Adele Ashworth (20 page)

Jonathan’s mind raced from her disclosure. Possibilities were innumerable now. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Goodness, Jonathan. You make it sound as if I’m keeping deliberate secrets.” She sat forward, dropping her arms as she reached for her fan again. Absentmindedly she began tapping it in her lap. “It’s not really information one goes around spreading in polite society.”

He couldn’t argue that. Being one-quarter French wasn’t necessarily bad. On the other hand, it didn’t speak well in making a good marriage when one wasn’t completely English, or when one’s grandparents and distant relations were Catholic. Though unimportant, these incidentals could have an effect on some in the social whirl, for nothing else but gossip. This said nothing of the English view of the French and sexual promiscuity and culture. Now that he thought about it, he supposed not mentioning a French count for a grandfather was probably well advised for those other than family or close friends.

He leaned against the lamppost. “Why haven’t you spoken the language here?”

Now she grinned in droll merriment. “Doesn’t it seem more logical to act the innocent in the exchange?”

His forehead pinched in confusion, and she leaned toward him so closely her face was nearly to his waist.

“Remember shopping Thursday, in that little boutique near the waterfront?”

He snickered. “I remember the offensively priced, ugly brown bonnet you bought to add to your scant wardrobe.”

She ignored the sarcastic comment, though her lids thinned with feigned disgust. “It was a chocolate-colored silk and quite fashionable, but that is beside the point. I purchased the bonnet although I didn’t need it—”

“You’re joking,” he interjected, straight-faced.

“You don’t understand,” she insisted patiently, sitting back a little. “I
wanted
the pink parasol. While I was considering the parasol, however, the saleswoman began speaking in French to two other French ladies about how the English had no taste at all, and always wanted things pink regardless of their individual skin coloring which was usually ghastly.” She flicked her wrist in indignation. “Then they carried on about how the English never seemed to dress boldly and elegantly like the ladies in France. I couldn’t allow that to pass without response.”

“Of course not,” he replied accordingly.

She eyed him carefully, not certain if she should take his sudden smile of amusement for condescension toward the female mind and its trivialities, or enjoyment at such a ridiculous predicament. When he said nothing more, she brushed over it.

“In any case, they then began to discuss the bonnet, it being of the latest fashion in color and cut, quite stunning and from Paris. When I heard that, I picked it up. The other ladies wanted it, but it was in my hand.”

“So you purchased something you don’t need.”

She breathed deeply and jutted her breasts out fully, straightening in defiance. “But they thought twice about my lack of taste.”

“You’ll never see them again,” he enunciated blandly.

“That is irrelevant.”

He stared down at her smug expression for a long, quiet moment, then rubbed his eyes with his fingertips. Women. He would never understand them.

“This is why you haven’t spoken French since you’ve been here?” he asked, attempting to return to the point.

She shrugged. “I suppose if I needed directions I would call upon it.”

He lowered his voice. “But pretending the innocent allows you to listen to otherwise private conversations.”

Her smile faded most abruptly. “I’m not being malicious at all. It just puts me at a little bit of an advantage when others are talking rudely about me—as they have once or twice here tonight—because they don’t realize I know what they’re saying.”

Jonathan paused, his eyes grazing over the low garden wall and out toward the open sea, black but for a long, shimmering stream of moonlight. The eavesdropping really didn’t bother him, mostly, he assumed, because he’d been doing the same since he’d arrived in France. What troubled him, however, was learning that her grandfather was a deposed French noble. And what did that mean? Probably nothing at all. She was correct that many nobles escaped to England during the time of the Revolution, a few of them providing for themselves as her grandfather had done, most expecting the British gentry or government to sustain them.

But something more disturbing was slowly taking shape in his mind. Could she possess some loyalty to the Legitimist cause, to those who intended to unseat the present king and replace him with the line of long ago—of the time when her grandfather had had power? This seemed extremely far-fetched, though not impossible to ignore, especially after his consideration earlier this evening that her motives went far deeper than she admitted, that he felt she was subtly using him or hiding things. To be fair, she had a life of relative wealth and ease in England and didn’t speak of her French connections to anyone, so why would she care who was king of France? She was also a woman. Women generally didn’t take notice of political issues, as it certainly wasn’t a feminine pursuit and was frowned upon by society as a whole. Then again, Madeleine was a woman, and she believed in righting political wrongs and working for government issues
because
she was female and would therefore be unsuspected by all. Natalie, for all her youth and naivete, could very well think the same. She was certainly smart enough.

What unsettled him the most was this: If she was hiding real motives, she had no reason to tell him of her ancestry, but learning her grandfather was once the count of Bourges seemed extremely coincidental to the moment and his reason for journeying to France in the first place. It would also firmly account for her eavesdropping on the French elite, without any reaction or concern, as they planned to rid themselves of the current king. Perhaps she’d heard nothing in a conversation about gaming or hunting or other gentlemanly endeavors. This was entirely possible and yet seemed unlikely given the knowledge of who exactly was behind the closed library door. But above it all, Jonathan had to admit that knowing she might now be aware of a political turmoil to come made him apprehensive.

“What are you thinking?”

Her huskily murmured words sliced into his thoughts. He turned to her, looking down at her face glowing softly in the lamplight, and the gaze of genuine question emanating from her eyes.

He gave her a half smile and tugged at a bougainvillea leaf clinging to the white trellis on his right. “The Black Knight is here tonight, Natalie.”

He watched her eyes widen with at first stunned disbelief, then almost instantly narrow with titillating excitement. “Did you speak to him?” she asked in a rush.

He looked at the leaf between his fingers. “Yes.”

She sat forward on the bench, palms clinging to the iron seat. “And?”

He hesitated with pleasure, making her wait, enjoying the moment for all it was worth. Then he dropped the leaf, reached for the fan on her lap, tossing it on the bench to her side, and lightly grabbed her arm to help her stand, which she did without thought.

“Before we get into that, there’s something I need to know,” he said vaguely enough to cause a flicker of doubt on her brow.

A sudden cheer, then applause and commotion erupted from the ballroom beyond. Annette-Elise had arrived, the emeralds no doubt gracing her throat, and hopefully he and Natalie were the only ones missing the debut.

Jonathan glanced around. They were alone, and the timing was perfect.

“Walk with me, Natalie.” It was rather unlike a question, more of an insistence, and she really had no choice. Her mind wasn’t on him and being alone in a moonlit garden, it was on the intrigue to come. Quite an advantage for him, and he would use it, naturally.

“Are you hiding something from me, Jonathan?”

That stopped him short. “What?”

She gazed into his eyes, concentrating. “About the Black Knight. I mean”—she shook her head to clarify, lips thinned—“I know he exists. That evidence is conclusive. But he’s also a man and he must have a life besides thievery. How do you know him? Why is he here?”

Without hesitation, experience took over, and he began to walk again slowly, his arm linked with hers, frowning in remembrance exactly as he should. “I met him four years ago during a gentleman’s card game in Brussels. He was playing terribly, losing every hand, wagering more than he probably should have, and I assisted with a small loan, between Englishmen of course, before he could be called for cheating or betting what he couldn’t pay. That incident began a friendship that has endured to this day. We’re close in age and we both have the same sort of . . . wandering spirit.”

He noticed her features change. He was taking a gamble on the fact that she didn’t know the first thing about what went on during card games, but in the dimness he couldn’t tell if she was aghast or captivated. Maybe just plainly disbelieving. He carried on before she could question something more and interrupt.

“As to why he’s here tonight, I don’t know. I didn’t ask him. But he is here, and I assume for a very good reason.” With pure amusement, he leaned toward her and added, “I gave him your vague description; told him you needed his help, nothing more. And he does indeed want to meet you, and has probably laid eyes on you already.”

She was thinking intricately now, brows wrinkled minutely, mind calculating coincidences, suspicion building. The deception wouldn’t go on much longer; she was piecing together too much. But he couldn’t afford a scene between them now, not when the final act was to take place in the ballroom in less than an hour. He needed her to remain unknowing for at least one more night.

In silence, he guided her to the farthest corner of the garden, where darkness prevailed as lamplight faded, where only grass lay beyond to give way to jagged cliffs and open sea. They stood quietly for a second or two—he studying what he could see of her face, she staring intently into his darkened eyes.

“Jonathan—”

He touched her lips with his fingertips to quiet her, and he felt her physical jolt of surprise. But he didn’t remove them. Instead he glided them along the soft, full line, enjoying the stirring heat it created within him, wishing suddenly she would kiss them with her own charge of need. Instead, she reached up and seized his wrist, pulling his arm away.

“I think we should go back to the ballroom.”

She attempted to sound stern, but her quavering voice exposed the battle she was losing inside.

“This brings back memories, doesn’t it?” he pursued, lowering his tone with intensity. “Of a night long ago, of another moonlit garden, of the scent of flowers in full bloom. Of hearing your sweet voice in shadows, of the desire I witnessed in your beautiful eyes when you looked at me, of touching you—”

“Please, Jonathan, don’t do this,” she begged in aching softness. She stepped back, lowering her head and running her palm across her forehead in irritation.

“Why?” The word was almost inaudible, and yet he knew she heard it. “Why won’t you talk about that night?”

“I’m here for a reason, and it’s not about us,” she maintained anxiously. “I’m not here to be with you.”

That stung him, but he wouldn’t let it go. “You
are
with me, Natalie.”

Her head shot up, and she glared at him through blazing eyes. “Only for a short time and only because I have to be—”

“You want to be.”

“That’s not true,” she insisted, jaw tight, body stiff. “And I don’t understand how you can keep thinking this way when I’ve made it so perfectly clear that I don’t want you.”

He smiled and slowly shook his head. “There’s nothing to think about and there never has been. We’re going to be together.”

It was a statement of fact made so profoundly, so intimately, and with so much finality, she couldn’t counter it. For moments she stared into his eyes, radiating unsureness and anger, even inexplicable awe at his confidence.

“It’s not worth fighting, sweetheart,” he gently persisted. He reached up and placed his palm on her chest, his wrist touching the tops of her breasts, feeling the quick beating of her heart beneath her warm skin. She didn’t move.

“I won’t be your lover, Jonathan,” she disclosed in a thick, fervid whisper. “I can’t be. I will never stoop so low in morality and self-respect to become another one of your conquests.”

He drew a long, full breath, allowing himself to admit openly what he already knew. “You don’t have to. You are
the
conquest, Natalie.”

She faltered with that, blinking away incredulity, her features going slack, body sagging in erupting confusion.

He calmed completely, understanding himself at last and the incredible power between them that had been there since the night they met.

“It’s all right,” he whispered, running his thumb along her neck in soothing strokes. “Everything will be all right.” He reached around her with both arms and pulled her into him, lowering his mouth to hers in a soft touch of warmth. She didn’t respond at first, but he pursued, gliding his tongue along the crevice of her closed lips until she opened her mouth for him.

She put her hands against his chest in a defensive measure that allowed her to touch him, and he savored the feel, tasting her completely, tongue against hers, listening as her breathing quickened to match his, as the waves crashed against rocks in the distance, as music from the ballroom became an echo of another time.

Slowly she began kissing him back with growing surrender, knowing as he did that it was useless to resist. He ran his fingers down then up her spine until they relaxed through the ringlets of her hair at the base of her neck, feeling the softness, reeling from the scent of lavender on her skin. She was more than a fantasy, real not imagined, wanting him with vigor and loveliness she didn’t even comprehend. That was what made her more beautiful than all who were gradually fading from memory. She was a brilliant jewel shining in a lonely desert of unfulfilled dreams. At last he understood, even if she didn’t.

She moaned deliciously, barely enough for him to hear. But hear he did, and he knew instinctively she was losing herself to the moment. From his own engulfing need he could wait no longer to caress her as he’d longed to do seemingly for ages. He brought his hand down, grazing his fingertips over her satiny neck and chest to run his knuckles lightly along the tops of her breasts, across warm, sensitive skin, aching for his attention as she pushed them into him. His hand closed over her fully then, his palm and fingers lightly massaging her through the bodice of her gown, his thumb flicking across her nipple until he felt it harden for him through thin fabric. This was the torture—the wait, the longing, the beginning vision of the rapture yet to come. For both of them.