Adele Ashworth (33 page)

Quietly Natalie lifted the lid to one of her trunks, reached in for her nightgown and pulled it over her head. Since she had nowhere else to go for the moment, she returned to his side and gazed down at his face only dimly illuminated by a trace of moonlight.

He was beautiful to her and always had been. He was the center of all of her dreams and yet he could never be hers because she would never be able to trust him with her heart. Regardless of what he’d said during the heat of passion, she knew he’d grow bored with her in time. He would move on to another, and she would be left with the pain—the jealousies and the wounds that would never heal.

Natalie eased between the sheets once more, avoiding his touch as she turned away from him to stare at the darkened wall. In the few weeks that she’d been with Jonathan in France, she’d cried more than she had in the last five years. Now she closed her eyes and allowed the tears to slide silently down her face once again, staining the pillow beneath her.

Chapter 15

N
atalie opened her eyes to a direct stream of sunlight striking her face. She blinked and squinted at the invasion, unsure of where she was. Then memory flooded her as she recognized the soreness between her thighs. She turned her head to the left to find Jonathan staring at her, propped up on one arm, his cheek in his palm.

“I love your hair,” he said contemplatively, lacing it through his fingers as it cascaded across the pillow.

She groaned softly, pulling her gaze from the starkness of his to take a sudden interest in the tiny plum rosebuds painted on the ceiling. “I should have worn it up.”

He drew his thumb lingeringly across her hairline from her forehead to her temple. “I prefer it down.”

“If I had worn it up, nothing indecent would have happened last night,” she clarified with a small shake of her head.

His lips curled in faint amusement. “What we did last night would have happened if you were bald, Natalie.”

She squirmed a little, peeking at him through her lashes, placing her hands on her stomach and locking her fingers together. His eyes skimmed her nightgown as if he’d just come to wonder why she’d put it on, then he leaned forward to brush his lips back and forth along her cheek.

“Are you all right?” he whispered.

She nodded fractionally.

When she added nothing more, he pressed for detail. “What are you thinking?”

His voice suggested concern over what she was feeling, but she couldn’t allow herself to consider his worries. Instead, she glanced back to the ceiling and said dryly, “That we missed dinner, that everyone heard us because the windows were open, and that it was much more work than I was told to expect.”

He grasped her chin and turned her head so she had no choice but to look into his smiling eyes. “You were the most scrumptious dinner I’ve ever had. If anyone heard anything they’d simply assume we were doing what married couples do, and next time I’ll do most of the work.”

Her cheeks grew hot as she blushed deeply, trying to sit up.

He grabbed her around the waist to hold her against the bed. “Who told you what to expect?”

“Jonathan—”

“Who?”

With a tight throat, she answered, “Amy.”

His brows pinched with his now-crooked grin. “Amy, your ever-valuable, sneaky, lying maid informed you of the intimate happenings between men and women?”

“Yes.”

“I shall have to thank her for all she’s done for us.”

That subdued her, although she wasn’t sure why exactly. “You’d be thanking her for nothing,” she informed flatly. “She told me I wouldn’t have to do anything but wait for my husband to finish and that it would never last more than ten minutes.”

Now he was thoroughly amused. “I promise, where we are concerned, it will always take longer than ten minutes.”

Natalie boldly held his gaze. He was lingering on the assumption that they would be doing this again, and if she allowed that to go on, she’d start believing it herself.

She shook her head with determination, her lips thinning against an impending argument. “We will not be doing this again, Jonathan.”

He didn’t argue at all. Rather, he mildly offered, “I gather, when describing the activities of the marriage bed, Amy didn’t tell you it happens more than once.”

She stiffened and he held her tighter. “This is not a marriage bed.”

He stared hard at her for a moment, then leaned into her and touched his lips to her cheek, gliding them across her skin in soft, sensual strokes. “I suppose in the most legal sense it’s not.”

“We’re not married,” she insisted.

“Not legally, no.”

She wanted to say, “How factual you are,” but his warm, broad chest pressed against her arm, his rich, male scent filled her senses, his mouth on her skin made her tingle, and this could only lead to trouble. “Jonathan, behave yourself or you’ll not see the emeralds again.”

She’d tried to be stern in warning, but it didn’t exactly come out that way—more like a tease, although it had the desired effect.

Reluctantly he lifted his head. “Ahh . . . the emeralds.” With great exaggeration he fell back flat against the bed. “I forgot about the emeralds.”

Natalie huffed in feigned disgust. “That seems rather stupid for a thief of your caliber.”

“You’ve captivated me, Natalie,” he admitted through a sigh, teasing her in return as he gazed to the ceiling. “I’ve lost all sense of time and constraint.”

She didn’t know whether to laugh or hit him. Instead, she fidgeted with the quilt, pushing it down to her waist as her body grew warm beneath it. “You’ve apparently lost all sense of propriety as well.”

His eyes shot back to her face, his countenance sobering. “I knew exactly what I was doing last night.”

She softened her voice, attempting at once to return to the point. “Then I hope the memory of it is enough to placate your desire and you can at last get to the business of finding my mother’s letters for me. That is, in fact, why we’re here.”

He gaped at her, seemingly bewildered. Then he slowly shook his head. “Natalie, I desire you so badly that I’m in pain this very second. The only reason I’m not ripping off that silly nightgown to take you again is because of the pain it would cause you. I imagine you’re quite sore.”

She heard birds chirping in the distance, smelled flowers and the lingering fragrance of a midnight rain, and yet suddenly everything washed from her mind but the drowning humiliation of the brazen behavior she’d shown him the previous night. Abruptly she turned to sit up, and this time he released her without question.

Stiffly she dangled her legs over the edge of the bed and stared at the wall in front of her. “Time is short, Jonathan. I need you to find my mother’s letters so we can return to England.”

Thick tension saturated the air, and for seconds he said nothing. Then she heard him rustle the sheets behind her as he adjusted his body to face her back.

“I’ve intended to do that all along.”

The sincerity in his voice calmed her a little, and she looked down at her hands clasped together in her lap. “I know you have.” She drew a deep breath for encouragement because she was about to expose her trust in him. “The emeralds are in one of my trunks.”

“Really?” he exaggerated.

She closed her eyes, smiling to herself. Of course he would have known that. Where else would they be? He’d even likely found them by looking through her things, probably when she slept, which apparently was the way his devious mind worked. He was a thief after all, experienced with deception and discovery, and her own stupidity at forgetting that disgusted her. But what warmed her heart was the sudden consideration that he had brought her to Paris without really having to do so. He’d done it for her, and she owed him the rest of what she’d promised him.

“The comte d’Arles and several others are hosting a banquet tomorrow night, to raise money quickly for their cause,” she revealed sedately without looking at him. “Louis Philippe returns from holiday on Sunday, and they’re planning to unseat him as he’s escorted through the city.”

The bed creaked as he sat up behind her. “What did you say?”

The tone of his voice dropped so dramatically she turned to him, trying to ignore his half-naked form as the sheet fell to his hips. “The comte d’Arles is hosting—”

“I heard the part about the banquet.”

It wasn’t his harsh interjection but his penetrating stare that unnerved her. “Several of them are planning to unseat King Louis Philippe,” she repeated. “On Sunday. I thought, considering your affiliations with those in government, you’d find the information interesting—”

“Interesting?” he cut in. “I find it interesting that you kept this from me, Natalie.”

The anger he expressed in look and manner took her by surprise. He scrutinized her with hard calculation, and she frowned in a fast irritation of her own. “I didn’t keep anything from you. It’s simple gossip I overheard at the ball in Marseilles.”

“French nobles meet in secret to discuss the assassination of their king, and you find this to be simple gossip?”

She stood and faced him, startled by the disgust now flowing from his voice. “Why on earth would you think this is about an assassination attempt?”

Immediately he threw the covers from his body, and she spun around just as quickly to avoid looking at him.

“What did you think ‘unseat’ meant, Natalie, that they were going to toss him from his carriage?”

She would have laughed at the thought had he not uttered the question with such coldness. She hugged herself, her palms rubbing against her cotton sleeves, staring at the rose-print wallpaper, listening to his clothes flap as he swiftly dressed.

“We were at a party, Jonathan,” she reasoned, exasperated. “The wine was flowing, and people say all sorts of things under those conditions. I assumed it was boastful talk between gentlemen who’d had a little too much of it.”

“And yet you didn’t overhear this in the ballroom while everyone laughed and drank and danced, did you?” he returned abrasively. “These men were closeted in a private meeting when they discussed it.”

She frowned. “How did you know that?”

“I saw you, Natalie. Walking away from the count’s private study.”

“You were
spying
on me?”

He brushed over that to add frankly, “I wonder where precisely you place your loyalties.”

She gasped at his audacity, his unfairness in assuming an involvement on her part, and she whirled around to confront him. His clothes nearly covered him now as he rapidly moved his fingers through the buttons on his shirt.

“That’s a cruel thing to say, Jonathan, and quite preposterous.”

He ignored that, reaching for his neckcloth.

“I didn’t know,” she insisted. “I didn’t really even think about it. My ancestry has nothing to do with this. The French are always considering ways to dethrone the current king, and most of it is nonsense.”

He glanced at her, pausing just long enough for her to know she’d made a perfectly logical point. Then he turned to the wardrobe, pulled out the appropriate pair of shoes to match his attire, and sat on the edge of the bed to address them. Still he offered nothing in reply, which in turn ignited her anger.

“I fully intended to tell you this, Jonathan, when you gave me my mother’s letters. That should have been yesterday.”

She knew her biting comment would elicit a response. His head flipped around so quickly his entire body jerked from the movement. For a flash of an instant he gaped at her, making her feel that perhaps the blow had been too brutal. Then he shook his head in disbelief.

“This information was your promised gift in return for the letters?”

She straightened, unsure, dropping her arms to her sides. “Of course.” She hesitated as her brows furrowed lightly with conjecture. “What else would I have to give you here? My ivory-handled fan? I know you didn’t want my cameos.”

He stared at her so sharply, sitting so incredibly still, she thought for a moment he’d quit breathing. Then, whether it was from his continued silence or the shrewdness of his gaze, she couldn’t be certain, clarity filled her in a surge of pure denial and a shock she couldn’t begin to describe.

“You—you thought I would give you
me
?” she mumbled, her voice sounding small and foreign to her ears.

For seconds he did nothing, just watched her, a vivid uncertainty augmenting his expression. And that’s when she knew.

Rage enveloped her. She fisted her hands at her sides, her body becoming rigid where she stood, eyes burning with tears she refused to shed. “You thought I’d give you my virginity in exchange for letters?”

Her sudden realization made him noticeably uncomfortable. He wiped a palm awkwardly over his brow, standing to face her. “Natalie—”

“How could you think that about me, Jonathan? How could you think I’d do that?”

He placed his palms on his hips, stalling. “I don’t know,” he answered gruffly. “It just—seemed logical.”

“Logical?” Her features twisted in deep pain. “You thought I’d give myself to you in
payment?
”

“Jesus, that’s not how I looked at it,” he asserted through a rush of air, taking a step toward her.

Icily she whispered, “Of course you would think I had virtues like my mother.”

That stopped him dead in his stride. He stiffened, his eyes shining into hers with dark brilliance. “I knew you were a virgin, Natalie,” he said very quietly. “But I also knew, just as you did, that eventually we would make love. Your desire for me was no secret. It was blatant.”

“You’re such an arrogant man,” she spat. “I wanted you to help me. I thought you were my friend.”

His cheek twitched, his lids narrowed. “Friendship aside, the sexual attraction between us couldn’t be denied forever. This started the minute you walked into my town house.”

She fought the urge to slap him for that—for his gall, for understanding her mind so intimately, and for using his experience against her innocence to a purely selfish end.

“It’s my fault, then,” she admitted sarcastically, digging her nails into her palms. “I should have prepared myself for your advances. Unfortunately I don’t know anyone who knows more about sexual attraction than you, Jonathan.”