Guarded Heart

by Jennifer Blake

  Strong hands broke her fall, cradled her in a firm hold as she settled to the canvas strip. For a stunned instant, she allowed it and was even grateful. Then she struggled to her knees, trying to pull from the grasp of Gavin Blackford as he rested on one knee before her.

  "Be still," he said in hard command. "Let me see where I cut you."

  It was only then that she realized he held her arm in a tight grip just above her glove cuff while jewel-like drops of blood squeezed between his fingers. She froze in place, staring at him as she faced him there on her knees, caught by his rigid pose and something in his voice that grated like footsteps on broken glass.

  He reached up and dragged off his face mask as if it were in his way. Dropping it, he turned his attention to her glove. Loosening the fingers one by one, he slipped the soft leather from her hand. Slowly, then, without quite releasing his clasp, he uncurled his hard grasp from her wrist until he could survey the damage.

  Ariadne looked not at her arm, but at the man who held it. His face was drained of color, leaving the bone structure in stark relief while the sockets of his eyes seemed suddenly deeper, half-concealing the glittering blue of his eyes. His hair was flat where the band of his face mask had compressed it, and hung in gold, perspiration-damp spikes against his nape. He seemed hardly to breathe, yet his fingers where he held her were rock-steady.

  An imprecation, whispered and scurrilously inventive, feathered the air between them. Closing his fingers again, he leaned away from her to snag his coat from the nearby table with his free hand. He took a folded handkerchief from an inside pocket and shook it out. Draping it over his thigh, he folded it with a few precise moves of one hand then pressed it quickly to her injury. Laying her wrist across his bent knee, he released his grasp while he wrapped the handkerchief around the cut and tied the ends in a neat, flat knot.

  "The slice isn't deep and it damaged no artery, I think," he said, his lashes shielding his gaze as he tucked the knotted ends under a fold, "but it may be painful."

  "It doesn't matter."

  "It does to me. Cow-handed and imprecise I may be on occasion, but I don't usually maim my clients."

  "The fault isn't yours," she said, driven by fairness and some peculiar inner disturbance brought on by the self-flagellation in his voice.

  "No?" The look he gave her was bleak. "My tongue can be, often is, my undoing. I thought to demonstrate the necessity of holding anger in check. Instead, I am shown my fallibility. Again."

  "You could not know I would trip."

  "I should have foreseen the possibility. At least you will now understand why this exercise is unsuitable for a female. Scars do not become the softer sex."

  "I will heal," she said evenly.

  "Oh, yes, and a sleeve may hide the result parfaite-ment, but what will cover my soul's wound, or heal it?"

  The mask obstructing her view was suddenly intolerable. She wanted, needed, to see what caused the anguish she heard beneath the low murmur of his voice. More than that, the wire screen seemed to be interfering with her breathing. That had to be the cause of the lightheadedness that gripped her, the weak sensation that made her arm that still lay upon his knee tremble against him.

  With her free hand, she reached up to wrench it off. Her hair, loosened from its pins by her exertions, caught in the band. The long swath of it tumbled free, raining pins into her lap as it unfurled down her chest padding.

  It was then that the door from the gallery swung open and a man stepped into the room. He stopped as if he had run upon a sword point.

  "A fencing lesson, is it?" Sasha asked, his voice corrosive with suspicion. "I don't remember my own instruction being so tender."

  Eight

  It only needed this, Gavin thought with profane resignation. It wasn't enough that he had goaded and driven the lady into a misstep which drew blood, but he would now be required to explain it to the stiff-rumped Cossack who had designated himself her protector. That should be an interesting exercise since he hardly knew himself how it had come about.

  There had been a sickening moment when he had been much too vividly reminded of the dawn meeting four years ago when his opponent, a young poet of overweening pride and minimal skill with a sword, had tried a clumsy attack that broke his sword so he plunged forward, slipping in the rain-wet grass of the dueling field. In a sequence that played in memory as horrendously slow, he had flailed, falling, impaling himself on Gavin's rapier before it could be disengaged.

  The object had been to teach the young fool patience and consideration, not to take his life. It was a senseless death. His own jagged wound from the broken sword had long healed before he could put it behind him.

  He had thought he was over it except for an occasional nightmare revisited in the dead of night. To discover it was untrue was sobering.

  No doubt it was the association of accident and inexperience that had affected him so badly just now, that and the natural disinclination to harm any member of the gentle sex. Ariadne Faucher gave little indication of the tender sensibilities that description brought to mind. Still she was valiant, proud and most definitely female, and did not deserve to have her blood drawn for no cause.

  If the mention of her brother's death in a duel had any bearing, Gavin could not see it. So far as he knew, the young poet of his meeting, Francis Dorelle, had been the only child of parents who were nearly middle-aged when he was born. He had heard them described in that manner, seen them from a distance at Maurelle's Maison Blanche plantation when they came for the body of their son.

  "What are you doing here?"

  It was the lady who made that demand of the interloper. Snatching her wrist from Gavin's knee, she bundled the darkly shimmering mass of her hair into a knot and secured it, then began to climb to her feet.

  Rising with less encumbrance, Gavin put a hand under her elbow until she could disentangle her feet from her skirt hem and stand beside him. He released her then, stepping away a pace to allow room for retrieving and wielding his blade should it become necessary.

  "I become curious about your progress while calling upon our hostess," the Russian answered, his eyes narrow under lowered brows. "What have I interrupted, if I may ask?"

  "You may not ask," she answered, her gaze on her glove she donned once more, "particularly in that tone. I will tell you, however, that you came upon us after a small mishap."

  "To you?" His gaze rested on the few drops of blood that spotted her skirt. "I must see the damage."

  Gavin resented the look of condemnation flung in his direction, also the Russian's assumption of proprietary interest and the way he took hold of Ariadne's hand and brushed her sleeve higher. He had no right to resent anything, though that knowledge did nothing to lessen the instinctive response. It was some consolation to see the lady snatch her arm away again since it suggested she was no more pleased by the Russian's touch than she had been by her instructor's.

  Her spirited answer to the gentleman's accusations was also unexpected. Gavin was not accustomed to anyone stepping between him and the prospect of unpleasantness. The novelty held him bemused.

  "It's the merest nothing," she said, unfolding her sleeves and fastening them into place over her bandage.

  "It's a sacrilege. You must cease these sessions at once."

  "We have had this conversation before. I will not go into it again."

  Novgorodcev turned to Gavin, his gaze imperious above his bristling white mustache. "Continuing after this incident is clearly impossible. If you are any variety of sword master, any man at all, you will excuse yourself from the lessons at once."

  "Nonsense," the lady objected.

  A moment before, Gavin might have agreed with the Russian. It was the perversity of human nature that it now loomed as impossible. He examined his fingertips, brushing his thumb over a small smear of the lady's blood, rubbing it into his skin as if it were a precious unguent. "I am at the command of Madame Faucher since I owe her due recompense for injury. If she req
uires my services in any manner whatsoever, how am I to refuse?"

  "Why, you English popinjay," the Russian began as he started toward him.

  Ariadne Faucher stepped between them. "Don't be an imbecile, Sasha. You can hardly expect Monsieur Blackford to accept your interference without retaliation. He means nothing personal by it."

  The other man seemed unconvinced, but allowed himself to be turned away with a hand on his arm while the lady continued in more soothing tones, suggesting he returned to his claret and cakes in company with Maurelle and her other guests until she had improved her appearance enough to join them.

  Gavin, left standing on the fencing strip as they moved from the room, picked up his foil, stared at it an instant, then swept it up to his face and down again in a fast and derisive salute.

  The lady was mistaken about his intentions. They were personal indeed, though, with luck, she might never discover it.

  She had also aroused his curiosity past bearing. That was, quite possibly, her greatest error.

  Nine

  Madame Zoe Savoie's benefit performance promised to be a triumph. Carriages lined the street before the Theatre d'Orleans to disgorge passengers. The rain had abated for the evening, so those who lived within walking distance crowded the banquettes. She would be pleased, Gavin knew, not only because of the addition to her purse—the point of the affair after all—but also for the indication of her enduring popularity in the city.

  She had chosen Davis's theater, known to all as simply the opera house, in part for its location in the heart of the Vieux Carre, but also from friendship. Her association with the emigre from Saint Domingue who had built the edifice was a long and profitable one to hear her tell it; certainly, she had spent many winter seasons filling the space with her magnificent voice. The St. Charles Theater uptown in the American sector might be newer and more impressive, but Zoe did not forget her friends. Neither did the aristocratic French Creoles of the Quarter who were intensely loyal to the old theater, once the grandest in the country. Davis, wily entrepreneur that he was, catered to their needs for all he was worth; next to the theater was a hotel, a restaurant and a gaming house built for just that purpose. It was said he could lodge you, feed you, amuse you and fleece you all in one city block, though Zoe insisted that he used the profits from gaming to subsidize his beloved opera house, including the importation of Europe's finest singers and musicians to perform there. Naturally, she counted herself among the luminaries.

  Gavin thought he might dine at Davis's restaurant after the performance, it being handy and supposing he might run across Kerr Wallace or another of his friends to join him. In the meantime, he had staked out a corner of the lobby as his own while watching the flow of arriving music lovers—the ladies in their silks and satins and velvets and the gentlemen in formal tailcoats, all of them chattering and laughing with animated gestures and anticipation of the evening's entertainment. Most were in family groups, fathers and mothers with their stair-step array of offspring in tow and often a marriageable daughter tricked out in virginal white with camellias or a white aigrette in her hair. No few were young married couples, easily identified by the dutiful husbands carrying cushions and fans and extra wraps. The voices rose above the sound of the orchestra tuning up inside, echoing against the high, coffered ceiling. Gaslight from flickering sconces along the walls played over them, glittering in faceted jewels, shining on high-piled curls, catching the sheen of excitement in women's eyes. The faintly sour smell of the coal gas drifted in the air with the fragrances of perfume and the floral offerings carried by the ladies. Dampness from the river and the rain-wet streets outside swirled with the cool wind through the open doors.

  Gavin was not often made aware of how solitary he had become; it was his natural state and seldom questioned. The sense of isolation that crept in upon him now was an unwelcome reminder of things he would as soon forget, chiefly the days of his boyhood in his grandfather's household.

  He had never been certain how that arrangement came about, whether by the old man's decree or because his parents, satisfied with having assured the family line by producing offspring, had placed them with him before going their separate ways. He and his two brothers had been too far apart in age to be companions, with some six years between the elder and himself, and nearly a dozen separating him from the younger. Their grandfather had disdained Gavin's bookish habits and lack of enthusiasm for hunting. An Irish nanny, Maggie, had provided sympathy and a soft bosom during his younger years but when he was six she had been replaced by a tutor with a taste for the cane. That he had cried for Maggie in the night for long months afterward was a secret he had confided to no one.

  Sometimes, sitting with his legs dangling from the carved pew of the parish church that was decorated with the names of his ancestors, he'd watched the families, mothers and fathers who smiled and touched their children, straightened their clothes and ruffled their hair, and wondered why no one cared about him.

  Strange how some things never changed, he thought now with conscious irony. It was a relief when he spotted Caid O'Neill wending his way toward him against the flow of human traffic.

  They dispensed with the subject of the unending rain which had turned the area beyond the principal paved streets of the Vieux Carré and uptown into a muddy and malodorous quagmire, also the chance of flooding if it did not stop soon. Gavin asked after the health of the children fast filling his friend's nursery, a son, Sean Patrick, and the little daughter with whom Lisette had been confined a short time before, Celeste Amalie.

  Caid was regaling him with a comical story about Sean Patrick's interest in the baby's nursing habits when a shift in the crowd gave Gavin a glimpse of Ariadne Faucher. Gliding toward him on the arm of her Russian admirer, she was vividly alive in burgundy velvet that was caught up in swags at the hem to show an underskirt of pink silk edged in gilt lace and complemented by a parure of garnets set in gold. She spoke over her shoulder to Maurelle who followed closely behind her, features animated in anticipation of pleasure, instead of drawn with the strain that appeared during their lessons.

  Tightness invaded his chest. He was here tonight at the command of Madame Zoe. That Ariadne might appear was a possibility he had also taken into account. Would she acknowledge him in this public arena or pretend she didn't see him, had no acquaintance with a notorious swordsman from the Passage de la Bourse? He wasn't at all sure he wanted to find out.

  The rich color of her gown was reflected on her skin in much the way a string of pearls mirrored the color in their surroundings. It gave the soft cleft between her breasts such an appearance of passion's flush that his mouth tingled with the need to taste it. To counter that impulse, he lowered his gaze to the pair of wide bracelets of garnets and gold that encircled her wrists in the current mode. Did the one on her right cover a healing scar or a festering injury? There was no way to tell. The combination of lust and pain that assaulted him was so strong it was all he could do to make the proper admiring replies to the new father beside him.

  "How goes it with the lovely widow?" Caid asked in an abrupt change of subject as he followed the direction of Gavin's gaze.

  "Excellently well, when she isn't trying to cut my throat and I'm not opening her veins. Which is to say," he went on before Caid could speak, turning to him as Ariadne moved out of sight, "that it doesn't go at all. I haven't seen her these past three days while she recovered from my last ham-fisted swipe."

  "You cut her?"

  "A clumsy error though superficial in its results, always supposing it heals without complication."

  "Clumsy is one thing you are not. There must be more to the story."

  "For which faith your name and progeny shall be blessed. In truth, the lady is a puzzle."

  "And brilliant with it, if gaining your attention was her object. Is it?"

  "Doubtful," Gavin said in dry amusement. "To all appearances, she despises me."

  "The devil you say. She's one of those, is she?"


  "Oh, I don't believe she holds herself on too high a form. It's more personal than that."

  Caid scowled. "Personal?"

  "Some damned sod gave her a grudge against men for whom a sword is the weapon of choice and now she holds us all in contempt. That I bled her like a surgeon is unlikely to improve her opinion."

  "You need not continue with her as your client."

  "How can I bear to desist? And don't, please, accuse me of too fevered attraction. I've had that from Maurelle already."

  Caid gave him a considering look. "The situation seems likely to land you in trouble before it's done. If there is no reward, why take the risk?"

  "I never said it was without reward."

  "You'll forgive me, but—"

  "But you fear for the lady and her reputation? Both are safe enough with me."

  "You mistake me. I was thinking of you and yours. Are they safe with her?"

  "That is the question," Gavin allowed, his gaze pensive. "When I discover the answer, I'll let you know."

  The performance began in good time, the gaslights lowering in dramatic style, the audience rustling into quiet attention, the curtains moving with well-oiled precision on their pulleys, folding back upon themselves to frame a garden scene. The footlights glowed as they were turned higher, revealing the diva in all her magnificence. From a pose of contemplation with her back to the audience, she turned with perfect dramatic timing. Her voice poured over the assemblage like molten honey laced with the finest of Napoleon brandies.

  Madame Savoie proved in fine form as the evening advanced. Moving gracefully about the stage, her height and size beautifully proportioned in the removed and foreshortened view across the footlights, she held the audience in thrall. Favorite arias were met with applause as their familiar melodies soared forth, the less well-known with a quiet that was even more telling. Still, cries of "Brava! Brava!" rang out again and again, echoing around the great crystal-and-bronze chandelier overhead and stirring the smoke from the footlights.