Adele Ashworth

by Stolen Charms

  He lifted his brows and relaxed in his chair. “Well, not much did happen, really. The comte d’Arles and six or seven other Legitimists were arrested early Sunday morning. The assassination attempt was carried off as planned, and there was a scuffle among the crowd. But the king was never very close to danger.”

  “Thanks to you, I suppose,” she put in with a prideful tilt of her head.

  He grinned again. “No, actually, he was fairly well guarded anyway.”

  “How humble you are today, Jonathan.”

  Shrugging fractionally, he conceded, “I do take credit when it’s mine.”

  She almost laughed. “Yes, indeed you do. You’re very good at that.”

  Jonathan turned his attention to his cup, tracing the rim with the pad of a finger. “Several were injured along the parade route, though. Two or three critically. The little information I revealed couldn’t prevent unrest.” His expression became guarded, his voice taking on a more serious air. “Louis Philippe won’t last a year, Natalie. His reign, if one could call it that, is nearly over already. The people are restless and ready for change.”

  “And our good friend the comte d’Arles?”

  Jonathan shook his head, frowning. “He’s probably home in Marseilles, the entire episode behind him. He and other nobles of his generation are far too prominent to be kept in custody during such a time of civil unrest. There’s more at stake for the French government than attempting to prosecute influential, wealthy men for an assassination plot that cannot be traced to them directly.” He looked back into her eyes. “The Legitimists want Henri on the throne, and maybe they’ll get their wish eventually.”

  She considered that for a moment, sipping her coffee, staring at the table.

  “Are you going to tell me about the chocolates?” he pushed at last.

  “Are you going to tell me about the emeralds?” she returned matter-of-factly.

  He sighed and rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. “I forgot about the emeralds.”

  “Again?” she charged sarcastically. Stirring yet another teaspoon of sugar into her coffee, she scrutinized him as she would a naughty child. “That’s a nasty habit of yours as well, Jonathan. A decent thief shouldn’t forget the objects of his endeavors so frequently.”

  “That’s why I need you, Natalie,” he admitted. “I’m getting too old to do this work on my own. I’m becoming forgetful.”

  She stared hard at him. “You’re not even thirty. And don’t change the subject.”

  Resisting a smile, Jonathan leaned forward, resting his forearms on the hard oak surface of his table as he turned his cup around in his hands. “I gave the real emeralds to Madeleine in Marseilles the day after I stole them. She got them out of France—before the ball. We couldn’t chance having them found once the count realized he had glass jewels in his possession.”

  Natalie placed her elbows on the table and covered her face with her palms. “So you carried two identical forgeries to France.”

  “Two forgeries and the onyx necklace,” he replied. “I didn’t know what I’d need, or what I’d leave behind in the safe the night of the ball. In the end I chose the onyx.”

  “So I stole a glass necklace from your trunk. How ridiculous I must have looked to you.”

  “Don’t be embarrassed,” he said softly, watching traces of pink flowing into her cheeks that she attempted to hide. “Your shrewdness took me quite by surprise.”

  “This also explains why you weren’t angry with me.”

  “I wouldn’t have been angry at you for stealing real emeralds, Natalie,” he maintained in a tone filled with deep meaning. “I was fascinated by everything about you on our little adventure.”

  She thought about that for a minute, then shook her head in her hands. “I’m disgusted. Madeleine knew this all along, and still she let me believe I had the real jewels, encouraged me to attend that dreadful party in Paris.”

  He waited, then reached for her wrist, which she tried to keep from his grasp to no avail. He pulled it from her, wrapping his large hand around her soft, smaller one. “Madeleine’s smart, Natalie.”

  She groaned and briefly closed her eyes, one palm clasped with his across the edge of the table, the other resting on her forehead. “No, she’s astounding. The two of you make a magnificent team.”

  He wasn’t sure if she was being serious or sarcastic, but he rubbed her fingers with his thumb and lowered his voice to a soothing caress. “Madeleine works on her own. She always has and probably always will. But she sensed very early that I was devoted to you—that I wanted to work with you, to be with you. That I was falling in love with you.”

  Her warm fingers stiffened in his hand, but he held fast to them. “You and I are the team, Natalie. You’re aware of this or you wouldn’t be here now, wearing red silk over bare skin, smelling like flowers and warm sheets and a night of lovemaking, tempting me with your smile and eyes.” Gravely he whispered, “I think it’s time for you to tell me.”

  Static charged the air, and Natalie knew, with a sudden tightening in her belly, that confession time had come. It had, in fact, been coming for weeks. He realized it as well, sitting smugly next to her at the table, rubbing her fingers with his, waiting arrogantly for her buried secrets to be revealed.

  She straightened a little and covered her coffee cup with her right hand, clutching it as her pulse sped up with anticipation and a creeping fear of the unknown. He felt her reluctance to begin but said nothing in response, just watched her intently with his beautiful eyes as they gazed through hers to touch her deepest feelings.

  “Madeleine is smart, Jonathan,” she started huskily.

  That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. He hadn’t expected to talk more of the Frenchwoman, and he couldn’t hide the dismay in his expression, which she had to admit pleased her.

  She attempted a smile. “The chocolates were her idea.”

  Now his brows furrowed in confused interest.

  “Well, not exactly,” she clarified with a small shake of her head. She paused to collect her thoughts, and he held even tighter to her fingers. “I told Madeleine that I thought you had cut my heart to pieces the night I gave myself to you. She defended you by saying that couldn’t have happened unless I had given you my heart as well.” She glanced quickly at the chocolates then back at his face, her stomach now in knots, pulse racing, mouth dry. “I never really did that, did I, Jonathan?”

  His body stilled, and he barely breathed. “No.”

  Natalie locked her gaze with his. “That’s what the chocolates are for,” she disclosed in a raspy, nervous breath. “They symbolize my heart. I’m giving it to you now.”

  For an endless moment he stared into her eyes, clinging to her fingers. Then he whispered, “Why?”

  She succumbed to tears she could no longer fight. “Because I love you.”

  It was as if the mysteries of the universe were unveiled for him in that instant. Air hissed through his teeth as he inhaled, and his eyes, his features, every part of him beamed in a vivid pleasure she felt as an ache in her own chest.

  “I’m afraid of it, Jonathan.”

  He caressed her with his gaze, her fingers with his thumb. “I know you are.”

  She dropped her lashes at last, staring at her coffee cup through blurring vision and memories of so long ago. “You were right, too. In Paris. You said I started loving you years ago, and I did. But I couldn’t talk about that night because I was mortified after it happened—about the way I kissed you and the things I said to you. I’m embarrassed about it to this day.” She shook her head. “I was so very foolish then.”

  “I didn’t think you were foolish. I thought you were enchanting and beautiful, so innocent.”

  Those softly murmured words were meant to calm, and they liquefied her. “I thought you were beautiful, too, Jonathan, and dashing and sophisticated. I dreamed about you for months after that night I dreamed of your lips on mine and hearing you tell me that you loved me, too.
”

  “You were so young, Natalie.”

  She raised her eyes to his again, and the look he gave her—one filled with such utter gentleness and keen comprehension of her feelings—nearly took her breath away. Her throat constricted, and she swallowed hard, wiping away a single tear as it slid down her cheek.

  “Yes, I was young,” she explained in a rough, faraway voice. “And naive. I didn’t know you then, didn’t really know anything except that I felt a small, innocent love for you in my heart like . . . like the beauty of a single rose, or a violin or harp playing a soft melody.” Her gaze became intense. “But the love I feel for you now is different. I know your weaknesses and strengths, your moods. I know how much you adore women—”

  “Natalie—”

  “Shh . . . Let me finish, my darling Jonathan, before I lose my nerve.”

  He lifted her hand to his lips, tenderly kissing her fingers, her knuckles, and wrist until she felt a tingling within. Still, he never took his eyes from her face.

  “I love you so much more as you are today,” she continued passionately. “And you wouldn’t be who you are without the experiences of your past, and this includes the women you’ve known. I love your intelligent humor and the way your mind works so cleverly to expose the ultimate good. I love the way you argue with me over silly things like the appropriate dinner wine and stealing the covers. I love the way you flatter me with a small, suggestive glance and tease me with your voice and make love to me as if you’re sharing the secrets and longings of your soul. I know how much you adore your ridiculous weapon collection, and the theater and fine brandy and expensively tailored clothes. I know your favorite color is lustrous, ruby red and that your greatest worry, your greatest fear, is losing me.”

  He’d gradually stopped kissing her with her intimate disclosure, his breath becoming uneven and raspy as she felt it on her wrist. For a second or two, Natalie was certain he was close to losing his composure in front of her.

  She smiled with trembling lips and squeezed his hand, her voice once again dropping to a whisper of profound intent and fervent conviction. “I said I loved you then like a rose or a harp—something innocent and delightfully sweet—and I did. But I love you now, Jonathan, like a—a conservatory filled with the dazzling color and fragrance of hundreds of exotic flowers, like a symphony of music—from flutes to French horns to cellos—playing rich concertos and beautiful waltzes.”

  She leaned toward him, running her thumb along his knuckles. “I don’t need to promise to love you, Jonathan. I love you enough to last a lifetime, and you know this already.” Eyes once more brimming with tears, she confessed in warmth, “But I swear to you, right now, that if you promise to cherish my heart with all the love and goodness in yours, I will give myself to you completely, faithfully, and trust you always with everything I am.”

  For a long time he just stared into her eyes. She’d given more than he’d expected to hear, much more. She could see the wonder in his gaze, feel it flow from him in currents, and suddenly emotion surfaced and the love he felt for her was a discernible force, radiating from him in joy, suffusing her to wash the past away. Forever.

  “Natalie . . .”

  It was a whispered plea for her to come to him, and she responded, raising herself on unsteady legs and walking two feet around the corner of the table to his side. He brought her knuckles to his lips, not kissing them this time, but just placing them against him, gliding the fingers of his free hand down her silk wrap as she stood before him—from the side of her breast, over her hip to her thigh. Then at last he pulled her onto his lap.

  She curled into him, erasing the world outside with his powerful embrace, fitting her bottom snugly against his hips as she wrapped her arms around him and nestled her face in his neck.

  “I will never break your heart,” he assured her in a violent, whispered vow, his cheek to her temple, his lips to her ear.

  The strength of his conviction unraveled her, and she started to cry softly, silently, against him.

  He held her quietly for several minutes, pulling the pin from her hair so the mass of it flowed in waves over her shoulders and down her back, tunneling his fingers through it, kissing her forehead and brow, cradling her in his arms. “Did you know, Natalie sweet, that since that night in the garden five years ago, I’ve never been able to get you out of my mind?”

  She sniffled but didn’t move her face from the curve of his throat. “With such variety at your fingertips? I don’t believe you.”

  He chuckled in a velvety tremor that shook her to the spine.

  “I lied to you in Marseilles,” he admitted, choosing his words carefully. “The truth is, after that night, I didn’t ask about you occasionally—I thought about you constantly for months, and later asked about you often.”

  She stilled in his arms, but he carried on without notice.

  “I knew who courted you from time to time, and I was more than irritated when I learned Geoffrey Blythe had serious intentions, because it was so obvious to me that the two of you didn’t suit.” Very slowly he added with a thread of discomfiture, “No less than seven times during the last five years, Natalie, I dressed for you to notice me and left this town house to call on you formally.”

  Amazement pulsed through her, and she raised her head to lock her startled eyes with his.

  He smiled wryly. “I wasn’t sure how you’d receive me, knowing my reputation, and especially after sharing that first incredible kiss and your innocent confession of love for me. And because of this uncertainty I never got past a drive down your street, except once. About a year ago I actually rang the bell and spoke to a parlor maid, but you were out, and I was too nervous to leave a card.”

  His eyes grazed her features as his palm slid across the wetness on her cheek. “I swear it was by fate that you walked into my home when you did. You were embarrassed to be here, but in some small regard I expected it. I was surprised to discover you in my study that morning, but not at all surprised that you’d come back into my life.” He grasped her jaw with tight fingers as his tone grew passionate. “You’re so vibrantly alive, and your presence and friendship enrich my life in so many ways, giving me something I’ve never experienced with anyone else. I dreamed of loving you like this, Natalie, and yes, I cherish it. I always will.”

  She didn’t think she’d ever been more shaken by a disclosure in her life. His beautiful gray-blue eyes pierced hers with stark memories, with honesty and abounding hope. She placed a palm on his cheek and drew it over a day’s growth of stubble, the tingle of it on her sensitive fingers making her toes curl and desire for him burn anew. Then she touched his lips with hers, kissing him, tasting the lingering traces of coffee and inhaling the warm, masculine scent of his skin.

  He reacted in kind, pulling her closer, untying the sash at her waist, demanding more as his hand reached in to caress her back and hip in sensuous strokes.

  “Marry me, Jonathan?” she begged against his mouth.

  “I was beginning to fear you’d never ask,” he whispered in fast reply.

  She smiled inside, squirming against the marvelous feel of his growing erection now stiffly nestled in the curve of her bottom. “Our courtship has been so unconventional.”

  He moved his hand to her breast, sliding his palm across her nipple in slow circles until it hardened, and she sighed from the welcomed invasion.

  “To avoid gossip,” he said against her mouth, “we’ll tell everybody I courted you in Newburn while you were there visiting your great-aunt for the Season. I, of course, was there on a scouting expedition for ancient English swords.”

  She laughed softly against him, and he pulled back a little.

  “We’ll say we met at . . .” He tilted his head in thought. “At Mrs. Peabody’s soiree.”

  She frowned. “Who’s Mrs. Peabody?”

  “I’ve no idea, but I’m certain there’s more than one in Newburn.”

  “As ingenious as that is, my mother won’t beli
eve it,” she warned in a teasing voice, brushing her fingers through his hair.

  His eyes rounded in challenge. “I’ll charm her into believing it. I can be very convincing.”

  “Indeed,” she said dryly. “I imagine you’ll spend years using your convincing charm on her.”

  He pursed his lips. “I think . . . perfecting it on her would be more accurate.” Another small laugh escaped her, and he leaned in again to nuzzle her neck. “What about your father?”

  She inclined her head to give him better access. “At this point my father would approve of my marrying almost anyone.”

  He chuckled. “Then you’re stuck with me, I’m afraid.”

  “I think I can manage to be happy,” she purred.

  His lips moved provocatively over her flesh again. “With the courtship issue respectably explained, we can be married within the month.”

  “That’s not enough time to plan a wedding, Jonathan.”

  “We have to, Natalie, to avoid scandal,” he clarified, nibbling her lobe with his teeth. “In case you’re carrying my baby.”

  Color crept into her cheeks. “Oh.”

  She felt rather than saw his broad smile of satisfaction, annoying her that he should enjoy flustering her with such considerations.

  “And speaking of your parents,” he whispered, his mouth to her skin, “I fixed your mother’s little problem.” He pushed the silk over her shoulder and trailed her throat with his tongue until he sucked her collarbone.

  “Wh-what?”

  “The problem with the letters,” he explained seconds later, his breath so cool against her suddenly burning flesh.

  His hand found her nipple again, teasing it, brushing it lightly with his thumbnail. Then he leaned over and licked it, sucked it, and she reached for him in response, raking her fingers through his hair and delighting in the sharp, tingling pleasure she felt between her legs.

  “Mmm . . .”

  “Did you hear me, Natalie?”

  He stopped tormenting her with his hands and mouth until she raised closed lashes to look at him.