Soldier of Fortune: A Gideon Quinn Adventure (Fortune Chronicles Book 1) (17 page)

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-N
INE

IN THE OVER-WARM
, over-decorated bedroom, Gideon stared at Celia and wondered — if they’d never met, if Commander Radesh had sent some other company to exfiltrate Rand’s wife — how different would his life have been?

Because if Gideon hadn’t been the one to recover Celia back in the day, Celia would not have developed an unhealthy obsession for Gideon (a term that seemed over the top until Gideon remembered he was tied to a chair in the woman’s bedroom).

And if Celia had not developed an unhealthy obsession with Gideon, Celia’s husband would never have become jealous, never been driven to revenge, never have murdered half Gideon’s company or framed him for treason.  

Gideon would never have sent Dani away, those six years in the Barrens wouldn’t have happened and he most certainly would not be tied to a chair in a silk-papered room filled with antiquities that probably cost enough to feed a company — no, make that a regiment — for a full fourteen months.

He also wouldn’t be half-starved, all-the-way beaten, dizzy from the scent of Celia’s perfume and yearning to let his hands roam that sumptuous body, tangle in the arrow-straight hair, shred the teasing excuse for a dress.

“Gideon,” she murmured from her languid repose, “you’re staring.”

“What can I say,” he managed an indolent shrug, “seven years haven’t made you less of a walking heart attack.”  

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she shifted so the gown rippled to yet more revealing effect.

“Don’t,” he said. “Really. Don’t.”

At that, he thought he saw the flash of hurt again, but it was so quickly replaced by predatory amusement he might have imagined it.

“Do you know why I find you so fascinating?” she asked now, running a hand up one of those amazing legs, then continued before he could kick his misfiring synapses into answering. “Because you’re the only one who’s ever said no. Men, women — every single one of my assets — they all fell for my charms. Willingly. Happily. Every one of them.

“Until you.”

Which was — wrong.

Not that he didn’t believe her claims to conquest. He pretty much hated Celia’s silk-wrapped guts but he still wanted her.

No, what was wrong was the other bit, the thing about the, “Assets,” he repeated. “As in…“ Somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to say the rest.

“As in,” she agreed. Idly, she set the glass on the long low table in front of the chaise, exchanging it for one of the knickknacks littering its surface.

It was, he noted distantly, a music box. One she wound now, so when she set it back in its place, it began to play.

“I’ve always loved this piece,” she told him, taking up the goblet and unfolding herself from the chaise.

As he watched, still uncertain she really was what she was telling him she was, Celia began to dance, rising lightly on her bare feet, extending a leg here, an arm there — a living ode to grace — before spinning her way across the room with such ease, not a drop of the deep red liqueur spilled from the glass.

Gideon was near to breathless by the time she spun to a stop in front of him. And then her gown’s one, lonely strap lost the battle to hold on, slipping over the smooth terrain of her shoulder and suddenly there was a great deal more of Celia to see.

In that moment Gideon was sure every bit of blood rushed out of his brain. Even the struggle to free his hands, so constant as to be habitual by now, came to a sudden halt as his body reminded him in no uncertain terms that six years is a long, long time to live in a desert — of any sort.

“Do you like it?” she asked, and though he didn’t for a second know if she meant the music, the dance or her current dishabille he felt his head dropping in a single, truncated nod.

“Do you know,” she asked, sliding her skirt aside with one hand so she could straddle the lap she’d so recently deserted, “where this music came from?”

It was a moment before he realized she was waiting for a response.

It was a struggle, but he managed a strangled sounding, “No.”

“It’s very old,” she told him, seemingly pleased by his difficulties. “
Was
old even when our ancestors left Earth.” She slid one arm behind his neck. “It was part of a ballet. That’s the dance I just performed for you,” she explained, bringing the goblet to his lips and tipping the glass and he, entranced and entrapped, drank from it.

“This particular music is a movement from a ballet called Swan Lake. The Black Swan Pas de Deus, it’s called.” She lowered the glass, now barely half-full.

He licked the traces of liqueur from his lips, which felt suddenly hot. “It was stunning,” he said, then flushed at the naked admiration in that statement.

She smiled. “I know.”

And then she let the goblet tip and fall to the floor, where the remaining liqueur spread over the carpet, pooling around the goblet like berry-scented blood, and wrapped her free arm around him as well, so that she might pull herself closer — close enough he could feel the contours of her flesh even through his clothing — and pressed her lips to his throat, his jaw, that small secret place behind his ear.

His hands strained again, desperate to touch, to take…

“Do you want to know the name of the black swan?” she asked.

He wanted to tear the rest of that dress off.  “… Yes…”

“Her name,” Celia said, her voice little more than a breath in his ear, “is Odile.”

Which was when Gideon finally realized that he’d been wrong.

Well, no, not entirely wrong.

It was, after all, Celia’s husband who’d framed Gideon for treason, and Rand who had ordered the Kodiak to fire on Gideon’s company, killing five soldiers and sending a sixth into slavery.

Rand who had, in his wide swath of collateral damage, ruined John Pitte’s career, and Gideon firmly believed there should be a reckoning for that.

All of it.

But there was, it appeared, more to the story.

There was Celia.

Celia, who’d pursued him both then and now.

Celia with her mercenaries and assassins and assets.

Celia, with her other name.

“Odile,” he said at last, that other name falling numbly from his lips. Odile, the spy inside Corps Command, the one whose existence might never have been suspected if Gideon hadn’t captured a courier so many years ago. “
You
were Odile?”

“I never thanked you properly for taking the fall on my behalf,” she said, either unaware or uncaring of his reaction to her.

“Untie these ropes,” he suggested. “We’ll work something out.”

“I don’t think so,” she undid another button — two more and she’d have the shirt off, “but maybe, before it’s all finished, I’ll have the chance to make it up to you.” As if to prove her good intentions, she pressed herself to him and there was enough exposed flesh involved in that contact to send Gideon’s entire system into overdrive.

“Stop,” he said through teeth clenched as tightly against Celia’s attentions as they’d been against Rey’s when she was venting her anger on his body.

“You don’t really want me to stop,” Celia murmured. “Do you?”

“Yes,”
he hissed, hating that he was lying — and hating  more that she knew it.

It was in that moment, when fury and desire declared war on each other, that the chair’s finely carved slats —  through which the rope holding Gideon in place was threaded —  snapped.

So did Gideon.

He saw her realize what had gone wrong but it was too late. He’d surged out of the chair before she could even draw a breath to scream. His momentum shoved her up and back, landing on the floor so hard what little air she’d taken came out in a pained gasp.

He didn’t have his hands  — the original binding still held —  but he was bigger than her, stronger than her and he was sure as the First Landing madder than her, so when she fell, he followed, setting one knee over her throat and pressing so there was only a thin trickle of air between Celia and the death of a swan.

It was tempting, so very tempting, to remain where he was.

To end it.

To end her.

Except for the unfortunate truth — one Gideon, even half-mad with rage, could recognize — that the only thing Celia’s death would end was his freedom.

And her
, he reminded himself.

Again, tempting.

But not
quite
tempting enough.

He removed the knee and sank back on his heels and it was a good thing he did because as the hot fuel of rage receded, so too went the energy that had shot him from the chair in the first place.

“Thank you,” Celia whispered hoarsely, drawing his attention to the bruise blossoming over her pale, pale throat.

“I’m not the murderer in this room,” he said, with some difficulty. He must be more exhausted than he’d thought. Either that or—

“Not yet,” she said, interrupting his train of thought.

“I— what?”  
Keepers
but he was tired of a sudden. And the dizziness from earlier, the dizziness he’d attributed to lust, seemed to have increased.

From where her body pressed against his thigh, he could feel her quiver. A hazy glimpse of her face told him her trembles weren’t from fear.

She was laughing.

Silently…

helplessly…

laughing.

What,
he wanted to ask,
is so damned funny?

But words failed — mostly because his tongue wasn’t willing to move.

And then there were the shadows spilling over the edges of his vision, much as the liqueur had spilled over the carpet.

The liqueur, he thought, looking to the fallen goblet and remembering that, though Celia had partaken of the first glass, she hadn’t touched a drop of the second.

Hells
, he thought as he tipped over, a lumpen imitation of the prone goblet.

“Poor Gideon,” he heard her say as the Morph she’d put in the liqueur dragged him the rest of the way down. “Still unable to see the spy for the swans.”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY

JESSUP WOKE QUITE
suddenly, momentarily uncertain of his surroundings, but with wakefulness came the realization he was in his study. He’d apparently dropped off in his favorite chair after seeing Killian Del — last of the guests to depart — to his carriage.

He’d meant to turn into his office, to see if there were any teleph messages waiting from the operatives he had looking for Quinn but at Celia’s suggestion, joined her for a nightcap in the study. Jessup couldn’t decline without an explanation, and he’d not yet told her of Quinn’s release. She would have to know eventually but not yet.

Not just yet.

So he’d joined his wife for a drink and she’d entertained him with her stinging observations of their various and sundry guests. Except Jessup must have been much more tired than he’d thought, for he’d fallen asleep.

Tired
, his querying mind prodded,
or old
?

Too old for the vibrant woman he’d married —
the woman he’d killed for —
and she’d left him there, snoring in his favorite chair.

Alone.

Unbidden, his fingers stroked over the chair’s leather arm, taking comfort in its battered familiarity

This chair had, after all, been through many a change with Jessup, following him from post to post, all way back to the Corps Academy. He often boasted he could trace his career in the various dings, stains and scuffs that marked the oak-tanned aurochs-hide, from the wine-stain of graduation day to the nick from an Adidan’s sword in Allianz, when Jessup’s regiment was forced to  evacuate. And when the Colonies retook Allianz, the chair was waiting in his office, exactly where he’d left it.

That was the same post where Celia missed the evacuating airship, leading to the 12
th
Company being sent to extract her. This in turn led to Gideon Quinn setting eyes on Celia and that had led to a cycle of violence and treachery which Jessup had struggled nearly seven years to forget.

On the arm of the chair, Jessup’s hand clenched in a fist.

“Darling?”

He looked up to see Celia entering the room. Her gown, a miracle of silk in her accustomed red, was held casually over one shoulder by a slender twist which, to his sleep-addled mind, looked like more like a wound than fabric.

“I fell asleep,” he said, struggling towards wakefulness.

“I know.” She crossed the room, her movements sinuous beneath the sleek fabric of her dress, her voice husky — though from exhaustion or desire he could not say. “I didn’t have the heart to wake you, but then I got lonely.” 

Desire, then.

She held out a hand and he, smitten as ever, took it, rising sluggishly from his chair to follow her —  an old dog on a young woman’s leash — out of the study.

At the base of the stairs he paused. He’d been worried about something, had he not?

Quinn, he recalled. He’d been wanting to check on news of Gideon Quinn. “Should have dealt with him the first time,” he murmured.

“Dealt with who?” A step above, Celia looked at him. One hand gathered her gown aside to reveal a length of leg. “Jess?”

“What?” He shook his head and forced himself to focus on his wife. “Nothing - just an old annoyance. Nothing that can’t wait until morning.”

“Good,” she started up the stairs again. “Because I will be wanting all of your attention.” Looking over her left, bare, shoulder, she sent him a smile — a private smile that promised delights of a nature he’d never known until laying eyes on her.

Helpless, as he’d been the first time he’d seen that smile, Jessup followed, thoughts of Gideon Quinn quieting to a dull echo. All he knew, as she opened the door to the bedroom, was her smile, the soft sigh of her dress, her fingers in his hand, tightening in anticipation.

And then he was inside the bedroom and there, sprawled at his feet in the flickering light of the fireplace, was Gideon Quinn himself.

Jessup froze, staring at his enemy. He didn’t know what was more surprising; that Gideon, too, had aged in the six plus years, or that he was laying, unconscious (and more than a little battered), on the floor of his bedchamber. He looked up. “Celia?” her name was a question.

“Yes, I know, and believe me, I would love to explain,” she said, moving close, placing a single, chaste kiss over his lips before adding, “but I’m afraid we’ve simply run out of time.”

“Celia, whatever are you talking about? Why is
he
here?” he asked.

Or rather, meant to ask.

In fact, he only got as far as “
Celia—
” before Nahmin, who’d been waiting in the shadows, stepped up and slid a cold black blade between Jessup’s ribs, piercing his heart so that the rest of his questions went forever unvoiced, and hence unanswered.

As he fell, however, Jessup did have time to wonder why Nahmin, bloodied blade in hand, was offering Celia a salute — and not the standard Colonial Corps salute, either, but the odd tap of the forehead that the Adidans favored.

Then he was on the floor, staring at the hated Gideon Quinn, also on the floor, which made him wonder . . .