Chapter Twelve

The room at the inn on the northern outskirts of the city was in his name, or at least the name he went by here in Vienna, and she did not give hers. She met him in the bold light of day, no spies, no servants, and no need for extraordinary secrecy. Anticipation soared through her as she climbed well-worn wooden stairs to his room. This time she was coming to him of her own free will.

The third door on the left, the proprietor had said. The door was a dark wood, the center polished smooth by the touches and raps over the years. She knocked. The door opened. Her stomach gripped and tumbled at the sight of his dark eyes, his dark gaze, the intensity of his desire.

Gerard.

Space, light, extinguished between them. The thump of the door closing, the turn of the lock, sounded distantly in her head as that desire devoured her, lips on lips, bodies overlapping. They pulled at each other’s clothing, undressing at first in a frenzy and then more languidly, taking their time as he unlaced her stays, his thumbs caressing circles onto her back.

Finally naked they stood, their skin golden in the afternoon light. She had never had a chance to admire him before. Now, her heart as full as her desire, she could. She traced the hard planes of his chest, trailed her finger down to his hip. He reached out and she stopped him, trapped his hand in hers, lifted it to her mouth. She pressed a kiss to his knuckles and then to the bones of his wrist. The length of his arms intrigued her. She had admired his lean strength before, but now it was hers to explore. The suntanned skin, dusted with hair, the corded muscles. She wanted to lick it all and she wanted to cry.

“Gerard,” she whispered, her voice breaking.

“Ma chere.” He pulled her against him, whispered to her in French, soothing her. “My love, my beautiful, brave, intelligent Jane.” She understood the words but it was his voice and the language that washed over her with the comfort of home. His home. His language. He had said he had no country that was his, but now in his voice it was clear that the language of his childhood was his first, the one he dreamt in. The one he loved in.

He loved her.

Loved.

His love had overwhelmed her at first, felt impossible. But now…

Such an amazing, incredible thing to have grown out of death, out of the strangest of circumstances. To have met a man who could see her for who she was, not as someone’s daughter or a flush dowry or any other superficiality. Not that money is a superficial— She thrust the pragmatic thought from her head. It did not belong here in this room, where all that mattered was this moment together. Here, emotion reigned. Here, she could love him.

She lifted her hand between them and touched the warm skin of his chest, reveled in the beating of his heart beneath. He had marked her with his love that last night in Frankfurt, but she could not and did not wish to mark him. She could make no promises. No promises but this afternoon.

She trailed her fingers over his sculpted chest, over the small nipples so like and so unlike her own, explored the nubs that hardened at her touch. Desire surged like a wave within her, powerful and all consuming, drawing her under. She gave into it, drowned in it willingly. She kissed his chest, the delineation of muscle, with her tongue. Every sense was centered there as she breathed him in, tasted him, listened to the rhythmic beating of his heart. Primal music.

“How…”

She paused infinitesimally, but his question trailed off, continued the trail of her tongue down his beautiful body as she waited for him to continue. She knelt as she reached his hips, the male part of him, which was erect and intriguing. She took him in her hands and marveled at the contrast of hard and soft, rough and smooth, beautiful and strange. This she had taken inside her, was how they had joined hip to hip, until nothing separated them, until they were nearly one being.

“How do you manage to unravel me?” His voice was hoarse, nearly guttural. “This isn’t simply pleasure.”

She had no measure for comparison but the wonder in his tone filled her with a deep, very female sort of satisfaction, made her feel for the first time the wonderful power of being a female. Here, in the privacy between two people, a man and a woman, they were utterly equal.

“No?” She was unsure what to do next, other than what she wanted to do, and yet, that seemed so… “May I kiss you?”

There was a moment of silence, a hesitation, and she wondered if he had understood what she meant. Then he choked, “Yes.”

Yes. Then this was something that was done. Not some strange creation on her part. She breathed in deep, then feathered her lips over the hard length of him. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught the movement of his hand, closing into a fist, his wrist and forearm radiating with suppressed tension. But he made no other motion or sound. If she were hurting him, he’d surely say something.

She touched him experimentally with her tongue, and his hips rocked toward her. She licked the length of him, slowly at first, and then, encouraged by his soft moan, at her will. His hands gripped her upper arms firmly and she loved the pressure of his fingers on her flesh. She slid her tongue under the slight ridge that encircled the tip.

“Jane, come here.”

Dizzily, she let him pull her up against him, let his mouth plunder hers once more. She could feel him hard, hot, throbbing against her and the simple knowledge of it sent a damp heat settling between her thighs.

“My turn.” The gravelly rawness of his voice as he matched it with forceful action thrilled her. He swept her off her feet and, breathless, she looked up at him from where he placed her on the bed, looming over her, never more than a few inches away.

She reached for him and he grabbed her wrists, pulled her arms over her head and held them there with one arm. “Let me pleasure you.”

Let me pleasure you. The pleasure she knew was his kisses, his touch, his body joined intimately with hers. Her body tingled in anticipation. He let go of her wrists and bent his head. She gasped as his mouth lowered to her neck and she arched her head back to give him more access. But he had moved on, down her body the way she had explored his. It felt as if he was everywhere, his hands, his mouth, his tongue. Even the simple contact of his thigh against hers sent fire running across her skin. It was as if each lick, each caress, were a strand, a thread, a piece of some grander tapestry of pleasure that he was weaving across her body. She followed each thread until he moved on and that one was left trembling, a maw of desire. He managed to find places she had never imagined would be sensitive, she had never thought of beyond the bath, and turn them into greedy centers of need.

Unravel me, he had said. As his mouth trailed down her body, she finally understood. His mouth closed over her, soothing her for the briefest moment before his tongue moved, kept moving, shooting tendrils of pleasure through her body with each lick. She had never imagined such a thing, imagined these ministrations as part of what occurred in sexual relations, and yet it was perfect.

Pleasure gathered, grew, until she started to shift her hips to escape the mounting pressure, the need for something. As if she were gunpowder about to explode and yet she didn’t know how, didn’t know by what mechanism she could find such a release. She moved frantically beneath him, hands finally weaving through the curls of his hair as she gave in to the sensation, to him, to her desire.

She scattered everywhere, into little pieces of thread fluttering through air, caught like sparkling dust in the afternoon light, floating down. He moved, loomed over her, settled his hips between her thighs, and the thrust of his hardness into her languid body was the most delicious thing in the world. She wrapped her legs around his, her arms around his back, and grinned over his shoulder at nothing.

At everything.

He’d unraveled her but now he was threading the loom again, putting her back together.

Until he unraveled her again.

The afternoon passed leisurely. Jane studied his body the way she had studied French, German, and Italian. Paid attention to what actions elicited involuntary moans, or made him lose control. In that plain, nearly bare little room, they made a home for themselves, a world that was just for them. But the sun shifted through the day, until it sent long shadows across the floorboards. She would have to return soon. Her father expected her to attend a dinner with him that evening, but with Gerard beside her, the long lines of his body beautiful as he rested, eyes half open, she wanted to stay. She wasn’t done touching him, tasting him, or simply looking at him.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” he said. “Everything has been taken care of. You will be…safe.”

The words cut through the relaxing warmth of satiation. These last weeks had been an odd idyll. As much not a part of reality as their time alone after the carriage wreck. But if he left, now, on the quest to win her, everything would change. Most of all, he would go to England and she would still be here, in Vienna, indefinitely.

She should urge him not to go, but the words were too harsh for this place, for the intimacy between them. She wanted to linger here in their own little world of the bed.

“Tell me a story,” she begged, as if they were still on the road, learning everything they could about each other. Only now he knew her identity and she his. The secrets they still had were simply a matter of excavation over time.

“I have six half siblings, four of whom still live. Templeton, who you know, is one.”

She nodded.

“After my birth, my father returned to England, begat his heir, then returned to France. My understanding is he wished to be out from under his father’s eye.” Jane laughed. Vincent Templeton must not have known his father very well if he thought Lord Landsdowne’s reach ended at England’s borders. “My eldest sister, Marie—when I found her she was married and with child. Happily, it seemed, in a simple life, and ignorant of all the rest of us. There was no reason to disturb her and so I did not.”

“I assume then that she is still happy.”

It was Gerard’s turn to nod.

“Then there was Florian. He was born the year of the revolution, the year my father fled France for Spain. I found his grave, tiny, for that of a newborn. His mother was still alive but…not well.”

“Why did you look for them? All you have in common is an absent father.”

“Does your father have any bastards?”

The question shocked her. It shouldn’t have, but it did.

“My mother died so long ago. I know he has a mistress, but she is not…she is not paraded about. And there are no children, I know that much. If he has sired any with any other woman, supports any other households, I do not know of it. And I believe I would.”

“You were curious enough about siblings to be able to answer my question,” he said pointedly.

“I concede the point. I suppose I would want to know, though I do not believe I would go so far as to acknowledge them.”

“As I myself am a bastard, I have nothing to lose.”

She nodded.

“And…Jane—” There was a note in his voice, something she had never heard from him before, something ragged and painfully honest and it pulled at her heart. “I am a man without a country, without people I call my own. My mother left her family for life as a courtesan. I was taken from her side at a young age, trained for…for death.” It was chilling to hear him finally admit it. This was not his matter-of-fact description of his life; it was something else, a pleading for her to understand. “You say I walk in the shadows, but I also walk alone.”

“You want a family.” His sharp inhale was her confirmation. She reached out, pressed her hand to his chest. He grabbed her hand and drew it to his mouth, kissed it. Maintaining control. Of course. That need, she understood fully.

“Clara was born in Spain with the pox and died early of it. Then Giana.”

“The one you found in a brothel.”

“The salacious detail is always the easiest remembered.”

“It is also one of the few details you offered. Salacious makes the best stories.”

“True.”

“And is she family?”

“I did not realize…I have been a man of action. Ruminating on the whys and wherefores were not part of my training. Unless, of course, it is to assess an opponent’s weaknesses.”

“So you put her in that convent without much care for her desires and without any established relationship.”

“I considered myself her guardian.”

She nodded. Women were subject to the wills of their guardians across the world, submitted to their decisions because there was often no other recourse. But Gerard had not been this girl’s guardian in truth, thus, if she was so against a convent, why did she go?

“Does she write to you?”

He looked surprised. “Frequently. Long missives about embroidery and the making of mulled wine, for which apparently the convent is famed.”

She laughed.

“Does that mean something to you?”

“I cannot be certain, naturally,” Jane said, “but I suspect that she very much would prefer a brother than a house full of sisters.”

“I had no life to offer her.” Yet he wanted to draw Jane into his. “Only the money I had earned. But enough of this. You wanted a story and I have given you a list.”

“You’ve laid out the tale of a man searching for his family.”

“And learning that a man makes his way, makes his life and his family.” He rolled over, looming over her so quickly, caging her between the sinewy lengths of his arms, between the weight of his hips and the softness of the mattress beneath. “And you, Jane. I choose you.”

The enormity of his statement clenched around her heart, gutted her with the weight of his expectation and his need. She wanted to do it, to be everything for him, everything he needed, and yet…she was not his savior, not a haven into which he could hide.

She didn’t wish for either of them to cling to each other as some sort of escape from their lives. Not that she had anything in her life to escape. She had, at least she had had until Gerard had upended it, a perfectly enjoyable and respectable life.

She met his voracious mouth with her own, wrapped her arms around him, around the smooth, muscular planes of his back, and though her heart leaped toward him, wished nothing else but to be a soft home for his, she could not tell him, Gerard, I choose you.

When they were breathless and languid once more, Jane rested her head on his chest. For the first time that he could remember, Gerard was completely content. This woman against him, the late afternoon light filtering in through the window, illuminating dust motes as if they were fairy sparkles. Such a fanciful thought, and yet that was how he felt inside, as if this moment were happening to someone else, some man who deserved this woman and a normal life.

“Don’t go.”

The air shifted around him.

“To London, you mean,” he said.

He tensed, but she stayed where she was, as if nothing had changed. Yet, the silence was full of the knowledge that it had.

“Yes. Stay here. Let us enjoy this time we have together.”

He wanted to, wanted to desperately, but the minute they left the inn the world would flood back in. If he wanted to make her his for more than stolen afternoons, the sooner he acted the better. The only reason to linger was if this was all they would ever have.

“You doubt I will succeed.”

She rolled off him and stared down at him, unflinching. “Yes…and no. You think you have power, but when have you ever asked or demanded something of the people for whom you work? You are a servant to them.”

She was here with him. She had come to him, and the look in her eyes…he had recognized it because that was how he felt inside. Yet the words were cold, an echo of what she had said to him that night on the road. And she meant them.

Jane would not be happy with a man who lived his life at the beck and call of others, or living on the outskirts of society. He had seen her among her peers in Vienna. As much as she was his, she belonged to that life. If he wanted her, he would have to belong as well. An impossible feat, but he had done the impossible before.

She shivered, sat up, slid off the bed, and then looked around the room for her clothes. She needed an answer, but what could he say that would appease her, that would convince her of their future together?

“No…and yes,” he said finally, throwing her own words back at her. “In some ways you are right. Powell, all of this, is a result of a debt that needed to be paid. No matter how powerful one is, at some point, you must pay the price.”

As his grandfather would. Jane doubted it but as well as she knew Landsdowne, she had never known the parts that Gerard knew.

“You think you are powerful? What great kindness did someone do you that a man’s life is the price?”

His jaw tightened. She was determined to push him away. He watched as she slid her chemise over her head and then started on the more difficult task of her stays. Her body was covered to him, another wall between them. It was understandable. Their love went against common sense. What woman would put herself under the protection of a man who kept secrets, a man she didn’t trust?

Secrets. There were so many he could not share, but perhaps there was another story he could tell that would give her the information she craved.

He put a hand on her shoulder, and she dropped her arms, released her breath in a shudder. He lifted the ends of the lace in each hand and they stood there in silence as he worked.

“Before Badeau’s death—”

She froze. “Badeau?”

“My tutor, but I loved and hated him as a father. In his last years, he was more and more ill. He asked me to come with him to Turkey.” He laughed. “That mission was in fact for Landsdowne.”

His hands rested on her back for a moment before he lifted them and took a step back. She picked up her dress and then turned to face him.

“When was this?”

“1810.” The hostilities between Russia and the Ottomans had renewed. Landsdowne had wanted information, and to help the nephew of a friend. It had been intended to be a quick trip into and out of occupied territory.

Jane shook her head.

“In any event, while there, Badeau visited a doctor, discovered his ailment was a canker of the stomach. There is more I am not at liberty to say, but we…we had to leave the area under the worst of circumstances. I could have managed on my own, but with Badeau, nearly crippled from the ineffectual treatments, it was more complicated. Szabo orchestrated our escape.”

“Szabo?”

Gerard let out a shuddering sigh. “Powell’s business partner and the man who orchestrated his demise.”

She pinned him with her gaze, direct, curious. “Why are you telling me this? Is this not information dangerous for me to know?”

“Yes, but it is also dangerous for you not to know from whom you may be under threat.”

She swallowed hard. He wanted to take her into his arms, to protect her from everything, even himself, but her arms were wrapped around herself now and there was no room for him.

“So,” she continued, “he knew Badeau and thus your identity as well, so when he called on the debt, you could not refuse?”

“No. He knew us under different names, but yes, I could not refuse.”

“From everything you’ve said about this man, there is no love lost between you. Why not just disappear?”

He slid an impatient hand through his hair. “Because if I did I would have to leave this life entirely behind. And Szabo is not one to forgive and forget. If he ever did choose to find me, it is possible he could. Anyone under my care would be in danger as well.”

“Giana.”

Gerard sucked in a breath. “Yes, and my younger brother as well. And now…you.”

She shivered.

“So there you have it.”

A story that told both of his power and powerlessness. Not all his decisions were for monetary gain.

“I would make you my confessor, tell you every moment of my life, as dark and cold as they have been, and lay it out for your judgment if I could. But this knowledge, it is the type that endangers people. Powell was killed for such tales.”

Her face was drawn and tight, the opposite of how she had looked in bed only half an hour earlier.

“Imagine Landsdowne publically recognizes you, his illegitimate grandson, encourages his close society to accept you. Imagine you buy yourself an estate, show off your wealth…is that the life you want?”

The life he wanted. He closed his eyes and for a moment a vision of verdant grass, laughing children, and Jane filled his mind. He wanted a family and peace. Landsdowne was not necessary, and it chafed at his pride to have to go to the man and ask for help, but to have Jane he would do what was needed.

“Do you love me?” His own heart ached as he waited for her answer.

“Yes,” she choked. “I do. But tragedies are written about fools who think love is enough.”

His lips were tight, his jaw tight, but inside his heart was unfurling.

“Say it again.”

“That we are fools?” she said.

He shook his head at her attempt to make it seem like the admission was less than it was. “That you love me.”

She laughed derisively and stepped into her shoes. Then stumbled as he whirled her around and pulled her close. He grabbed her chin in his hand and stared down at her.

She looked back, eyes wide and searching. There was nothing but the taut air between them, the pulse of her skin against his hand.

“You have to let me go,” she whispered.

“Don’t be a coward.”

She pushed at his hand and then at his chest until he took a step backward and she was free.

“I’m going to return now.”

“To what? To your father? To the congress? Will satisfying your intellect alone be enough of a life for you now that you know how much more there is to be had?”

His answer to that question for his own life was no. From the traces of thought and emotion that flickered across her face, he was certain his point had been taken. He took a deep breath.

“Then go, Jane. But this is not over.”