Petals in the Storm (19 page)

But she had learned self-control in the hardest of schools, and even now she knew that he was wrong to claim that no one would be hurt by what they did. She would be more than hurt; she would be devastated if she fell in love with Rafe again. Losing him once had nearly destroyed her, and no handful of days as his mistress could be worth the agony that intimacy would bring.

As she tried to find the strength she needed to break away, he murmured, "I promise that you won't be the poorer for it, Margot. The emeralds are only the beginning."

He wanted her to be his whore.

The knowledge gave her the fury she needed to resist. She jerked away, unconsciously raising one arm defensively. "No means
No\
If I'd meant yes, I would have said yes!"

As she whirled around, her elbow clubbed his solar plexus with a force that knocked all the wind out of him. Rafe gasped and staggered back.

Appalled, Maggie stared at him, backing up until she was pressed against the pier table under the mirror. In a stifled voice, she said, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hit you."

He straightened up, fighting for breath. His gray eyes weren't cool now; they blazed with anger, and something more. Maggie had never felt physically afraid of Rafe, but now she was acutely aware of the height and breadth and sheer athletic strength of him.

She had wounded his pride, and that was a far graver blow than an accidental elbow.

The moments it took for Rafe to regain his breath gave him time to grab the last shreds of his temper. "It's fortunate for you that I was taught never to strike a woman," he said with icy fury. "If you were a man, I would teach you a lesson you would never forget."

"Surely if I were a man, this situation would not have arisen," she said tremulously.

Rafe's anger began to fade. "No, I suppose it wouldn't have. I'm rather conventional in my preferences."

She gave him an uncertain smile. "Will you forgive me if I promise not to hit you again unless I mean it?"

He had to smile. "Forgiven."

Her gaze dropped and she busied herself with putting on her evening gloves. He guessed that she had been deeply affected to lash out like that, and that was promising. Yet he felt a stirring of guilt at having caused her unhappiness.

Cool strategy and analysis disappeared when she raised her beautiful gray-green eyes to his. There was infinite courage and vulnerability in those smoky depths, and with a surge of emotion that left him shaken, Rafe realized that it wasn't the maddening, elusive countess he desired. What he really wanted was to have Margot Ashton back.

At that moment, he would have given his title and half his fortune to turn back the clock to the uncomplicated love they had shared when they were young. Though that was impossible, clearly the girl he had loved still lived somewhere inside the lady spy. If it were humanly possible, he would call Margot forth again.

With mild surprise, he recognized that in his mind, she was always Margot when he was thinking of her as she was—or as he wanted her to be. He asked, "Why don't you like to be called Margot?"

She gazed at him for a long, long time, her changeable eyes unfathomable. Speaking as if the words were being torn out of her, she said, "Being Margot hurt too much."

It said everything and nothing, but intuition told him that it was not the time to ask for a clearer explanation. After a pause, he said, "It's time we left for Prince Orkov's ball. We have a general to hunt."

"Very true." Maggie turned to the mirror and replaced her jade earrings with the emeralds. "The day our mission is completed, you will have your 'bits of trumpery' back." After wrapping her long cashmere shawl around her bare shoulders with casual artistry, she turned to face him, the Countess Janos once more. "Shall we be off?"

Rafe offered her his arm, pleased that he did not give in to the nearly overpowering desire to embrace her again. Still, as he helped her into his coach, he found himself reaching out to touch her golden hair. The silky strands flowed over his fingers like gossamer, and he wished he dared bury his hands in them.

More than ever he wanted her, but she was proving to be a far more difficult challenge than he had expected. He had thought she would yield to the passion of the moment, like the society beauties he had known, and he had been wrong.

But Rafael Whitbourne was unaccustomed to failure, and he would not accept it now. There had to be a way to win her, and by God, he would find it.

Prince Orkov's ballroom was decorated with barbaric Mid-Eastern splendor, including footmen dressed as Turkish harem guards and an Egyptian belly dancer performing in a side room. Even the jaundiced tastes of Paris society admitted that it was out of the ordinary.

In spite of frustration with their lack of progress in uncovering the plot, Maggie was enjoying herself. Their host held her hand and gazed into her eyes with Slavic soulfulness, but fortunately he was too busy to seek her out.

For the first part of the evening, Rafe stayed close to Maggie's side, playing the part of the devoted lover, as if there had been no traumatic scene earlier. But for him it would not have been traumatic. There were plenty of women available to relieve his physical frustrations later this night.

Fleetingly she toyed with the idea of letting him have his way with her so she would no longer have the cachet of being unavailable. After a night or two, surely he would grow bored and try his luck elsewhere.

As soon as the thought surfaced, she squashed it, recognizing it for an outrageous rationalization. No matter what reasons she concocted to allow him into her bed, the emotional repercussions would be disastrous. He was upsetting her enough as it was. Whenever she looked at Rafe, she felt his lips moving sensuously down her neck, and her knees started to weaken. It was hard to keep her mind on the business of the evening.

Though General Roussaye was supposed to be present, they couldn't locate him in the crush, and Maggie was beginning to fear that they would be unsuccessful. After an hour, she and Rafe decided to separate and hope for the best.

Midnight came and went, supper was served, the dancing resumed, and still she hadn't found her quarry. Exasperated, she wandered into the room where the belly dancer was performing for a handful of guests.

The woman undulated in veils and bangles while three musicians on the low dias behind her played minor-key music that sounded strange to European ears. As her eyes adjusted to the dimmer light, Maggie realized that she had found her man. While she had never been introduced to the general, he had been pointed out to her once, and she recognized him immediately.

Michel Roussaye was below medium height and wiry in build, but at first glance he reminded her of Colonel von Fehrenbach. The blond Prussian was an aristocrat who had been bred to the trade of war, while the dark-haired Frenchman was a commoner who had achieved his rank by merit. Nonetheless, even in this dim light it was clear that they were brothers under the skin, with the tough watchfulness of the professional man of war.

Would Roussaye have as much anger in him as von Fehrenbach did? Of their three suspects, the Bonapartist had the best motive for creating disruptions.

Maggie crossed the room to take a seat near Roussaye, wondering how she might strike up a conversation since there was no one to introduce them. The general was intent on the dancer and her eyes followed his.

She had never seen a belly dancer before, since the few places where they might be seen were off-limits for females. The sight made her blink with astonishment. Was it really possible for a woman to make her breasts twirl in opposite directions? Improbable as it was, the evidence was before her eyes. The spinning tassels heightened the effect. The dancer was heavy by European standards, but there was a large amount of her visible, all of it superbly trained.

Maggie must have made some sound of surprise, because a soft tenor voice said, "A very talented performer, do you not agree?"

She turned and saw that Roussaye was watching her with amusement. She replied, "Indeed, monsieur, I had no idea that it was possible for a human body to do such things."

He gestured at the stage. "Though Orkov hired her as a curiosity, she is an artist of great skill."

"Is artistry what a man sees when he looks at a belly dancer?"

"That may not be the first thought in most men's minds," he admitted with a hint of smile, "but I have spent time in Egypt, and have some appreciation of the fine points of the art."

She remembered that Roussaye's first military experience had been in Napoleon's Egyptian campaign of 1798, when he had been scarcely more than a boy. A formidable man. Keeping her tone light, Maggie agreed, "She does have rather fine points."

The music ended and the sweat-drenched dancer took a bow and retired for a break. The rest of the audience also left, leaving Maggie alone with Roussaye. She asked, "What was Egypt like?"

This time his smile was warmer. "Remarkable. The temples are almost impossible to believe, even when they are right before you. We look at a cathedral five hundred years old and think it ancient.
Their
temples are many times that age. And the Pyramids ..."

The general was lost in memory for a moment. "Bonaparte spent the night in the largest. The next morning when he was asked what he had seen, he said only that no one would believe him." With an undertone of sadness he added, "In the history of Egypt, the brief French occupation is less than the blink of an eye. In the history of France, Napoleon may be of no more importance than that."

Maggie said dryly, "A thousand years from now, people may be that detached. In our time, Napoleon appears as the greatest and wickedest man of our age."

Roussaye stiffened, and she wondered if she had gone too far. While she wanted to stimulate responses from him, it would be a mistake to alienate him entirely.

"You are not French, madame," he said coldly. "It is not to be expected that you would see him as we do."

Wanting to know what motivated him, she asked, "How
do
the French see Bonaparte? I am one of many who paid a high price for his ambition. Can you convince me there was any value to it?"

The general's dark eyes held hers. "You were right to say that he is the greatest man of our age. In his younger years, to be around him was to feel... to feel as if a strong wind was blowing. The emperor had more force and vitality than any man I have ever seen, more strength and more vision. We will never see his equal again."

"Thank God," she said, unable to repress her bitterness.

Leaning forward, he said intensely, "After the Revolution, the hands of every nation in Europe were raised against us. France should have been destroyed, but we weren't. Bonaparte gave us back our power and pride. We were everywhere victorious."

"And in his later years, your emperor lost whole armies. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers, countless civilians, died for France's glory. He once said that the lives of a million men were nothing to him," Maggie retorted. "When Bonaparte came back from Elba, were you one of those who forgot his vows to Louis and followed your emperor?"

After a long silence, the general said quietly, "I was."

She took a deep breath, reminding herself that she must be controlled. "Do you think it was right to rally to him?"

He surprised her by saying, "No, I can't say that it was right, but that didn't matter. Napoleon was my emperor, and I would have followed him to hell itself."

"Then you got your wish. They say that Waterloo was a close approximation of hell."

"The emperor was not the man he once was, and fifty thousand soldiers paid the price. Perhaps I should have been one of them, but God had other plans for me." Roussaye's expression eased. "Though it is a salvation I do not deserve, I have learned that there is life beyond war."

An odd, mystical statement for a warrior. Maggie was saved from further comment when two people entered the room. Glancing up, she saw Rafe accompanied by a tiny, exquisite woman with raven black hair and the swelling figure of midpregnancy. Roussaye rose, a smile transforming his serious expression.

Rafe said, "Magda, my love, permit me to introduce you to Madame Roussaye. She has been showing me our host's paintings. We are cousins of some sort, for she is from Florence and her family is connected to that of my Italian grandmother."

The raven-haired woman greeted Maggie warmly. Judging by the way the Roussayes looked at each other, it was easy to guess that his wife was the salvation he had referred to; the bond between them was almost tangible. Was the general an ardent enough Bonapartist to risk his personal happiness in a treacherous plot?

Unfortunately, Maggie feared that he was.

The intensity of the earlier discussion disappeared in a general conversation. All four of them shared a serious interest in art, and before the couples parted they made an engagement to visit the Louvre together three days hence.

Back in the main ballroom, a waltz was playing. Rafe swept Maggie into it without asking her permission. As they whirled across the floor, she decided ruefully that conservative opinion was right. Even though he held her at a perfectly proper distance, the waltz was still altogether too erotic to be decent. With her awareness of him heightened by their encounter earlier