“If we destroy just the roadbed, Boney can have it back in use within days, correct?”
“Or hours, for infantry.”
“That won’t do!” She glared at him, her hands on her hips. “We’ll blow up everything we can.”
“Now you’re starting to sound like a man.” He managed to sound heartily approving.
“I was not!” Sheer horror washed over her face.
“Of course you were.”
“Was not!” She was behaving like a woman again.
“Perhaps I need to look more closely—at your hands and your throat—to be certain.” He lounged against the desk and considered her, lingering on her feminine assets, concealed though they were under layers of widow’s clothing. The weather was so nasty she could almost go out in daylight, given the amount of clothes she wore. “Or those skirts could be hiding a great deal, which would warrant a detailed investigation by my tongue…”
His voice deepened into a purr.
Realization of how she was being teased began to dawn. She blinked, a multitude of expressions rapidly crossing her face from bafflement to anticipation, before cautiously settling on flirtation.
He concealed a hopeful grin, never having seen that particular gleam in her eyes before.
“Indeed?” She pursed her lips and looked him over thoroughly, lingering on his groin.
His blood stirred eagerly.
“Can I be certain that any man as blind as you are has a mouth capable of discernment?” She sniffed and tilted her nose up in the air. The effect would have been more dismissive if the tip of her tongue hadn’t swept out across her lips. “But, since we’re to be members of a team, I suppose a little mutual exploration might be beneficial.”
“Mutual? My dear partner, I am the one who called into question your identity.” He lifted her chin with a single finger. “After all, you could be a captain—or a colonel—of engineers, given the way you discuss gunpowder so expertly.”
She gaped at him for a moment before breaking into peals of laughter.
He silenced her by the simple expedient of kissing her thoroughly. She flung her arms around his neck and returned the salute, her mouth opening immediately so their tongues could twine together.
Long moments passed before he lifted his head. He caressed her cheek, sliding her veil back from her hair. “Hélène, chérie, if we closed the shutters, we could satisfy our curiosity in a much more direct fashion.”
“You’re trying to distract me, mon cher.” She played with his cravat’s knot, her slender fingers teasing the sensitive nerves and muscles in his neck.
His breath caught, and he had to swallow before he could speak. “Would I do such a thing, when we are two servants on a mission?”
“Of course,” she answered simply. The linen strip fell away, opening his throat to her touch. She delicately rubbed the back of her finger up and down the long muscle on one side.
He tilted his head happily, trying not to purr.
Fair was fair, though.
He bent his head farther and kissed her neck, tasting the small patch of skin below her ear and above her dress’s high collar.
She moaned sharply and surged up to meet him. He nuzzled and licked, lavishing attention on both her ear and the pulse hidden behind it until she lay shaking against his shoulder.
“Perhaps another kiss, chérie—to your wrist? Or to that most intriguingly hidden zone above your boots?”
“Jean-Marie…” Her luminous green eyes blinked, trying to focus.
He put a stop to that nonsense by lifting her onto the immensely sturdy dining table.
He pressed a kiss into her palm and lightly scraped his teeth over her wrist, teasing her senses in the fashion he’d learned would drive her wild.
“Jean-Marie!”
His breath hitched at the passion in her voice. Her free hand wrapped around his head and pulled him close, her fingers tangling in his hair.
He needed to pause for a moment until he recovered a little discipline. She didn’t help him by caressing his head and whispering his name. Nobody had ever made those simple syllables sound exotic before.
He licked the delicate skin, sensitizing it. He kissed and nibbled—and blew lightly.
She moaned, her head arching back.
A hunter’s smile of masculine triumph touched his lips. His chest tightened, and his heart beat faster, but he forced his body’s demands back. Not yet, not yet.
He gathered her other hand in his and courted it, as he had the first.
She swayed, moaning softly, her eyes heavy-lidded with lust. Good; she wasn’t thinking about yesterday’s losses or the coming night’s dangers.
Unable to stop himself, he kissed her sweet mouth again, savoring every delicious thrust and parry of their tongues as they tangled to taste more and more of each other. She pushed at his coat and somehow it vanished, together with his waistcoat.
He laid her backward onto the table. Hélène, chère Hélène, the most adored, the most perfect of all women. The one who made his heart sing and his breath rasp in his throat, until the frustration in his cock at being locked behind his trousers meant nothing compared to her pleasure.
Her legs opened, her woolen skirts tumbling across the glossy wood. He eased them farther upward, letting his fingers brush her stockings—so fragile compared to her heavy outer garments!
“Ah, mon coeur.” She gasped and writhed against him, sobbing his name when he fondled her knee.
He would not take her like a boar rutting in the fields. She would have her pleasure first. He had made himself that promise, and he would carry it out. He gritted his teeth yet again and wondered if there had ever been a vow more difficult to carry out.
His thumb stroked the inside of her thigh—and she moaned, a sound coming from deep within her soul.
He smiled tightly, hooked his foot around a chair, and pulled it up.
An instant later, he sat down and drew her hips to him, posing her on the edge of the table.
“Hmmph?”
The sound was barely a question, and he chose not to answer it with words, just as he refused to yield to the heat sparkling through his body. He caressed the inside of her other thigh, and she promptly tightened her legs around his hand.
Bien. Very, very good indeed.
He folded her skirts back and nuzzled her leg. A long, gentle lick brought her hips rolling to meet him, her folds dripping with cream. Lovely, perfectly lovely—and the most intoxicating taste in the world, fully capable of driving a man insane.
His pulse speeded up, driving into every cell of his body until it made even his fingers tremble.
He tasted more, nibbling, teasing, stretching her sweet folds like the beautiful flower they were. Writing her lovely name with his tongue onto her wildly sensitive muscles, while his own skin leapt with a matching fire.
She was the finest banquet in the world, the richest and the spiciest delight ever to enrapture him. He could have spent hours or days finding new ways to lift her to the heights, while his body throbbed with anticipation.
Until finally he lifted her hips up a little more with a subtle twist and fine pressure on her mound—just so!—to urge her clit closer to his mouth.
And, ah, mon Dieu, did she howl with delight! She writhed and she moaned, she surged to meet him and she ground herself down on his fingers. She poured cream over his hand and she begged for more.
He was half-blind with lust. His cock was leaking pre-come, his trousers clearly having been unbuttoned by his mindless fingers at some point. Thinking about anything was nearly impossible—but he knew she had to be lifted into ecstasy, and left sated.
She cursed him again, frantic at being denied. Her fingernails sank into his shoulders, ripping through his shirt and stabbing his skin with a vampira’s strength.
He flung back his head, startled. His breath seized, and his cock jerked, demanding everything. Sanity fled.
He knocked the chair over in his hurry and ca
me down on her.
“Take me now, mon prince!” she ordered, locking herself around him with both arms and legs, her green eyes closing in anticipation.
No one had ever called him that before with love.
He entered her in a single clean stroke, aroused beyond endurance. She tightened herself around him in welcome, her channel caressing his cock.
He pulled out and slid back, trying to make the moment last, while she rippled around him. Again, and again, and again, impending orgasm building deep within his spine and groin.
She bit his shoulders, sending the familiar bright burst of vampiro pleasure wheeling through him.
He stiffened and howled. Climax poured over and through him like a geyser, blasting up out of his spine and through his cock, pummeling his sanity as much as it shook him to the bone.
CASTRO SANCHEZ, BEFORE DAWN THE NEXT DAY
Hélène edged farther uphill along the slippery path, the old castle rising solidly at her back. The river foamed and frothed below her, laden with mud and boulders after the sudden thaw and a day of heavy rains. Bringing down the bridge would send fragments downriver past Napoleon’s engineers’ ability to recover them.
She could see remarkably well, though, the rain having yielded to a brilliant moon, which reflected off the river and the town. To her vampira eyesight, it was almost as bright as day. She could certainly discern the barrels of gunpowder she and Jean-Marie had laboriously wrestled into place under the pier closest to the tower. Destroy that, and the structure it supported would collapse in a cloud of stone and dust.
But if she miscalculated, the explosion could take out the tower, as well as some of the town and the mountain.
Jean-Marie cautiously pulled himself over the bridge and onto the road. There were still a few passersby at this hour, mostly a few ill-equipped soldiers serving the local junta at the castle. Many had already disappeared into the mountains to become guerillas, knowing full well their odds of defeating the tens of thousands of Frenchmen who’d arrive tomorrow were nonexistent. Plus, the English cavalry were rumored to be only hours behind the French but on the other side of the river.
He vanished into the shadows and reappeared beside her on the path. Scarcely wider than a goat trail and hanging perilously close to the cliff edge, it must have originally been an escape route for the castle’s garrison. It was certainly the only spot from which she could see the ledge holding the gunpowder under the pier, given the restricted choices of bridge pier, wide ledge for gunpowder barrels, and a high enough sill to keep the fuse dry.
Unfortunately, this vantage point was almost completely exposed to any blast effects. They could knock her off her feet—and there wasn’t a parapet here to protect her from sliding into the river, as there was beside the road.
Jean-Marie kissed her lightly on the mouth, a sweet but risky salutation, given their rather public location. She shook her head at him in mock dudgeon, which he completely ignored, of course. Instead, he threaded his fingers through hers, and they held hands, quietly enjoying each other’s company.
“The monastery is holding Vigils tonight,” he whispered.
“Prayer service?” She blinked. People were moving about the old city tonight?
He nodded grimly.
“How many are attending it?”
“At least two dozen, some of whom probably came from the other side of the river.”
She bit back a curse. “Do we know how long the service will last?”
“Do you want to take the responsibility for guessing?” he countered.
She blew out a breath and shook her head. The priest could add extra prayers or psalms to extend the service until matins. Or simply send his congregants home early.
“I’ll go down to beyond the bridge portal, where the statue of Saint Peter is,” he said firmly.
“I can see it.” The downstream side of the bridge? Chills ran through her that had nothing to do with the weather or the wind. If the blast went wrong, he could be hit by the portal.
“I’ll signal you when the road is clear, so you can light the fuse. We don’t have much time, after all, not with the British cavalry likely to arrive at dawn.”
“Of course,” she echoed faintly. She tried to think of an alternative but couldn’t. Of course, they couldn’t let innocent people die—and there was no other spot where someone could watch the church and signal her.
She nodded briskly, pushing her fears aside.
“Hélène…” He cupped her face in his hands. His fingers were long, callused, and shaking slightly. “Give me a kiss for luck, chérie.”
She blinked at him, a little startled by his unusual seriousness, but leaned up to him. He caught her close in a passionate kiss, as if he wanted to devour her into his memories. An instant later, he released her abruptly and turned away, immediately vanishing into the shadows.
He reappeared when he reached the bridge portal, raising his hand in a startling echo of Saint Peter’s protective watchfulness over his flock.
She waved back at him reassuringly. Her bruised lips were already healing from his kiss.
Church music stirred the night.
A quick glance reassured her she could still see the gunpowder, lurking under the bridge like an oncoming thundercloud.
Jean-Marie moved farther downstream along the road, his gray hair turning silver in the moonlight. She dug her nails into her palms, fighting not to scream at him to stay closer to her.
He braced himself beside the parapet, facing the church, and scanned the small plaza.
Calm swept over her, extending time into long steady beats. She and Jean-Marie were the perfect team, two halves of one whole, acting together to execute a single thought.
He came alert, poised on the balls of his feet like a dancer—or a brilliant swordsman.
The gunpowder barrel was as easy to see as if it stood next to her. A bit of slow match curled on the sill above it, dry as a cat on a winter’s night.
Jean-Marie brought his hand up—and slashed it down, as if slicing through an opponent with his saber.
She pushed the slow match, shoving into motion the small things inside that couldn’t be seen. Flame leaped into being on the fuse and sped toward the gunpowder.
What the devil? The slow match was burning much faster than she’d expected.
Hélène ran toward the road with its protective parapet. Jean-Marie raced toward her but he was far, too far away.
With an ear-shattering roar, the gunpowder blew up, shattering the night with its thunder. Flames leapt upward, stabbing through roiling clouds of black smoke. The deep, narrow gorge had increased the explosion into a beast of incalculable strength, rather than a neat shove at a single pile of stone.
The ground tried to tear itself apart under her feet, dropping Hélène to her knees onto the slick, muddy slope.
Windows shattered throughout the town in a heavy staccato torrent. Chunks of roadbed flew into the sky like birds and rained down in an avalanche, chipping chunks of stone the size of men’s heads out of the tower. The great bridge portal swayed, its immense columns teetering as if drunk.
Hélène started to slide toward the river and grabbed for an ancient rosebush, sturdy enough to climb several stories up the castle.
Jean-Marie flung himself up the road toward Hélène. Debris rained down around him, and cracks opened in the cobblestones under his feet.
Something groaned, long and loud. Jean-Marie hesitated but quickly redoubled his speed, ignoring the huge pieces of stone dropping from the sky.
With a great crack, the portal’s columns ripped out of the cliff nearest the town, taking Jean-Marie with them, as if a giant had thrown them. They fell into the river, followed by the bridge’s few remaining pieces.
“Nooo!” Hélène screamed. “No!”
She caught the rosebush and brought herself up with a yank, her feet dangling over the precipice. A crack formed in the tower and another, as chunks began to slowly drop off it.
The church’s great bell was ringing madly. Ignoring her own peril, Hélène changed her grip on the thorny, icy shrub until she could peer into the river.
Everything below was thundering white waves, pounding against chunks of rock the size of horses. For an instant, she could see Jean-Marie’s head, but he wasn’t moving.
One of the columns rolled over him, and he went under, not to be seen again.
“Jean-Marie!” she screamed. “Jean-Marie!”
A crooked gap formed around the bush’s roots, and it slid toward the river. The tower groaned like a dying soul.
Was she going into the water, too? Did it matter? Did anything truly matter now? Sobs ripped at her heart.
“Hold on, ma’am. We’ve got you. Uh, señora, por favor,” a very Welsh accent coaxed, and a man’s arm reached out from the unstable slope.
She reluctantly let him catch her.
TEN
CASTRO SANCHEZ, THE NEXT EVENING, DECEMBER 1808
“Ma’am, there’s no sign of anyone washed up below the castle.”
Hélène closed her eyes, glad her heavy veils concealed the signs of still more tears. The major had led the squadron of British Hussars who’d stormed into Castro Sanchez in the explosion’s wake and rescued her from the cliff edge. He was also well enough trained that he’d recognized her as a spy, after they’d exchanged passwords. He’d guarded her very closely, of course, keeping her out of town in the British camp and away from the French army. She doubted many, if any, of the local townsfolk had caught a glimpse of her since the patrol had brought her down off the tower.
“Thank you for looking, major. I’m sure you searched very thoroughly.”
At least her voice was completely composed, as befitted a Sainte-Pazanne or a d’Agelet. Without Jean-Marie at her side, she had only her family pride to uphold her, after all, throughout the long lonely years—centuries!—ahead.
Not that it would help her to forget him.
Her visitor lingered, and she waited to learn the reason why.
“If you don’t mind, ma’am, the colonel would like to leave within the hour.”
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