by Jane Feather
Cordelia didn't realize that the viscount was observing her as closely as she was observing him. Leo was thinking that she bore no physical resemblance to Elvira, who had been fair and statuesque, unlike this spritely dark beauty with the creamy skin and deep-set eyes that were sometimes blue as turquoise and sometimes gray as charcoal. But he was convinced that the two women shared something else. Passion and a sensual appetite that would drive a man wild. He had watched Elvira before her marriage work her magic with her rich laugh of pleasure and a careless toss of her blonde mane. Prince Michael had not been the first in her bed, but that was only to be expected when a woman as lively and sophisticated as Elvira waited into her twenties before accepting a husband. She had insisted that Michael had never questioned her about her past. He was a man of the world; he wouldn't have expected a woman of the world to be a virgin. But sometimes Leo wondered how true that was. Michael cultivated a smooth diplomatic courtesy and Leo had never seen it crack, but it was hard to believe there weren't some other currents beneath the surface.
Leo sipped champagne and watched the prince's destined second bride go through the motions of the minuet, gracefully but without enthusiasm. Her partner was looking bored. Lady Cordelia turned on the floor and once again her eyes met the viscount's. A flush started on her cheeks, her lips parted, her eyes glowed.
He swung away from her. Holy Mother, what was she doing? First some poor soul behind the tapestry screen and now she'd turned her enchantment upon him, God help him!
The palace clocks chimed midnight and the guests strolled through the gallery to the supper rooms, where burned champagne, green goose, quail in aspic, larks' tongues, salmon mousse, oyster barquettes, and crab patties awaited them.
Leo remained in the gallery, staring moodily out into the gardens, where the light from the windows spilled onto the lawns and the gravel paths. He sipped from his refilled glass. Behind him the musicians continued to play softly, the sounds of laughter and the chink of glass and china drifted from the supper rooms.
A figure appeared below him, on the curved stone staircase leading to the garden. She passed beneath the line of flaming torches edging the stone-flagged terrace, and her black hair shone with blue fires. Her gown of ivory gauze swayed gracefully around her as she stepped onto a gravel path running between the parterres and walked swiftly toward the orangery.
Now where in the devil's name was she going, sneaking away in the middle of the night? Leo put his glass down on the windowsill and strode from the gallery, down the great staircase to the doors opening onto the stone stairs. If this was another tryst, he was obliged in his role as Michael's proxy to put a stop to it. She was betrothed and could no longer run around like a schoolgirl pursuing her own butterflies.
He caught a glimpse of ivory disappearing into the darkness of the orangery and quickened his step.
Inside the sweetly fragrant glasshouse, Cordelia moved unerringly down the third alley, her feet clicking on the stone floor. Braziers were lit even on such a mild night, coddling the rare orchids, the exotic fruit trees, the lush grape vines in the arbor.
"Christian? Are you here?" Her voice sounded unnaturally loud in the silence as she came to the end of the aisle and looked around in the semidarkness.
"Here." Christian stepped from behind a palm tree. His face was pale in the gloom. "Is it true? You're to go to France, to marry some Prussian prince?"
"Yes," she said softly, "but listen. Why don't you accompany me? You can find a new patron at Versailles and be your own master, not a pupil any longer. If I can persuade the empress to release you, as a sort of wedding present, then you'll be free of Poligny."
"But even if the empress does release me, I have no money. How can I make the journey?"
"Why do you always look for difficulties?" Cordelia said impatiently, punching his arm with her small fist. "We'll manage something."
Christian still looked doubtful, but turned the subject to Cordelia's concerns. "Is this him?" He poked the miniature pinned to her dress with a fingertip, as if it were something disgusting or harmful.
"Yes. I have to wear it." She tipped it up and peered down at it. "Do you think I shall like him?"
Christian examined the miniature more closely. "He looks hard. But perhaps that's just the portrait," he added hastily, anxious to reassure her. "People always look too composed in portraits."
"Mmm." It was Cordelia's turn to look doubtful. "I wonder if he'll like me."
"Of course he will. How could anyone not like you?" He hugged her tightly to him. "I'm going to miss you so."
"No, you're not," she mumbled against his chest. "Because you're coming too."
"Are you both insane?"
Christian jumped back with a startled cry, his hands falling from her body. He stared over Cordelia's head into the pale glimmer of Viscount Kierston's face.
"Of all the stupid, reckless things to do. Lady Cordelia is betrothed; the palace is crawling with guards, officials, guests. And the two of you kiss and cuddle among the orange trees like a pair of village simpletons!"
Cordelia stared at him, forgetting the strange effect he had on her in her resentment at this furious and bewildering castigation. "We weren't doing anything of the kind, as it happens. Not that it's any of your business what I do," she stated, as Christian was still trying to recover his wits.
"You forget. I am to stand proxy for your husband," he said curtly. "That makes your business very much mine, my lady. And most particularly when it leads to this kind of self-indulgent idiocy. Have you given any thought to what would happen if you were discovered?" He stared at them, anger fading to exasperation. "What a pair of foolish children you are."
He turned to the still tongue-tied Christian and said more kindly, "Be off with you, now. Your business here is done. If you wish to do Cordelia a favor, you'll keep out of her way until she leaves here. It will be easier on both of you." A smile glimmered in the dimness and he patted
Christian's shoulder. "First love hurts, I know. But it does ease.
Christian looked blankly at the man who he assumed was Viscount Kierston, since he'd said he was Cordelia's proxy husband. But he seemed to have taken hold of the wrong end of the stick. Christian cleared his throat and said, "Of course I love Cordelia, sir, she's my best friend. But we're not in love, if that's what you're implying."
"No," Cordelia agreed tartly. "We were simply having a friendly conversation."
"A friendly conversation at dead of night, locked in each other's arms in a secluded orangery!" Leo scoffed. "What kind of a fool do you take me for?"
"One who's blind as a bat," Cordelia retorted. "Christ
ian was just hugging me."
"I think I'd better go," Christian said, reading Leo's incredulity without difficulty. "We're not having an assignation, sir, but it's true that Cordelia shouldn't be here with me. It's not appropriate for the empress's goddaughter to make a friend of a mere musician." He spoke with a quiet dignity, bowed stiffly, and walked away.
Leo's exasperation faded. The lad's composure was convincing. Maybe he'd come to the wrong conclusion, but it didn't alter the fact that Michael's betrothed had no right to be doing whatever she had been doing, however innocent it might have been. He turned back to Cordelia, who now stood silent and still in the shadows. He crooked a finger at her. "Come here, my lady."
Cordelia stepped into the dim light. She returned his scrutiny. All her anger had dissipated and that strange thing was happening to her again. They were alone in this dark and fragrant place, and she could think of only one way to dispel the confusion raging in her brain, pouring through her veins with every heartbeat. "Would you kiss me, like you did this afternoon?"
"Would I what?
"Please kiss me," she repeated patiently. "It's very important."
"My God, you are beyond belief!"
Cordelia didn't say anything, merely stepped up to him. He wanted to move back but he couldn't, it was as if she'd bound him with invisible threads. He could feel the heat of her body, smell the fragrance of her skin and hair. She looked silently up at him, her eyes wide and luminous.
"Please." She raised her hands to hold his face and then pulled his head down to hers.
Why couldn't he move? Why couldn't he stop this? But he couldn't. He couldn't resist the power of her passion or prevent the rush of his own. His hands encircled her throat, feeling the pulse beating wildly against his thumb. Her mouth opened beneath his, her tongue darting against his, tasting the flesh of his cheeks, the moist underside of his tongue, running over his lips. Her breasts rising above the low neckline cried out for his touch. His hands slid down the column of her throat, moved over the soft swell of flesh. A finger dipped into her neckline, and her nipple was hard and erect as he touched it. All the while her hungry mouth engulfed him, seeming to draw him up from his body's core, her demanding sweetness heady on his tongue.
With a supreme effort, he broke free of the web her body was spinning around him, a web whose gossamer strands were made up of her scent, her taste, the lithe feel of her beneath his hands.
"Holy Mother! Enough!" He pushed her from him and ran his hands over his face, his mouth, tracing her imprint on his flesh. "What kind of sorceress are you?"
Cordelia shook her head, saying with soft wonder, "No sorceress. But I love you."
"Don't be absurd." He struggled to regain his composure. "You're a spoilt and headstrong child."
"No." She shook her head again. "No, I'm not. I've never loved anyone like this before. Oh, once Christian and I thought that perhaps we loved each other in that way, but it didn't last a week. I never wanted him to kiss me the way I needed you to. I know what I feel."
There was such calm conviction in her voice, in her eyes, in her smile. She looked as smug and satisfied and as sure of herself as any cat with a saucer of cream.
Leo laughed, thinking desperately that maybe tolerant amusement would puncture her intimidating self-possession. "You know nothing, my dear girl. Nothing at all. You're at the mercy of a host of emotions you don't as yet understand. They belong in the marital chamber and you'll understand them soon enough. I blame myself. I should never have kissed you."
"I kissed you just then," she corrected simply. "Because I needed to."
He ran a hand through his hair, disturbing the thick black locks waving off his broad forehead. "Now, listen to me, Cordelia. It was all my fault. I should never have teased you the way I did in the gallery earlier. I didn't realize, God help me, that I was playing with fire. But you must now put all this nonsense about love behind you. You're going to be the wife of Prince Michael von Sachsen. That is your destiny. And you will only hurt yourself if you don't accept it."
Cordelia tucked a loosening ringlet behind her ear. "Are you married?"
"No." He answered the simple question without thought. "Do you have a mistress?"
"Do I what?" The change of tack left him momentarily speechless, until he realized that it wasn't a change of tack at all.
"A mistress?" she repeated, tucking away another ringlet. "Do you have one at present?"
"Get out of here, Cordelia, before I really lose my temper."
"I wonder what that would be like," she said mischievously, then backed away as he stepped toward her. "Oh dear, I have made you cross. Well, you needn't answer me now I'll ask you again when you're more used to the idea."
She blew him a kiss, turned, and moved away into the darkness. He stood watching the glimmer of her ivory gown wafting as if disembodied until even that had vanished and he was left only with the lingering scent of her.
Chapter Three
Rain lashed the windowpane, and a chill draught set the flames in the hearth flickering. Prince Michael von Sachsen put down his pen and leaned toward the fire, holding out his hands to the warmth. April in Paris was not always a soft time of budding trees and nodding spring flowers; the wind and rain could be as raw as on any winter day.
He picked up his pen again and continued with his writing, covering the thick vellum page of the leatherbound book with a spidery sloping scrawl. At the end of the page, he laid down his pen. For twenty years he hadn't missed a daily entry: a scrupulously accurate accounting of his day, with every event, every significant thought punctiliously recorded.
He reread the entry before sanding the page and closing the book. He carried the journal over to an ironbound chest beneath the window. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked the chest's brass padlock. He kept the chest locked even when he was in the room. It contained too many dangerous secrets. He lifted the heavy lid and inserted the journal at the end of a row of identical volumes, each one with the year embossed on the spines that faced upward. His hand drifted over the spines. His index finger hooked the top of the volume for 1765, flipping it up. He opened it, standing with his back to the fire. The page fell open to February 6. There was only one line on the page: At six o'clock this evening, Elvira paid for her faithlessness.
The prince closed the book and replaced it in the chest. The lid dropped with a thud and he turned the key in the padlock, dropping the key back into his pocket. A green log hissed in the grate, accentuating the silence of the room, indeed of the entire house at this dead hour of the night. He picked up his neglected glass of cognac and sipped, staring down into the spitting fire, before turning restlessly back to the secretaire where he'd been writing his journal.
He opened a drawer an
d took out the miniature in its mother-of-pearl frame. A young, smiling face looked out at him. Raven black ringlets framed her countenance-fresh skin, large, deep-set blue-gray eyes, a turned-up nose that gave her a rather impish look.
Lady Cordelia Brandenburg. Aged sixteen, goddaughter of an empress, niece of a duke. Impeccable lineage and a very pleasing countenance… but one that bore no resemblance to Elvira's. Cordelia was as dark as Elvira had been fair. His gaze lifted to the portrait above the mantel. Elvira, just after the birth of the twins. She reclined on a chaise longue, clad in a crimson velvet chamber robe. Her voluptuous bosom, even fuller after the birth, rose from a lace-edged bodice. A rich velvet fold caressed the curve of her hip. One hand rested negligently in her lap. Around her wrist glittered the charm bracelet that her husband had given her on the birth of the children. At first glance an observer would miss its curiosity, but the artist had caught the bracelet's intricate design, a ray of sunlight throwing it into sharp relief against the lush crimson lap. Elvira was smiling the smile Michael remembered so well, the one that drove him to madness. So defiant, so derisive. Even when she was terrified and he could feel her fear, she gave him that smile.
How many lovers had she had? With how many men had she betrayed him? Even now the question twisted in his soul like a fat maggot. Even now, when Elvira was no longer here to taunt him with her defiance.
He looked down again at the miniature on his palm. He had coveted Elvira in the early days, but he would never expose himself to such weakness again. He would take this woman because he needed an heir. And he needed a woman in his bed. He was not a man who enjoyed paying for his pleasures; it left a sour taste in his mouth. This fresh young woman would arouse his flagging energies, would bring him pleasure as well as the fruits of her loins. And she could occupy herself usefully with the twins. Leo was right that they needed more complex schooling than their governess could provide. The prince had little interest in them himself, but they needed to be educated in the duties of womanhood if they were to make satisfactory wives. He was already planning their betrothals. Four years old was not too soon to make the most advantageous connections for himself. They wouldn't marry for another nine or ten years, of course, but a wise man prepared early.