Charmed and Dangerous (20 page)

“I am.”

“Oh, good.”

It fell from her shoulders. Laura looked at him with wide passion-blurred eyes, and then pulled her shift up and off, standing naked in front of the fire. Her slender curves showed all the allure that was usually hidden. Her gaze seemed to dare him. Responding, he shed his own clothes and faced her, feeling at once taunting and tender.

She blinked and breathed, “Oh.”

“Do I match your studies?” he asked hoarsely.

“You are all golden.”

“Some parts are hard as metal,” he acknowledged and stepped forward to sweep her up and into bed.

Once again he coaxed from her the passion he had recognized in the beginning. Once again, their bodies fell into an inevitable rhythm with each other, and desire rose unspoken. There was no place for thought or reason, no chance of hesitation. She touched him and he almost cried out.

“Not cold as metal though,” she whispered.

He couldn't speak. He couldn't wait. He had to have her now. It was all he could do to hold back until she moaned in release. And then he let go and allowed the sensations to crash through him like a storm battering jagged cliffs. The pleasure was so intense it made him shudder. It rebounded from every part of him and left him utterly spent. He was so shaken he was afraid to collapse on her, afraid he would crush her with his weight. With his last strength, he turned, holding her close and pulling her onto his chest. He came to rest on his back, pulse hammering, breath ragged, and waited for the world to return from the whirlwind.

Minutes passed unheeded. Slowly, his heart resumed its normal beat. His muscles regained some resilience. He was aware of his surroundings again. The rain was heavier; droplets strayed down the chimney to hiss in the fire.

Laura's head rested in the vicinity of his collarbone. Her legs straddled him. One of her hands cupped his shoulder. Gavin's earlier qualms came rushing back. He hadn't meant to do this. Uneasy, he cleared his throat.

Laura pushed up on her hands and looked down at him, her black hair falling around them. “You're very good at this, aren't you?” she said.

He blinked.

“I heard some Frenchwomen talking about you once. They said you were ‘a poet of the bedchamber.'”

“I beg your pardon?” Gavin hastily searched his memory for Frenchwomen and came up with none. “I assure you that I have not…”

“And now I know what they mean.” She smiled down at him.

She sounded like a scholar pleased at some new bit of learning, he thought. And she looked rather like the cat who had managed to unlatch the canary's cage. She was an incomprehensible woman.

“I wish we could stay here forever,” she said, looking around the shabby house with far more fondness than the furnishings deserved.

This was more what he had expected. Gavin cleared his throat again. “Ah. I realize that my behavior has gone beyond the bounds of propriety.”

Laura turned to look down at him again. She appeared astonished.

“The situation was irregular,” he continued. “Though I do not mean that it excuses—”

“You didn't seduce me,” interrupted Laura bluntly. She straightened, pushing her raven hair back behind her pale shoulders. “Please don't begin talking of proprieties and convention and reputations. As far as I am concerned, they have nothing to do with me.”

Gavin found himself speechless.

She moved to kneel beside him on the bed. “I will be going back to England to find a new post when we escape, as I had always planned to do.” She got up and went to put on her shift. “There is nothing else to discuss,” she finished. “Are you hungry? If only we had some tea.”

She continued to dress as Gavin stared at her. After a while, his only option seemed to be to follow suit.

“Bacon,” she said, looking through their stores. “Just the thing.”

Gavin spent the afternoon walking the bounds of the island, climbing over stone and sand, searching the seas for a sail. The rain had stopped at last, and the clouds were beginning to break up. He could see for miles across the water, all of them empty. Accompanied by seabirds and, for a while, goats, he walked.

As he moved, he tried to formulate plans for escape. But he had difficulty concentrating. He was suffering the restlessness of a man who has gotten what he wanted.

He put it down to frustration. He had to get to the mainland, and he couldn't. But what he kept thinking was: Laura wanted no declarations, no promises. She expected nothing from him. She was going back to England and taking up her life as if they'd never met.

He would be able to go his way, free of entanglements, just as he had wished, just as he had always done. She would become just another of the pleasant interludes in the long series of them that punctuated his career. He would leave her behind and go on with his work, venturing into new places, facing new dangers. All was well.

Why, then, did he feel unsatisfied with this resolution?

Her behavior made no sense, he told himself resentfully. She wasn't like the other women he'd known. She'd apparently been as isolated as a nun for years. She had no experience in dalliance. She should not be acting as she was.

Gavin kicked a stone out of his path. She ought to be railing about her shattered honor, insisting that he offer marriage, weeping at the cruel advantage he had taken of her innocence.

His lip curled in distaste at the picture. If she had been… But that wasn't the point. It was the way she
ought
to be reacting. He had been braced to deal with that. He had been readying responses. Damn it, he had wanted to comfort her, to show his nobility. Indeed, it almost seemed to Gavin now—when the question was moot—that he had
meant
to propose to her. It would have been damned inconvenient, of course, really an imposition. He had no interest in marriage, no place for it in his life. But he had been ready to make the sacrifice. He had known his duty. He had some respect for the conventions that supported society—unlike the maddening, incomprehensible woman who waited back at their prison.

Rounding a point of land, he pushed a straggling shrub savagely out of his way. She had dismissed the civilized proprieties with a snap of her fingers, he thought. It was…unnatural. All that reading she'd spoken of must have turned her brain.

The thought of her reading roused a memory of the morning. Gavin smiled reminiscently and felt his body respond to the images thus evoked. He imagined her in an empty library turning the pages of some scandalous portfolio and absorbing the images with wide-eyed curiosity. He almost laughed aloud. Surely there was no other woman like her in the world, he thought.

An odd regret came with the idea. Back in England, she would vanish into the mass of people there, and he would hear no more of her. He would miss those moments of amazement at her remarks and reactions. And, of course, he would never touch her again.

Gavin stopped, feeling momentarily breathless. The terrain was rougher than he'd realized, he thought. He'd been climbing too fast. He put a foot up on a rock ledge and leaned an elbow on his knee.

Separation was inevitable, he reminded himself. He worked alone. And the places he went were wild and brutal. After being exiled, practically disowned by his family, he'd learned to be independent—and he'd learned to love it. He loved the freedom, the risk, and the sense of achievement when he triumphed over great odds. He wasn't giving up any of that.

Gavin started walking again. Of course he wasn't. There was no question about it. What was he thinking? Laura's attitude was a profound relief. He was grateful for the lack of complication. He was extremely fortunate, in fact, considering that he had violated his own code by becoming involved with her. Everything was going very well.

Except for their imprisonment on this lump of rock, he added silently. Rounding the last bend and seeing the sagging dock ahead, Gavin turned all his considerable intellect to the question of escape.

* * *

“I have an idea,” said Laura when he returned to the house.

“Do you?” Gavin's own lack of viable ideas for escape had put him in a foul mood that had lasted now for hours.

“Yes. The native tribes of North America sent signals with smoke. They can be seen from a great distance, I understand.”

Once again, he was taken aback by the sheer unpredictability of her thought processes.

She gazed back at him, waiting.

“Is this something you found in a book?” he asked.

“Yes. They use green wood, I believe, and—”

“How in God's name did you come to read such a thing?”

“You can become very, very bored in ten years. You would be surprised at the volumes I waded through.”

“I already have been,” he murmured.

She flushed a little, but showed no other awareness of his insinuation. “The smoke might be visible from the mainland. And someone would come to investigate, don't you think?”

“Why should they? A column of smoke—”

“Not a column. The tribes make it into a code. They cover the fire with blankets and then remove them to make a pattern of…clouds.”

Gavin frowned. “We don't know the code, nor does anyone hereabouts.”

“Of course not. But such an unusual phenomenon would cause curiosity. They would come to see the source.”

“Possibly.” He looked for flaws in the idea.

“I would think certainly. Besides, what other way do we have to send a signal?”

Gavin had an overwhelming desire to present a stunning counterplan. Unfortunately, he had not thought of one. “Perhaps we could try it,” he conceded.

“You gather some green branches. I'll get the blanket.”

“We have only one blanket,” he objected. “And it will end up covered with soot.”

“True,” she said, pulling the gray wool from the bed and bundling it in her arms.

Her calm competence was beginning to annoy him. “I suppose we will find other ways to keep warm,” he taunted, and he was obscurely gratified to see her flush a deeper red.

She didn't look at him, however. She had been avoiding his eyes since he returned to the house. Gavin needed her to look at him. “You are very eager to flee,” he said.

This brought the desired result. Wide green eyes focused on him. “It is vital that we communicate with the authorities.”

He searched her face for more than this. It was unreadable.

“Just yesterday, you were railing about the need to escape,” she pointed out.

Her logic infuriated him. “Let us go and ruin our only blanket,” he said, striding out into the cool air.

After a moment, he heard her footsteps on the path behind him.

“It's no good trying this now,” Gavin said when they stood on one of the headlands beside a pile of logs and branches. “There are too many clouds.”

Laura nodded. “The smoke wouldn't be noticed among them.”

“We will have to wait for a clear day,” he said, scanning the sky and for some reason feeling gratified.

Picking up the blanket, she turned and started back down the path toward the house. Gavin remained behind, looking out over the empty sea. It was rather a good idea, he acknowledged to himself. An obvious pattern of smoke might well attract a passing ship or a local fisherman. It would be far more noticeable than a beacon fire, which he had already determined to light. They might have a real chance to escape.

Wondering why he didn't feel more elated by this development, he followed Laura down the hill. The winter day was waning, and the wind was chill. He started walking faster.

Laura had done what no other woman in the world could do, an insistent inner voice argued. She had discovered Michael, courageously endured an abduction, and now she had formulated a possible escape plan. And through all this, she had not let…personal concerns interfere. He could not have asked more of Hasan or any colleague, the voice pointed out.

It was all luck, he retorted silently. She didn't really know what she was doing. But his own inner honesty forced him to concede that many times, she certainly seemed as if she did.

* * *

Laura placed another log on the hearth and straightened. She listened for Gavin's footsteps outside, but heard nothing. Perhaps he was still on the headland, wishing for a ship. Part of her longed for his return, while another part hoped he would stay away a while and leave her some tranquillity.

Too much had happened in too short a time, she thought. It was difficult to adjust. But that wasn't really the problem, and she knew it. The thing that was making her hands tremble and her heart ache was the memory of Gavin's expression when she'd awakened this morning. Still fogged with sleep, she had seen him sitting in the chair, and when he met her eyes he looked as if she were a burden that had been forced upon him, which he was trying to find a way to shed. He couldn't hide it from her. It had been clear in the lines of his body, which spoke to her more eloquently than words. He was regretting the night that had seemed magical to her. He was wishing for escape from more than this small island. Was he also wishing for Sophie Krelov?

Even when he touched her, making her forget everything in the world but him, that knowledge lingered in the background, waiting. It made her heartsick. It made her furious. Lying in his embrace later, she had remembered a conversation she once overheard at Leith House. A friend of the countess's was rejoicing in her daughter's luck. The young woman had been forced by circumstances into a compromising situation with one of the greatest catches of the season. The young man had done the honorable thing—even though nothing had really occurred—and offered marriage. They had accepted, and the mother was exulting over the brilliance of the match. Despicable, thought Laura. And Gavin had expected something similar from her.

Yanking the wooden bucket from the floor, she went out to the spring to fill it. How could he think that of her? Had he seen so little in the time they had been together? Couldn't he feel when they touched…? She stumbled, and water splashed out of the bucket onto her skirts. She hauled it inside and set it down by the fire. At least she had shown him his mistake, she thought with grim satisfaction. He would have nothing to reproach her with. She had behaved like a creature that no one believed existed—a woman of honor.

Holding her wet skirts out to the flames to dry, Laura swallowed tears. She hoped pride in that accomplishment would sustain her when she was once again in a dreary schoolroom.

The door opened, and Gavin walked in. At once, every fiber of her body was aware of him.

“The smoke really was a good idea,” he said carefully. “I think it may well work.” He nodded in acknowledgment.

Something twisted in Laura's chest. She loved him. More than she had ever loved anyone—or ever would again, she realized. The enormity of the knowledge made her sway on her feet.

“Are you all right?” He took a step toward her.

“Of course.” She turned her attention back to her wet skirts, afraid to meet his eyes. “I am afraid there's only cheese, bacon, and ship's biscuit for dinner. That is all they left us.”

He didn't answer.

Daring a glance, Laura found him watching her as if he sensed her turmoil. He was so handsome, she thought—antique gold and bronze and formed like an ancient Greek statue. But even more, he was so intelligently aware, so compelling, and aligned with her in some subterranean way that she didn't understand. It beat in her as steadily as her heart.

She couldn't have helped falling in love with him, she realized, any more than she could help breathing. She might know it was a mistake. She might despair of the result. But she couldn't have stopped it. From the moment they met and danced together so naturally, the outcome had been inevitable. She had met her match, Laura thought a bit wryly. In more ways than one.

“Did you fall?” he asked, as if still trying to interpret her expression.

“No, the bucket spilled.” She gave her skirts a final shake and prepared to turn and face him.

“You should have waited. I would have gotten water.”

“I'm perfectly able to do so. I was clumsy, that's all.” She turned, and found him watching her. He was everything she wanted, Laura thought. But he didn't wish to be burdened by love. They had these days together, and then it was finished. She would take full advantage of the time, she decided. She would have at least that memory for the rest of her life.

“Sit down,” he commanded. “I can cut cheese.”

She took the chair and let him examine their stores of food. “Have you really eaten sheep's eyes?”

“What?”

“The general said you had.”

“Pryor? Why would he say such a thing?” He unwrapped the block of cheese and began slicing off pieces.

“Actually, I believe he said you were the sort of person who
would
eat sheep's eyes, if it was necessary to make an alliance.”

“Fortunately, the matter has never come up.” He laid the slices out on a tin plate.

“Too bad. I wondered how they tasted.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I suppose I could catch a goat for you. They are quite similar to sheep.”

“No, thank you,” she responded hastily.

He looked at her as if still sensing something unusual. “Why this sudden curiosity?”

Laura wondered if he could feel a change in her now that she had realized the truth. Did it show in the way she sat, the angle of her head? “I am always curious. I've always wanted to travel and see how other peoples live.”

He gestured with the knife, which he was preparing to use on the ship's biscuit. “Well, you are traveling now. What do you think?”

She was surprised into a laugh. “This isn't precisely what I had in mind.”