Leslie Lafoy (16 page)

“Are you decent?”

“Not quite,” she called out, letting the hem of the gown fall to her ankles on its own and snatching up the wrapper. “Give me just a minute more.”

“No,” he declared, stepping into the doorway with bare feet visible under the hems of his dark trousers, his shoes and socks in hand, his shirt collar open and his sleeves rolled back to his elbows.

“In the first place,” he went on, advancing toward her as she swallowed down her flip-flopping heart and rammed her arms into the sleeves of the long, lightweight robe, “I wouldn’t leave you here alone. I’d have Carden or Aiden stay with you. And in the second place, I strongly suspect that you’re more capable of protecting yourself than any woman I’ve ever known.”

“Ah,” she said warily, yanking the waist sash into place and easing down on the seat so that the hem of her nightgown covered her bare feet. “We’re to the I-have-some-questions conversation you warned me about.”

“We are.” He came around the pile of her wet clothing, dropped unceremoniously onto the window seat beside her, and began to put on his socks.

“Well?” she pressed, wondering what he’d do if she were to hike her hem, wiggle her bare toes, and start rolling a stocking up her leg. She had perfectly shaped feet, too. And it wasn’t terribly fair that she was the only one struggling to maintain the illusion of decorum, the only one whose blood was warmed and who was battling temptation’s urge to touch.

Without looking at her, he pulled on a short boot and answered, “Why don’t you spare me the necessity of asking and just tell me about yourself?”

Because there’s quite a bit I don’t want you to ever know,
she silently rejoined, watching him pull on his other boot. Knowing better than to be so provocatively honest, she summoned a smile and offered instead, “I have no idea what it is that has you curious.”

He turned on the seat to face her, one foot on the floor, the other on the seat, and his arm resting casually atop his drawn-up knee. Temptation didn’t whisper, it practically growled for her to slide over and curl into the space between his thighs, to lean against his chest and let him wrap his arms around her. And his hair, so invitingly tousled from his having made an effort to dry it …

“You carry a knife and a derringer in the seams of your skirt,” she heard him say through the thundering beat of her heart. “You sleep with a Colt repeater under your pillow. When and why did you develop those most unfeminine little habits?”

His eyes were so dark, so intensely focused on her, that she couldn’t draw a full breath. Looking away, she moistened her lower lip and tried to stem the chattering chaos of her thoughts. “After Henri left for the war and because I was living alone and felt vulnerable,” she answered, pleasantly surprised by how even and calm her voice sounded. “We’ve had this conversation already.”

At the edge of her vision she saw him lean his head back against the window frame. He considered her for a long moment in silence, his gaze still intent, one corner of his mouth moving ever so slightly upward. “When we came up out of the tunnel,” he said slowly, thoughtfully, “you looked around and instantly saw the darkest of the shadows. I didn’t have to tell you where we were going. You knew. And you read my hand signals without so much as a second’s hesitation. How does a sweet little widow from New Orleans develop those kinds of instincts and skills?”

He didn’t give her time to answer before quietly adding, “And don’t tell me it comes from having to evade men who thought you were Mignon. I’m not going to believe it, Belle. I know the look of a hunter when I see it.”

Silently swearing, angry at having so blithely and inadvertently given herself away, she absently plucked up a stocking and drew it through her hand. God, what could she tell him that would be even remotely believable?

“You also recognized the need to have a secondary plan for our rendezvous and came up with a solid one on your own. While it might be logical to explain it as the sort of skill one develops in trying to keep track of a servant while out shopping, the look in your eyes said it was born of more than that.”

“Was it the look of the hunter?” she asked, staring down at the stocking twisted around her hands, desperately hoping to find a way to salvage the illusion. Six years and no one had ever suspected. A single day with Barrett Stanbridge …

“It was the look of someone who was quite used to being the prey,” he answered gently. “You didn’t so much as bat an eyelash when I laid out the plan for you. I’ve seen soldiers who don’t have the kind of field confidence you do.”

What was the point of keeping the secret? her exhausted mind asked. What Barrett thought of her as a woman didn’t matter. Who would he tell? Lord, of all the times for tears to crawl up her throat.

“How did you come by such skills, Belle?”

There was no evading it, no lying about it. He wasn’t going to let her and she was too worn down to fight him. “The hard way,” she answered, lifting her chin, resolved to make the best of it.

His smile was soft, growing by slow degrees. “That doesn’t surprise me. Could I persuade you to elaborate?”

She suspected that he could persuade any woman to do just about anything when he smiled like that. Expelling a long, hard breath, she fixed her gaze on the far wall. “Remember,” she began, “when I said that while you built and defended bridges, I was more comfortable with blowing them up?”

At the edge of her vision she saw him blink, saw his smile falter a tiny bit. “Yes.”

She turned on the seat to face him squarely and took a fortifying breath. “I was speaking literally.”

Barrett stared at her, his thoughts wildly tumbling over several courses at once. “You spent the war as a saboteur?”

“I was a very good one, actually.”

One part of his mind reeled and struggled to imagine the woman sitting before him setting explosive charges. Without the hoops, without the wide shoulders of a gown, she was so small. The wet, golden ringlets framing her face, cascading over her flawless nape … Soft, dark eyes, so innocent, so warily defiant. Isabella, an angel of destruction?

Another part of his mind believed and calmly accepted it as the only truth that made sense. Yet another remembered the battles for the bridges he’d helped build. Imagining Belle in that bloody, screaming, bullet-raining hell … His heart slamming against the wall of his chest, his breath caught hard and low, he forced himself to swallow, to keep from reaching out and snatching her into his arms.

“It was really much easier than being a spy,” she said softly, shrugging her shoulders and drawing him from his waking nightmare. “I tried that. Once. And…” With a fleeting wince and a nervous smile, she added, “While it didn’t bother Mignon to seduce men for a larger purpose, it bothered me a great deal and so I looked about and found another way to help.”

Her smile disappeared and then, a fraction of a heartbeat later, bloomed wide and full. “Not that they wanted it at first, you understand. Eventually, though, they decided that since I was determined, they’d be better off having me under some sort of control.”

“You could have gotten yourself killed,” he managed to choke out. “In a most grisly, lonely way.”

She sobered and moistened her lower lip with the tip of her tongue. Her gaze drifted away and her voice came as a whisper. “It was a war, Barrett. Dying was a distinct possibility no matter what I did. Death was everywhere and came from every quarter. The market. A garden. On the road. At home. Sometimes it stalked, deliberately and slowly. They could see it coming, but couldn’t get away. Other times it came swiftly and out of the blue. More usually, the dark. And the candle was snuffed in a single instant. I’ve buried so many people. Women and children. There are so many, many ways to die. All of them lonely. All of them grisly in one way or another.”

Her chin came up and she took a deep breath as her gaze snapped back to his. “I decided,” she said, her voice once again strong and vibrant, “that I’d rather die on my own terms than cowering in the corner of my house and letting someone else set them for me.”

He was numb, body and soul. Awed by her strength, humbled by her resiliency.

“I was an only child,” she went on, brightly filling the silence between them. “My father wanted a son and had to make do with what he’d been given. I grew up hunting and riding. I know the woods and the bayous better than most men.” She chuckled and a chagrined shadow stole over her smile. “I wish I could say that I’m as comfortable in parlors and ballrooms, but I can’t. Lord knows my mother tried to fashion me into a lady. But the plain simple truth is that I don’t have the instincts for it.”

“I haven’t noticed any shortcomings,” he managed to say, feeling suddenly, wildly flaring through every fiber of his being.

“I’ve been trying very hard to put my best feminine foot forward,” she laughingly countered, looking down to unwrap the stocking she’d twisted around her hands. “And if I’d been playing the part well, you never would have even suspected there was more to me than that. I’m just ever so glad that none of the Yankees were as perceptive as you are.”

So was he. “One more question, Belle,” he began, wanting—needing—to know for sure. “Did you do it out of devotion to the great and glorious Southern cause or because you simply liked the danger?”

Arching a brow, she looked down at her feet, seeming to give the matter some thought. After a moment, she replied softly, “I knew the cause was doomed. From the very start. But there comes a point when you need a purpose so that living with death is endurable.” She looked up at him and in an instant her face brightened with an unholy smile as the light in her eyes danced, wicked and wild. “And danger does have a way of making you feel very much alive.”

“That it does,” he admitted as compelling heat surged through his loins. “That it does.”

He understood the appeal of it; Isabella knew it to the center of her bones. Just as she knew that if she reached for him, he’d meet her halfway. There was a desperate kind of restraint in his breathing, a hunger in his eyes. And more. A depth and a darkness that were both promise and threat and pulled at her in a way she wouldn’t deny, couldn’t resist. Making love with him would be no gentle, tender affair. It would be steel and fire and gloriously fierce. And dangerously intoxicating. No man had ever done what Barrett could so easily do to her. If she dared to let him. If she was brave enough to fling herself into the flames.

The tension in his body shifted abruptly and she blinked, startled by the sense of tumbling that came in the loss of his full attention. Desire still glimmered in his eyes, but it was overlaid with a resignation that tore at her heart.

“Carden’s here.”

She looked away, acutely aware of the edge and how close she’d come to blithely dancing over it. And, God forgive and save her, how very deeply she resented a man who had come only to help them.

“Aiden’s with him.”

She nodded, hearing nothing beyond the frantic thumping of her heartbeat. As Barrett shoved himself off the seat and turned to leave, she began rolling the stocking to the toe, saying far too breathlessly, “I’ll be down in a few minutes. Once I’ve put my dress back on and done something about my hair. It wouldn’t do to meet gentlemen looking this way.”

He turned around and stepped back, slowly lifting his hand. Her heart skittered and her breath caught as he gently placed his fingertips beneath her chin and tilted her face up until she met his solemn gaze.

Trailing the pad of his thumb over her lower lip, he whispered, “You’re perfect just the way you are, Belle.”

She stared up at him, mesmerized and desperately wanting to believe him, desperately wanting more. As though he could read her mind, he bent down and, as her eyes drifted closed and her heart pounded, brushed his lips ever so gently over hers.

“Absolutely, stunningly perfect,” he whispered as he slowly drew back. Then, with a long, hard exhale, he shook his head, turned and left her alone, her senses reeling.

Perfect? Barrett thought she was perfect? She smiled ruefully and quickly brushed away the welling tears. Men, she reminded herself as she placed her toes in the stocking, would say anything in the pursuit of women. And, every now and then, they managed to say just the right words, just the words a woman craved to hear. A virtuous woman kept her wits about her, realized the ploy for what it was, and didn’t let it affect her good judgment. A less than virtuous woman recognized the ploy, admitted that she didn’t care about the motives behind it, and marched boldly on into the seduction.

It had been ten years since someone had considered her worth the work of seducing. And she’d been ever so virtuous in the years before and since that one day. Well, except for the one time when she’d mistakenly thought she might have the wherewithal to follow in Mignon’s spying footsteps. But since she hadn’t had the courage to see it through, it probably didn’t count against her.

Barrett Stanbridge would count, though. And there wouldn’t be any flirting with the notion of bedding him, then changing her mind and clinging to virtue at the last minute. If she stepped into his arms it had to be with a clear understanding of just what she was doing. There would be no love in making love with Barrett. It would be solely for the physical satisfaction in it. And, honesty compelled her to admit, for the thrill of boldly meeting the challenge of a dangerous man. But there would be nothing more than that. There would be no commitments. No obligations. No expectations. No forever.

It would be, she realized, tying her garter, her idea of the perfect marriage. Blazing, breathtaking, and mercifully brief.

Chapter Nine

Barrett stood at the top of the stairs and took a settling breath. On the floor below, Carden and Aiden—judging by the sounds of their voices—had stepped into the parlor to wait for him. And wait they would; of that he was absolutely certain. Their rakehell days were well over, but they remembered the rules and would play by them.

Ahead of him, off to the right, clearly visible on the other side of the open doorway, Belle was rolling a stocking up a beautifully shaped, delightfully long leg. He deliberately looked away, allowing her privacy, trying to slow the frantic rhythm of his heartbeat.