by Jane Ashford
“Nor has Bonaparte faced Wellington,” replied Laura. Her gaze met Gavin’s once again, and she smiled.
Gavin had the sudden sense that he had made a mistake. Had he forgotten something? he wondered. Had his report been incomplete? He shook his head. It wasn’t that. No detail of his work had been neglected. Yet he continued to have that sinking feeling that had surfaced on the few occasions when he had jeopardized a mission and was in danger of losing everything at one throw.
“Are you all right?”
He looked up to find Laura close beside him. The others were a little distance away.
“You looked so odd. I was afraid you were ill.”
Had he become so transparent? Gavin wondered. He was known for his skill in masking his feelings. He looked around, but no one else was paying any attention. His gaze shifted back to Laura, and held.
“I…beg your pardon,” she said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
She stepped back, but he held her with his eyes, refusing to let her go. She was his, reiterated that powerful inner voice. He ought to be free to take her home and demonstrate that fact to her so thoroughly that she could never forget it again. His lips and fingertips knew every contour of her body. His desire moved to the same rhythm as hers. This was undeniable, whatever she might say.
Laura flushed, and he knew she read this message in his face. The same memories that were rousing him drifted like shadows in her eyes.
Gavin stepped closer, towering over her. He was unaware of anyone else in the room. He was going to take her out of here, he decided. He didn’t give a damn about the consequences. He didn’t give a damn about anything, actually, except hearing her breath catch and feeling her respond to his touch as she always did. His hand reached out to grasp her.
“Mr. Graham?” asked a deep, gruff voice.
Gavin and Laura both started, pulled back from some private world by this inquiry.
“Yes?” Turning, Gavin confronted a stranger—a burly, middle-aged man whose face showed signs of hard living. He wanted to tell the fellow to go to the devil.
“May I speak to you? I have some information you might find useful.”
Gavin examined him. Such an offer couldn’t be refused, no matter how much he might wish to. Years of control snapped into place, and he was impassive once more. What he’d wanted was impossible in any case, he acknowledged. He had no right to Laura. She had told him so. The driving inner conviction that he did was wrong, and if he couldn’t eradicate it, he would have to resist it.
“If we might speak more privately?” The man gestured toward a partly curtained alcove, out of earshot of the crowd.
With an impatient nod, Gavin headed for it. “I’ll be back in a moment,” he told Laura.
The stranger followed him to the recess, standing so as to block Gavin’s view of the room. He had better have something extremely useful to impart, Gavin thought. And if he didn’t begin to do so immediately, he was going to shove past the fellow and sweep Laura out of here.
* * *
Left alone, Laura watched the people—their animated faces and gestures, the kaleidoscope of colors shifting around her. It looked different to her now. When she had first arrived in Vienna the crowds at parties and the din of conversation had been almost overwhelming. At the same time, it had seemed distant, like a play she was attending rather than an event in her own life. Now the chatter and busyness was revealed as simply a shell beneath which all manner of fascinating things went on. Laura felt as if she could discern some of them and would soon recognize others. She belonged here, she thought—not in the way Catherine Pryor hoped she would, but in quite another, more complicated way.
Sophie Krelov was approaching her. She was coming from the side and a little behind, hoping to catch her unawares, Laura saw. And in that moment she realized that the unknown man had removed Gavin just so this might happen. Curious, and a little apprehensive, she turned and waited for the countess to reach her.
When she did, she wasn’t smiling. “Have you told me anything that was true?” she asked.
“Everything I told you was true,” answered Laura.
Sophie brushed this aside contemptuously. “I won’t be beaten. You may have slipped through Michael’s fingers, but you will not stop me.” She moved in closer, as if trying to force Laura to take a step back.
“It isn’t Bonaparte, is it?” she responded, not moving. She was remembering the way Sophie had spoken when they first talked.
The countess’s blue eyes narrowed, and she leaned even closer. “Have you fascinated him? Do you imagine that you have?”
Laura couldn’t help but pull back a little.
“You are a fool if you think so,” the other woman went on. She peered into Laura’s eyes. “You are, aren’t you? And even more than a fool. You hope for something beyond fascination. Love, perhaps?” Her soft laugh was deeply derisive. “Oh, this is better than any threat I could make. You have destroyed yourself!”
Laura concentrated all her faculties on showing no reaction.
“Gavin Graham has no heart. He has hands, and lips, and…other pleasurable parts, and he is very good at using them.” Sophie smiled gloatingly. “Very, very good. Isn’t he?”
The last two words were like the sudden strike of a cobra. Laura couldn’t suppress a start.
“Yes. We both know that. We both know how he—”
“No,” interrupted Laura, conscious only of wanting to stop her.
Sophie smiled, looking very pleased with this reaction. “Gavin only uses women. Everyone knows that’s how he gets his information, manages his spectacular ‘successes.’ And afterward, he throws them away. I could tell you stories that—”
“Is that what he did to you?”
Sophie’s smile broadened. “Oh, with us it was quite the other way around. I set out to use him. He found that very…exciting, I think.”
“You failed.”
The countess gave a lovely shrug. “Perhaps. But it was a most enjoyable failure.” She leaned closer again. “Tell me, did he ever come up to you in the midst of a crowd and slip his hand beneath your…”
Laura turned and walked away. Sophie’s bell-like laughter followed her across the room. Her hands were shaking, and she felt cold despite the stuffiness of the room. All this time she had been worrying about whether Gavin truly cared for Sophie, she thought. And the truth was he cared for no one.
Fingers closed on her arm and pulled her around. “What was she saying to you?” Gavin demanded.
It was all Laura could do to stay on her feet. She gulped a deep breath.
“Did she threaten you?” he asked. “I promise you I will—”
“No.” Once again, Laura didn’t know if she was answering or simply protesting the last few minutes.
“What then?” He was frowning at her. He looked half angry, half concerned.
“Nothing,” stammered Laura. “She said nothing important.”
“Then why are you so upset?”
“I’m not.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I can see that you are—”
“I’m not being ridiculous!” She spoke so loudly that several heads turned nearby.
“Laura, what is the matter?”
He had never used her first name in such a public place before. Laura felt the danger of tears very close. And if she cried…
“I’m tired,” she said. “I need to go home.” The word seemed to echo slightly in her mind. Where was home?
Gavin appeared to become conscious of the inquisitive people surrounding them. Looking dissatisfied, he offered his arm in silence.
Fifteen
Laura made it back to her room ahead of the tears. Oddly enough, once she was there, she found she no longer had any desire to weep. On the contrary, she threw her cloak into the window seat and sent her gloves flyin
g after it. Still unsatisfied, she kicked off her evening slippers in high arcs that ended with gratifying thumps in the corner.
“I am sick to death of being treated like an idiot,” she said aloud.
The words surprised her considerably. She blinked, then sank down at the desk to try to figure out what in the world she meant by them.
“No one believes that I know what I’m doing.”
Laura nodded in response to her own statement.
“No one understands what my life was like for the last ten years.”
This was not only true, it was somehow calming. Laura’s finely honed intelligence went to work and began to offer her hypotheses. First, Sophie had obviously arranged their talk together. Her maneuvers hadn’t been particularly subtle. She had certainly also planned what she was going to say. Every word she’d uttered had had a purpose. Was this simply to hurt Laura?
She shook her head at the empty room.
Sophie’s motives always went beyond the purely personal. Even her tantrums furthered some scheme. She used emotions for her own ends.
Laura frowned. Sophie had very much wanted Gavin out of the way, and once she had associated Laura with him, she had wanted to be rid of her as well. No doubt she still wanted this. She’d been furious when they confronted her this evening.
She would do anything to get what she wanted. She would tell lies, Laura thought.
Perhaps everything she’d said was untrue.
Laura felt her spirits lift. She wanted to believe this. She wanted to dismiss the whole conversation, erase the picture of Gavin with Sophie and the assurances that he cared for no one. She wanted to deny the character Sophie had given him, to obliterate the man she had described and replace him with…the man she loved.
But he had never said he cared for her, an inexorable inner voice declared—not in their time together on the island, not when he proposed marriage, not at all. Everything she knew of him suggested that Sophie was right.
At this, tears threatened again. But Laura did not allow them to fall. She rose and began to prepare for bed. She was on her own, she thought. She knew that, had known it for years and years. If she was to have a future, she must make it herself. She must prove beyond a doubt to Mr. Tompkins that she was a valuable addition to his organization and create a place for herself within it. Once she did, it wouldn’t matter what Gavin Graham thought of her.
But though she repeated this silently more than once, Sophie Krelov’s words echoed through Laura’s dreams, making them painful and the night very long.
* * *
Right after breakfast the next morning, Laura sought out Mr. Tompkins. “You said Countess Krelov had been seen talking to an unusual variety of men,” she said. “Do you have a list of them?”
He eyed her. “One could be prepared.”
“I could speak with them as well, and see if they have some interests in common or if Sophie revealed anything to them.” She didn’t tell him the rest of her plan just yet. There would be time enough for that if it worked.
Tompkins frowned. “Perhaps some. These are not all men of good character.”
“All,” replied Laura firmly. “I should only approach them in public places, of course.”
“I’m not sure even that would be wise.”
Laura put her hands on her hips. “Mr. Tompkins, do you have any intention of letting me work for you—really?”
He raised one brow at her vehemence.
“Because if you do not, it would be a kindness to—”
“I have a great many intentions,” he interrupted. “Some of them quite clear; others not yet fully formed. But all of them must be thoroughly thought out and correlated. I do not accept an idea the moment it is brought to me.”
Chastened, Laura looked down.
“Not until I am certain it is a good idea,” he finished.
“What is a good idea?” inquired Gavin, coming into the room behind Laura.
Tompkins looked at him with an amused calculation that Laura did not understand, and then explained her suggestion. Laura braced herself.
“Absolutely out of the question!” Gavin exploded. “An idiotic scheme. I forbid it.”
“Why?” asked Laura, keeping a tight rein on her feelings.
He glared at her. “Why? Because it is dangerous, and useless, and completely unnecessary. I will find out everything we need to know in a very short time.”
He was extremely agitated, Laura thought—more so than she would have ever imagined he could be when she had first met the cold, supercilious Gavin Graham. He cared about something. But what, precisely? “I don’t see why I can’t help,” she ventured.
“I don’t need any help! I work alone.”
Instead of anger, Laura felt a curious shivery sensation, as if shutters were folding back to reveal unexpected vistas. “Has anyone ever helped you with anything?” she asked.
Gavin looked distinctly startled. “What?”
“Has no one ever done anything for you?”
He frowned, at a loss. “I have always had servants. I don’t know what you—”
“Not servants. When you were small, did no one—”
“What sort of nonsense is this?” he interrupted. “If you are trying to divert me from the subject, it won’t work.”
Laura noticed that Mr. Tompkins was watching her with what seemed like approval, as if he had set some sort of test and she was performing well. If only he would be so good as to explain it to her, she thought wryly, rather than leaving her to flounder.
“You have no business speaking to that sort of man,” Gavin added.
Did she hear a hint of jealousy? Laura wondered. She didn’t dare believe it.
“It’s rather the same idea you had with the countess, I believe,” commented Mr. Tompkins.
Gavin stared at him as if he had said something incomprehensible.
No one had ever helped him, Laura thought. She remembered what she had learned about his family. His father had treated him as a pawn, and when Gavin had failed to perform as his father wished, he had been banished from everything he knew. Gavin had had to prove his worth to his superiors, she thought, recalling things Mr. Tompkins had said. And he had had to do it alone. His friends… Did he have friends? She couldn’t remember hearing of any.
“This is outrageous,” he declared.
Laura felt a deep tremor. She wanted to help him. Along with all the other things she wanted, she wanted this very much. But to say so would be foolish.
Gavin had turned to Mr. Tompkins. “How can you even consider sending a young woman with no experience to mingle with the likes of Girard or Slanski?”
“The only way to acquire experience is to…” began Tompkins mildly.
Gavin cut him off with a slashing gesture. “I won’t allow it.” He turned to Laura. “I shall be with you every moment you are out,” he told her. “You will have no opportunity to do anything foolish.”
“So we will work together,” she dared. “As partners.”
Something flared in Gavin’s eyes. Probably rage, Laura thought. He made a sound like an animal goaded past endurance.
“Splendid idea,” said Mr. Tompkins.
With a searing look at both of them, Gavin turned and left the room.
Silence fell in his wake. Laura was trying to sort out a welter of feelings and to decide what Gavin had really meant by some of the things he had said—or hadn’t said.
“That went rather well,” commented her companion.
She looked at him. “Do you think so?”
“Oh, yes.”
He looked quite self-satisfied, she thought, rather like a gardener surveying a successful planting. “Why?” she asked.
He gave her one of his charming smiles, but no answer.
She very much wanted to press him
, to ask him about Gavin and whether he had seen some of the emotions she imagined in him. But she didn’t quite dare.
* * *
The next few days were among the most maddening of Gavin’s life. He had never allowed any other woman to lead him such a dance, he thought, as he watched Laura making her way around the room at the Saxon delegation’s ball.
She accepted his escort without protest, but at each of the events they attended, she waited until he was engaged in conversation with an acquaintance and then slipped off to accost some blackguard who knew Sophie. She seemed to have no difficulty interesting such men. And why should she? Gavin thought sourly. They all of them had an eye—and more than an eye—for an attractive woman. He got her away from them as quickly as he could, but not always as quickly as he would have liked. And he was developing a reputation for rudeness as he dashed about trying to keep her safe. Not to mention the whispers that were rising over his obvious interest in the lovely Miss Devane, he thought bitterly. Traveling faster than a diplomatic courier, the gossip had even reached as far as London. He had received an irritating note from his eldest sister asking just what he thought he was doing.
He thought he was keeping Laura from getting into serious trouble. Gavin gritted his teeth as she paused on the other side of the ballroom to reply to a sally from a disreputable Polish nobleman. She was going to dance with the fellow, he saw with outrage.
“She’s doing rather well, isn’t she?” said George Tompkins at his side.
Where had he come from? Gavin wondered. He hadn’t seen him approach, and indeed had thought that the old man meant to spend this rare excursion from his home in the cardroom.
“I believe she has a knack for this sort of thing.”
Gavin grunted, too irritated to speak.
“Just needs a bit more experience,” Tompkins added.
“What sort of experience do you expect her to get from a rakehell like that?” growled Gavin, watching Laura turn in the fellow’s arms.
“She is learning to take care of herself.”
Anger washed over Gavin like a pail of scalding water thrown in his face. A red haze pulsed across his eyes. If that blackguard made the slightest move toward Laura, he thought, he would find an excuse to call him out and put a bullet in him.