The Corrupt Comte: The Bourbon Boys, Book 1

by Edie Harris

  Arranging her knee over his hip, he slid a leg between hers. Without a word, as the last remnants of sated arousal shivered through them both, he wrapped her in his arms and set his forehead to hers.

  Eyes closed, she felt his warm breath on her bruised lips just before he kissed her, a soft kiss praising her for the lovesick confession she had given him moments before. She turned her head and shifted lower in his hold to burrow into his shoulder, unable to tolerate that final intimacy.

  She couldn’t receive such a kiss, knowing she’d never be allowed to give him a similar one in return. Predators never surrendered, after all—to do so was to become the prey. And no matter what he thought, he hadn’t been the prey tonight. Not in the end.

  Ignoring the sudden tension stiffening the protective limbs surrounding her so possessively, Claudia fell asleep and dreamed of a time when she hadn’t known Gaspard Toussaint existed.

  Chapter Sixteen

  24 February 1820

  Claudia strode to the large window in the front parlor of her new townhouse and flung back the heavy brocade drapes. Southern sunlight streamed through the pristine glass panes, highlighting the dust motes disturbed by her sudden action.

  “What do you think, child?”

  She stared dispassionately out across the tidy front garden, noting the frost-tipped landscaping, the sturdy tree trunks with their barren branches and the elegant wrought-iron fence gating her property from the quiet Mayfair street below. “It’s lovely, G-Grandpére. And v-very generous.”

  There was a shuffle of feet on the parquet floor behind her—purposeful, she knew, because Amaury Pascale possessed a silent tread that had allowed him to sneak in and out of any number of dangerous rooms in Paris unseen and unheard. “It’s yours,” her grandfather murmured in rumbling French. Her entire life, they’d spoken thusly: him in his native language, her in hers. Somehow, they had always found a means of conversing. “Not your father’s, not your fiancé’s.”

  “It’s m-mine until I m-marry,” she corrected, turning her back on the picture of dreary grayness neatly framed by the parlor window.

  Amaury scowled at her, worn, wizened features bunching in rejection of her statement. “Non,” he retorted. Bushy white eyebrows rose to near-comical heights as he shook an arthritic finger at her. “It’s in your name: C.A. Pascale.”

  “Th-those are your initials too, Grandpére.”

  “Why can you not simply accept what I say?” An angry edge lurked in his tone. “And what I say is that this is your house. Not Auguste’s—” he spat his son’s name, “—or your future husband’s, but Claudia’s. Claudia’s. House.”

  “Grandpére, arrêtez.” She softened her expression and moved to join him where he stood, an elflike old man dwarfed by the tall ceilings and empty floors of this room, this house. It had been ten years since the last time she’d seen him, and that decade hadn’t been kind to him. “C’est m-ma maison.” It’s my house.

  Her French seemed to soothe the rough edges of his temper, and he crossed thin arms over his chest, glaring at her without heat. “You need something that’s yours,” he grumbled. “Your father cares nothing for your safety, and your husband-to-be is an aristocrat. What have I always told you, Claudia? Never—”

  “—trust an aristocrat.” One of many lessons he’d taught his young granddaughter, unable to shed the paranoia from his years as a spy. “B-because they always have s-s-secrets.”

  Claudia had learned her own lesson about secrets. She wanted nothing to do with them.

  “That’s right.” Amaury turned in a circle, studying the detailed moulding that lined the edges of the parlor’s high ceiling. “This house is several blocks away from your parents’. I thought you might like that.”

  She did, yet over the past few days she had wondered—more than once—if she hadn’t been too hasty to leave her childhood home. Her parents openly hated her, true, but at least she knew where she stood and no longer hungered for their love. To expect a pair so shallow and so selfish to love her was unreasonable, and that was their loss.

  No deficiency within her made her unlovable. Claudia was not the first person to ever have a stutter. Certainly others with her same condition had loved and been loved.

  And though she had wavered, briefly, she reminded herself that her parents had sold her off to the Duke of Évoque, and that she would have spent the rest of her days married to a cold-eyed, cruel-voiced man her father’s age. She remembered that Gaspard had rescued her, in his own way, and she had chosen him…even as she questioned how much of a choice it had been.

  He had targeted her, after all. Because of her ten thousand pounds.

  Not because of her.

  The night of their ridiculous engagement ball had only highlighted the farcical nature of their relationship. From the linen closet until that horrid morning in the duke’s foyer, she had permitted him to overwhelm her. She’d fallen in love with his sizzling touches and smoldering glances and the very damaged manner in which he lived his double life. Yet their lovemaking three nights ago, when he’d submitted to her…she hated thinking of it as magical.

  Magic didn’t exist, no matter what her body tried to tell her.

  She hadn’t spoken with Gaspard since he crept out of her bedchamber before dawn, her attention snared by the shocking arrival of her grandfather. How Amaury had even known about her wedding was beyond her, as it quickly became apparent that Auguste had not bothered to inform his father of Claudia’s impending nuptials. He’d been furious at Amaury’s pronouncement that he would be staying through the wedding—and not only that, but giving the bride away himself.

  While Claudia had been pleased to hear this, her father was very obviously not pleased. Not pleased at all. The tension between the two men made her ponder their relationship as she hadn’t thought to as a child, wondering at the secrets Amaury held and what knowledge Auguste had of them.

  Not that she cared about secrets.

  And here he was, ten years absent and giving her this modest-yet-elegant London townhouse. It was exactly the sort of home she’d dreamt of living in, back when her dreams were more amorphous goals than actual desires. A husband, a house, children.

  She possessed one of the three, and as of tomorrow, she’d have achieved a second. She wasn’t sure she wanted the third. She and Gaspard hadn’t discussed children. Perhaps they’d never have any—she was an only child, with no aunts or uncles or cousins, and while Gaspard had mentioned being one of several children…well, he hadn’t impregnated her yet, had he? She didn’t know how quickly these things were supposed to happen, but she was approaching her menses in a few days’ time. She’d have her answer then.

  For now, her grandfather had just offered her an extravagant gift—this house, free of any ties to her past. A safe space in which Claudia could build her future—except her future was forever tied to Gaspard Toussaint, and this lovely structure would house them both, together.

  So how safe was it, really?

  “Claudia.” Amaury tapped her upper arm to regain her attention.

  Shaking off her moroseness, she forced a smile. “Yes, Grandpére?”

  “How much of your dowry will be left after your husband is done with it?”

  Even as surprise held her immobile, she heard the echoing click of low-heeled shoes wandering through the foyer. Those shoes paused—to study the intricately constructed balustrade bracketing the front stair, she was certain—and then continued to the open double doors of the parlor in which she and Amaury stood. “Three thousand, six hundred and thirty-nine pounds.”

  Amaury whirled with a scowl. “Pardon?”

  Gaspard’s stern features were a mask of indifference. “That is how much will be left of Claudia’s dowry after I repay the debts owed against my title. Three thousand, six hundred and thirty-nine pounds.”

  A quick mental calculation told her six thousand, three hundred and sixty-one pounds. That is how much she was worth to her fiancé. Not even the full t
en thousand. The remainder was simply a bonus, she supposed. It could keep him in peacock-blue frock coats for the rest of his lying life, identical to the one he wore at the moment.

  Framed in the creamy paneling that trimmed the doorway, he was…pristine. Cold and distant and really quite handsome, the more she studied him. His attractiveness still managed to catch her off-guard. Gaspard had been lacking when she’d first compared him to Sabien Purvis, whose male beauty was unparalleled, in her opinion. Not unhandsome, per se, but not Sabien. Looking at him now, the man was a splash of vibrant color bleeding into his staid surroundings, living artwork on a canvas of swarthy-skinned ice. His sleeves were tailored, his cuffs stark, his shoes envy inducing, and it wasn’t a costume to her anymore. It was him, just like the peasant’s attire from the night of the Red-and-White Ball, and just like any other garments he might choose to clothe that fine, strong body of his with.

  Gaspard was a spy, but he was first and foremost a man, and it was time Claudia recognized the fact. Men possessed weaknesses and strengths in equal measure, as did women, and she was coming to realize that Gaspard’s weakness was his inability to own his identity.

  She wondered if he knew who he was on the inside, and if that identity would ever be reflected on his outside, unfettered. They might spend their entire lives together without ever truly being together, and she didn’t know who would leave this world less confused: Gaspard or his reluctant wife.

  And as the reluctant wife, it would be for the best if Claudia began erasing her own confusion. She needed to…accept. Accept her future. Accept her fiancé.

  Accept who she was, and who she would be, with him.

  “Gaspard,” she murmured cordially, greeting him.

  “Chaton.”

  Amaury snorted.

  “S-so we have s-s-some m-money left over, do we?”

  “Plenty.”

  Amaury cleared his throat. “Plus shares in her mother’s family’s business, do not forget, when you have your first son.”

  Something twisted in Claudia’s stomach, but Gaspard didn’t rise to the bait. “Indeed.” His clever gaze assessed the old man standing between them. “Monsieur Pascale,” he murmured, bowing respectfully.

  “Gaspard Toussaint.” Her grandfather watched her fiancé through squinted eyes of a duller brown shade than Claudia’s. He slunk forward to poke at Gaspard’s arm, much as he’d poked Claudia moments earlier. “You’re no comte, are you?” Amaury asked, creaky tone accusatory.

  Gaspard didn’t answer, nor did he look to Claudia to come to his defense. In her defense, she knew Amaury had lost his tenuous grip on reality years ago. Strange conversations were to be expected of mental deterioration.

  Amaury didn’t disappoint. He dipped his head to Gaspard’s coat sleeve, sniffing at the iridescent satin. “You reek of commonness. I can smell the coarseness on you.”

  Far from being insulted, Gaspard appeared intrigued. “Can you, now?” His French was so much quicker and easier on his tongue than his English, the English he always spoke to her. For her? “That’s an interesting trick.”

  Another snort, this one more amused than derisive. “You’re marrying my granddaughter for her money.”

  “Among other reasons.”

  “My son told me about you.” Amaury stared up at him, a genuinely curious glint in his eyes. “You don’t bed women.”

  Her lungs seized.

  Those broad shoulders lifted in a negligent shrug. “I wouldn’t be so certain of that.” And then he looked at her, and she saw that he wasn’t cold or indifferent at all.

  He was the heated memories of their nights together, personified. He was the promise of more nights, each and every night, of touch and touching and— “The furniture is c-coming this afternoon,” she blurted out. She, who never blurted anything.

  Other than I love you.

  “Wonderful,” he said in English, and the grooves bracketing his mouth softened to better match the warmth in his gaze. “How are you today?”

  She hated herself for blushing. “Well, thank you.”

  “That is also wonderful.”

  Ignoring the exchange, Amaury began to circle Gaspard like a carrion beast. “You know who I am, yes?”

  “I—”

  “Or should I say, who I was?”

  Gaspard nodded once, decisive.

  Her grandfather dropped his voice then, and Claudia strained to hear his low, rapid French. “Once upon a time, I knew every secret there was to know in the court of Versailles. Do you know why?”

  Gaspard’s French was equally quiet. “Why?”

  “Because I could smell a secret from a league away, rotting the very skin of its bearer. I know lies when I hear them, and liars when I see them.” The old man paused, then stepped close to the comte, until they were nearly toe to toe. “You’re like me, aren’t you?”

  Another nod. “But not quite so prolific.”

  Amaury wheezed out a cackling laugh. “Prolific. Yes, I was prolific. So prolific that eventually I learned the one secret guaranteed to see me tortured into sharing with those who should not know such things. I barely escaped.”

  Secrets, always secrets. But this was more than Claudia had ever heard about her grandfather’s life before he’d whisked his only son to England—and relative safety—thirty years earlier, and she had to keep listening.

  “But you did escape.” Gaspard leaned casually on a walking stick she hadn’t noticed before, his demeanor unthreatening, but she could see he listened as intently as she. “You have a life here.”

  Amaury’s lip curled. “What sort of life do you imagine I have, boy? One of ease, or comfort, or safety?” He cut off Gaspard before her fiancé could respond. “I’ve been hunted for decades, always looking over my shoulder, waiting for the knife or the noose. Or worse, the hood and shackles dragging me back to France.” He spun to pierce Claudia with a fierce stare. “Do you remember the man in the garden, child?”

  Ten years ago. It had been the last time she’d seen her grandfather, until he’d knocked on their door this week. She nodded, even as Gaspard stiffened, coming instantly alert. “What man?” He gripped the walking stick in one hand, the other bunching into a fist shrouded in the neat fall of lace from his cuff.

  But Amaury had switched his attention to her, and for the first time in her life, she was scared of him. He didn’t look like the man who had taught her about the plants in the garden, how to cultivate them and extract their scents. He looked like…like…

  Like a spy. A cold-blooded, deadly, dangerous spy.

  Nervous, she held her ground.

  Amaury crossed the empty parlor to her, arms over his chest. He didn’t seem to care that Gaspard followed, quick on his heels. “Do you remember what I did to that man?”

  Neck snapped in the space of a breath. “You k-killed him.”

  Gaspard’s walking stick clattered to the floor. “You killed a man in front of Claudia?” There was thunder in his expression, violence in his voice.

  “I protected her, when my life put her in danger,” Amaury retorted. “My idiot son opened a perfumery here in London—Pascale’s—and not even a week after the open-house announcement in the Times, there were agents hunting me again.” Every word was for Gaspard, though his gaze on Claudia never wavered. “I left London the day I killed that man. I drew every one of them away from my family, and led them on a wild chase across the Continent for years. Years, boy.” He turned his attention to Gaspard. “What will you do when your secrets threaten my granddaughter’s life?”

  Gaspard insinuated his big body between them, a physical show of aggression, of protection. “Any danger to me, and to her, stayed in Paris. I made sure of that.” But Claudia heard the seed of doubt her grandfather had planted, and her unease multiplied.

  “Fool.”

  “Grandpére,” she murmured. “P-please. Be k-kind.” She settled a hand on Gaspard’s upper arm to move him aside, and a zing of tension shot through them both at the co
ntact. They froze.

  Amaury noticed and hummed under his breath. “Well, now. That’s interesting.” One bushy brow arched halfway up his forehead. “I suppose this changes things.”

  As Claudia let her hand fall, Gaspard frowned. “Changes things how?”

  “What will you give my granddaughter, boy? It’s her wealth and her house, is it not?” He shook his gray head. “We’ve established she’ll never be safe with you, not really. So what are you offering her?”

  Gaspard’s mercurial gaze clashed with hers, and she read the concern there. “A title.”

  Even as disappointment wracked her, Amaury shook his head. “I taught her better than to want that. Try again.”

  His jaw clenched. “An escape from her parents.”

  Amaury acknowledged this with a nod. “Better. I would have rescued her from those monsters years ago, but there’s no place for a little girl when you’re running for your life.”

  Her heart tripped at that. “I c-could have s-s-stayed in Hampshire with you.” She would’ve been happy there, and safe—from her parents, if not from French assassins.

  Amaury gave her a pitying look. “I was never in Hampshire, child. Do you understand? The cottage was there, but I was not.” He shook his head and spoke to Gaspard once more, ignoring her as she reeled from this revelation. “Is that escape all she gets, boy? When she’s giving you so much, is that the only thing you’re good for?”

  Gaspard’s irritation thickened the space around them. “What do you want from me, old man?”

  With dreadful certainty, Claudia knew what her grandfather was going to say the split second before he opened his mouth, and she prayed he wouldn’t.

  “Do you love her?”

  Her hands pressed against her fluttering abdomen. Oh, how she wished he hadn’t loosed that question, that possibility, into the ether! If he hadn’t said it, Gaspard wouldn’t feel compelled to answer, and if Gaspard was compelled to answer, she knew there was only one possible answer he could give.

  She’d laid bare her soul the night of their engagement ball—she knew it, Gaspard knew it. The way he watched her now, her grandfather’s demand hanging in the air between them, nauseated her, turning any hope she had into dust that clumped heavily in the pit of her stomach.