Congress of Secrets

by Stephanie Burgis

  Of course, it would be wisest to wait in his room until the apartment was empty again before he left.

  Wait here while they …

  No. That, he could not bear after all. Michael picked up the satchel and started for the door. If they caught him leaving—well, what then? Caroline would be relieved to see him go. And Weston …

  Michael bit back an unprofitable surge of rage, as irrational as it was violent.

  He would make no noise.

  He turned the handle of his door in silence. Thank God for well-oiled doors, every trickster’s best friend.

  Barely breathing, Michael stepped out into the passageway. For one long, mad moment, he stood outside Weston’s door. He heard Weston’s voice, murmuring in low urgency. The door handle seemed to grow larger at every moment in Michael’s funneled vision.

  He wanted to turn the handle, throw the door open, say something unprintable …

  But he had done enough damage to Caroline already in his life. If she had found true happiness now, it would be a poor friend who interfered with it.

  Michael closed his eyes, trying to dismiss the visions summoned up by his over-vivid imagination.

  He would never see her again.

  Opening his eyes, he walked steadily toward the apartment’s front door. One step, two steps, three …

  Behind him, Caroline’s voice rose in a sudden cry of pain.

  Michael dropped his satchel, spun around, and leaped for the closed bedroom door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Michael threw open the door and found himself in a scene from a fever-dream. Caroline and Weston sat on the floor in the middle of a wilderness of scattered books. The candle between them sent shadows leaping across their faces. With one hand, Weston held Caroline’s bare left arm poised above a metal beaker. With the other …

  Michael’s gaze slipped from the silver knife in Weston’s hand to the blood that dripped from a long cut in Caroline’s pale inner arm into the waiting beaker.

  “What in God’s name are you about?” Michael lunged forward, stumbling on the cluttered floor. He grabbed Caroline and swung her up off the floor and behind him in one quick movement. With her safely shielded behind his back, Michael glared at Weston. “You bastard! I’m going to—”

  “Prince Kalishnikoff!” Caroline’s voice came out breathy with shock, but her grip on his shoulder was firm as she tried to pull him aside. “Calm yourself. Charles isn’t—”

  “Don’t tell me to calm myself. He attacked you!”

  Weston glared back at him, holding the beaker protectively close to his chest. “Perhaps you should listen to what Lady Wyndham has to say. Your Highness.” He spat out the final words like an insult.

  “You—!” Michael wished he was wearing a glove to slap across the other man’s face. Then again, in his latest guise, he wouldn’t be allowed to fight a duel with a servant.

  Just as well. He’d hate to put off the satisfaction for that long, anyway.

  Michael fisted his hand, swung forward—

  And Caroline pulled him back with a hard yank, even as Weston leapt away, hugging the beaker close.

  “Stop!” Caroline said. “I can explain. I swear it.”

  Weston let out a choked sound of protest. “Lady Wyndham!”

  “Charles …” She paused, biting her lip. Her face was bone-white, Michael saw, and pinched with pain. He looked down at her arm, and his stomach roiled.

  “You’re still bleeding.”

  “I … yes, I am. Of course.” She took a deep breath, as Michael yanked out a handkerchief from his pocket and passed it to her. “Charles,” she said calmly. “You have what you need. I know I can trust you to do the rest without me.”

  “Yes, your Ladyship. But—”

  “Thank you. I’ll meet you upstairs in my drawing room as soon as possible. Wait for me there. Prince Kalishnikoff …” Her dark eyes met his, as she pressed the folded handkerchief against her skin. “Come with me,” she said. “Please.”

  Michael hesitated. Weston was still hugging the disgusting, blood-filled beaker to him like an infant. Every one of Michael’s instincts told him to snatch the damnable thing away and punch Weston in his smug face.

  Caroline tugged at his arm. “Please,” she repeated. She swayed slightly and reached out for balance.

  Michael slipped one hand behind her back for support. As Caroline turned toward the doorway, Michael met Weston’s glare for one last moment.

  “Later,” he promised softly.

  Weston’s eyes narrowed. He darted a swift glance at Caroline’s turned back and then dipped his chin to Michael in silent agreement. Michael felt the secretary’s venomous gaze on his back as he and Caroline picked their way across the floor, until they finally closed the door behind them.

  Caroline hesitated in the passageway. Her cheeks were still deathly pale, and Michael watched her with concern. How much blood had she lost to that leech?

  “I don’t know where—”

  “My room,” Michael said. “It’s the only safe place. You don’t want your servants to see that wound.”

  “No,” she agreed. “Not until I’ve thought of a good reason for it.”

  Michael’s teeth set. “There is no good reason.” He guided her into his room and closed the door. “Let me see.”

  He raised her arm, lifting away the handkerchief, and took in, for the first time, the seriousness of the wound. It was only a narrow slice down the skin of her forearm, but it oozed blood at a worrying rate, without any signs of slowing. Michael set his teeth together.

  “I am going to kill him.”

  “Don’t be absurd.” Caroline pulled her arm back and pressed the skin together. “I’m sure he didn’t mean to cut so deeply. I only need a proper bandage.”

  “I’ll find one for you.” Michael turned around—and bit back a curse as he surveyed his empty bedroom.

  Of course, he had nothing left here to bandage her arm. All of his possessions were sitting in the front room, in his packed satchel. Brilliant.

  “Just wait here a moment. Sit still and keep your arm raised above your chest.”

  She sighed. “You don’t need to speak to me as if I were a child.”

  Michael gritted his teeth and hurried out into the passageway. He scooped up the packed satchel from the drawing room floor just as the door to Weston’s room opened and the secretary stepped out.

  “You’re leaving?” Weston asked.

  “You’re not so fortunate.”

  Michael brushed hard past the other man, heading down the passageway. He heard the front door of the apartment open and then slam shut with an unspoken message of resentment.

  When he stepped back into his own room, he found Caroline sitting on the edge of his bed.

  “Did you know—?” she began. Then her gaze fixed on the satchel in his hand, and her eyes widened. “You’re leaving.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Not at the moment,” Michael said curtly. He tugged out a clean silk shirt from the satchel and ripped it neatly in two. “Hold out your arm.”

  She shook her head, still staring at the satchel he’d dropped to the ground. “You were going to leave without even telling me, without—”

  “I said, hold out your arm.” He dropped down to his knees in front of her.

  “You—”

  “Pay attention.” He met her gaze. “Do you want to bleed to death?”

  “It’s not so deep a wound.”

  “It’s too deep for my liking.” Michael folded the first half of the shirt into a thick pad and pressed it against the open wound. “Hold this here for me,” he said.

  Caroline did, but glared at him. “You can stop giving me orders now.” As her voice regained its strength, it took on a cutting edge. “You’re hardly in a position to command.”

  “No?” Michael wound the other half of the shirt around her left arm, careful not to tie it too tightly. “I’m still waiting for you to explain exactly what mad
ness was going on in there. Weston’s gone, so you needn’t worry that he’ll overhear you. I want the truth.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You have no right to expect any such thing from me! You were on your way out, without any warning, any word of—”

  “I would have told you,” Michael muttered. He tied the final knot and looked up at her, releasing her arm. “I intended to tell you. Originally.”

  “But—?” Her face, only inches away from his, had settled into haughty unapproachability. Was he only imagining the hurt hidden behind the anger?

  “But,” Michael continued steadily, “I heard your voice in Weston’s room as I came into the apartment.”

  Caroline blinked. Confusion pierced her mask of aristocratic hauteur. “What on earth would that have to do with anything?”

  Michael shook his head and gave in to the disaster he’d been trying so hard to escape.

  He’d spent twenty-four years trying to forget her. It had never, ever worked.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  He leaned forward, careful not to brush against her injured arm, and kissed her.

  Caroline froze, eyes wide open.

  Michael’s lips felt warm against hers. So warm. They moved gently, tentatively, against her mouth. He tasted faintly of powdered sugar, but mostly of himself, an indefinable, irresistible essence, like coffee or rich, dark chocolate. With a breath, she could push him away.

  She ought to push him away.

  Caroline hadn’t kissed a man for pleasure since … Wait. Had she ever kissed a man just because she wanted to? Because it felt like this?

  She’d kissed men because she’d had to. She’d kissed men because she’d wanted to, because it had been her key to survival.

  But Caroline had never kissed a man with nothing to gain and everything to lose. She’d never kissed a man who truly knew her.

  She had never kissed Michael.

  Caroline closed her eyes and gave in to temptation.

  Just for a minute. I’ll push him away in just a minute.

  She reached up to touch Michael’s face lightly, caressingly, as her lips moved against his. His skin felt warm and already faintly rough against her fingers. The feeling of that light stubble sent tingles racing across her palm. She curved her hand around his cheek and threaded her fingers into his soft, short hair. At her touch, she felt him suck in a breath.

  She opened her mouth and leaned into him to deepen the kiss.

  Just one more minute …

  He tasted bone-deep familiar and utterly intoxicating. She fell into the kiss like an ocean wave, letting it sweep away all reason and common sense, carrying her far from where she’d meant to go. Michael’s strong hands came up to hold the back of her head and the nape of her neck. Caroline slid forward onto the floor beside him, pulled inexorably closer to his warmth.

  She had been cold for so, so long …

  When she pressed herself against him, he sucked in a gasp through their kiss. She shivered with the shock of it, and the pleasure.

  Being with a man wasn’t supposed to feel this way. It was a chore that she had learned to accept, because there were no other choices. She had forced herself, years ago, to turn it into a talent, to save it from feeling like utter degradation. She’d developed careful skill but always held herself removed while her body played out the set moves of the ritual.

  Now, though, she could have melted straight into Michael’s skin. His chest felt warm and solid against hers, and his arms wrapped around her back as if he could hold her safe forever. The tops of his thighs pressed intoxicatingly against hers as she half-lay across his lap.

  She wanted to crawl inside him and lose herself.

  Caroline wriggled even closer, reaching out to catch her balance—and her bandaged left arm hit the sharp edge of the cabinet just behind him.

  “Ahh!” She jerked back and fell against the bed.

  “Are you all right?” Michael loosened his hold around her. “Your arm—”

  “I’m fine. It was only …” Caroline drew to a halt, staring at him. She was gasping for breath—and so, she saw, was he, his eyes half wild.

  Their legs were still tangled together, warm and close.

  What in the world was she doing?

  “Don’t,” Michael said. He drew a ragged breath. “Please. Don’t move away.” His lips twisted into a half-smile, but he looked physically pained. “I can actually see you considering it, you know.”

  Caroline swallowed, her gaze trapped by his. “You see too much.”

  “I love you,” he said.

  Caroline’s whirling, disordered thoughts went completely still.

  “Wait.” Michael winced. “Forget that I said that, please. Pretend I didn’t?”

  “So it isn’t true, then?” Caroline asked. Her voice seemed to come from a long way away.

  “No, it is. I hadn’t realized it until now, but … it’s true.” Michael’s eyes were wide with what looked like panic, his linked hands held very still against her back. “But you don’t want to hear it yet, do you? So I shouldn’t have said it.”

  “I don’t … I can’t …” Caroline drew a deep breath. Pain throbbed in her left arm, a beating reminder. “I have to stand up,” she told him.

  “Don’t,” Michael said. He dropped his hands to his side, freeing her, but kept his searching, hazel gaze intent on hers. “Stay,” he said softly. “Please.”

  Caroline stood up, carefully disentangling herself. Once she was upright, though, she found her head whirling too much to do anything more than collapse down onto the bed. Michael’s bed, she thought, and then cursed herself.

  “This is madness,” she said. She looked down at her bandaged arm to avoid looking at Michael. Her eyes felt drawn to him with mesmeric force. Her eyes, her hands, her mouth … She cut off the all-too-enticing train of thought. “This is only a whim—a moment of madness—”

  “Not on my part,” Michael said quietly. “I wish I could dismiss it so easily, for my own peace of mind.”

  “Perhaps you ought to try harder,” Caroline said.

  “Never.” Michael moved to sit on the bed beside her, keeping a careful hand’s breadth of distance on the narrow mattress. The heat from his body reached out to brush, temptingly, against her skin.

  She could have pinched herself with irritation at the words that somehow escaped her mouth: “And Princess Bagration?”

  “What?” Michael stared at her. “What has she to do with anything?”

  Caroline closed her eyes, burning with self-contempt. She shouldn’t care, she didn’t care, she—

  “Marie Rothmere said that you were her latest paramour.” Caroline pressed her lips together tightly to hold back any further revelations. Where had her self-control gone? It must have deserted her at the same moment as her common sense, when she’d first been foolish enough to kiss him back.

  “Do all of the lady’s romantic affairs consist of a courtesy kiss on the hand and a few polite compliments from her guests?” Laughter warmed Michael’s voice. “It would be a sad lack of passion to wish on anyone, I fear.”

  “Really?” Caroline opened her eyes. “But—”

  He was smiling at her with the same rueful, affectionate grin she had known since childhood. It had charmed her then, as a naïve, impressionable girl. Now …

  “Princess Bagration is an admirable hostess and politician,” Michael said, “but she hasn’t a tongue sharp enough to cut her enemies into slivers and a heart fierce enough to light them on fire afterward. She’s not the one with the courage and the wit to climb out of poverty and disaster, create a new history for herself, and play a role in front of all society for decades.” His smile dropped away as his voice dropped to a bare whisper. “Princess Bagration is not the woman I admire and desire with all my heart.”

  “I would have hated it if she had been,” Caroline confessed, and felt her last defenses drop away.

  His mouth was warm and familiar and absolutely right, firs
t against her lips, and then trailing soft, tingling kisses down her neck. She shuddered at the intensity of it and pulled him closer.

  They fell back onto the bed together. Caroline kissed his stubbled cheek and pulled off his cravat to kiss his throat. There was too much between them, suddenly, too much blocking her hands and her skin. When she tugged at his fitted dark green coat, he pulled it off willingly and tossed it onto the floor beside the bed. His white silk shirt felt soft under her hands, fitting close to his strong, lean arms. His scent dizzied her.

  If she let herself stop and think, she’d remember all the reasons she couldn’t do this, not now, not ever. So she didn’t let herself think about it.

  Caroline unbuttoned his silver waistcoat instead, cursing the difficulty of the tiny gilt metal buttons, and pressed her hands into his shirtfront, soaking in his warmth.

  Michael’s chest moved with ragged breath against her hands. She looked up and met his eyes.

  He started to say something—shook his head—then laughed.

  “If you had told me this morning that this would happen, I would have thought—”

  “Don’t think,” Caroline said. She tugged down the puffed short sleeves of her gown and felt the cool air brush against her exposed shoulders.

  Michael’s eyes darkened. He replaced her hands with his own on the edges of the gown’s bodice.

  “May I—?”

  “Don’t stop!”

  Michael tugged down the dress until it fell to her waist in a crumpled mass of blue silk and gauze, and only her thin, cotton stays supported her breasts.

  “Look at you,” he whispered. “Karolina Vogl. In my bed. You are so very beautiful.”

  Caroline could barely breathe. The intensity of his gaze mingled with the tingling heat in her skin. Michael.

  Michael Steinhüller.

  Looking at her.

  She formed his name with her mouth but couldn’t speak. Instead, she leaned wordlessly forward, wrapping her hands in his hair and pulling him forward.

  His lips traced her skin, from her throat down to her breasts. She gasped with pleasure—

  And the door to the bedroom crashed open.