Gabrielle struggled up and sat blinking around the moonlit loft. Her ruined nightgown lay in a heap on the straw. "It seems as if I'm going to have to cross the yard stark naked. Whatever possessed you?"
"God knows," he said, sitting up himself. "The devil in you, I suspect." He reached for her discarded cloak and wrapped it around her damp body. "You'll catch your death of cold."
"I doubt that." She smiled and then shivered. "Then again, it is March."
"I used to think I was perfectly sane," Nathaniel remarked in tones of mild interest. "But I now realize that I'm heading for Bedlam. Stand up." He pulled her to her feet and cupped her face between his palms. "Driven there by a wanton brigand! What the hell am I going to do with you, Gabrielle?"
"You seem to have done a fair amount tonight," she observed judiciously. "You've wrestled me and manhandled me and tied me up and then dispatched me to the outer limits of bliss. What else is there?"
Nathaniel shook his head in mock reproof. "You're an impossible woman, too much for any ordinary mortal to manage. Hurry back now into the warm." He pulled the edges of the cloak tighter around her. "Go on, quickly!" He pushed her to the ladder.
"I'd expected a little more ceremony," Gabrielle grumbled, obeying the hand in her back. "But I can't think why, since this has been a most unceremonious evening, one way and another." She edged backward onto the ladder and grinned at him, blowing him a kiss before the bright head vanished into the darkness below.
Nathaniel stood at the window, watching her run across the yard and slip safely into the inn.
How could someone so open, so gloriously candid in her desires and her needs and her loving, be treacherous? And how could he lose all sense of that when he was within her, when she was a part of him and he of her?
He'd asked himself the question before, and, as before, there was no answer.
Chapter 17
"The spymaster is in Paris?" Talleyrand most unusually revealed his surprise as he poured wine into two crystal goblets in the study of the house on rue d'Anjou.
"Just so." Gabrielle untied the ribbons of her hat and tossed it onto a leather couch. She peered at her reflection in the glass over the mantelpiece and tucked a straying wisp of hair back into the pins.
"Where?" Talleyrand handed her a glass of burgundy.
"Merci." Gabrielle took the glass with a smile and inhaled the bouquet. "Idon't know," she said frankly. "He wouldn't tell me. I'm to wait to be contacted."
"A cautious man, as one would expect." Talleyrand nodded. He made a steeple of his fingers and gazed into the middle distance. "For some reason, your letter gave me the sense that there is a… a frisson"-his hands opened eloquently-"between you and Lord Praed."
Gabrielle sipped her wine. How had he guessed that? She'd thought she'd been completely emotionless in her letter. But Talleyrand always saw beneath the surface, and there was never any point attempting to pull the wool over his eyes. "Yes," she agreed. "In fact, something rather more than that, I believe."
"I see." The Minister for Foreign Affairs examined her with the searching, assessing scrutiny of a connoisseur of women. "Passion becomes you," he stated after a minute. "It has always been so. You looked thus after your times with Guillaume."
Gabrielle met his gaze steadily. "There are similarities," she agreed.
"They are-were-both master spies," her godfather pointed out dryly. "It would seem you have a fatal predilection toward the devious, mon enfant."
"With such a mentor, does it suprise you?"
Talleyrand laughed. "Such a quick tongue, you have. How does your spymaster react to it, I wonder?"
Gabrielle rightly assumed that no response was required.
"So, does this added dimension alter your attitude in any way?" Her godfather shifted the subject, blandly matter-of-fact.
"He was responsible for Guillaume s death," she answered. "I can't forget that, despite-" She shrugged. "Despite physical passion. We have that, certainly, but it alters nothing essential."
Talleyrand stroked his chin. "Let us be sure we understand each other, mafille. You are saying that despite physical passion, you still intend to be avenged on this man for his part in Guillaume's death?”
Gabrielle wandered over to the fireplace, staring into the flames. Guillaume's face rose in her internal vision. He was laughing, his eyes so alive, his beautiful mouth curved.…
"Oh, yes," she said, almost to herself. "I will use him, sir, in whatever fashion you dictate."
Talleyrand nodded, satisfied. "There is much at stake. Too much to be sacrificed to blind passion."
"I understand that."
There was a knock at the door, and a footman entered to light the candles, draw the long brocade curtains over the windows as dusk deepened, and make up the fire.
They were both silent as the man went about his work. Talleyrand looked down into his glass as if reading solutions to unanswerable questions in the ruby wine.
"You must be tired after your journey," he said as the servant finished mending the fire and the door closed behind him. "Why don't you go to your apartments and rest. I'm sure Catherine must be eager to greet you."
"Yes." Gabrielle rose immediately. "I'm glad you're in Paris. I'd find it hard to weave my way through this tangle without your counsel." She picked up her discarded gloves and slapped them idly into her palm before saying abruptly, "There's a complication. Nathaniel's son is with him."
"In Paris?" Again Talleyrand revealed his surprise. "How old's the child?"
"Six. He stowed away on the boat and there really wasn't any choice but to bring him. Nathaniel has a safe house where he says the child won't be remarked, but if Fouche were to hear of Jake…" She fell silent, chewing her bottom lip.
"He mustn't," Talleyrand agreed instantly. "You will have to submit to an interview with him. You must be very careful."
"I know,' she said simply. She bent forward for the avuncular kiss he placed on her forehead. "Will you be dining at home, sir?"
"I hadn't intended to, but in the circumstances, I believe I shall," he said, patting her cheek.
"You do me too much honor, sir." Her eyes twinkled, banishing the seriousness of the last exchange.
"Go and do your duty to Catherine," he said gruffly. "I don't know what your father would say to this habit you have of forming highly improper liaisons. It's high time you found a husband and started having babies."
"I would if I could," she said, and the twinkle faded. "But I don't seem to be attracted to men who want to lead conventional lives."
"Probably because you don't want to yourself,” her godfather observed briskly. "The vicissitudes of war suit you."
"And what does that say about my character?" Gabrielle queried, shaking her head.
"I'm sure you can work that out for yourself." Talleyrand waved her way, reflecting that Gabrielle was one of the people for whom fate had fashioned a twisted destiny, one of great passions and great sorrows. In many ways she was to be envied. She lived on the cutting edge, never in the comfortable safety of the middle, and she'd experience heights and glories that ordinary people would never approach. But such a life had its price, as she already knew. Twenty-five was young to have lost so much.
Gabrielle found the Princess de Talleyrand in her boudoir. Catherine had been married to Talleyrand for five years-a misalliance that shocked society as much as it puzzled. That Talleyrand, a descendent of one of France's oldest families, should have married a woman of inferior birth, his own mistress of four years, and reputed to have been the mistress of anyone willing to keep her, was completely incomprehensible. Catherine was a silly woman with vapid conversation, no companion for the urbane and brilliant Minister for Foreign Affairs, and she was no longer young, although her fabled beauty was as yet barely dimmed.