Twenty-One
As Mr. Danworth left the study, Monique slid behind a massive ornamental display case in the hall and prayed he wouldn’t notice her. Fortunately, the man seemed too caught up in what had just occurred to pay his surroundings any mind. That wasn’t surprising, given what he’d said to Gregory. Clearly, Mr. Danworth thought he held all the cards.
And perhaps he did. She had come up here after leaving the drawing room, hoping for a chance to continue this afternoon’s discussion with Gregory in private. Instead, she’d heard Mr. Danworth threaten him most appallingly.
Waiting until the wretch disappeared up the stairs, probably headed for his bedchamber, she slipped into the study.
The moment the door closed, Gregory said, “What now? You wish to blackmail me into something else?” He turned, then started. “Oh. It’s you.” He tensed and wouldn’t meet her gaze. “What are you doing here?”
Her heart ached to see him looking so lost. “I came to talk to you, and I overheard—”
“What Danworth said?” He crossed his arms over his chest. “How much did you hear?”
“Most of it, I think.”
That seemed to deflate him. “Wonderful. So I suppose I can add you to the list of people who despise me.”
His acid words broke her heart. “Don’t be absurd. I could never despise you. But I don’t understand how he could threaten such a horrible thing. Clearly, he is cobbling together a bunch of nonsense—”
“I wish he were.” Gregory went to pour himself some brandy from the decanter on his desk. “Sadly, he is not.”
That shocked her. She’d been sure that Danworth was simply taking advantage of an accidental death to strike out at Gregory. “So what he claims, what he threatens to expose—”
“Is the truth. Yes.” Twirling the glass he held in his hand, he stared down into the amber liquid. “You might as well know it. The world will hear it soon enough.”
Her blood clamoring in her veins, she walked up to take the glass of brandy from him. “Not if I have anything to say about it,” she said firmly. “I’ll reveal the truth about my masquerade, and that will be an end to it. You will champion Prince Leopold, who will become king of Belgium, thus ensuring that none of your secrets come out.”
“And you will be forced into poverty with your grandmother?” A faint smile curved up his lips as he faced her. “I think not.”
“I will not save Grand-maman at the risk to your future . . . and that of your mother. I refuse to see your family embroiled in scandal on my behalf. Grand-maman and I will manage somehow. You have far more to lose than we ever did.”
His confident demeanor faltered a little at that. “You’re amazing, do you know that?” he said in a voice wrought with emotion. “You just heard that I am a murderer, yet here you are, springing to defend me.”
I am a murderer.
No—she couldn’t believe it. With her heart pounding, she laid her hand on his arm. “I know the situation can’t have been as cut-and-dried as Mr. Danworth implied.”
Now he looked desperate. “Ah, but it was.” He dragged in a shuddering breath.
She had to know it all. “Tell me about it, mon coeur. How did it happen? When did it happen?”
He gazed off across the room. “When I was twelve.”
When he said nothing more, she prodded him. “What were the circumstances?”
For a moment, she thought he wouldn’t answer. Then he drew himself up as if preparing for an onerous task. “I had just come home from Eton for the holidays. My father was drunk and in a foul temper. He lashed out at my mother as always, and I defended her, as always.”
His gaze grew distant. “Father and I were at the top of the stairs—the ones right outside that door there, actually—and I got so angry that I thrust myself between them, determined to keep him from hurting her. I’d done it often enough before. She’d done it for me, too.”
Snatching the glass of brandy back from Monique, he took a long swallow. When he continued, the matter-of-fact tone with which he’d begun his recitation shifted to something more tortured. “Father pulled his fist back to punch me, and I shoved him. He fell, all the way down the staircase, head over heels. He—” His voice cracked a little before he gathered himself to continue. “He ended up in a crumpled heap at the bottom. His neck broke on the way down, and he . . . died instantly.”
“So you didn’t mean to kill him,” she said softly.
He uttered a harsh laugh. “Didn’t I? I’ve never been sure. Perhaps I did. Perhaps I took my chance to rid us of the plague that was my father.” His voice hardened. “All I know is that when he died, I had not one moment of remorse. Do you hear me? Not. One. Moment.” He downed the rest of the brandy, his eyes bleak. “If anything shows that I’m a killer at heart, it’s that.”
“Oh, Gregory, that’s not true. You did feel remorse, or you wouldn’t have spoken of the ghosts that torment you here.”
“Only because I remember so much of what my father did to my mother. Only because every time I return, I realize how little . . . I regret killing him.”
“You were twelve!” she cried. “You were acting as impulsively as any lad that age and trying to protect your mother. No one would blame you.”
“You think not, do you?” He poured himself more brandy and stared into its depths as if finding the past in them. “As a result of his death, I inherited everything. I gained my title and my fortune by shoving my father down the stairs. Plenty of people will see only that.”
Unfortunately, that was probably true. “Then you must do what Mr. Danworth says. Vote for Prince Leopold. Use your power to get him chosen as king.”
Even if it meant that she had to return to Dieppe with Grand-maman and take a protector. She couldn’t watch Gregory and his mother be destroyed in the press by . . . by a devil like Danworth.
“I am not going to let that arse win,” he said fiercely. “I’m certainly not going to reward Leopold by giving him what he wants after he used such tactics to gain it, assuming that he knew what Danworth was up to.” He set down his glass to fix her with a tortured gaze. “And I damned well will not overlook the fact that Danworth tried to murder you in order to gain his aims.”
She swallowed. She’d heard that part, too, after all. “You don’t know that for certain.”
“I can’t prove it, no.” He caressed her cheek. “But I know it as surely as I know that Danworth is up to no good. And I won’t let him get away with it.”
“Then you and your mother will suffer. You’ll lose your career and your future,” she whispered. “I can’t bear that.”
He stared at her a long moment. “Why do you care? All I’ve done is give you grief, threaten to expose you . . . take your innocence. You ought to be handing me over to Danworth on a silver platter.”
“I would never do that!” she cried, her heart in her throat. “I love you! So I can’t stand by and watch while you are destroyed.”
I love you. The words rang in his ears. Clearly, he was losing his mind, because never had three words sounded so sweet.
And so very maddening. All he could think was how he wanted to take her to bed and make love to her until the sun came up. She’d just heard how he’d murdered his father, yet she was on his side. He didn’t know whether to exult or to despair. If Danworth—and possibly Leopold—had his way, she would be headed back to Dieppe in two days, with nothing to show for all her effort.
He couldn’t endure that. “I don’t care what Danworth says—Aurore will be chosen as queen of Belgium. And you and I will marry. Somehow. I shall not stand by and watch you suffer at the hands of Danworth or anyone else.”
A despairing look crossed her face. “Yesterday you told me you couldn’t allow the masquerade to continue, and now you’ll put Aurore, whom you’ve never met, in the position of queen of Belgium? Why?”
“Because she’s the best choice politically, assuming she lives.”
“That’s not the main reason. You just don’t want Danworth to win. But Aurore may not even live. So choose Leopold, save your career, prevent a scandal, and stop being stubborn about it, for God’s sake!”
“I am stubborn,” he growled. “It’s why I’ve progressed this far in my career. I don’t give in to blackmail, and I especially won’t give in to it if it means watching you suffer.”
“Gregory—”
He dragged her into his arms. “You’re mine, chérie. And I think it’s time I convinced you of that.”
If he couldn’t convince her with words, then he would convince her this way. He took her mouth, reveling in how she melted against him. There had to be a way for them to marry. He would find a way, damn it.
In the meantime, he would show her that they were meant to be together. He’d been at a disadvantage before, not knowing she was an innocent. But he knew now, so he could show her what things could be like between them . . . if he took her the way she deserved.
Pulling back from her, he drew her toward the door that led to his adjoining bedchamber. “Come with me, my sweet. This time we will do it right.”
She didn’t even pretend to be confused about what he meant. “Did we do it wrong last time?” she said with a tender teasing that lodged somewhere down deep. “Because it certainly seemed right to me.”
“I could have taken more care with you, ma chérie.”
“I have no complaints.”
He led her into his bedchamber and closed the door before saying, “I aim for better than that.” Then he thrust her against the door and kissed her hard and long, until he felt her soften against him.
She had put her faith in him, though he wasn’t sure why, given what she now knew about him. And he meant to prove himself worthy of it. He undressed her with great care, eager to see her body unveiled for him yet again.
And as before, he marveled at her perfection—full breasts, a slim belly that would make a man weep, and hips the right size for a man who liked a bit of flesh on his woman.
She blushed. “Why do you stare at me so?”
“Because I take great pleasure in looking at you.”
Seemingly self-conscious, she averted her gaze from him. “I’m not as pretty as some.”
“You’re a goddess,” he said, and meant it.
“With too prominent a chin and unruly hair and—” When he laughed, she cast him a hurt look. “What?”
“Forgive me, dearest, but surely a woman who entrances every man in her orbit knows that she’s gorgeous.”
She pouted in a way so classically French that he got hard just seeing it. “I still don’t like my chin.”
“Well, I love it.”
When the word love made her shoot him a questioning glance, he cursed himself, not wanting her to put too much stock in what had to be a mere slip of the tongue. Men like him did not fall in love. It was too . . . reckless.
He chucked her under her much-maligned chin. “It’s pert and assertive, just like you. As for your hair, I’ve only seen it covered in wigs, trussed up under hats, and wrapped up into fat chignons. Never down and loose.” He reached for her coiffeur, tugging it free of its pins. “So I mean to remedy that.”
With a satisfaction that sent his cock rousing even more, he watched her honey-brown tresses cascade down over her shoulders to nearly her hips, which was saying something, given how tall she was.
“There,” she said tartly. “Are you happy now? You have finally managed to unleash my hair.”
Unleash was a good word. Because it was messy and thick and glorious. And all his. His.
He filled his hands with it, kissed its “unruly” mass, and then used hanks of it to caress her nipples until she sighed and melted. “Do you know what I see when I look at you?” he asked.
“A fake princess?”
“Not fake—but no, a princess is not what I see.” He backed her toward the bed, stripping off his clothes as he went. “I see the woman who will be my wife. The woman I will have in my bed for the rest of my days. The woman who will bear my children.”
The words sounded more like vows than he’d meant them to, and the alarm in her face gave him pause. “Oh, Gregory, we can’t marry. It will ruin you!”
“We can. We will. And it won’t.” He tumbled her down onto his bed, relishing the sight of her lying there, exactly where he wanted her. “I shall make it happen, my sweet. You just have to trust me to manage it.”
He had no plan yet, but he would find one somehow. He still had four days to do so.
Parting her legs with his knee, he moved between them and bent to kiss her mouth, but she caught his head in her hands to prevent it. “Are you marrying me solely because you took my innocence?”
He froze. The vulnerable look on her face told him what she wanted—the same words of love she’d given him. Words of love that would lay his heart bare to the knife, that would put the power to destroy him in her hands.
The man who ached to possess her wanted to say them, if only to please her. The cautious spymaster knew better.
The spymaster won out. “To paraphrase a certain fetching actress, ‘I desire you. That is all.’ ”
There was no mistaking the flicker of disappointment in her face. And seeing it made him feel as if he’d just told the first real falsehood of his life, even though he’d lied many times as a spymaster.
But never to himself. Never about something this important. And never to someone he cared about.
Then she smoothed her features into a seductive expression and said, in a coquettish voice just a shade forced, “Well, then, sir. What are you waiting for?”
He seized the reprieve eagerly and set about arousing her in every fashion he knew. He tongued and sucked and fondled her breasts. He kissed every inch of her delectable belly, licked her navel and then her quim, brought her to the brink of satisfaction until she was moaning and begging and clearly needing him as much as he needed her.
Desperately, madly. Now.
Only then did he slide inside her, reveling in the smooth wetness of her . . . in the tight fit of her, like a hot glove . . . in the sweet, luscious smell and taste and essence of her surrounding him as he pounded into her in search of that unnamable thing he wanted and dared not reach for.
Her face grew flushed and her eyes glazed over. “Gregory . . . oh yes, mon coeur . . . yes . . . like that . . . mon amour, mon amour, mon amour!”
And as she reached her release, her delicious quim squeezing and kneading his cock, the words my love, my love, my love chimed in his brain, triggering his own explosive climax, which seemed to go on and on until he fell exhausted atop her.
And as he lay there, pillowed by her softness, with her arms wrapped about him and her legs entangled with his, he thought, My love.
But he was too much of a coward to say it.