“I’ll manage. You’re wrong about her, you know.”
“I’ll find out, won’t I? I’ll go eat and wash, then get her settled in.” He had control of his voice, but the latch clanked savagely in his hand as he opened the door.
Damned if he’d fight her again. Or maybe this time she’d play the whore and offer to part those sweet thighs for him. If she offered, maybe he’d just take her. They could wrap themselves around each other and tussle that way for a change. He’d use her and roll aside and forget her. There’d be no magic to the woman when she was slick and sweaty underneath him. She’d be just another warm, willing body.
That was a damned unprofessional way to think about a prisoner. “And maybe I’ll just chain her to the bed.” He didn’t glance back.
Doyle said, “Robert…”
Adrian said quietly. “Let him go. It’s between them, now.”
Five
“IT’S DARK IN HERE.” GREY’S VOICE WAS A RASP of sandpaper and velvet. He spoke in the familiar form, as one speaks to the most intimate of friends or to children or animals or servants. Or prostitutes.
“Light candles if you wish. It makes no difference to me.” She spoke in the formal mode of speaking, which is how one talks to foreign spies who have kidnapped you.
“I thought Doyle told you to get into the nightgown.”
“He did, most certainly. I will let you know if ever I begin taking orders from Monsieur Doyle.” She faced the window, the nightgown twisted between her hands, and did not turn toward him. The night ahead would be one of immeasurable difficulty.
Wind came to her off the fields, smelling of cows and the earth and apples. She felt a longing, sharp as a physical pain, to see the fields and the stars above them. It never left her in all these months, that ache.
The shirt she wore billowed loose, then flattened possessively over her breasts and her hips, then blew loose again. Grey’s shirt. She had some wide knowledge of men. There were those who would find her alluring, so incongruously within a man’s shirt, with her feet bare on the floor and her hair farouche and uncombed about her face. In the so-obvious silk rag she held in her fingers, she would look the whore. Wearing a man’s shirt, she appeared the wise and subtle courtesan. There were no right choices for her tonight.
She heard him lock the door behind him.
“You’ve decked yourself out in my shirt. Well, well, well.” He was never without that undercurrent of incomprehensible anger when he spoke to her. “Maybe I should have expected that. The nightgown is blatant. Nobody could accuse you of being blatant.”
“Have you not tormented me enough for the sin of being French and a spy? This is the middle of France, Monsieur Grey. I am not your lawful prey. Let me go. It is the only sensible answer for any of us.”
“After you give me the Albion plans. We’ll pay, you know, if that sort of thing matters to you. Extravagantly.”
Oh, but Leblanc had much to answer for. It was the final straw among great heaps of straw that his words should set this English upon her, demanding the Albion plans.
How much she would like to say, “You desire the Albion plans? But yes, I have them tucked here in my garter, you see? Take them away and stop Monsieur Napoleon from making this stupid invasion of your island, which will kill many thousand French soldiers and countless English and will not succeed at all.”
It was not that simple. It had never been that simple.
She lied, immediately and convincingly. “I do not have these plans. Never, not once, have I laid eyes upon them.”
“You lie well. I suppose I’m not the first man to tell you that.”
She hit the windowsill with her fist. “No and no! I am sick of this folly. Leblanc spits poison like a toad and you believe him for reasons wholly incomprehensible. You kidnap me into Normandy for nothing. You endanger me and yourself with this mad insistence to—”
“Turn around and look at me. I’m damned tired of talking to your back.”
“You, I do not find attractive or interesting. In fact, I wish you would go away altogether.”
Adamant hands gripped her and turned her, without pain, but very, very firmly. She kept her head lowered, concealing her face from him in the dark.
“You’re thinking about fighting me. Don’t. Believe me, little fox, you wouldn’t like what I’d do to you. Don’t make me show you how thoroughly you’re trapped.”
“Trapped? But yes, I admit it freely. I am easy to snare these days. A dolt like Henri can do it.”
“I haven’t found it particularly easy. I’m changing the rules of this game we play.”
“I do not play games against Grey of the British Service. I would not dare.”
“You’re playing one now.”
Where the many nerves ran in the joining at her shoulder, his fingers explored, drawing idle, poignant circles, which entirely paralyzed her. Then he slid, smooth and slow, down her arm. How powerless it made her feel to learn his hands could secure themselves around her upper arm like large bracelets. At her elbow he found a great sensitivity.
Fighting points. He caressed the fighting points, lingering till she shivered with it. She had never thought of this obvious truth. At the weak places where one strikes an opponent, the nerves run exposed and vulnerable and receptive. Receptive to any touch. He knew that. It was disheartening to encounter so much admirable expertise in an opponent.
She squeezed her eyes closed and wished for the hundredth time she could see his expression and guess what he was going to do to her. Nothing so simple as to hurt her.
The rumble of his voice vibrated across her skin. “That shirt’s more erotic than I would have believed possible. To see my shirt wrapped around you and know there’s nothing…but you…underneath it.” He plucked at the fabric, considering it with his fingertips. “You take the prerogatives of a longtime lover when you help yourself to my clothes. I should be disarmed. Clever Annique.”
“I am not so clever,” she muttered, being sincere.
His hand traveled to rest over her heart. “You have exactly the right number of buttons undone. I congratulate you. One less, and you’d be playing the timid virgin.” He slipped two fingers into the shirt, tugged briefly, and left the top button loosed behind him. “Virgin isn’t a convincing role for you.”
He could say such things to a woman he was going to take to his bed. She could not reason with him when he was like this. She could do nothing but stand and listen to him and tremble everywhere.
He stroked downward and found the next button. “Too many unfastened, and there’s no challenge to it.” He slid it open. “Men enjoy challenges.”
The beat of her heart shook her whole body. Did he know she was growing excited for him, at that place between her legs where he would want to pleasure himself? It was most probable he did.
He set another button free. He would have her naked soon. Her plan of reasoning with him did not seem to be working.
“A man itches to peel you, veil by veil, laying your secrets bare, opening you up to reveal mysteries.”
Her body was not mysterious in that place he so poetically discussed, merely hot and anxious. She squeezed herself together, which did not help, but indeed made things worse. She could not stop herself doing it either, again and again, so matters grew progressively more complicated for her. “Me, I have no mysteries. You delude yourself.”
“It would be so easy to lure the honey out of you. All I have to do is this…” His fingers grazed her breast, through the shirt. “…and two sweet little berries come nudging up against the cloth, begging to be tasted. Like that. Yes. That’s honest enough. It might be the only kind of honesty you have in you.”