Guarded Heart (33 page)

Novgorodcev jumped forward again, his face purple with rage. Gavin met him with a hard, fast parry and riposte. And suddenly the match took on a vicious edge. The beat was harder, faster than it had been before, the clanging blows resounded over the water with a brutal ring.

Gavin felt the concentration of the dueling field settle over him like a mantle. It fit him well in spite of the clinging wetness of his shirt and pantaloons and the dank, muddy-smelling water that ran from them to streak the deck, regardless of the pull and burn of his stitches. Deliberately, he called on every iota of poise and skill he possessed, every sublime advance and deadly stratagem.

Ariadne pushed to her feet and backed out of the way; he was aware of her movement on the periphery of his vision. He was glad to have her beyond the strike zone since it left him with more room, more freedom of motion. He was able to give his complete attention, for these few moments, to the Russian.

Sasha Novgorodcev was grim of face, his teeth bared under his bristling mustache. Blood dripped from a cut on his arm that Ariadne must have given him. It stained the leg of his pantaloons, spotted the damp deck. He advanced, hacking, once, twice, three times, until Gavin curbed his aggression by attacking every time he came near in his offensive. From that point he held the initiative, upsetting with threat, early parry and footwork that negated the Russian's attempts to gain ground.

Desperation rose in Sasha's narrowed eyes. With it came a glow of cunning, a tensing of muscles.

He could not have indicated his intention more clearly if he had shouted it from the ship's main mast. Gavin was ready as the Russian took a running leap in a powerful attack. He side-stepped, leaving him to engage nothing but air.

Sasha veered to his right, came to a stumbling halt then slewed around in panicked haste. Gavin knew such a chance might not come again. His strength was not infinite, and he could not trust the captain and crew not to intervene. This must be ended, here and now.

He lunged into an advance as swift and lethal as an arrow. The point of his saber took Sasha in the shoulder, driving him back while he howled like a wolf in pain. Gavin withdrew, then bore down on him again until he stumbled, sprawling on the deck in the same way he had forced Ariadne to fall. In an instant, he leaned over the Russian. He ripped the saber from the other man's hand then flung both weapons in a wide arc. They turned end over end, flashing in the dim light, before plunging into the river.

“Bastard,” Sasha said from where he lay with blood seeping through his fingers where he clamped them to his wound. He turned his head, calling out to the ship's crew. “Get him! Take him now!”

The seamen stirred, glanced at their captain who rapped out an order. They got to their feet, pushed from where they leaned on the masts and rails, started forward in a milling group.

Gavin turned to Ariadne, reached her in a few steps and caught her arm before swinging with her toward the rail. “You swim?”

She shook her head, her eyes dark as they held his, as calm as if they were alone on the deck, as though they could not feel the vibration under their feet of the seamen jogging toward them.

He had not expected it. Few could swim in this city surrounded by water, especially few females. “Will you trust me to see you to shore?”

He saw the struggle in her face, the questions in her eyes. Could she rely on him to get her off this ship, to keep her safe? Though she might not know it, she had already shown her trust in the most supreme manner of which she was capable. She had thrown him her weapon, disarming herself because she expected him to be a better match for Novgorodcev. That knowledge was like molten gold inside him, warming him, strengthening him.

“I will.”

His smile was a brief yet fervent salutation. An instant later, he swept her to the rail opening, paused to take her in his arms. Behind them, he heard Alexander Novgorodcev crying out, calling to Ariadne with despair like a groan of pain in his voice. Then Gavin plunged headlong with her, heart to heart, into the river.

The going on this return journey was harder, much harder with the need to keep Ariadne afloat and her face above the washing waves. The fog drifting around them made it difficult to see the shore. He could hear the shouts and calls behind them but dared not look back to see if a boat was being lowered. Nor could he find the will to look ahead, to see what the other swordsmen might be doing on the levee. Nothing mattered except the next hard stroke of his one free arm, and the next and the next.

Nothing could be allowed to break through the control he held on his will and mind, not the drift of blood, warm compared to the river water, from the slice along his back that had split open during the fight, not the slow draining of his strength that threatened to fog his brain. He could not stop, couldn't afford to rest though his muscles clamored for it, urged him to turn and float even if he and Ariadne both sank beneath the silt-filled waves. He breathed with conscious effort against the burning agony, the laboring of his lungs and dizzying thunder of his heart. He was slowing; he could feel it. His arm grew heavier each time he lifted it. The powerful kicks that should have sent him surging forward seemed barely to stir the water behind him.

“Let me go.” Ariadne's voice was a hoarse whisper from where she lay with her face in the crook of his arm and her body trailing alongside his, trying to help kick, so closely matched she might have been a part of him.

“No.”

“My skirts are dragging us down and I can't unfasten them. You can…” She stopped, coughing in a spasm as a wave washed over her, before going on in a breathless rasp. “No need for…for both of us to drown.”

“Both or neither.” He had no breath for a better answer.

“You…you've done enough. I can…make it from here.”

She couldn't. He knew it and she knew it, which meant it was an excuse, a sop for his conscience if he should do as she suggested. “Sweet, unacceptable sacrifice—I would do the same…if I could. It would be right.”

“An ultimate injury, gladly taken?”

“Poor Ariadne…caught between monsters, both crying out, ‘Live for me.'”

She had begun to struggle, as if she would free herself from his grasp. He tightened his hold.

“You are no monster,” she said on a gasp, even as she pulled at his constricting arm.

“No angel, either. I will choke you like a mewling kitten before…before I'll let you go. One death is as good as the other.”

She was abruptly still. He swam on while black curses filled his head for his threat that had banished trust, his promise that made him a monster in all truth.

It was then he heard the dip and swirl of paddles and the sluicing whisper of a craft shooting over the water. He redoubled his effort, not to avoid pursuit, but to reach the skiff that ghosted toward them. It eased alongside. He saw Nicholas and Caid bending over the side. Hands reached, taking Ariadne from him, dragging her, sodden skirts and all, into the rocking boat. It was his turn then, and the rescue was not gentle. Somewhere in the middle of it, he shuddered, cringing at the ripping of another few inches of stitches. Curling in upon himself in the bottom of the boat, with his wet head resting on Ariadne's knee, he closed his eyes and accepted, at last, that neither death, sacrifice nor polite, soul-scarring murder would be necessary.

What followed afterward was a confusion of voices and movement, exclamations and shouted orders, none of which came from him. He was transported back to the city with intemperate haste and a great deal of painful jostling, then left at his atelier to the brusque solicitude of Nathaniel and Nicholas. A sawbones came with a needle larger and sharper than any foil to reset his stitches. Then he was left alone with a hot brick at his feet, the smell of laudanum in the air, and his unanswered questions concerning Ariadne's whereabouts lying around him like singed moths around a candle flame.

He slept and roused and slept again, sipped broth, stared at the window near his bed, watched clouds skim past and birds loop their way through them in ecstatic flight. He damned Nathaniel for a cow-handed oaf in the morning when he attempted to shave him and called him his savior in the evening when he appeared with steak and a glass of ale. He was being stubborn and oafish, knew it, and did not care. Above all, he waited, though for what he could not say.

It came on the morning of the fourth day, when he was half mad with inactivity and doubt and the suspicion that his friends, when they deigned to visit, were keeping something from him. The form was a note on thick parchment, closed with a wax seal of French blue impressed with an Athenian owl. The direction which had brought it to him was in the fine, sloping hand of a lady.

Nathaniel gave it to him on his breakfast tray. Gavin drank his café au lait and ate his hard roll before reaching for the note and breaking the seal. Even a condemned man was allowed a meal before his sentence was carried out.

It was not the note of farewell he expected. It was, instead, a summons.

Gavin pushed the tray aside, shouting for Nathaniel.

Dressed finally in a tobacco brown frock coat, buff trousers and a new beaver hat of impressive height and sheen, he left the Passage. He crossed rue Royale on his way to the street where lay the town house of the Widow Herriot, the present address of her guest, the daring Madame Faucher.

The lady had rare courage, he thought. She would not give him his congé, his final dismissal as her sword master, in a note. Rather she had resolved to face him with it. To smile, perhaps, and give him her hand. To thank him for his intervention and speak a clear but personal farewell.

It was a surprising consolation.

A
riadne was packing when Gavin was announced. She had not thought to see him so soon, had expected to wait until evening perhaps, when he might reasonably be expected to be free. So little news had come her way about him that she thought he must have returned to his usual pursuits, his round of clients and manly pleasures. Maurelle had been maddeningly vague on the subject, though Ariadne knew she sent often to learn how the Englishman was faring. She said merely that he was no worse for his dip in the river or the reopening of his injuries, but seemed to have recovered as was usual in a man of health and vigor.

It was most unsatisfactory.

Ariadne had thought Gavin might pay a courtesy call on Maurelle, if not on her. She had given him little reason to feel concern for her sake, of course, but he might have pretended out of mere good manners once he presented himself. She had been abducted, after all, even if few knew of the circumstances. She might have been prostrate with nerves or in the throes of morbid decline.

He had not appeared. It might have been worrisome if she had not known he was in fine health.

If he would not come to her of his own inclination, then he must come at hers. Certain things still required to be settled between them before she could say good-bye. It might not be comfortable, that interview, but she refused to take the coward's way out by leaving matters unresolved.

Moments after she came to that conclusion, her note had been written and handed to Solon for delivery.

Rising from her knees in front of the trunk now, she shook out her skirts of lavender broadcloth striped in white and black over a black underskirt. She smoothed her hair, pressed her lips together to make them pinker, then walked as calmly as she was able along the gallery to the salon.

Gavin turned as she entered, putting his back to the fire that burned in the grate and clasping his hands behind him. His smile was polite, his composure as impenetrable as a brick wall. He was a little pale, she thought, but gave no other sign of the events on board the
Leodes
or afterward. Still he seemed to glow like a work of art in gold, brown and ecru, with the dark blue of his eyes a brilliantly cool contrast. The knowledge that this rare swordsman had held her, made love to her, burned through her from her head to her heels, a lightning strike of pleasure that held her rooted where she stood. Her gaze touched his mouth, his hands, while a tremor ran down the back of her neck, catching her unaware.

“Madame,” he said, inclining his head.

As if released by the low resonance of his voice, she jerked into movement. She glided toward him, determined to match him in imperturbability if it killed her, to behave as if nothing untoward had ever occurred between the two of them. “Thank you for coming so promptly,” she said. “Has Solon offered…?” She stopped as she saw the balloon glass holding a dark gold liquid which sat on the mantle behind him. “I see that he has. Excellent. Won't you please be seated?”

“I would as soon stand,” he replied. “Executions are traditionally met in an upright position.”

She gave him a narrow look. “Why would you say such a thing?”

“Expectation based on experience?”

“Both of which are wrong. I only asked you here to…to express my appreciation.”

He tilted his head, his gaze watchful. “For?”

“Coming to my rescue, of course. You may consider it nothing, but I do not.”

“I haven't said so.”

“Said what?” she asked in exasperation. She had not meant to take this tone. Why did everything between them have to descend into a quarrel?

“That it was nothing, preventing you from being taken from us.”

“You saved my life, I believe.”

“I doubt the danger was of that nature,” he answered, his eyes blue slivers between his narrowed lashes.

“You think Sasha would not have killed me?”

“He meant to make you his, whatever the means. That was all.”

“Assuming, of course, that he had the skill you once displayed of disarming without injury,” she snapped. “But you were not there. He would have killed me, I do believe, to prevent me from leaving him. Yes, and especially from going to someone else.”

“Still you faced him with a saber.”

“As did you, if I remember correctly.”

“That was different.”

He was truly angry. Beneath his quiet veneer of elegant indifference, he was furious with her. It had taken a moment for her to see it, but the recognition seemed to ease something cold and hard inside her. “It was the only weapon available.” She shrugged. “I dared it because I had been taught well, particularly in the area of strategy. It was ill luck that I fell.”

“It was a trick, and his doing alone. He meant you to fall, would have been upon you in an instant.”

“I might have dispatched him first if you had not appeared. What were you thinking of, to demand the saber from me? You might have been killed, fighting him so soon after being wounded.”

“What were you thinking when you gave it to me?” he asked, the words even.

She lifted her chin in defiance. “Very little, if you must know. It was, as you have harped upon so often, purest instinct.”

“As it was my instinct to prevent you from causing his death. You will be far better off to remain among those who can still revere life without reservation.”

“So you said before.” She turned from him, moving away, trailing her fingers along the back of the brocade settee before the fireplace while cogent thought moved in her mind. “Your aim from the beginning of our acquaintance seems to have been to prevent me having a death on my conscience, even if it was your own.”

His smile was brief. “As efforts go, it seemed more worthwhile than most.”

“But why? Oh, I understand that you aren't anxious to forfeit your life, but surely there was more to it.”

“Do you really not see?” He tilted his head, his gaze considering. “You were the very embodiment of life and purpose while I was lost in an endless round of death and aimless days. It seemed teaching you the art of the sword with its myriad painful ways of causing harm might convince you to abandon your need for revenge. Of course, I didn't know that I was your quarry.”

“You soon learned.”

“I guessed, a different matter,” he said in correction. “It required proving.”

“Which you set about with underhanded methods.”

“As you pointed out, it was my skin at stake.”

She lifted her hand, clenching it into a fist. “And your skin that you allowed me to slice at my leisure, finally, for Francis.”

“You misjudge me. It was not at all for Francis. Rather, it was to prove, if need be, that you were not made for taking life but for giving it.”

“A salutary lesson.” She paused, looked away from him. “And you were right. I could have killed Sasha, you know, when I first faced him with the saber in the ship's cabin and later, when I slashed his arm instead.”

“Then it was worthwhile.”

Worth the pain she had given him, he meant. She swallowed hard. “Is that why you didn't finish him when you had the chance, because of this aversion to killing?”

“You might say so, though I also thought he could mean something to you. Besides, he roused my pity, wanting you so badly. He called after you, you know. I hear him in my dreams, Othello crying for his Desdemona—though it was worse for him since you were merely lost to him instead of safely dead.”

“There, you see? You did think he would kill me.”

“Reason says he would not have struck the blow—but men are not always reasonable in their jealousy.”

She released a long sigh. “I'm glad you let him live. It was a generous impulse.”

“Or a most dastardly punishment, who can say? He has been forced to leave the city without you. The
Leodes
sailed two days ago. He was on it.”

“You're quite certain?”

“My friends in the Passage made it their business to know.”

“For your sake.”

“And yours.”

Restless, driven, she walked to the window and stood with her back to him though she saw nothing beyond the wavy patterns of the thick, greenish glass. “There is something I don't understand, something I've been puzzling over since I came, finally, to see that you knew who I was and what I intended. Why didn't you just tell me what happened with Francis, that his death was nothing you could have prevented?”

“Maurelle knew, and I was sure she must have given you the details,” he said as he turned toward her. “If you chose not to believe her, why would you believe me?”

“No,” she said after a moment. “I don't suppose I would have, not in the beginning.”

“Then I was guilty, you see. I injured his young pride, interfered in his effort to praise a lady. My reasons were, perhaps, inadequate for the offense. Some recompense was owed. As I could not render it to him, then….”

“Then you would allow it to me.”

“If you required it.”

“It seems I did, though I might have been less bloodthirsty if I had known you had been injured as well. Maurelle never mentioned that, or your regret.”

“Some injuries are best kept hidden so they, and their cause, can be forgotten. As for my regret, a sword master reluctant to meet other men, one haunted by past kills, becomes a target with every man's hand raised against him. I am not that fond of deadly meetings.”

She turned, drawn by the rasp of old anguish in his voice. “But you allowed me to see the scar.”

“It seemed a fit lesson in what not to achieve. But I was silent for another, less exalted reason.”

“That being?” Her frown was perplexed.

“It seemed likely you would abandon our sessions with a sword if convinced your foster brother's death was unavoidable.”

“But why should that matter? Unless…”

“It was not the money for my services,” he answered her unspoken thought with the ghost of a smile curving his lips. “I needed the lessons to continue. I was only alive when I was here, facing you in your man's garb that showed you as more womanly than any petticoat could, seeing the possibility of my death in your eyes.”

She met his gaze, noting the certainty which rested there, seeing, too, the opaque self-protection that gave away nothing more. Forcing words through the constriction in her throat, she said, “I might have handed it to you in a moment of rage before I knew you. But not…not afterward.”

The realization of what she meant leaped into his face, the understanding that she would never have been able to cause his death once they had made love. “In spite of everything?”

“Yes, in spite of it all.”

She waited, thinking he might answer the declaration, that he would say something more, something that she could depend on for a tiny hope of a future. The moment stretched, filled by the ticking of the mantel clock, the muffled sound of traffic in the street, the voice of Maurelle's cook humming in the kitchen below. He did not look away but his gaze turned even more stoic than before, as if to conceal some pain beyond imagining.

A piece of coal turned to ash in the grate with a small, shattering whisper of sound. Ariadne let go the breath she had been holding, turned sharply away. She put a hand to her mouth then brought it down again.

Lying on a side table was a long, narrow case of polished ebony inlaid with ivory. She had placed it there earlier in the day to have it on hand for this occasion. She moved to it now, taking it by the silver handles set into each end and carrying it to the settee. “You may not recognize this,” she said as she sprang the catch and lifted the lid back then waved at the contents, “but I am persuaded you will be familiar with the weapons.”

He glanced down, his gaze impassive as it moved over the swords she had kept concealed in her room, over their silver and black enameled hilts and the silver chasing on their blades. “Indeed.”

“They have been cleaned, at least the one with traces of your blood. I thought—I hoped that you would accept them as a gift, and as my surety that any need I ever had to be avenged against you for Francis's death is ended.”

“You sent for me for this, to present a parting gift?”

His voice was devoid of emotion, the muscles of his face rigidly controlled. Her gaze on the hard line of his jaw, she said, “I suppose you might say so.”

“You gave me a shirt.”

“And you gave me a nightgown. We are even on that score.”

A chill smile flickered at one corner of his mouth. “I thought you might intend to return it this morning.”

She should have done so, had told herself a hundred times that she would. Instead, she had worn it these past nights, wrapping it close around herself because he had touched it, perhaps thought of her in it, pictured it against her skin. “It was not a gift but a replacement,” she said, the words abrupt. “A sign of damage repaired.”