Lady of Intrigue

by Sabrina Darby

  He caught her shiver. He swallowed back the sudden nausea. He was growing soft.

  “You may answer your own question, then. Have you ever loved?”

  For a moment he thought she would persist, not follow his lead to the new, safer topic. Then she shrugged.

  “A passionate love? No.”

  He could show her passion. He had never been one to care about being the first, had no need to mark his territory via the purity of a woman’s body and yet, satisfaction at her words was a knife edge.

  “As a child, I wanted too much to prove myself. My mother died early and, aside from governesses, I was raised in a world of men. I had infatuations, to be sure, but for much older men who were hardly eligible,” she said. “But they were intelligent men who spoke eloquently about whatever the issue of the day was, from war to tariffs to crop rotation to parliamentary reform. And at night, I’d tear down that childish admiration for persuasive rhetoric by silently taking apart their arguments, thinking for myself in the privacy of my room. Then…my first season…”

  Her first season. He had gathered already that she was the daughter of a political man, but that phrase, her first season, was a telling one, revealed more about her than she likely realized.

  “I did not make my debut with any sort of flair or drama,” she said. “I had been living in London for several years already. I was present at many events it would be unusual for a girl still in leading strings to attend”—she caught his look and laughed—“metaphorically, that is. My governess cared deeply about fashion if she did not care deeply about me.”

  His parentage had defined his life as hers had. He had been raised without his father and she without a mother, but he’d had a surrogate for whom he’d cared.

  “Yet you remained unmarried.”

  “Are you truly surprised?”

  “Too forthright?”

  “And too well versed in politics and history.”

  “I would think some aspiring politician would have seen that as of value. Perhaps one of these men you admired.” She didn’t answer right away and his mind strayed to the clues of her identity. “Your father is a politician, then. House of Lords?” He watched her carefully, as much as for what she would not reveal as for what she would. But she slanted him a mocking glance.

  “And your father was?”

  He admired the way that she turned everything back to him, but he was done playing. As much as he wanted to know her identity, he wanted to know what lay beneath more. He wanted everything.

  “I will have all of your secrets, Jane.”

  She looked down. Then she looked up and her eyes were large and moist. “I think you already have the only one that matters.”

  He puzzled over that for a moment, trying to discern which secret she referred to. Faced with her tears, she was an enigma.

  “Now it is completely dark,” she said. “I’d best rest if we are to travel tomorrow.”

  He stood before she could finish struggling to her feet, swept her up into his arms. She was right. Any journey would be taxing to her.

  The distinction between outside and inside was so slight, but now there was his horse to walk around, the packages on the floor, and their presence made the pitiful nature of this hideaway even more obvious. If she had been more gravely hurt, here was where she would have died. He laid her down on the bed. She closed her eyes and rolled toward the wall. He sat down by the hearth, leaned his back against the cold bricks. The nights were growing colder. Whatever shelter he sought next would need to truly protect them from the elements, protect them from the danger he knew would come.

  He could not lose himself in this woman.

  Since the moment he had first found her she had intrigued him because she was brave, honest, and vibrant in the face of death. Despite fear, she put rational thought ahead of unbridled emotion. She was softer than he and her life had been soft, but she was like him. Yet turned away from him, he could not identify her expression or its cause. She was a mystery. He did not know this woman, but he wanted to, and that desire was making him softer, endangering both of them. The thought was as sobering now as it had been tickling the back of his mind for the last days. When he let Jane live, he had instigated change. How much, he could not guess. A wise man would recognize that now was the time to cut his losses.

  He was beyond wealthy. He could leave Amsel and Gori, and all the other versions of himself behind, be the man of leisure Gerard Badeau was known to be. Assassin. She had used that word to describe him and though he had never thought himself in such a way, to an extent she was right. He knew the origin of the word, knew the history of the art of death. Understood the importance of executioners, whether they stood in their black masks by the chopping block or guillotine, or whether they worked in the shadows. But he had spoken truly. He had not yet lied to Jane, hardly even the lies of omission. He made no secret of the secrets he kept.

  Badeau, perhaps, had been an assassin. Certainly he had explained the intricacies of poisons in an underground workroom, the stench of oils and herbs so strong Gerard could still smell them, feel the sting of them in his nostrils. Badeau had instructed him in swords, pistols, and fists. He had imparted the importance of knowing the limits of one’s own body, from the most dynamic to the most still, the agility needed to move silently through an old, creaky house, or to step across leaf-strewn grass without anyone the wiser. But those were not the only lessons. There had been the classical English education, the study of politics and strategy, the focus on draftsmanship and language. The drills in social etiquette so that he could blend in on a farm and in a ballroom. He had been trained to take on any identity, if needed.

  This history had been his own; he had never spoken of it with anyone, not even those who shared it—the English grandfather, the legitimate half brother, and the tutor who was more of a father than his own father could ever have been. He was proud of his abilities, without doubt about his choices—at least, he had been.

  At the shuffle of skin against fabric, he looked to Jane. Her bright gaze was trained on him intently.

  “The year the revolution began a man showed up at our door.” He was speaking before he realized he had intended to. Instinct again. Or need. “Until that point I lived with my mother and grandmother.” He watched Jane’s expression, which was a mask of polite curiosity. He had not wanted to be known and understood in a very long time, but here and now he did. By this woman. “I thought at first it was her newest lover and then I realized he wore no jewels. An elegant man, but one meant to be forgettable. I did not until later realize that was a skill one learned.”

  He had taught Gerard what a shadow moves like, a shadow that no one sees. He had imparted the art of disguise. Illusion. A sleight of hand here, a bit of padding there. Dye for the hair, kohl and ashes for new angles to the face.

  She laughed. “There are many young ladies in London who would love to shed their natural talent.”

  “He claimed to be from my grandfather,” Gerard said, now compelled to finish this narrative. “That he had been sent to take me to safety. I did not wish to leave my mother, even though she insisted. I went to bed in my home and the next morning awoke in a carriage far from Paris, this stranger staring at me over his book.”

  “You ran away from him.”

  It was his turn to laugh. “Of course I did.”

  Her lips turned up.

  “But only because he let me.” Gerard’s humor faded as he considered that time, the desperation, loss and rage at being sent away. “He let me so he could catch me. It was the way he taught lessons. A loose but firm rein.”

  “You sound fond of him.”

  Something twisted inside of him, ached. Every moment of Badeau was touched with the bittersweet, tinged with what Gerard had later perceived as betrayal, and with the despair of the man’s death. “Fond enough to have taken his name as my own,” he said simply, at a loss to explain the complexity without revealing too much.

  “So he was
your tutor.”

  “My tutor…my father.” The man who had groomed him for a life in the shadows, at his grandfather’s request. He had never blamed Badeau for that. The earl, however, had put Gerard into Badeau’s care.

  “Where is your real father?”

  “Deceased now. At the time, I did not know. Somewhere begetting more bastards. Spreading the pox in his wake.”

  She winced. “You are illegitimate.”

  “Yes.” Which had never bothered him before. Many men were born such. It was simply the way of the world. It had never stopped him from going where he wished, doing as he wished, obtaining anything at all that he desired. But this woman thrust these words in his face: assassin, illegitimate. For the first time, they threatened him because his choice to let her live, her presence in his life, changed everything. He could not just step back into his world.

  “So from Paris he took you to Venice.”

  He nodded, drawn back into telling his story.

  “Among other places, but that was home.” A home different from the rooms he had shared with his mother. When he returned years later to see her, those rooms had been occupied by someone else. An inquiry had revealed that she had passed over a year earlier. He had never been informed. By then he had learned to put emotions away as if they were foreign relics to be studied objectively. The rooms had no longer looked like the home he had remembered, just as the Venice house had changed with Badeau’s death.

  Home. He had not had a home in years.

  His stomach felt hollow and that odd twist inside his chest intensified. Sentiment is the harbinger of death, he could hear Badeau say as if the man were still alive. A man in a dangerous position could not afford the luxury of insipid emotions.

  “So your grandfather put you into the care of a man who would teach you to be an assassin and a spy?”

  He laughed, her question breaking his solemn reverie. How easily she added that new aspect to his interrogation, hoping to catch him in an inadvertent truth. If she had not been trained in the art of subtle inquiry, she certainly had natural technique.

  Her face was lit only by moonlight, and yet he could see the shape of her mouth. If she had been closer he would have kissed her then, taken her face in his hands and claimed those lips, that cunning mind, for his own. It was good then, that four feet of dusty, earth-covered stone separated them.

  “Neither of those words describe…” Gerard stopped. Yes, he had at times acted as both spy and assassin, but there had been more to the work as well. Negotiator, peacekeeper, courier. “Death is one means to an end.”

  “Death is the end.”

  He nodded in acknowledgment of the quip, and then stood, restless, frustrated.

  He was wrenched inside by his weakness. An assassin, he wished to say, to frighten her into silent submission, would have killed you and would at the very least do so now. But the childishness of the threat disturbed him. Such an action would be a sign that he had lost control.

  “You are the one who wished to forgo names,” he said roughly. “What I do, that does not need a name.”

  Chapter Six

  His dark form paced the confines of the room, such as it was. He was bothered by the title of assassin, as if he were troubled that she knew, but also, as if he were ashamed.

  If his actions were for good—not that good was ever such a simple thing—then he had no need for that shame. But clearly it bothered him that she distilled his employment down to one facet. Yet, he refused to admit to anything else and this she had witnessed.

  “I cannot even bear to hunt,” she said softly, “but I understand it must be done. I do not have enough information to know if…this…if Lord Powell was something that must be done. Or if the casualties, Lady Powell and myself, were worth it.”

  “You are alive.”

  “That was not your intention.” She sat up, leaned forward toward him. “Why? Why do you let me live? What does your instinct say?”

  He was at her side before she could form a thought, his expression full of furious emotion. He pulled her up toward him, his left hand grasping her injured arm too tightly, and she gasped. He loosened his grip instantly, and the thunder left his expression. What was left looked oddly like remorse. Then his mouth flattened into a harsh line. “My instinct is that I would be better off with you dead.”

  “Perhaps you would,” she said, “but let’s not pretend anymore. You have no intention of killing me.”

  She studied his expression for something, searched his dark gaze.

  “You are breaking me,” he whispered, each word sounding as if it were being pulled from him by force.

  She shook her head mutely, even though inside joy surged. For one instant, she knew him utterly, and then his lips were on hers.

  His lips were dry and cool against her closed mouth, but then his hand tugged at her chin. She parted her lips and everything changed. Desire shot through her broken body and made it whole, made pain disappear. All that mattered were his lips tugging, nibbling, urging her own. Then she was sitting on the bed, cool air rushing in, and through blurred vision she could see Gerard leaning against his horse, could hear his labored breath. Or was that hers?

  She blinked, lifting her fingers to her lips. Had Lady Jane Langley truly died in the crash the way she insisted? Certainly that respectable, reasonable woman would not now be having fanciful emotions about her captor. But was Jane so much less reasonable? Was this distilled, freer version of herself so different? So…weak and womanly?

  “Jane.” He turned and crossed the room back to her, knelt at her feet. Still, his face was only slightly below hers and she could see without a doubt that now his expression was remorse. For kissing her?

  “I should not have taken advantage of you in such a way.”

  She laughed in disbelief, even though it was no more than she had come to expect from this strange, contradictory man. “You have no qualms about taking a man’s life and yet you balk at a stolen kiss?” Heat filled her face and she wanted to cry.

  She had almost died a few days ago. Certainly that was reason enough for her emotions to vacillate so, for her nerves to be fraught, and tears ready to her eyes. Still, her watery emotions frustrated her, even more because if she were alone, she might examine them and come to fully understand what now only teased at the edges of her mind.

  But one thing she did know, she leaped so quickly upon each sign of compassion and humanity from this man that it was clear she was in danger. If not her life, then certainly her sanity, certainly everything she had ever known about herself and her world.

  “You are under my protection, Jane.” His voice was low and intent and it reverberated through her body, gaining weight and meaning with each moment that passed.

  Under his protection.

  He had kissed her, he had bathed her naked body, and yet, the mere inches between them were a tense barrier she could not abide. She lifted her hand, all too aware of her daring, aware that she was touching him, and pressed it to his cheek. His skin was smooth and rough and warm. He was utterly still—she thought he held even his breath—and she moved the pad of her thumb slightly over his skin.

  Then she grew more daring, ran that thumb over his lips, slipped her hand over his jaw, down his neck. He didn’t object and that tacit permission made her brave, made her feel as if he were hers to do with as she would. To kiss again, perhaps.

  He caught her hand in his, gently placed it down on the bed.

  “What am I to do with you?”

  Kiss me, she thought. She fell back upon the bed and closed her eyes, closed them against her own stupid desire. “Take me to Vienna and leave me there,” she said. “Or take me to the nearest coaching house and pay for my fare. I shan’t speak of you. It is simple enough to say that I stumbled from the wreck looking for help.”

  “You’re not a fool,” he chided. “You know that will not be enough.”

  Perhaps she was a fool, because she didn’t understand why not. She would
not speak of him. Yes, he had no reason to trust her discretion, but surely he understood already that she had every reason not to wish to admit to having been alone with a man for days, for having had her every need tended to by him. Essentially, if she admitted this story, even though she was a victim, she had been compromised as far as society would see it.

  “When I was a girl, my father would send me and my nanny to visit my cousins’ estate. I hated those months. Felt that I had been exiled. Worse, my cousins were three girls, all a year apart in age and each one more lovely and feminine than the rest. Our interests crossed in music and art, but otherwise there was little that we shared then.”

  He rocked back on his heels, an eyebrow quirked. “That is more than many share.”

  “Perhaps, but remember, I had been taught to think those things necessary for society but superfluous to the concerns of people who mattered.”

  “Your father is a member of parliament. House of Lords?”

  “My father’s actual power and his desire for power are two different things,” Jane said, avoiding a direct answer. And it was true. Her father had taken his seat in parliament years ago, but as a member of the unofficial “Group of Eight,” men who predicted and plotted out the future of the world in order to best protect and design England’s path forward, he intended to have far more of an impact. To some extent, he was succeeding in his ambitions. After all, he would never have been invited to join Castlereagh et al. in Vienna were his opinions and understanding of history not of use. “But that is only to explain how and why I had very little interest in music and art. I have since recognized that early error.

  “They had a tutor,” she continued, itching to finish telling this story of a long ago incident that she had never revealed to another soul. “A man who then seemed much older, but in truth had just finished his studies. He taught the harpsichord and the pianoforte and the elder two girls liked to go on and on about how handsome and skilled he was. How elegant his fingers.” She shivered. “How well he understood passion and matters of the soul.”