Hearts Beguiled

by Penelope Williamson

  No one laughed at his joke. He doubted they had even heard him. He saw Gabrielle steal a look at Max, who was staring out the window with such a forbidding expression on his face it could have been chiseled from granite. There was a look of such love and anguish on Gabrielle's features that Percy wondered how Max could resist it. What's more, she looked positively scrumptious in a gown of pink tiffany with blond lace scallops topped by a short, fur-trimmed pelisse and matching hat. Percy had to sternly remind himself she was the wife of his best friend, and that he didn't like temperamental redheads.

  Resigning himself to many more hours of this uncomfortable, taut silence, Percy leaned his head against the leather seat cushion and shut his eyes. They popped open immediately at the sound of Gabrielle's voice, sweet and clear, filling the chaise.

  "Monsieur le Vicomte?"

  Monsieur le Vicomte turned to regard his wife with upraised brows.

  "I have been thinking," Gabrielle said.

  "It's about time," Max retorted, and Percy stopped himself from snickering just in time.

  "I have decided that you may have all the mistresses you like-"

  "Thank you, but—"

  "—and I shall take lovers."

  Percy's eyes opened wide at this remark. "By Christ, I'll see you dead first!" Max snarled, predictably.

  "We shall have an accommodating marriage."

  "I'll accommodate you black and blue if I so much as catch you looking at another man."

  She lifted a haughty chin into the air, and Percy grinned. "Hunh!" She sniffed. "Your threats don't frighten me."

  Max gave her a wolfish smile. "I'll thank you to remember that you are mine. I'll keep you chained to my bed if I find it necessary, but you will be a lover to me, Gabrielle, and no other."

  Percy broke into a sudden fit of coughing. He smothered his entire face with his handkerchief, while dark gray and violet eyes sent sparks flying at each other across the confining carriage.

  It was obvious to any fool that those two were madly in love with each other, but Percy wisely kept such an opinion to himself. After dinner yesterday at the Chateau de Morvan, he had tried to get Gabrielle alone long enough to undo some of the damage caused by his earlier tactless remark. He thought to convey some of the torment his friend Saint-Just had gone through during her absence, but she had seemed unmoved. Then he had made the supreme error of mentioning that a man like Maximilien de Saint-Just had certain physical needs that could be suppressed for only so long.

  "And, pray tell," she had said, opening wide those great purple eyes, "what needs are those?"

  Percy could feel his face burning hotly. "Well, uh, that is

  ... a man who's never had trouble finding a woman whenever he gets the urge becomes used to the, er, regular physical release."

  "Ah. So that then is the reason why Max took a wife. So he could have the convenience of regular physical release without taking the trouble, however small, to look for it."

  Percy had once fought a skirmish against the redcoats in a swamp in North Carolina, but this ground he now tread felt far more dangerous. Sweat trickled down his cheeks, and he struggled hard to come up with just the right words that wouldn't further damn his friend.

  "A man can take a woman without feeling any affection whatsoever, and think nothing of it," he finally said, "but I Would stake my life that Saint-Just not only loves you very much, but that you are the only woman he has ever loved."

  Gabrielle lifted her head, and he could see plainly how hurt had marked her face. "I would die before I let another man touch me. If Max loved me at all he wouldn't have been capable of making love to another woman."

  Percy had no answer for that. Women, he decided, were made differently than men in more ways than the obvious. It was why life with the opposite sex could be so delightful, and so maddening.

  He had tried to explain this theory to Max later that night as they got drunk together over port and brandy in the library.

  "Women," Max had responded, sounding as surly as he looked, "are good for only one thing. And the man who forgets that is a fool."

  Percy sighed. "It's only because Gabrielle loves you so much that she can't forgive you for—"

  "Love!" Max sent his glass crashing into the flames, and the spilled brandy caught fire in a whoosh of blue light. "How can she claim to love me and have thought me capable of such despicable acts? If she loved me, she would never have been able to leave me—no matter what she saw or thought she saw."

  Percy, who had earlier been told the full story of the reason for Gabrielle's flight, tried to think it through from her point of view. "She was frightened—"

  "If she was frightened, why didn't she come to me for help? Why keep it all hidden from me?" Max pounded his fist so hard on the delicate arm of the chair that it cracked. "As my wife she had an obligation to tell me."

  "I don't know why she didn't tell you, although I can guess. That perpetual sneer you wear on that handsome face of yours doesn't do a lot to encourage confidences. What I fail to understand is why the pair of you are now putting yourselves through all this added misery." Percy waved a hand in the air. "It's obvious you're still in love with her—"

  "I'm not."

  "Horse manure. And she still loves you. You should both swallow your damnable pride and go to each other, admit your mistakes, and build a life on the love you share, rather than tormenting each other by denying your feelings."

  Max thrust out a square and stubborn chin. "I'll admit Claire de Tesse was a mistake—when Gabrielle admits she drove me to do it in the first place!"

  Thinking back now on this conversation, Percy leaned against the leather seat of his chaise and used his handkerchief to smother a sigh. He was glad he had thus far escaped the misfortune of falling in love. It turned even the most reasonable of men and women into utter idiots, and wreaked more havoc than a plague of locusts.

  The chaise bullied its way slowly down a Quai des Tuileries that was congested with traffic. They had left Percy at his lodgings in Versailles and continued on by themselves to Paris, borrowing the chaise. Max, Gabrielle had just learned, no longer leased the apartment in the Palais Royal, but lived instead in a grand hdtel on the Rue de Lille that he had inherited with his title.

  Dominique sat on Gabrielle's lap and leaned out the window, offering a running commentary on everything he saw. "Look, Maman!" he exclaimed loud enough for all on the quay to hear. "All those ladies have big, fluffy white feathers in their hats."

  Gabrielle looked. Indeed, it seemed every hat she saw sported an ostrich feather—obviously the dernier cri in millinery fashion this winter season—and she made a mental note of it.

  Dominique screeched in her ear and pointed at a fat woman who sat wedged tightly into a sedan chair that had been dumped into a pile of kitchen rubbish while her bearer indulged in fisticuffs with a clumsy carter. "Maman, that lady curses even worse than Agnes!"

  Beside her she heard Max swallow a laugh. Unconsciously she turned to him, and they both shared a smile until they each remembered their anger and looked away. But the smile eased some of the tension between them, enough so that she could say, "Paris seems different somehow."

  "Percy would say it is the sedition you smell in the air," he drawled, and his smile caused her heart to give a little leap.

  It was a dark, drizzly day, and the city seemed as gray as the weather. Piles of frozen garbage lined the streets, and surely there were more beggars than usual sheltering beneath the stone parapets that lined the river Seine. Many of the shops along the quay had their green wooden shutters pulled down tight, although it was only midday. There were long lines outside the bakeries, and in the gutter beside a butcher's shop Gabrielle spotted a skeletal old woman stuffing a handful of raw animal innards into her mouth.

  But as the chaise crossed the Pont Solferino and entered the fashionable Faubourg Saint-Germain, the look of the city changed. Here the tree-lined streets were quiet and swept free of refuse. Looking at the s
tately carriage entrances to the great stone houses, it was easy to believe, as Percy had said, that things would continue as they had for a thousand more years.

  The chaise rolled up before a porte cochere with the shield of the house of Saint-Just carved into the stone arch over the gates. They were pulled open by a pair of lackeys in silver and blue livery, and the chaise continued forward along a short white-pebbled drive.

  A valet ran up to open the door of the carriage and let down the step, and more servants were there to hold open the front door of an enormous mansion that seemed to be all windows and marble facing. Max stepped into the hall, letting fall his greatcoat and hat into the hands of a porter without even bothering to look around to ensure the man was there to catch them. If Paris was, indeed, seething with sedition, Gabrielle thought, then the disease had yet to infect the household of Saint-Just.

  The huge entrance hall was the most magnificent Gabrielle had ever seen, with so much gilt scrollwork it made her feel slightly dizzy. The majordomo magically appeared to lead them up the sweeping marble stairs—first to the nursery, where a sleepy-eyed Dominique was put down for a nap, and then to what was termed "madame's room," where unseen minions had already deposited the many trunks filled with all the clothes and accoutrements Max had bought for her.

  "Madame's room" was decorated in soothing green and mauve colors, and separated from "monsieur's room" by a connecting door. She could hear Max's voice speaking on the other side of it, and she stood in the middle of the splendid room wondering whether she should go to him, wishing he would come to her, and regretting the need to think about it at all.

  Instead she went to look out one of the room's three velvet-draped windows.

  The Hotel de Saint-Just backed up to the Quai d'Orsay. She could see the river from here. For the first time in her memory it had frozen over solid enough for skaters to cross back and forth on their swift, sharp blades. Chunks of ice had caught against the pilings of the bridges. Cookfires burned orange on the ships that were locked into their moorings, and the cries of the peddlers on the quay carried far on the cold air.

  The view blurred as shameful tears filled her eyes. Five days and nights had passed since Percy Bonville had come to the Chateau de Morvan, and Max had not touched her once since then.

  Gabrielle tried to convince herself she didn't care, that— husband or not—she would never let him take her as he would a whore, without love. She felt so betrayed by him. In some ways it was worse than when she thought he had sold her to Louvois. Every time she closed her eyes she saw Max with a faceless woman, their limbs entwined in passion, and she felt a bitter and angry hurt that throbbed in her breast like a raw wound.

  Yet still . . . still . . . One look at his dark, sensual face, at his hard, demanding body, and she knew she would accept him back into her bed on any terms. When it came to Maximilien de Saint-Just she had no pride, no shame, no sense.

  She heard a knock and whipped around, her heart in her throat, but it was the wrong door that opened.

  A serving girl entered bearing a large brass can filled with water. "Monsieur le Vicomte said the vicomtesse would wish to wash off the grime from the journey." She set the can and a pair of thick white cotton towels on top of an ornate dresser with a marble top and gilt bronze mounts. She poured some of the water into a large Sevres porcelain bowl and turned to smile at Gabrielle. She had a friendly face with round, plumlike cheeks and slightly crooked teeth that gave her a gamin look.

  Gabrielle tried to produce an answering smile. "Thank you, mademoiselle ..."

  The girl curtsied. "I am Henriette, Madame la Vicomtesse . . . Madame, do you desire that I unpack for you now?"

  "No, thank you. Later, if you please, Henriette. There's a green silk dressing gown in that cloak bag just there beside the door. If you could lay it out on the bed for me . . ."

  "But of course, madame."

  "I prefer to undress myself."

  The girl curtsied again. "As you wish, madame."

  Left alone, Gabrielle rapidly stripped off her clothes. She pulled the pins from her coiffure, shaking her head until her hair tumbled like a mantle over her shoulders. She stood naked in the middle of the- room, shivering, for the place was large and a bit drafty in spite of the thick rugs that covered the floor and the fire that blazed in the grate.

  Lavender-scented steam rose from the water in the bowl. Gabrielle spread one of the towels on the floor and, taking a sponge, began to dribble water over her body, luxuriating in the sensuous, oily feel of it coursing softly over her skin. Her eyes drifted closed and she imagined it was Max's hands caressing her flesh, Max's hands setting her blood afire. She rubbed the perfumed water between her thighs, trailing her fingers through the curly, silken nest of hair. She trembled and her mouth parted on a soft sigh-There was a small sound behind her. She whipped around, the blood leaving and then rushing back to her face in a wave of furious color. Max stood just inside the room, within the shadows of the muted winter afternoon light.

  She reached frantically behind her for her dressing gown, her eyes unable to leave the dark oval that was his face. She belted the gown tight around her waist. "You—you could at least have had the courtesy to knock," she stuttered, feeling hot with guilt, shame—and something else. Excitement.

  He came into the room. Now the firelight fell on his face. It was very pale, and a muscle twitched in his cheek. For a moment his eyes rested on her breasts, where the silk clung to her wet skin, outlining her tautened nipples, and she saw hunger flare hot and bright within the sooty gray depths.

  He averted his head, showing her his sharp-boned profile. He had removed his coat, and she saw the thin cambric of his shirt flutter against his chest as he breathed.

  "I thought I should tell you," he said, a rough edge to his voice, "so that if you should happen to see us together you won't take it into your head to run away again ..." He jerked back around and looked hard into her eyes. "Tomorrow afternoon I intend to pay a visit to the duc de Nevers."

  Gabrielle felt the color drain from her face, and she saw Max's reaction to it in the way his mouth twisted down at one corner into a sneer. Even now, even in the midst of this renewed worry over her son, she wanted to kiss that sneer away, to make him smile at her again, to make him love her.

  He lifted his head and stared down at her from beneath half-closed lids. "What's the matter, Gabrielle? Don't you trust me?"

  She clenched her fists to control her trembling. "But if you tell him about us, he'll take my son! I'll be arrested. The duc has a signed lettre de cachet with my name on it. And you could be arrested as well. I was forbidden by the king ever to marry again."

  He waved his hand impatiently and took a step to bring himself closer to her. She could read nothing in his hard mask of a face, but she felt the heat of his nearness as if his body were a flaming torch.

  "What did you plan to do, Gabrielle?" he said. "Skulk inside the house here until Nevers dies, or until Dominique becomes a man? This matter with the duc must be resolved so that we can all live a normal life." Again his lips twisted downward. "Or at least as normal a life as is possible given the circumstances of our marriage."

  This was important; her son's future was at stake. She had to consider all the consequences and all she could think was that Max was here in her room, they were alone together for the first time in days, and she wanted him with a raw, primitive hunger that was an ache in her belly.

  Sucking unconsciously on her lower lip, she looked down at the floor and missed seeing the telltale muscle in his jaw clench and unclench. "But what . . . what will you say to him?" she said. "How can it possibly be resolved?"

  Max lifted his hand, hesitated a moment, then lightly stroked her cheek. The harshness on his face eased somewhat. It was all she could do not to melt against him, not to go into his arms seeking comfort.

  "You are the wife of the vicomte de Saint-Just. It's a name that counts for something in this country." A small dimple appeared and disapp
eared in his taut cheek. "Thanks to my great and noble parent."

  "But the duc-"

  "Hush and listen." His voice took on that silky resonance that never failed to send chills up and down her spine. "I know certain things about the duc de Nevers that he probably wouldn't like whispered into the ear of the king. I think we can reach a fair exchange. He gives up his persecution of you; in return he can visit his grandson occasionally. Dominique is the old man's heir, after all, and he should come to know his—"

  Gabrielle jerked away from him. "Never! I will not let that monster near my son! He would carry him off and I would never see him again."

  He clasped her upper arms and turned her around to face him. She shuddered at the frisson of feeling that ripped through her at his touch. But Max, evidently thinking she feared or was repulsed by him, released her so abruptly that she almost stumbled.

  He backed up a step and his eyes, under their drooping lids, looked mockingly down on her. "Come, come, Gabrielle, the mighty Saint-Just pride is at stake here. Do you think I'd allow anything to happen to Dominique? He's my son now and I'll protect him." His eyes darkened to charcoal-black with some emotion she couldn't begin to fathom. "I would never let harm come to the boy. Can't you find it in you to have a little faith in me, Gabrielle?"

  Her throat closed up and she almost couldn't get the words out. "Oh, Max ... of course, I have faith in you."

  He gave a bitter laugh and started to turn away from her, but she grabbed his arm to stop him. Whipping around, he seized her by the neck and slammed his mouth over hers.

  Their teeth grated together, and then his tongue, rigid and thrusting, was in her mouth while his hands loosened the belt around her waist and the damp material of her robe fell aside to expose her breasts. He cupped them in his hands, his fingers twisting her nipples to the ecstasy side of pain, and she arched her back, pulling their mouths apart.

  His lips swooped down to her breast. His hands cupped the underside of her buttocks, pulling her hips up onto the column of his body, while his tongue and teeth toyed with her nipples. She rubbed her mound against the marble-hard muscles of his abdomen and felt his thick male ridge, tightly encased in his satin breeches, pressing up between her thighs. She lifted her knee and rubbed it against him and she could feel him pulsate and throb beneath the thin slick cloth.