"Thank you." Gabrielle went swiftly up the stairs, her step light. At the second door she raised her hand to knock, then changed her mind. Bo idly, she lifted the latch and pushed open the door onto a narrow room furnished with a single cot, a plain dresser, and a massive oak table beneath a small, high window.
Nathaniel was in the process of dressing for the evening. He spun away from the spotted mirror as the door flew open. Gabrielle stood there. Energy seemed to pulse from her, creating a sparking halo around the dark red hair; the dark eyes had an almost febrile glitter, her lips were parted, the faintest flush glowed beneath the habitual translucent pallor.
"What the hell are you doing?" he said with a surge of anger.
"Fraternizing with the enemy," she said with one of her crooked, wicked smiles.
"By God, Gabrielle, you have done this just once too often. I told you I would not tolerate indiscretion-"
"I had to come," she said. "No one knows who I am. I sent the carriage away and told it to come back in an hour." She stepped toward him, pushing the door shut behind her.
She was an image of glinting diamonds, smooth, undulating cream silk, black feathers flowing in startling contrast to the vibrant hair massed on top of her head.
"I want you," she stated, coming toward him across the plain, unvarnished floorboards, her hands outstretched. "I wanted you with such an overpowering hunger that I had to come."
She seized his hands, pulling herself forward against him. A smile hovered on her lips, and the febrile glitter in her eyes intensified.
He could feel the power of her sensuality emanating in waves, lapping him, enclosing him. And he was lost as he always was when she came to him in this way.
She laughed softly, reading his capitulation, clipping her bottom lip with her teeth, moving her lower body against his loins with an urgent sinuous pressure that set his blood on fire.
"Now," she said. "I want you now,Nathaniel."
Catching her around the waist, he lifted her onto the table beneath the window. His hands circled her throat, covering the emerald collar, and he brought his mouth to hers. Her lips parted in eager response, her tongue fencing with his, her breasts pressing against his chest as she leaned into him.
Slowly he bent her body backward with the pressure of his own until she lay stretched out on the cool, hard surface of the table, her mouth still joined with his, her hands on his shoulders.
He reached beneath her skirt. At the brushing touch of his fingers, she leaped beneath him, and he knew it would take but a whispering breath to carry her over the edge of bliss.
Why? he wondered. Why this desperate passion tonight? But the questions were fleeting as his own body responded to Gabrielle's urgency.
He drew back long enough to pull down her lacy undergarment, to release his own body from confinement.
Gabrielle's eyes held his, and they were filled with the wonder of anticipation.
He gathered her against him, crushing her to him as the turbulence raged around them, swallowed them, then receded, leaving them stranded on the sands of fulfillment.
Nathaniel let her fall back on the table and slowly straightened, his breathing ragged, his head whirling. Gabrielle lay unmoving in an abandoned sprawl, her rich skirts rucked up around her waist, long, bare thighs gleaming pale against the dark wood beneath her, diamonds glittering in the lamplight, the dark red hair tumbling loose, the black feathers escaping from the securing pins.
She looked like some wildly exotic bird come to rest after a long and exhausting flight. Leaning over, he stroked the curve of her cheek with one finger. "Come back, sweetheart."
Her eyelashes fluttered and her eyes opened. She looked up at him, her expression dazed, then she smiled. "I think I just died again."
"You were possessed by some madness," he said, taking her hands and pulling her into a sitting position. "How dare you come here, Gabrielle." But there was little force behind the statement. Shaking his head, he pulled up his britches. "Do you have any idea how you've compromised us both?"
Gabrielle struggled to regain her senses after that explosion of sexuality. How could she ever have been afraid she might have to feign a response?
"Nonsense," she said after a minute. "This kind of thing is going on all over Tilsit. People are crisscrossing the town, hopping from bed to bed-"
"How do you know that?"
"I heard," she said loftily.
Nathaniel examined her with a puzzled frown. She seemed completely unaware of her semi-nakedness, and the contrast of that dishevelment with her elaborate dress and those priceless diamonds. "Just what, in the name of goodness, brought that on so suddenly? Or don't you know?"
"I've brought you a present," she said. "You might find it strange… but-"
"I don't think I can concentrate until you tidy yourself up." Nathaniel picked up her discarded drawers and slipped them over her feet, then he lifted her off the desk and pulled them up over her hips. "Straighten your skirt."
Gabrielle shook down the crumpled silk and put her hands to her head, where unruly ringlets escaped in a cloud. She plucked out the feathers and tossed them onto the table, then released her hair from its pins and shook it free to her shoulders, combing her fingers through the tangles. The routine process calmed her and gave her time to collect her thoughts.
"Any better?"
"Some," he said. "I think the problem really lay with the feathers. They were more than a little incongruous." He picked one up and ran it through his fingers. "You're going to need the attentions of your maid again before you go to the Prussian residence."
"I don't think I'm going," Gabrielle said. "Do you have a glass of wine?"
"I managed to persuade Tolstoy to part with some of his precious supply of port." Nathaniel opened a cupboard in the dresser and took out a bottle and two thick, rather dusty glasses. "This place lacks for amenities, I'm afraid." He wiped the glasses with his handkerchief before filling them.
"The bed's a little small," Gabrielle observed, taking the glass from him.
"But the table compensates," he observed with a half-smile. A tumult of speculation was going on behind his eyes, but there was no indication on his face. What strange gift lay behind this wild visit? Gabrielle was deeply disturbed, and by a lot more than the exigencies of lust.
"So?" he prompted. "Where's my strange present?"
Gabrielle sipped her port and then said, "It's a gift of information."
A great stillness entered Nathaniel, but his eves remained calmly on her face.
"There are some secret articles to be appended to the treaty. One of them commits Alexander to mediate a peace between England and France. If the English refuse, then Russia will declare war on England and join France and her allies in the Continental Blockade, bringing Denmark and Sweden with her."
Nathaniel said nothing for a long time. Napoleon had forced all the nations subjected to France to join a naval blockade designed to starve England into submission. Her prosperity, indeed her lifeblood, depended on overseas trade. With all the ports of Europe closed to her, she would be unable to trade, and the nation of shopkeepers, as Napoleon referred to them, would be brought to their knees. The blockade was already biting deeply into the nation's economic foundation, but while Russia was at war with France, the Baltic ports had remained open to English commercial shipping. If the Scandinavian nations in hegemony to Russia were forced to join the blockade, then they could close off the Baltic and there would be no outlets for British trade. She would indeed starve to death.
Nathaniel also knew that no amount of Russian mediation would convince the English government to make peace with Napoleon, so war with Russia and the closing of the Baltic ports was inevitable under the terms of the secret articles.