Gabrielle made no attempt to straighten her body, relaxing into the supporting hold of the arm around her waist, feeling the hardness of his buckskin-clad thigh beneath her belly. His hand slid under the ruffled hem of her drawers, and a shudder of delicious expectation rippled through her as the fingers insinuated themselves into her moistening cleft, searching her out in an ever-spiraling dance of erotic intimacies.
"This isn't going to get a cook hired," she murmured in a desperate attempt to keep herself from sliding too soon into the inferno.
Nathaniel removed his hand and whacked her bottom. "Not an appropriate response in the circumstances, wife." He flicked her skirt down so that it fluttered back to her ankles, and released his hold.
Gabrielle straightened, flushed, her eyes glowing. "That was hardly appropriate behavior in the circumstances." She gestured eloquently around the salon. "Anyone could have walked in."
The idea seemed to amuse him, judging by his complacent grin. "I didn't heat too many objections, my love."
"No, well, you wouldn't, would you?" she said with feigned resignation. "You know my weaknesses all too well."
His grin broadened. "I'll lock the door and then I can finish what I started without fear of interruption." He suited action to words and then leaned back against the door, regarding her with hooded eyes.
"What is it?" she whispered, her voice thick, as if the sounds were coming through treacle.
"I'm trying to decide how I want you." he replied.
Gabrielle glanced around the room at the available props, now so engrossed in their game that she gave no thought to her earlier anxiety. "Chaise longue?" she suggested. Nathaniel shook his head "Table?" Another headshake. "Chair?"
"Perhaps," he said consideringly, pushing himself away from the door. With a swift economical movement he toppled her forward over the back of an armchair.
"I might have guessed," Gabrielle said into the velvet cushions, laughter mingling with arousal in her voice. "You're in one of your dominant moods."
"So it would seem," he said affably, throwing her skirts up over her head and slipping her drawers down over her hips. "Are you comfortable?"
"Perfectly," she assured, chuckling, shifting her feet to brace herself.
His hand moved over her, long, slow sweeps caressing her buttocks and thighs, repeating the voluptuous intimacies of the moment by the fire, and all desire to laugh vanished as they both entered the closed world of passion.
He drove against her womb in a deep probing thrust, and she reached back, wanting to enclose him totally within her, to lose all sense of their separateness. His fingers curled into her hips in a biting grip that expressed his own need for this knowledge of completion. Her flesh was his. The rhythmic throbbing deep within her grew to envelop her in the crimson-shot blackness behind her eyelids. He had a strong hand on the nape of her neck, exerting warm pressure as he moved within her, and his other hand was teasing, nipping at the exquisitely sensitive bud of her sex. Her climax ripped through her in a devastating, mind-numbing tidal wave. Somewhere in the distance she heard her voice, and then Nathaniel's hand on her neck pushed her into the cushions, muffling the involuntary sobbing cries of bliss, and his length fell against her back, his hands on her breasts as he held her through his own explosive moment of joy.
"Sweet heaven!" Nathaniel straightened slowly, leaving her skin feeling cold and exposed as he peeled his body from hers. He ran a hand down her back.
Gabrielle pushed herself upright. "Tell me it's eleven o'clock on a Monday morning," she demanded weakly, fumbling with her clothes as she attempted to put herself back together again.
"It is," Nathaniel refastened his britches. "What is it about you?" He shook his head in bemusement. "Devil woman." He answered his own question.
"I don't think I had anything to do with that," Gabrielle declared, examining her reflection in the mirror above the fireplace. "Look at my hair, it's all over the place. How am I supposed to show myself outside the room like this?"
"I can't imagine," Nathaniel said with callous insouciance, unlocking the door. "But do something about those women. I want my house back."
"Yes, my lord. We arefeeling assertive this morning, aren't we?" Gabrielle stuck her tongue out at him in the mirror as she hastily tucked errant ringlets back into their pins.
Nathaniel raised a hand in mock threat and left her, unaware of the smile hovering on his lips or the bounce in his stride.
Gabrielle rang the bell for Mrs. Bailey and asked her to send in the next candidate.
Nathaniel went into his book room. He sat down at his desk, pulling a sheaf of reports toward him. He had to decide which of his agents could best be sent to Lisbon… or should he go himself? The Portuguese king was a pathetic, childlike individual, unable to govern; his regent was a coward, unfit to govern. They would crumple before a French advance. A British presence in Portugal was now vital…
Idly, he picked up his quill, noticing that the end was splitting. He looked for the small knife he used to sharpen his pens, but it wasn't on his desk and he remembered that Gabrielle had borrowed it the previous evening.
He didn't need it right now, but his mind was racing and he was too restless to sit in contemplative silence, so he strolled upstairs, pausing at the foot of the nursery stairs, thinking he would go up and see how Jake's twisted ankle was progressing. Perhaps he'd retrieve his penknife first.
Gabrielle's sitting room was quiet, sun-filled. It had been Helen's favorite room and the wallpaper and furnishings were distinctively her choice. He wondered if Gabrielle would decide to change anything. It was a very pastel foil for her vibrancy.
The secretaire was open, his penknife lying on the blotter. He picked up the knife and his eye fixed on the markings on the blotter.
Curious marks, back-to-front letters, numbers. He felt an enormous reluctance to pick it up, and yet he did so. He picked it up and held it in front of the mirror on the dresser.
Gabrielle had been playing with the Voltaire code.
Chapter 27
It wasn't possible that she was still involved in espionage. She couldn't be. It wasn't logical.
Nathaniel looked across the dining table to where Gabrielle sat in animated conversation with her neighbor. As if aware of his scrutiny, she glanced up briefly, her eyes flickering across the expanse of glowing rosewood, the glistening silver, the puddles of golden candlelight. Her lips twitched into her crooked little smile that imparted a special intimacy among the buzzing voices of their fellow guests. Then she turned back to her neighbor and Nathaniel heard her laugh, that deep, warm sound of merriment that had never failed to delight him even when he was angry with her.
His own neighbor offered a tentative conversational sally, and he realized that he'd been sitting in brooding silence for the better part of the second course. He went through the motions for a few minutes but was as relieved as his partner when she was drawn into a conversation on her other side.
Absently, he helped himself from a dish of quail in aspic, remembering too late that he disliked the fiddly little birds and couldn't abide aspic.
He'd asked her about the notations on her blotter-a genial, casual question-and she'd responded in the same manner, saying it had been such a long time since she'd exercised her mind in that way and she'd been testing herself to see how much of the code she could remember.
It was a perfectly reasonable explanation.
Why on earth was Nathaniel eating quad? Gabrielle frowned, watching him dissect one of the birds and then push it to the side of his plate with an impatient gesture. He loathed aspic and despised quail. And didn't he realize how discourteous he was being, sitting in morose silence? Poor Hester Fairchild looked as uncomfortable as if she were sitting next to a hungry tiger.