The Corrupt Comte (18 page)

Her fingers tightened on his knee. “Th-then…then t-tell me s-s-something true.”

“How do you mean?”

“S-something not a lie. It d-doesn’t have to b-be a s-s-secret. A truth.” She shifted, curling her body into the space between his feet and leaning forward into the chair’s edge, languid and catlike, to rest her cheek atop the hand on his knee. “I shall t-tell one f-first.”

“A secret?” He thought of the demons in her eyes from their first encounter, searched for them now…and couldn’t find them lurking in her whisky gaze.

“A t-truth.” Her warm body reclined against his leg, and her eyes turned slightly slumberous, lashes fluttering, cheeks pinking.

He expected her to start purring at any moment.

Her other hand came up to settle near the first, higher up on his thigh, her fingertips digging with gentle pressure into the muscled limb encased in cheap woolen trousers. Affectionate, open and physical, she offered him a snippet of damning insight into what it might be like to have a home with her. Alone, like this, every night. Relaxed and warm and cloistered away from the outside world and all its dangers. No rushing, no worrying—just being. Together. A home and a life.

Man and wife.

Madness, utter madness.
“Tell me your truth,” he managed, voice gone hoarse as he struggled to erase the image of her—of them—from his mind.

Tipping her face so it was half hidden from his view, she murmured, “I’d never b-been held…b-before you.”

He wasn’t sure he understood. “This makes sense. You are unmarried—”

“No. No. I m-mean, no one hugged m-me before you.”

“As a child…?”

But she lifted her head, shaking it. “I’ve no m-memory of it.”

For the first time in years, he sought to actively remember his parents, his family. His father had been a stern man, gruff and plainspoken, but he’d been known to ruffle his child’s hair, or pat a shoulder in recognition of a job well done. His tired, overworked mother, who’d nearly always been pregnant or nursing—or so it had seemed to Gaspard—had tucked each of her children into bed at night with a hug, a kiss and the sign of the cross.

Then came the army, when he had been touched too much, had wanted to peel the skin from his bones in an effort to repel the touches of his tormentor. In the past five years, he’d fought and fucked, and he struggled to think of when he’d gone more than a few days without even the most casual of physical contacts.

“And when you dance?” A man would hold her while they waltzed, surely.

“I d-don’t often g-get asked.” She shrugged self-consciously as she lowered her cheek to his knee once more. “It’s n-not the s-s-same, anyway. Hands are one th-thing, b-bodies another.”

She’d been starved, he realized with a shock. Her parents had starved her, denying her the most fundamental element of human interaction. People touched one another. People held one another. People made love to one another, because a hug just wasn’t close enough, not when there was the possibility of more, more, more.

Her parents might as well have locked her in a dungeon for twenty years. For all he knew, they had.

Yet here she was, comfortably draped over his leg, as though touch was a given for her—but it wasn’t. This was huge, a louder declaration than the words he didn’t want from her and refused to contemplate.

He could use this. Calculating, cold Gaspard, who hadn’t put in much of an appearance since meeting Claudia, could use this.

But all he could do right now was hold her, an urge from deep within his chest that had him grabbing her beneath her arms and half-lifting, half-dragging her into his lap. Ignoring the stab of pain from his freshly bound arm, he settled her hip against his side and arranged her legs across his, the satin skirt of her evening gown bunching haphazardly around them. Then, curving an arm around her shoulders, he tucked her head beneath his chin and draped his other arm over her lower body.

She melted against him like butter, shifting to put her forehead against the side of his neck, hands creeping out to slide beneath his vest, lightly petting his shirt-covered chest. “I don’t want p-p-pity,” she whispered.

“No. You want to be held.”

She mumbled her agreement into his shoulder, and he tightened his arms around her, pressing tender kisses to the top of her head as he breathed in the simple, sweet scent of her. His eyes drifted shut as they sank deeper into the chair, allowing himself one moment—just one, he promised—to
be
.

Exquisite. Heavenly. Peace.

Which was why it had to end, because nothing was more dangerous to him than this moment, here, holding Claudia Pascale as though he would never, ever let go. “My turn,
chaton
.”

“You d-don’t have to—”

“My truth is that I have killed a man. My truth is that I have killed many, many men.” Tragic, that it needed to be confessed.

Sadder still was the way she stiffened in his arms.

Chapter Eleven

Held by a killer.

She couldn’t say she was surprised. He reeked of guilt, with grime under his skin and blood in his eyes. How could she let herself fall in love with someone who traipsed around at night killing people, as he’d obviously done tonight? She had a sinking feeling it was too late for her, her heart already compromised by her feelings, her thoughts, her words, both spoken and unspoken.

Too late to stop that heart from dropping tidily into the hands of a murderer.

“Oh.” It was all she could say, her tongue refusing to comply, though this time not because of her stutter.

His arms tensed around her, but he still pressed his lips to the top of her head. “Yes.
Oh.
” He lifted the hand from her shoulder to stroke gentle fingertips through the strands pulled back from her temple.

The tender caress melted the steel in her spine and had her relaxing against him once again, even as her thoughts whirled. Apprehension, longing, unease and trust—every emotion swirling within only served to add to her confusion.

Earlier tonight, she had been on the verge of accepting that Gaspard Toussaint was a stranger to her, unreliable and unknown. Now, as he held her close, showering her with the sort of physical affection she’d never experienced and always longed for, her heart overrode her good sense. It screamed her most desperate desire, a secret she should not, could not, share with him.

She wanted to fall in love.

More accurately, she wanted to fall in love with the
comte
.

Who was a murderer.

A sudden memory of her grandfather slammed into her, of that long-ago summer day in the garden, an afternoon filled with sunshine and the rich, abundant scent of roses. A strange man had emerged from the stately row of trees flanking the rear gate to their property, rushing toward
Grandpére
, whose back had been turned. But Claudia had seen the man and, afraid, had said…nothing. No sound, no words of warning, yet
Grandpére
had somehow sensed the threat behind him. Whipping around, he reached for the would-be assailant’s head, grabbed it and snapped the man’s neck.

All in the space of a breath.

So Claudia wasn’t unfamiliar with violence, or death, but there was a distinction to be found in the
comte
’s words, a distinction she needed him to make. “Why?”

His fingers continued to comb through the ever-loosening strands of her evening coiffure. “Why…did I kill those men?”

“Yes.” He was so warm, a safe kind of warm. His warmth reminded her of blankets drawn to her chin, a feather pillow beneath her head, a hot brick at her toes. “Was it s-s-self d-defense?”

His chest rose and fell in a heavy sigh. “Sometimes.”

“And other times?” Her eyelashes caught on the kerchief around his neck as she blinked, fighting the urge to cuddle into him and doze, confident in the knowledge that she was…protected. Had she ever known how much she needed someone to protect her, until this moment?

The hand in her hair clenched, tugging her from his shoulder until he could look her in the eye. “I do what I must. Always.” Blunt fingertips massaged her scalp, liquefying her limbs until she worried she’d turn into a boneless puddle in his lap.

“B-but do you
enjoy
it?”

Grandpére
had said,
I had to do it, child. But I don’t like that I had to.

His lips firmed into a taut frown. “Only once.”

Once. One time, in one instance, Gaspard had enjoyed taking someone’s life. Was it strangulation? A sword to the belly? A pistol round in the chest? Was it lynching, or poison, or suffocation? A man’s heart could be halted in so many ways, ways her grandfather had expounded upon for hours at a time during the days before he’d been shuttled off to the Hampshire cottage. He’d educated her in a stern whisper while his fingers sifted through the damp soil blanketing the roots of fragrant green herbs, but
Grandpére
had known—he must have known—Claudia didn’t have it in her.

If she had possessed the soul of a fighter, she would have lashed out against her parents years ago. She would have raised her fists, literal or proverbial, and stuttered her way into some form of emancipation.

Things were bad in the Pascale household. Things were worse than she’d ever admit, even to herself. If Claudia had been the woman her grandfather had tried to shape her into, she wouldn’t be facing marriage to Évoque right now, nor would she have been reduced into chasing a gilded French lieutenant through ballrooms and bawdy parlors.

She wouldn’t be curled up in the arms of an aristocratic murderer, in a bedchamber far removed from her room in London, fearing this man had blinded her to reality with his touches, his kisses, his deliciously possessive demeanor.

Lifting a hand to his jaw, she stroked a thumb over the sharp jut of his cheekbone. His scruff scraped against her palm. “D-did you kill a m-man tonight, Gaspard?”

The tiny muscles in his jaw bunched. He said nothing.

A confirmation. “I s-see.”

One thick brow arched as he stared down at her. “You heard what I said, Claudia? I have killed, many times over.”

“I heard you.” She’d heard, and she found it meant nothing in this moment. It didn’t change the mostly sane feelings burgeoning in her chest for the
comte
, in all his secretive glory. Shifting, she cupped his face, familiar and foreign, in both hands. “Why d-did you choose that t-truth? Why not s-s-something…s-safer?”

The hold on her hair loosened, his large hand slipping down to rest heavily on her nape. “Your eyes.”

“M-my eyes?”

His brows drew together. “There is too much in your eyes when you look at me.” The hand on her hip moved up to span her rib cage, then down again to stroke the length of her thigh. “You should not look at me like that.”

So his confession was meant to dissuade her, his aim to push her away. She’d been too obvious once more—though at least with Sabien she hadn’t gone any further than a hasty, uncomfortable kiss outside a busy ballroom—and here she was again, in pursuit of an unwilling man.

The
comte
wasn’t going to rescue her from her family, or from her engagement.

“He s-said I have tonight.”

His hands stilled. “Who said?”

“The duke. I have t-tonight.” The only assumption to draw from such a statement was that this was the last night her body would be her own. After tomorrow, she was the property of the Duke of Évoque, whose Christian name she didn’t even know. But tonight…tonight was hers. “C-can I have you too?”

Thankfully, he didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “You do not fear me.” It was a question, though not phrased as such.

She shook her head.

“Claudia.” A warning.

Words, he always wanted her words, no matter how garbled they left her tongue. “No. You don’t s-s-scare me.” She drew his face closer, and he didn’t resist. “I
chose
you, remember?”

His fingers slipped beneath the many pins holding the mass of her hair in place, sliding up to cup the back of her skull and tangling themselves in the coiled strands. “Not Sabien,” he growled, stormy gaze searching hers.

“Not S-Sabien,” she promised, meaning it. Sabien Purvis had been no more real an option for her than the fairytale prince whose handsomeness he so confidently wore. This man, with his lies and his secrets and the hungry way he looked at her, touched her…this man put a song in her blood, answering some yearning call buried in the deepest recesses of her terrified heart.

The hold on her hair tightened. “Never Sabien.” He nibbled lightly at her lower lip, and she parted on a sharp inhalation. His tone was wintry, harsh. “Say it, kitten.”

She shook her head and leaned in, attempting to catch his lips in a kiss. She didn’t want to talk anymore, having made her decision. Tonight, she gave her body over to Gaspard Toussaint, and she wanted him to start. Now.

But he held her where he wanted her, away from his mouth, and shifted in the chair until she was practically lying across his lap with him looming over her. His brows lowered into a fierce scowl. “You will not say it?”

“I…I d-don’t want him.”

“Not good enough.” Without warning, he dropped his head to her breasts where they strained against her bodice, teeth nipping the plump rise of pale flesh. “Renounce him,” he demanded as his lips traveled across her chest, up toward her exposed throat. The hand in her hair forced her to arch into his mouth, as though she were eager for him. Greedy for him.