A License to Wed: Rebellious Brides (7 page)

“I indulge on occasion.”

She licked some of its red juice from her plump lower lip. “Then you must treat yourself.” Finishing the strawberry, she licked its juice from her tapered fingers. “They are perfect. Plump, sweet, and juicy. I had them brought in especially for you.”

His temper simmered along with lambent desire, at the way she lounged opposite him, radiating heat and sensuality as if their past didn’t exist. This temptress might look like Elle—from the radiant sparkle in her eyes to the determined jut of her delicate chin—but this practiced, seductive performance would be completely alien to the girl he used to know. “May I ask you something?”

“Of course.” She looked at him expectantly. “Anything.”

“Did you find my proposal of marriage so objectionable”—his words were hard—“that you prefer to keep company with a married man who will soon be at war with England?”

She bit into the strawberry and chewed thoughtfully, but he noted—as he was trained to do—the subtle tightening of her expression and the almost imperceptible stiffening of her lissome limbs. She was not as at ease as she would like him to believe. “There is peace between France and England.”

“At the moment. But the Treaty of Amiens will not last the year. You shall soon find yourself consorting with the enemy.”

She reached for a piece of toast and began to butter it. “It is possible I will return home to England before war breaks out.”

“You’ve had five years to make that journey.”

“Not exactly.”

“What does that mean?”

Her expression clouded. “I was detained.”

The image of Duret’s proprietary hand at the small of her back flashed in his mind. “So you’ve said.”

“What I mean to say is that I was held against my will.”

He stilled. “By whom? Duret?”

“No.” She swallowed a bite of her toast. “I was in a detention camp for Britons.”

He inhaled in surprise. British intelligence had long been aware of the camps where England’s citizens had been detained before the current peace was negotiated. “Were you mistreated?”

“Only in that I was cut off from my family at a time when I sorely needed them.” He registered the effort it took for her to keep her voice even. “No communications with the outside world were allowed.”

“Where were you detained?”

“It could have been worse, I suppose. I was taken to a fortress along with other wealthy English
détenus,
as they called us. Some rented an entire house for their families, but I was alone, so I rented a room and lived with a family.” She gave an unamused laugh. “I was obligated to pay for my captors to keep me.”

“I trust they at least treated you well.”

“They treated me with suspicion.” Her voice took on a brittle edge. “I was one of the enemy.”

“What were the conditions of your detention?”

“We were allowed to walk freely within the town, but French eyes were always upon us, watching, waiting to see if we would attempt to escape beyond the town limits.”

“How long were you there?”

“Up until a few months ago.”

“As long as that?” He didn’t bother to hide his surprise, revealing his first honest emotion of this encounter. “You were held against your will for five years?” He couldn’t imagine a free spirit like Elle being hemmed for all that time, treated like cattle, allowed out to graze for a few hours before being penned in again.

“I would repeatedly walk from one end of the village to the other and dream of the day I could finally go home.”

He wondered whether she considered Paris home now. “And when they finally let you go?”

“I was released after England and France signed the peace.” She bit into her toast, dashing away a crumb on her strawberry-stained lip with a tapered finger topped by a clean, rounded nail. “But of course no one expected the fragile Treaty of Amiens to last, so I rushed home to Paris, intent on packing my things, closing the house, and returning to my family.” Sadness glinted in her eyes. “At least to the family I had left. Laurent, of course, is forever lost to me.”

His gut stabbed at the thought of her mourning her husband’s loss, even after all these years. The emotion was coupled with his growing contempt for her, this mother in name only, who never even mentioned the daughter she’d abandoned. He reached for a strawberry. “And yet, here you still remain.”

“Yes, as I said, I have personal business that keeps me here at the moment.”

He bit into the strawberry, its sweet juices at odds with the bitter taste in his mouth at the thought she’d stayed in Paris to be with her general.

There was a tap on the door, and Elle rose when her maid—whom he recognized from the park—entered the chamber carrying a crimson dress. They briefly discussed the dress in French before Elle turned—facing Will—and allowed the maid to remove her dressing gown.

He did not even pretend to avert his eyes. Taking in the long pale arms and feminine curve of her slender waist, he ached with the wanting of her. He might hold her in distaste, but the physical attraction between them still burned brighter than ever.

Color rose in her face, and he sensed her arousal was as keen as his own. The bodily sensitivity to each other was potent and palpable. She stepped into the petticoat and held his gaze while the maid tied her into it. The slender cords of her throat worked beneath snowy white skin. Next, she stepped into the crimson dress, the color vibrant against her pale skin, and stood still as her maid worked the tiny buttons in the back.

Finally, when he thought he might not be able to stop himself from vaulting over the chair and making her his again, she turned away to sit at her dressing table. Her maid moved behind her, gathering the cascade of silky strands in her hands, and began to manipulate them into exacting designs atop her mistress’s head.

He watched it all in silence, mesmerized as she donned her hair and clothing in the methodical manner of a knight putting on his armor ahead of an impending battle. The performance he knew was for him, although he hadn’t quite discerned the purpose for it. If her intention had been to torment him, she’d succeeded admirably.

If she prepared for war, he couldn’t be certain who she saw as the enemy. Elle carried herself with the intent of a woman who intended to win, no matter the cost to her or to anyone who stepped in her path.

“I am giving a party this evening,” she said lightly, watching him through her dressing table mirror. “Will you come?”

He rose and executed a short bow. “You may depend upon it.”

“You observed the ceremony of the toilette?” Henri’s caterpillar eyebrows twitched as they walked, doing their best to sidestep the mud and horse dung. No matter what the weather, a mire of black slime always streamed down Paris streets. “From this you deduce it is a campaign of seduction?”

“She certainly appears to hope that I will think it so.”

“Perhaps Madame Laurent wishes to reunite with an old amour. Invitations to her soirees are not easily had, and yet she has included you on this evening’s guest list.”

“The party can hardly be that exclusive,” he said wryly. “After all, you were invited as well.” His heart sped up as they neared Elle’s house. After her performance earlier today, he couldn’t help but wonder what she had planned for him this evening. “And I never said she was an old love.”

“You didn’t have to. It is plain from the way you look at her.”

The idea that he could be so transparent irked him. “Like what exactly?”

“Like a man who has been denied dessert for many years, who suddenly has a tin full of the finest sweetmeats placed before him.”

“Really, Henri, only you would compare everything to food.”

“And why not? Eating, like the sexual act, is one of life’s most sensual experiences.” They paused to allow a carriage to pass before forging across the sloppy sodden street. “You still desire her. You should be willingly seduced.”

It wasn’t as though he hadn’t succumbed to temptation before, but Henri didn’t need to be made aware of that. “She is the sister of one of my closest friends.”

“If you must be so provincial—and I would expect nothing less of you—then you should just marry her.”

He scoffed. “Do not be absurd.”

“It is obvious you care for her.”

“I shall never marry. My work and travels leave no time for a wife and family. Nor do I desire either of those things,” he added pointedly. He had wanted them very badly once, with Elle, before she’d run off and married her French nobleman. Since then, a carapace had hardened around his heart, and nothing akin to love could ever flourish again in that arid terrain. He simply wasn’t capable of forming tender connections with any woman.

Besides, his work was far too hazardous for him to take a wife now. Before Elle’s desertion, his expertise had been in cryptography, and he’d expected code breaking to be his primary occupation with the Home Office. But after Elle married Laurent, he’d lost patience in that painstaking endeavor, preferring to ease his restlessness by undertaking clandestine—and far more dangerous—assignments behind enemy lines.

He saw now that he’d been a fool to expect Elle to behave any differently than she had. The daughter of a marquess would naturally reject the bastard son of an earl in favor of a French
vicomte
. He’d captured her interest only because she’d been locked away in Dorset, far from society. Now that she was out in the world, Elle seemed well aware of her power over men. She commanded everyone’s attention the moment she entered a room.

His brother, Giles, the current earl, would have been a far better match for a diamond like her. Giles was tall, broad, and handsome, effortlessly charming, whereas Will was smaller in every way, both in stature and body, contained and bookish, awkward in social situations mostly because he had no interest in them. Even their father, the old earl, had noted more than once in his presence that Elle and Giles would make a fine match.

“You clearly have an interesting history with Madame Laurent,” Henri said.

It was that shared past with Elle—and his firsthand knowledge of her capricious nature—that now aroused his suspicion. “She is Duret’s mistress. Perhaps she is now sympathetic to the French cause.”

Henri tsked. “This would surprise me.”

“I suspect her abundant supply of fine food and wine has affected your ability to think rationally.”

A hum of sarcastic agreement sounded from Henri’s throat. “One of us is certainly less than clearheaded when it comes to Madame Laurent.”

“Do you not think it strange that, although she only returned to the capital a few months ago, her salons already draw people from the highest levels of government, both French and English?”

Henri turned a bloodshot gaze on him. “You think Madame Laurent gathers intelligence for the French?”

“She was detained for five years, they could very well have coerced her, slowly twisting her thoughts and beliefs against her will,” he said. “Furthermore, if she were working for our side, I think I would have knowledge of it.”

They reached the steps to Elle’s townhome to find it teeming with life. People filled every window visible from the outside, and the layered chatter of multiple conversations spilled out into the street.

“What do you think she is after?” Henri asked.

“I’ve no idea.” Will started up the steps leading to Elle’s front door. “But I intend to find out.”

“I expect you to execute this evening,” Duret said as Elle smiled and nodded at various diplomats and other notables in attendance. This evening’s party was one of her best attended, but now that she knew her daughter’s fate, she had little appetite for entertaining. “Time is running short.”

“I gave you my word that I will learn what I can.” Nervous agitation roiled her stomach. She missed the soothing sensation of rolling her Cleopatra coin between her fingers, but the revealing nature of the current style left no room for pockets. “But you must consider the possibility that you are mistaken about the identity of
Le Rasoir.
”

“Our information regarding this matter is excellent.” He fisted one hand and squeezed hard with his free hand, cracking all of this knuckles at once, the resultant popping sounds putting her even more on edge than she already was. “Naismith is very likely the man we seek.”

“I can’t even be sure he will attend this evening,” she lied. “I can hardly enthrall a man who isn’t present.”

“I have it on excellent authority that your Mr. Naismith will be in attendance.”

She shot a look at him. “You are having him watched?”

“We make it our concern to know the whereabouts of all our foreign guests.”

She wondered how much the French knew. “Mr. Naismith was said to be absent from Paris for several days, do you know where he went?”

“He eluded the man we assigned to follow him,” Duret answered, clearly irritated. “We have no idea where he went. Such things are now for you to discover.”

“He was in the country, near Fontainbleau.” She didn’t divulge that Will might very well have been in Jersey. Or that he might never have left Paris at all.

Although she couldn’t fathom him as
Le Rasoir,
she’d begun to think Will was involved in some sort of intrigue; he’d lied about being in the country and denied ever visiting the
passages couverts,
even though she’d seen him there. The more she thought about it, the more plausible it seemed that a clerk from the Home Office could be in league with
Le Rasoir,
perhaps acting as a courier of sorts.

Her mind raced with the possibilities. If Will had gone to Jersey Island, would he have lied about it because he was meeting with
Le Rasoir
? The island, just a few miles off the French coast, was under English control. Rumors circulated that Napoléon intended to invade the tiny enclave, which was home to many French nobles who had pledged their loyalty to England after fleeing the revolution.

“You do not have much time to unmask
Le Rasoir,
” Duret reminded her.

“Why the sudden urgency?” she asked.

“I travel to England in a fortnight and wish for you to gather as much information as you can from Naismith.”