere they’ll never find me. Change my name. My appearance. I’ll never…”
She looked at Max, utterly unprepared for how much it hurt, the thought of never seeing him again.
Dieu, what was wrong with her, that she should still care for him after all he had done?
“Your plan would never work,” he said simply.
“Why?”
“Because I would find you. You might evade the others, but not me. If you left, I would follow. If you ran, I would catch you. Wherever you tried to hide, I would find you. I love you, Marie Nicole LeBon. Yesterday, today, tomorrow. Always.”
She covered her eyes with both hands, shaking. It took all her strength to hold back the tears. She couldn’t even argue with him anymore.
“Running is not the answer,” he stated. “My plan, however, might work. Provided one thing is true—is there any more of your chemical in existence, anywhere?”
She shook her head. “A-Armand had the only sample, and he gave it to the men from the French navy.”
“And they used it on Julian’s ship. And if they had any more, they wouldn’t be trying to capture you.”
“The rest of the compound was destroyed at my laboratory. There’s no more unless I make it.”
“Good. That means my plan has an excellent chance.”
She let her hands fall to her lap, looking at him. “What plan?”
His mouth curved in a mysterious grin. “We’re going to give both the British and the French exactly what they want.”
“We had an agreement, my lord.”
Max set the beaker down, his whole body afire merely from the brush of his shoulder against hers. The touch had been accidental, but of course, she wouldn’t believe that. “Pardon me,” he said with strained politeness, returning to his side of the table.
Marie sprinkled the contents of the beaker into one of the two dozen boxes of soil and seedlings arranged and labeled in precise rows on the table. “I agreed to cooperate with your plan purely in the interest of science,” she reminded him.
Max tried to disregard the aloofness in her voice, along with the throbbing pain in his chest and shoulder and the pounding ache in his head. He extinguished the burner he had been using. “Yes, of course.” He didn’t quite manage to keep the ire out of his tone. His temper had worn thin over the past four days. “I recall your words exactly, mademoiselle. We’re working together ‘on an intellectual, scientific, rational basis.’”
Marie glanced over the glassware, funnels, and strainers that cluttered the table. “I really don’t see why we need to work together at all. I could do this on my own.”
“Without my credentials and my associate at the university, you wouldn’t have a laboratory.”
“True,” she admitted grudgingly, returning her attention to her experiment.
Max frowned. This wasn’t proceeding exactly as he had hoped.
One of his friends from the university had secured this private laboratory for them, a classroom facility on the second floor of a building that wasn’t in use during the summer. He had also procured all the supplies they had requested, without asking too many questions. But so far, their efforts to neutralize the unstable aspects of her chemical weren’t meeting with much success.
And Max had been force
d to make a few concessions before she even agreed to take part in his plan. He wasn’t to make any advances, touch her or even tell her again that he loved her.
Which was rapidly driving him mad. They had been working together from dawn until dark every day, but she flinched away whenever he came within two feet of her, and at night they took separate coaches back to the town house—at her insistence.
For security, they also took armed guards and a different route each night—at his insistence.
He had hoped that working together would draw them closer, that she would come to accept that his feelings for her were genuine. But instead she seemed more withdrawn than ever. It was becoming more and more difficult to tell what she felt for him.
If anything.
She moved down the row to the next box. “I must admit, my lord, you have a surprising amount of expertise.”
“You’re too kind,” he said sardonically, picking up a rag to clean the glassware he had used.
The fact was that his knowledge complemented hers almost seamlessly. She was an expert in all the experimental aspects of chemistry, from designing reactions to analyzing results; he had more experience in the theoretical side, a knack for tying the results from various experiments together.
Not to mention far more familiarity with explosives and weapons.
“But I do want to make it clear,” she said, moving down the row, “that I’m only staying long enough to finish our—my work on the fertilizer, and then I’m leaving. That was our agreement, was it not?” She looked at him from beneath her lashes.
He heard the unspoken second question: You’re not lying to me again, are you, Lord Maximilian D’Avenant?
“You’re free to go at any time,” he assured her. “And as soon as we find a way to perfect your fertilizer—as soon as we’ve assured your safety—you’ll be on your way. And you’ll never have to see me again.”
She returned to her experiment without comment.
Without any sign of relief. Or regret.
Or any emotion at all.
How exactly did she feel about the prospect of never seeing him again? He wanted to demand an answer to that question—but the subject had been declared off limits, along with everything else pertaining to their personal relationship. Or lack thereof.
He pulled up a stool and sat down, his contribution to this morning’s efforts finished. Rubbing his aching shoulder, he watched her work.
Since their discussion in the parlor four days ago, she hadn’t looked at him with loathing in her eyes. He supposed he should be thankful for that. But then, she hadn’t looked at him very much at all.
They had declared a truce between them, a cessation of hostilities in the interest of science, in the hope of saving lives on both sides of the Channel.
But he was beginning to wish he had never agreed to it. Peace was hell. Being in constant, close proximity to the woman he loved, while she held herself so distant, so aloof, was killing him.
And it was damned difficult to concentrate. He kept finding himself distracted by longings, memories…fantasies. One of which involved kissing her senseless and making love to her right here on the floor of the laboratory. The very idea was uncivilized, underhanded…
Undeniably tempting.
Unthinkable.
He leaned forward on the table and rested his forehead on his crossed arms, a pained sigh escaping him.
“Are you not feeling well?” she asked.
He raised his head just enough to peer at her from between the tangled hair that had fallen in his eyes. “I’m fine.”
She shook her head. “Traveling across the city can’t be good for your recovery, my lord. You really shouldn’t be out of the house yet. You shouldn’t even be out of bed yet.”
He didn’t reply, except to convey with his eyes that she could take him to bed and keep him there any time she wanted to.
Unfortunately, she seemed to miss the suggestion entirely.
“Are you sure you’re all right? Your eyes look rather odd. You could be running a fever, which would mean an infection—”
“Careful, mademoiselle,” he rumbled. “One might get the impression that you cared.”
She glanced away instantly. “Not at all,” she said lightly. “I simply don’t wish anything to interrupt our work.”
He noticed that she forgot to correct the our this time.
Resting his cheek on his forearm, he watched her. In truth, he had noticed an uncomfortable heat muddling his head this morning, competing with the burning pain in his chest, but he had more important things to worry about.
“I still say the problem is the proportion of flaked charcoal,” he commented. “You’ve used too much. It has the potential to produce a great deal of phlogiston under these conditions. Which would make it unstable.”
“But we know that water is the key here, and charcoal doesn’t react at all with water. Except to turn to sludge. I’m more concerned about the phosphorous.” She didn’t dismiss his theory out of hand, however. “What makes you suspect the charcoal?”
“When I was eleven, I accidentally set the ceiling of my bedchamber on fire while trying to duplicate Stahl’s experiments with phlogiston.”
She frowned. “I see. Was your childhood completely unsupervised, my lord?”
He grinned. “Not completely. Though I did fall off the roof once while trying to observe the rings of Saturn. Mother wouldn’t let me have another telescope for months.”
A reluctant smile curved her mouth. “I’m not sure your youthful escapades qualify as reliable scientific theory.”
“You’ll never know unless you try.”
After a moment, she nodded. “As soon as this last test of the phosphorous is finished.”
Max smiled as he watched her. They worked well together. She couldn’t deny that.
When she finished distributing this morning’s batch of the compound, she sat on a stool on her side of the table, leaning forward in much the same pose as him, watching. Waiting.
She sighed. “I’m still not entirely clear on how this will stop the military from hunting me. Even if we manage to isolate and neutralize the unstable element, and make the chemical work as a fertilizer…how will giving them the fertilizer make them leave me alone?”
“The trick is to make them think they’re getting the explosive.”
Her brow furrowed. “But once we alter the chemical, it won’t work as an explosive.”
“Exactly. The attack on Julian’s ship will go down in history as an unexplainably successful stroke of good fortune for the French navy…and you will go down in history as a complete failure in the creation of scientific weapons.”
She considered that for a moment. “But both your government and the French government have scientists in their employ. What if they attempt to modify it? What if they discover some way to turn it back into a weapon?”
He nodded. “That’s the real problem we need to address. We need to find a way to render it completely, irrevocably harmless.”
They both sat in silence for a while.
Thinking.
When his sore muscles started to bother him, Max rose and stretched, pacing. Marie remained where she was, reaching for a quill and inkwell to take notes. Her plume bobbed and scratched rapidly across the page, her attention fully engaged in her experiment.
He enjoyed simply watching her, enchanted by his mademoiselle—the expressiveness of her features, the keen intelligence in her eyes, that adorable little cleft in her chin, which she tapped with her plume now and then when she paused in her note-taking. Marie had a beauty that was uniquely hers, and she had never looked quite so lovely as she did right now, when she was caught up in the passionate pursuit of her work.
Except, of course, for the way she looked when—
He yanked that thought to a halt. Forced himself to stop remembering. Stop wishing. He was only tormenting himself.
Walking over to the windows, he sank onto an overstuffed couch
, flipped aimlessly through one of the scientific journals piled on it. The answers to their problems—both scientific and personal—eluded him.
After a while, he tossed the journal aside, settling his gaze on Marie again.
“How did you become a scientist?”
She looked up from her notes. For a moment, he regretted asking the question he had wondered about for so long. He didn’t want to be subjected to another lecture on forbidden topics of conversation.
But to his surprise, she answered.
“My grandfather was a chemist. Rather a renowned chemist. A fellow of the Académie des Sciences in Paris. He raised us, after my mother died.”
“How old were you?” he asked gently.
“Five,” she said softly. “She died not long after…” Her voice faltered. “My sister was born.”
She looked down at her lap, smoothing the blue-and-white striped silk of her gown. But after a moment, she continued talking, as if she couldn’t stop herself. “My mother, you see, was very pretty and had a tendency to be rather fanciful and romantic—a terribly unfortunate tendency. My father”—she said the word as if it were unpleasant—“was a dashing young officer at Versailles who seduced her and then left her as soon as she was with child. My brother Armand and I are twins. Both of us are, to put it plainly, bastards.”
Max felt a cold lump in his stomach. Good God, was it any wonder she had reacted so furiously to what he had done? She must see it as some awful reenactment of her mother’s misfortune.
“You are not your mother, Marie,” he said cautiously. “And I am nothing like your father.”
Her fingers twisted in her skirt. She didn’t acknowledge what he had said, didn’t even seem to hear him. “We were born and raised in the country, at Grandfather’s manor, because Mother could never show her face among polite society again. But she never stopped dreaming. A few years after we were born, she had the misfortune to believe herself in love again, with a dashing country squire this time. But he was only using her to persuade Grandfather to invest in a South Seas scheme. He not only left her with child…he left us with nothing.” She inhaled as if in pain. “Mother died not long after my sister was born. The physician said it was due to complications from childbirth…but I believe she died of a broken heart.” Her voice became so faint he could barely hear it. “Of broken dreams.”
A Scoundrels Kiss Page 33