roses back in your cheeks. I call them the Lady Seras.”
Andre and Katherine caught up with them, greeting Mrs.
Torville fondly. Nicholas helped Sera into her chair, pushing
away the twinge of disappointment. He had counted on their
total involvement with each other to keep them in the dim
recesses of the abbey long enough to give him some time alone
with Sera.
At least at this small table, Sera sat close beside him to his
right, and he could feel the warmth of her body and scent the
elusive perfume she wore. But she did not seem to be in a very
receptive mood. She stared at her teacup and merely pushed
the tart around on her plate.
Nicholas refrained from raking his fingers through his hair
in frustration. How did one speak to a brooding female, anyway?
One discussed the activities of the day, he supposed. It certainly
wouldn’t do to begin with the shooting lesson.
“Montanyard Abbey is said to rival Notre Dame and
Westminster Abbey in its architecture,” he began, sounding
every bit the pedant to his own ears. “It has been the scene of
every royal wedding in the last six centuries.” She froze and
kept her eyes resolutely on her untouched plate.
“Didn’t you like the Abbey?” he asked, hurt by her
disapproval.
“It was quite beautiful,” she said indifferently.
“Perhaps you would like to attend Sunday services there.
We have a chapel in the palace, of course, but it is quite majestic
in the abbey, and all the people of Montanyard….” Will see us
and know that I am courting you in all seriousness.
“I shall not worship in your prayer house,” she said, pursing
her lips like a disapproving governess.
“You need not worship, but to see it with all the candles lit
and—“
“No. Your religion is nothing but lies. It says not to kill, but
you hand me a pistol and teach me to do so, and still you may
go to your prayer house whenever you like, and you all live
that way. Why, you will marry your Beaurevian princess in that
prayer house, and then you will take a mistress, even—even
though you will promise to cleave to no other.”
Katherine looked up from her private conversation with
Andre. Her mouth dropped open. Sera was sure her shrew’s
voice must have carried through the crowded teashop, titillating
and shocking aristocrats and commoners alike.
Nicholas threw a sharp glance Katherine’s way. She turned
beet red. And Nicholas, unaccountably, smiled at Sera, his face
lit with what looked like tender amusement. No, it must only be
amusement.
“I shall never take a mistress when I am wed, Sera. I promise
you that. Stay and finish your tea,” he said to Katherine and
Andre. “I believe Lady Sera and I have something to discuss.”
“I see I am no longer a gentle lady in need of chaperones,”
Sera said. By the gods, he was turning her into a snappish prune.
“Enough.” Nicholas’s voice was very soft, but dangerous.
She clamped her mouth shut, but shot him a searing glance.
Nicholas took her hand firmly in his and pulled her to her feet.
He planted it on his arm as they walked back to the palace.
Occasionally, the folds of Sera’s skirt flowed against the
buckskin of his breeches, and she was terribly conscious of his
long, muscular legs. He was close enough that she felt his solid
warmth, even through the fur of her cloak. The shadows
stretched across the square. One day almost gone. One of the
last. She fought the sadness, reminded herself that the man
beside her was a—what did they call these womanizers who
tempt one woman while betrothed to another? A rake. She pulled
her hand free of his arm.
He merely wrapped his fingers round her wrist and carried
her hand back to his arm, holding it there when she tried to tug
it away.
His voice was soft, impersonal. “I hoped today would go
differently for us.”
“What did you expect, that I would be like all your other
mistresses?” She felt absurdly close to tears.
“You are not like anyone, and there have been precious
few ‘other mistresses’. I expected to have a happy day showing
you my favorite places in Montanyard, so you could see why I
love it, and, I hoped, come to love it yourself someday soon.
“But what I wished,” he continued, “well, that is a different
story. I wished to take you to your chamber, rather earlier than
now. I thought I would close the door behind us. We would be
alone, of course. That would be when I could tell you that I
may marry where I wish, rather than where I was promised.
Then I would kiss you until we both turned blue for want of
breath.”
She gasped, a sharp intake of breath. Had he just said what
she thought he’d said? And why was he telling her? And what
had he learned in Beaureve?
Her hand trembled beneath his fingers. They were up the
palace’s outer stairway, now. Two footmen bowed as they held
the great double doors open. Nicholas nodded once and
continued up the stairway, his eyes fixed straight ahead of him.
“Next, I tormented myself with visions. How I would touch
you all over,” he continued, his quiet voice beginning to strain.
“I would tease you with my hands, my mouth, until you begged
me to give you what you needed. But I didn’t wish to do so
immediately. I thought I would prefer to start all over again,
making it last until we’re both mad with it, and then—”
“Hush.” She didn’t dare look up at him. Her face was
flaming. She could feel its heat.
Nicholas slanted a glance at her from beneath thick, dusky
lashes. “I believe you ought to know that I am suffering mightily
here. There is something about telling a woman just what one
wants to do with her, to her, that makes one mad to do it.”
She was suffering, as well. His sensuous words sent her
into paroxysms of embarrassment and desire. They stood at the
door of her chamber.
Nicholas didn’t give her time to think. He merely opened
the door, pushed her gently inside before him, and followed,
shutting the door and turning the key in the lock.
Ten
Sera retreated to the window, staring out, looking anywhere
but at Nicholas as he casually rested his back against the door.
She didn’t dare look at him. She knew what she’d see. A king, a
sorcerer of mesmerizing power. Beauty, strength and
vulnerability, wicked temptation and drugging kisses. All in an
Outlander who said he was free to choose his bride.
She and Nicholas were a mistake, a chance meeting of two
worlds that could never exist together. What an ironic joke. The
gods must surely be laughing.
“I knew you would fit in this room,” he said. His voice had
gone deeper, thicker. “All pink and gold. Your skin, the gold in
your hair—I’ve pictured you in here for so many nights. I know
how you’ll look l
ying in that big bed, with your hair fanning
out in a halo on the pillow, and your neck arched as I kiss that
tender little place right behind your ear—the one that makes
you shiver in my arms. You’ll like that, won’t you, Sera?”
“No. I should not like it at all.” Sera shut her eyes against
the images his words created. He was saying all the wrong
things, calculated words of seduction, and still, to her shame,
she was growing taut and heated as his voice wove that deep
enchantment. She barely heard his footsteps on the deep plush
of the carpet as he came closer to her. His hand brushed down
her cheek to that spot he had made intensely sensitive merely
by naming it.
She kept her eyes tightly shut, but she didn’t move away.
She stood there, helpless, hating herself. He gave a deep murmur
of pleasure. She felt his heat as he bent closer, still holding her
only with a caress of his fingers. The warm, solid wall of his
chest was only a hair’s breadth away. Blindly, she reached out
and grabbed his arm, afraid of the weakness in her own legs.
His strength alone held her up, and his breath played warm
against her ear, making her shiver with anticipation.
“See? I told you you’d like it.” His voice was velvet soft as
his lips found the spot directly beneath her ear.
“Mmmm.” He nibbled delicately, as though she were a rare
treat to be savored, and she clutched his arms with both hands,
making those same sounds she had heard herself make with
him in a dream.
“Don’t fight it. Please, just let me—just once let me—” he
whispered, soothing and inciting her to a hot, empty ache with
his teasing kisses.
“This is wrong.” Her voice was as insubstantial as a frayed
autumn leaf. “You are a king. I am a Hill woman, a slave. We
can have none of this.”
He eased himself back, smoothed her hair and tilted her
chin. “Open your eyes, Sera,” he said, his voice tight and
controlled, while she trembled, fearful of coming apart
completely.
She looked at him, held by his thumb and forefinger, and
by the spell he managed to weave around her.
He rubbed his thumb gently down her neck, settling where
the blood beat heavy and strong.
“I have fought against this, using that kind of parochial
logic.” His smile held irony. “It keeps growing, this—need. Fool
that I was, I thought it madness to want you like this, but if so,
you share it with me. Both the desire and the fear.”
She pushed against his chest, staring at the floor, shaking
her head. He shook her shoulder once, gently. “Look at me,” he
said through gritted teeth.
Her eyes sprang open.
“Don’t bother to deny what you feel. Your face and your
body give you away. You want me as much as I want you. You
have a beautiful sensuality, Sera. Your response is honest and
precious to me.
“I want to watch you come alive to pleasure, one discovery
at a time. I want to know every sweet secret of your body. I
would take a very long time at it. There are so many places
where you’ll be incredibly responsive.”
“Let me go,” she said, choking on the words. She was
shaking with her shame, hating herself for giving him this much.
“You are free to go any time you wish. I’ll do nothing to
you that you don’t want, Sera. Indeed, I plan to leave you eager
for more than I’ll give you,” he said in that deep, velvet voice.
She whirled about, her back to him, refusing to look at him,
so beautiful with his dark power.
“When you’re finally willing to accept the truth, you’ll come
to me. Look at the walls of the chamber very carefully. There’s
a door in the wall, just over there.” He pulled her to him and
pointed over her shoulder. Sera’s back was pressed against the
solidity of his chest, her hips against the very evident strength
of his arousal. She gave a start of shock. Nicholas braced his
legs and pressed forward, holding her tightly against his hard
heat with the curve of his arm.
She heard a rumble of frustration and amusement from deep
in his chest. “You’re not the only one of us burning from a
simple kiss. Now, pay attention. Do you see the door, there,
built so cleverly that you wouldn’t normally see it?”
Sera looked. There, indeed, barely visible in the candlelight
was the shadow of a door, covered as the rest of the room was
in wainscoting and wallpaper.
“When your body is ready for me, push the beak of the
green bird with the red throat on the wall to the right of it. The
door to my chamber will always be open. The passageway will
lead you to me.”
“I do not wish to become your mistress.”
His hands grasped her shoulders and then trailed down her
arms, soothing her as if she were a fractious child, and he rubbed
his cheek against her hair.
“Mistress?” There was surprise in his voice. She supposed
he had not thought beyond today to the consequences of such a
choice. “This was not a room for a mistress,” he said. “My
grandfather had it built for my grandmother, a Russian princess.
Like you, she was a very beautiful woman. Actually, there was
a vague feeling—within the family only, of course—that she
had a rather unconventional upbringing. Grandfather was
smitten with her from the first moment he saw her until the day
of his death.
“Tradition decrees that the king and queen occupy separate
chambers. But grandfather wanted his wife in his bed every
night, and he wanted easy access to her. Thus the door. Only
Vanbrugh, the architect, and the workmen knew and every one
of them kept the secret. He was a very popular king, you see, as
well as a clever one.
“I was lucky. He decided to tell me about it when I was but
a young boy. Obviously, the story stirred my imagination.”
“I shan’t use it,” said Sera, but her voice sounded weak to
her.
He turned her to face him, holding her lightly with both big
hands on her shoulders. He smiled and gave her a wicked glance
from beneath the dark fringe of his lashes. She fought the desire
to put her hands on his wide shoulders and take another kiss.
“As I said, I was lucky to learn of it. We’ll see if my luck
holds out.”
He left her, then, to think and worry over what to do.
Marriage was impossible.
Oh, she cared little for what the courtiers or the townspeople
thought, but she cared about herself, and him, now. She feared
that Nicholas had the power to possess her until she was a
helpless child, forgetting what she owed her people as long as
he held her body in thrall. She thought of her mother, and the
terrible consequences of the choice she had made. She thought
of the hatred and avarice of the court, and what it would do to
Nicholas, as well as her.
It didn’t matter that he was beautiful and stern in a wa
y that
moved her soul. It didn’t matter that his need for her, in spite of
his reluctance to depend upon anybody, had been elemental,
that at times he seemed to be another person in her presence,
one who shed his cold remoteness and teased and laughed. He
was of this place, where enough greed and resentment and self-
hatred lived to taint even the gift of his body. She must leave,
before she gave him the power to bring them both down.
Where was the thief?
***
In the cold, dread hour of midnight on All Hallow’s Eve, a
tall figure, wrapped in black from head to toe, stepped out of
the fog-swirled light of a street lamp and into the shadows.
Several other figures, all of them garbed similarly, gathered
beside the spectral presence in the little town of Barkley, which
stood between Selonia and Montanyard.
“You have done well,” said the tall man in a voice that
carried its own empty echoes. “To have infiltrated so far without
detection considering the patrols, is proof of our superiority to
this upstart king and his line.”
“Our lives and our souls belong to you, Count Laslow,”
said the man who commanded the rest of the group.
Laslow looked around him proudly. These were the first to
enter Laurentia, the ones who were responsible for the victory
at Selonia. Those of the True Faith would sing of that victory
for centuries.
“I am pleased,” he said. “But Galerien grows restless. What
news of the thief?”
The commander of the squadron shook his head. “He has
gone to ground, most assuredly somewhere close. We believe
he is making his way to Montanyard and will then attempt to
head north to Russia, losing himself in the confusion of
Napoleon’s march south. “We surmise that the thief will creep
into Montanyard within the month. He must sell the ruby before
he leaves the country, for the Russians are not in the mood to
buy, and the thief must have enough coin to bribe his way into
Europe. As he must make his move before the snows begin, he
will come to roost in Montanyard in approximately fifteen to
twenty days.”
“Very good,” the spectre said. “I do not care about this thief,
myself, but in order to prepare for our final push into Laurentia,
we need Galerien’s payment. He has promised us enough arms
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