Hearts Beguiled (20 page)

"
G
et that bloody ass out of my yard! He's eating my roses, the bloody greedy-gut!"

Gabrielle moaned and pulled the pillow over her head.

A tormented scream filled the room—the sound of a damned soul getting its first lick of hcllfire. Gabrielle sat up with a start, pushing a tangled curtain of golden-red curls out of her eyes. The scream turned into a bawl and was soon drowned out by a man's angry bellows. "Out! Get him out!"

Gabrielle started to get out of bed, then fell back against the pillows with a groan. Her body felt like a wine grape at harvest time, pummeled and .trampled into liquid mush. She looked up with blurry eyes at a garish purple canopy, and for a moment had no idea where she was or what she was doing there. Then memories of the night filled her mind, overwhelming her with a tidal wave of happiness.

Max. His name was a hosanna in her heart. She ran her hands down her body, over her breasts, across her hips, but it was a stranger's skin she felt; a stranger's blood pumped through her veins. His touch had branded her flesh. She no longer belonged to herself; she was his now. She sat up and looked around her with wonder. Sunlight filled the room, brighter than sunlight had a right to be. The morning air was too soft to bear. She breathed and his love gave her life. Max, my lover, my husband, she thought. My joy.

The source of her joy, however, was not in her bed, nor even in the room. Before she could start to wonder where he was, another loud, throaty bray assaulted her eardrums. She eased her legs over the side of the bed and, getting up with a slow stretch, hobbled over to the window. She had to see what poor beast or soul was being tortured on such a bright, wonderful, beautiful morning.

She peeked out the jalousie shutters into the yard, where a youth was pulling at the head of a gray donkey while the innkeeper shouted and danced around them, swatting at the donkey's bald rump with a flat stick. The donkey seemed oblivious to the turmoil he was causing. He stood unmoving, feet spread wide, one ear up and one down, pink rose petals trickling from his grinning mouth.

Gabrielle started to giggle. Soon her rich, throaty laughter filled the room. "Max!" she sang out loud. She whirled away from the window, hugging herself, letting the happiness flood her whole being. "Max, Max, Max," she sang as she twirled, louder and faster, "Max, Max—"

She stopped, suddenly self-conscious. What if he had come in just now and caught her dancing naked around the room and shouting his name like a demented hen-hussy? He'd wonder what had ever possessed him to wed such an idiot. Where was he, anyway?

She looked around the room, searching for something of his that was proof he was coming back. There was clothing scattered all over the floor; it was all hers.

With a hand that trembled, she picked up the chemise at her feet. It had been torn in two. She remembered the look on his face in the moment before he had ripped away this last barrier that stood between him and his final possession of her body. She had seen passion and hunger blazing from his eyes, but had there been love?

She thought of the story Max had told her about his father bedding a reluctant virgin through trickery. Had that merely been a slice of his past shared with her after the intimacy of lovemaking? Or had it been some sort of a confession? Surely Max couldn't have arranged for the aerostat to start leaking right over this particular village, her heart protested. Of course he could have, her mind answered. But fat Father Benoit with his funny nose, surely he's a genuine priest, her heart insisted. He could be anyone, her mind scoffed. Max loves me, her heart proclaimed. He wanted you, her mind jeered, and now he's had you, so what's to keep him around?

"No!" she cried, burying her face in the torn chemise. It smelled of him, tangy and musky, and she was utterly convinced now that he was gone. People she loved were always leaving her.

Her head flung up at the scrape of a step in the hall. The door opened and Max entered the room. He stopped just inside, pausing to look at her before shutting the door with his heel. She drank in the sight of his beloved face, and her heart plummeted, for his eyes were flat and cold, like gunmetal, and his mouth was pulled taut into a disapproving frown.

He took a step toward her, then another, and Gabrielle backed up until she was pressed into the window. Her muscles tensed, preparing to carry her up and over the bed, when he reached out and enveloped her in his arms . . . and at his first touch she knew she had indeed been behaving like a foolish, fearful child.

"You're shivering, ma mie," he said gently. "What are you doing up and about and looking so gloriously naked?"

She laughed, too loudly, feeling relieved and nervous and shy. "I'm in a sad state of deshabille this morning, monsieur. It seems you spent all of yesterday ripping the clothes from my back piece by piece. I've little but rags left."

He smiled down at her. "I'll buy you an armoire full of things as soon as we get back to Paris. I'll dress you like a queen, and Marie Antoinette will turn green as a spring apple with envy."

It was his first smile of the day and its gentleness warmed her. She pressed her face against his chest and burrowed deeper into his arms. How solid he felt, how strong. "You make rash promises, my husband. There'll come a day, and soon I'll wager, when you'll be scolding me for spending all your money on feminine fripperies."

He pushed her hair off her neck and began to nibble at the tender spot below her jaw. A spasm of pure pleasure shot through her clear down to her toes.

"Now that I think on it," he said, his breath caressing her tingling skin. "I should keep you just the way you are at this moment." He ran his hands down her bare flanks to cup her buttocks, pulling her against him so that she could feel his arousal. "Gowns and corsets and other such nonsense would only get in my way—"

An agonized wail blasted through the window. Max's head jerked back and his arms tightened around her. "Good Lord, what is that awful racket? It sounds as if someone's trying to tie a cat into knots."

Laughter spilled out of Gabrielle. She bracketed his face with her palms and pulled his mouth down within reach of her lips. "It's a donkey. He's eating roses for breakfast."

"Lucky donkey," he said, a smile in his voice.

His lips molded with hers, feeling so warm and firm, so right. He fell backward onto the ravaged bed, bringing her down with him and rolling over so that she was pressed into the piles of rumpled, tangled bedclothes. He pulled back to look at her, tracing her face with his fingertips—eyes, nose, lips, down the column of her neck to her right breast. He flattened it with his hand, rubbing the nipple into an almost painful tautness.

"And lucky me," he said, before his mouth descended to claim hers once again.

❧

They had a very late breakfast of coffee and mignonettes in the taproom. The innkeeper had just cleared away the plates when Father Benoit entered, sneezing and rubbing his nose, and carrying a large, moldy black book with a pen and ink pot balanced carefully on top.

He squeezed his bulk down on the bench next to Max, opposite Gabrielle. "Good morning, my children!" he exclaimed in his booming voice. "I hope you haven't forgotten about signing the register. And we must fill out the proper documents. The intendant for these parts is very strict. Also there are, er"—he cast an apologetic eye at Max—"certain fees to be collected." He chuckled as he dipped the tip of the quill into the ink. "God, I assure you, Monsieur de Saint-Just, is more than satisfied with your generosity, but now Caesar must be rendered his due, eh?" He opened the thick black book and, pen poised, fixed Gabrielle with a stern gaze. "Name!" he barked.

"Gabrielle Prion," Max answered for her. She could feel bis eyes carefully watching her. He loved her, she knew, but after last night he trusted her not at all. And who could blame him—for she had told him nothing. She had cried and he had held her, and then they had made love. But she hadn't told him the reason for her tears, and he had not risked his pride by asking her again.

Would the marriage be valid, she now wondered, if she used a false name?

"Actually, Prion is not. . . that is to say, my given name is Gabrielle Marie Vauclair," she said to the priest, although she watched Max as carefully as he had watched her. If the name meant anything to him, he didn't show it, and she breathed an internal sigh of relief. Perhaps he hadn't even been in Paris that year she had scandalized society by eloping with the son of the duc de Nevers. But then she hadn't given the telltale "de" with herlast name, which would have marked her as the daughter of a gentleman. The "de"—that coveted badge of nobility that had been throughout Gabrielle's life more of a curse than a blessing.

The priest, certainly, was satisfied with her answer. He printed it out laboriously in his black book and on various documents. She and Max both signed their names numerous times, and then Max counted out another twenty-five livres to cover the fees and bribes which would be needed to smooth over the recording of such a hasty marriage.

They left Chenaie-sur-Seine soon afterward, taking the Paris road. The sun was a hot, white ball high in the sky, and their bare feet stirred up puffs of dust behind them. Since the curd had intruded on their breakfast with his black book, Max had said not one word to her beyond the polite necessities. Now Gabrielle wondered if he intended for them to walk all the way back to Paris. Perhaps between them, the innkeeper and Father Benoit had cleaned out Max's purse, leaving him no money with which to rent a cart or carriage. She wondered, but she didn't dare ask anything of this distant stranger who now walked in silence beside her.

About two miles outside the village, Max stopped at the top of a rise. It was not too far from the field where they had been dumped from the aerostat the day before, and in fact she could see part of the vividly striped envelope through the stand of pines that had been their undoing.

Max turned off the road and went to throw himself down beneath the shade of a lone, leafy oak tree. Gabrielle stood where she was, staring after him with exasperation. They would never make it back to Paris if he stopped like this to rest every few feet.

"Max, why are you sitting under that tree?" she demanded.

"Because it's much cooler here than standing out on that hot, dusty road. Why don't you join me?"

She took several steps toward him then stopped at the edge of the shade. There was no mistaking the meaning of that particular gleam in his eye. "There are men over there working in the fields," she said, pointing behind him.

He gave her a slow, lazy smile. "What of it?"

"They'll be able to see us, Max. Making love out in the wide open like a pair of . . . of . . ." She stopped, unable to go on as the blood rushed to her already flushed cheeks.

He threw back his head in laughter. The sunlight glinted off his white teeth and burnished his dark hair to a rich walnut color, and the sight of him did something funny to her chest.

"Gabrielle, Gabrielle, for shame, you lusty wench," he taunted, his laughter winding down. "Are you asking for your love alfresco this time? Your daring astonishes me. Not to mention your energy."

She sucked in an indignant breath. "I wasn't asking—"

"You were hinting."

"I was not! You were the one who was leering at me with that look you get."

He screwed his face into what he evidently thought was the picture of cherubic innocence. "What look?"

She bit back a giggle. "You know the look I mean."

His features metamorphosed suddenly into those of a lunatic rapist overcome with lust, and he lunged to his feet. Gabrielle shrieked and whirled around, but not fast enough, for he was on her in two strides.

Laughing, he seized her around the waist and lifted her, whirling her around and around until tree and sky and field blended into a stream of color. When he put her down on her feet she had to clutch his arm to keep from falling while the world went on spinning dizzily.

He laced his hands in the small of her back and pressed her tightly against him. "Come sit beside me, my sweet seductress," he whispered, in that silky way of talking that turned her muscles to mush.

"You are the seducer," she protested, knowing he was doing it to her even now.

He brushed his lips lightly over her ear. "Only because I find you so completely irresistible. But I promise to control my lecherous inclinations, if you'll control yours. I would remind you, Gabrielle," he pointed out with affronted indignation, "that there are men working right over there in the fields."

She surrendered, laughing and leaning into him, luxuriating in the feel of his strong arms holding her. It was rather hot and dusty out on the road. She let him lead her beneath the tree and settled beside him within the crook of his arm.

He began to toy with her hair, brushing a curl back and forth across her cheek. It tickled a little, but pleasantly. His chest was warm and solid beneath her back, and she could feel the steady beat of his heart. She stretched her legs out straight in front of her. One of her thighs pressed against his and she felt him tense, his breathing quicken. Secretly she was pleased with this power she had to make him want her.

Smiling happily, she wriggled her toes. Already her feet were bruised and covered with dust. "How far away are we from Paris, do you think?" she asked.

"Four, maybe five hours' ride by coach," he answered. His thumb began to stroke the cord of muscle in her neck. Slowly down to her shoulder, slowly up to her ear. Down, then up, down, up . . .

Gabrielle's stomach muscles started fluttering and her heart beat faster. "Then why ..." She stopped, forgetting what she had been about to say. His arm had shifted. It was draped over the top of her shoulder now, his hand dangling near her breast, though not touching it. She sucked in a deep breath and her breast rose up. Her nipple, visibly hard beneath the material of her bodice, brushed against his curled knuckles.

She took another, deeper breath. And then another. "Why have we stopped so soon?" she asked. She trembled, and her hand, which had been resting in her lap, sort of accidentally drifted onto his thigh. "It'll take us weeks to walk to Paris at this rate."

The muscle of his thigh hardened and she felt his heart do a funny stutter step. "Silly goose," he said, his voice slightly rough. "I've no intention of walking to Paris."

He turned his head and began to plant gentle kisses along the side of her face. His fingers inched beneath her bodice, easily finding the bare flesh of her breast, with no corset or chemise to hinder him.

"But then how . . . Oh, Max, don't ... I can't think when you ..." Gabrielle's senses began to whirl, as if she were again being spun around and around—

A loud bray echoed across the fields and Gabrielle pulled away from Max with a guilty start. The mangy gray donkey with a taste for horticultural products strolled right past them on the road, driven by a youth who grinned and hooted at them, making a suggestive gesture with his fist. The donkey, Gabrielle saw, had a rosebud tucked into his halter, and the drooping petals couldn't have been any pinker than the flush of embarrassment that stained her cheeks.

She felt the rumble of Max's laughter against her back. She turned to face him, shaking a wifely finger under his nose. "Maximilien de Saint-Just, this is all your fault. You promised you would behave yourself."

"I lied."

"You are devious, shameless, truly diabolical—"

"And wicked," he added helpfully.

"Most definitely wicked." She tried to glare at him, but her mouth betrayed her, dancing up into a smile. "But you make love like an angel."

"Angels are celibate creatures, ma mie. "