STOLEN CHARMS

by Adele Ashworth

  Without hesitation, experience took over, and he began to walk again slowly, his arm linked with hers, frowning in remembrance exactly as he should. "I met him four years ago during a gentleman's card game in Brussels. He was playing terribly, losing every hand, wagering more than he probably should have, and I assisted with a small loan, between Englishmen of course, before he could be called for cheating or betting what he couldn't pay. That incident began a friendship that has endured to this day. We're close in age and we both have the same sort of … wandering spirit."

  He noticed her features change. He was taking a gamble on the fact that she didn't know the first thing about what went on during card games, but in the dimness he couldn't tell if she was aghast or captivated. Maybe just plainly disbelieving. He carried on before she could question something more and interrupt.

  "As to why he's here tonight, I don't know. I didn't ask him. But he is here, and I assume for a very good reason." With pure amusement, he leaned toward her and added, "I gave him your vague description; told him you needed his help, nothing more. And he does indeed want to meet you, and has probably laid eyes on you already."

  She was thinking intricately now, brows wrinkled minutely, mind calculating coincidences, suspicion building. The deception wouldn't go on much longer; she was piecing together too much. But he couldn't afford a scene between them now, not when the final act was to take place in the ballroom in less than an hour. He needed her to remain unknowing for at least one more night.

  In silence, he guided her to the farthest corner of the garden, where darkness prevailed as lamplight faded, where only grass lay beyond to give way to jagged cliffs and open sea. They stood quietly for a second or two—he studying what he could see of her face, she staring intently into his darkened eyes.

  "Jonathan—"

  He touched her lips with his fingertips to quiet her, and he felt her physical jolt of surprise. But he didn't remove them. Instead he glided them along the soft, full line, enjoying the stirring heat it created within him, wishing suddenly she would kiss them with her own charge of need. Instead, she reached up and seized his wrist, pulling his arm away.

  "I think we should go back to the ballroom."

  She attempted to sound stern, but her quavering voice exposed the battle she was losing inside.

  "This brings back memories, doesn't it?" he pursued, lowering his tone with intensity. "Of a night long ago, of another moonlit garden, of the scent of flowers in full bloom. Of hearing your sweet voice in shadows, of the desire I witnessed in your beautiful eyes when you looked at me, of touching you—"

  "Please, Jonathan, don't do this," she begged in aching softness. She stepped back, lowering her head and running her palm across her forehead in irritation.

  "Why?" The word was almost inaudible, and yet he knew she heard it. "Why won't you talk about that night?"

  "I'm here for a reason, and it's not about us," she maintained anxiously. "I'm not here to be with you."

  That stung him, but he wouldn't let it go. "You are with me, Natalie."

  Her head shot up, and she glared at him through blazing eyes. "Only for a short time and only because I have to be—"

  "You want to be."

  "That's not true," she insisted, jaw tight, body stiff. "And I don't understand how you can keep thinking this way when I've made it so perfectly clear that I don't want you."

  He smiled and slowly shook his head. "There's nothing to think about and there never has been. We're going to be together."

  It was a statement of fact made so profoundly, so intimately, and with so much finality, she couldn't counter it. For moments she stared into his eyes, radiating unsureness and anger, even inexplicable awe at his confidence.

  "It's not worth fighting, sweetheart," he gently persisted. He reached up and placed his palm on her chest, his wrist touching the tops of her breasts, feeling the quick beating of her heart beneath her warm skin. She didn't move.

  "I won't be your lover, Jonathan," she disclosed in a thick, fervid whisper. "I can't be. I will never stoop so low in morality and self-respect to become another one of your conquests."

  He drew a long, full breath, allowing himself to admit openly what he already knew. "You don't have to. You are the conquest, Natalie."

  She faltered with that, blinking away incredulity, her features going slack, body sagging in erupting confusion.

  He calmed completely, understanding himself at last and the incredible power between them that had been there since the night they met.

  "It's all right," he whispered, running his thumb along her neck in soothing strokes. "Everything will be all right." He reached around her with both arms and pulled her into him, lowering his mouth to hers in a soft touch of warmth. She didn't respond at first, but he pursued, gliding his tongue along the crevice of her closed lips until she opened her mouth for him.

  She put her hands against his chest in a defensive measure that allowed her to touch him, and he savored the feel, tasting her completely, tongue against hers, listening as her breathing quickened to match his, as the waves crashed against rocks in the distance, as music from the ballroom became an echo of another time.

  Slowly she began kissing him back with growing surrender, knowing as he did that it was useless to resist. He ran his fingers down then up her spine until they relaxed through the ringlets of her hair at the base of her neck, feeling the softness, reeling from the scent of lavender on her skin. She was more than a fantasy, real not imagined, wanting him with vigor and loveliness she didn't even comprehend. That was what made her more beautiful than all who were gradually fading from memory. She was a brilliant jewel shining in a lonely desert of unfulfilled dreams. At last he understood, even if she didn't.

  She moaned deliciously, barely enough for him to hear. But hear he did, and he knew instinctively she was losing herself to the moment. From his own engulfing need he could wait no longer to caress her as he'd longed to do seemingly for ages. He brought his hand down, grazing his fingertips over her satiny neck and chest to run his knuckles lightly along the tops of her breasts, across warm, sensitive skin, aching for his attention as she pushed them into him. His hand closed over her fully then, his palm and fingers lightly massaging her through the bodice of her gown, his thumb flicking across her nipple until he felt it harden for him through thin fabric. This was the torture—the wait, the longing, the beginning vision of the rapture yet to come. For both of them.

  She gasped against his mouth, but she didn't pull away. She wanted him, more with each passing second. And that's what he needed to know. Natalie wanted him, not a myth, deny it though she might, and fulfillment would eventually be theirs. He knew it as surely as autumn followed summer. The day she resigned her sexuality to him at the beach was not chance, nor a momentary heat or loss of control. The force between them was there in the garden of long ago, and would be a part of them always. There was no stopping it now, no going back to the individual lives they knew before. Fate had brought them together again, for the second and final time, and eventually she would accept it.

  Gradually, with more reluctance than he could ever recall feeling, he drew his hands up and placed his palms on her cheeks, pulling his lips from the embrace, resting his forehead against hers. She began shivering, from desire not cold, and he inhaled heavily to control his own aching need.

  He clung to her like this for minutes, until she calmed, feeling her breath on his cheeks, her palms still warm against his chest. "I need you, Natalie."

  She shook her head in small, violent movements, but he persevered.

  "I want to touch you skin to skin, to feel you lying naked beside me, to take you as mine alone and watch when the passion explodes inside of you as it did days ago on the beach—"

  "No—"

  He tightened his grasp on her face, afraid she would jerk free and run. "We're not playing anymore. Not now. Not here. This is real, Natalie, and you want it, too. I can feel it in you when I touch you, when I hold yo
u, when I look into your eyes." Slowly, fiercely, he whispered, "It will happen."

  He'd never seen her cry before, but now he could feel wetness on her cheeks, brought out, he was sure, by frustration, anger, and confusion. He wiped them away with his thumbs but he wouldn't release her. Not yet.

  "Why do you continue to fight this?" he asked huskily. "Why won't you let it be what it is?"

  "Because I can't, Jonathan," she answered through a forceful breath. "Not with you. This is my choice, and I don't want you like that. You are my friend, not the man I will lose myself to."

  At any other time in his life, he would have been offended or disheartened by such a passionate statement made to be a cold dismissal. But he knew she was lying, even if she hadn't yet admitted it to herself. Her words of negation also made him smile inside as he really thought about them. She insisted on thinking of him as a friend, even after he took advantage of her feelings on the beach, even after forcing himself on her emotions now. Friendship between the sexes was unusual at best, and yet it was now becoming clear to him that this was how Natalie was dealing internally with her awkward and inexpressible fondness for him—an attachment growing by the hour. And this fondness, he decided as he acknowledged a first real hint of relief, would be the advantage he would need when she finally discovered who he was.

  Tenderly he kissed her forehead and stood back a little, gazing down to her face still resting in his palms, though partially hidden in shadow. "Perhaps you'll think differently about men and attraction after you meet the Black Knight."

  She breathed deeply and opened her eyes, gaining better control of herself as he eased his approach and manner and turned the conversation away from them.

  He grinned, attempting to lighten the mood. "It would take me hours to discard all these clothes to take advantage of you anyway. I just can't do that here, not when the fun is about to begin and we haven't even danced."

  For every ounce of compassion and strength, intelligence and reason within her, Natalie simply could not understand him—his moods, his feelings—if he had any beyond lust—his reasons for being there and doing what he did, why he expressed such words of longing when she was just another woman to spend a few weeks in his company. Every day she found him more beautiful to look at, warmer and kinder than the day before, so increasingly exasperating and daringly masculine, kissing her boldly even after she'd insisted he not, caressing her as if they'd been intimate for years. He got the best of her with each round, and somewhere deep in her mind, as an almost unconscious ripple, she knew he was winning the game he played with her good judgment and body, her heart and soul. She wanted to be harsh, to make him understand how she felt about him and his past, how she'd made up her mind long ago about which path she would follow. Her life just did not include him.

  She knew she was blushing as he stared down at her, though the darkness covered it well. She wiped her cheeks with her palm, angry at herself for reacting so wantonly each time he touched her, but more so for succumbing to tears he'd noticed. She hated weepy women who sniveled over men for every minor catastrophe, real or imagined, and she'd never really cried before in the presence of anyone. It didn't become her, and she knew it. Yet Jonathan brought out her passions with the greatest of ease, though the tears hadn't appeared to annoy him, which she supposed was a good thing.

  Striving to keep the choke out of her voice, she stepped back from him a foot or so, folding her arms in front of her. "Are you going to introduce us now?"

  Seconds passed, and he said nothing, just watched her intently as she fought a swirl of emotions within. Then, without any physical touch, she could positively feel his gentleness envelop her.

  "Tomorrow. It's too risky for him tonight, and I'd rather you spend it with me anyway."

  She opened her mouth to protest, but the words wouldn't come. She heard laughter in the distance, the violins and French horns and oboes through the partially opened windows, smelled honeysuckle in the balmy night air. Reality had returned, and she hadn't given in. She was in control, or would be again when she finally met the thief. At that point the masquerade with Jonathan would be over, and her life would begin a new, far more exciting and challenging twist that would not involve him. It was a somewhat painful thought, she finally admitted, but then many times in adulthood the right choices came with heartache.

  "I need to see him, Jonathan, and I can't wait much longer."

  "I know." He turned toward the house and offered her his elbow. "Dance with me?"

  She hesitated briefly, but the lamplight in the distance once again reflected his smile of assurance, even comfort and honesty, and at this point she could do nothing but trust him.

  Smoothing her skirts, feeling composed once more, the gravity of the moment gone, she grasped his arm, walked to the bench to retrieve her fan, then strolled gracefully beside him along the garden path and back into the house.

  * * *

  Chapter 10

  « ^ »

  The ballroom had grown from warm and stuffy to hot and stifling, but Natalie hardly noticed. She opened her fan, swishing it without thought, studying the gentlemen guests with returned interest. Jonathan walked beside her, cool as usual, or at least not openly sweating like the others. But many people were already wandering outside again, and the windows had been opened fully now, so perhaps there would be a reprieve from the heat after all.

  Then she saw Annette-Elise, in the center of the dance floor waltzing with her father, and her mind began to race. She stopped and stared, which forced Jonathan to do so as well. He shifted his gaze to the place where she fixed hers, then leaned over to whisper in her ear.

  "Stunning, isn't it?"

  Natalie knew he meant the necklace. Annette-Elise, as a woman of eighteen, could only be described as modestly attractive, with light-brown hair piled high on her head and a ruddy complexion she tried to hide with ringlets about her face. Her body was thick, though not fat, just … shapeless, with no breasts or waistline to speak of, and unfortunately from lack of experience she actually tried to draw attention to both from the cut of her gown. And her choice of clothing for the occasion had obviously been made with the supervision of her stepmother, as she wore the most unbecoming dress of mint-green satin, accented by huge, emerald-green bows and yards of white lace along the full skirt. But everything about her went virtually unnoticed after only one glimpse of the necklace.

  It was magnificent—breathtaking—and Natalie couldn't help but stare. Its design was angular and sharp, not round and soft, and quite unusual. The thick chain of gold was likely only fourteen inches long, and yet at least one dozen emeralds covered the entire length of it, spaced about a quarter of an inch apart from each other, and cut into thick sections, each about one-half-inch squared. But what made it so unique was that the emeralds didn't hang in a circle attached to the gold necklace at the top of each gem. An experienced jeweler had taken an enormous amount of time in sectioning each emerald perfectly, then attaching each one individually at the exact place on each jewel, whether it be at corners, to the sides, or somewhere at the top or bottom, adding gold if needed, so that each one hung absolutely straight at right angles to the others and the ground when worn. The emeralds themselves were probably worth a fortune. But the necklace, intact as it was like this, was unquestionably priceless, and she had never seen anything like it in her life.

  "That's what he's here for," she whispered with growing wonder. She glanced up to Jonathan who was once again watching her, faintly amused. Then without response, he led her onto the dance floor, only giving her time to grasp her fan against the soft wool on the arm of his frock coat and lift her skirts with the other hand as he took it in his.

  The contact shocked her as they began to move rhythmically in time to the music, not because he held her closer than appropriate, but because to her the memory of waltzing with him years ago was the most vivid she possessed. Perhaps he recalled the kissing and touching to the particulars, but she remembered the dance,
his eyes, strikingly rich, piercing hers from a face and soul hidden behind a black satin mask. In five years she'd thought of that night often, sometimes dreamily, sometimes with extreme discomfort, but always with a detail as fine as if it had all happened yesterday.

  "What are you thinking?"

  His words cut into her thoughts, and she caught herself, blinking quickly to reality. "That I want to be there when he steals them."

  He laughed softly, though his gaze never wavered, tightening his hold of her waist to draw her closer as he expertly twirled her around on the floor. "You think that's what he wants tonight?"

  "Don't you?"

  "I suppose it's as reasonable an assumption as any," he admitted.

  She ran her thumb back and forth along his as he held her hand. "But I also think there's more going on," she disclosed with the briefest spark of excitement. "I think the reason he's here is political."

  That comment grabbed his full attention. "Really? Why so?"

  She lifted her shoulders negligibly. "The Black Knight isn't known for stealing items for money, and if that's all he wanted he could just as readily steal from the English. Madeleine and I had a discussion about this very thing earlier tonight, concluding that if the Black Knight does indeed make an appearance, he will steal jewels worth something more than their monetary value." She leaned very close to his face to whisper, "I believe those emeralds are priceless, likely stolen, and probably worth something politically, either to the French or English government."

  Jonathan stared into her eyes for a moment or two. His expression never changed as he gauged whether her spoken thoughts were from knowledge or conjecture, as the hem of her thick gown hugged his legs while their feet traced the parquet floor in a soft click of rhythm to the crescendo of music and the murmur of conversation around them.

  Finally, in a voice low but firm, he asked cautiously, "Did Madeleine tell you this?"