Tender the Storm (64 page)

"I've been patient with you," he said, and he drew her unresistingly into his arms.

"Yes."

With one hand, he tilted her chin up. Their eyes met and held, hers wide and enigmatic, his heavy lidded, smoldering. His head descended, and he captured her lips. He kissed her again and again, softly at first, and then with growing hunger. She stood passively in the shelter of his arms, following his lead, not trying to evade the response he so easily evoked. He wanted entrance to her mouth, and she obediently parted her lips for the rhythmic surge and thrust of his tongue.

He took her arms and draped them around his neck. "Zoë," he said, and the word was almost a plea. Her fingers splayed out, and she ran them across his hard muscular back and shoulders, the way he wanted her to, pressing
herself
against him, tempting
him with her softness.

He found the knot on the belt of her wrapper and quickly dispensed with it. The buttons on the front of her
nightrail
were similarly dealt with. His hand pushed inside her bodice and cupped her naked breast, his thumb tormenting the engorged nipple until Zoë whimpered with the pleasure of it.

That soft sound of arousal sent Rolfe's senses spinning. He crushed Zoë to him, stealing her breath, straining her against the hard length of him. Zoë didn't try to pull away. She arched into him, her soft cries of pleasure inviting more.

Rolfe went wild for her. He didn't take the time to remove her night clothes. His hands swept under her skirts, sliding over her bottom, hauling her hard against the cradle of his thighs.

It was too fast, and he could not seem to stop himself.

In a fever of impatience, he lowered her to the bed, thrusting her skirts to her waist. His hand was between her legs, stroking into her, arousing her to the same mindless pitch of wanting that fired his own blood.

Breathing harshly, he pulled back to tear out of his clothes. Zoë cried out, her arms reaching to pull him back to her. When he spread her legs wide, his features were taut with the violence of his passion. He felt a fierce surge of satisfaction when his eyes took in Zoë's dazed look. She wasn't submitting to him. She was shivering with desire, as eager for him as he was for her.

Then he was over her. "I love you," he said, the moment before he drove into her, blending their bodies as one.

Once was not enough for him. He could not get enough of her. He had smashed through her wall of reserve, not with words, but with something that went beyond words. He loved her. She loved him. Long, involved explanations of his past iniquities might prove disastrous. In that shattering act of love, everything else paled into insignificance.

Sated at last, he allowed her to drift into sleep. Even then, her capitulation was complete. She curled into him, accepting his cupped hand across her breast. With one powerful leg, Rolfe anchored Zoë more closely to his naked length. "I love you," he said. He had to nudge her before her voice gave him back the words.

Rolfe was more than content. He was basking in an unfamiliar haze of sensual satisfaction. Every man should be married, was his benevolent thought, so long as he chose for his wife a woman made in the image of Zoë. He could not get over how fortunate he had been to snatch her for himself.

She denied him nothing. Zoë's bed had become his bed. Morning, noon, and night, he took his fill of her. And if sometimes he found her regarding him with a strangely considering eye, he shrugged it off as of little consequence. In every way that counted, she belonged to him. Her reserve was natural to her. She loved him. Hadn't she said so? Zoë was not the sort of woman to hold grudges. And so she had proved to his complete satisfaction. There was no question that he must strive to earn his place in his wife's good graces. But that was Zoë. She had that happy knack of making a man feel ten feet tall.

Contrary to Rolfe speculations, Zoë did not dwell overlong on the deceptions he had practiced. The duel with Tresier, the fiction that her husband had come into France with the sole purpose of persuading her to return to England—these things were pushed to the periphery of her mind. Rolfe was right in this, however—it was the scene in the bookroom with Francoise that was responsible for Zoë's lingering reserve.

Zoë was thinking that it would take a lifetime to understand the man who was her husband. When they made love, all her misgivings melted away. He was only Rolfe to her Zoë, male to her female, and her perfect mate. But at other times, she would brood on that nightmarish scene in the bookroom when Rolfe and Francoise had played out their deadly game.

That
Rolfe Zoë did not recognize. That man filled her with awe. In the face of overwhelming odds, he had conducted himself with a disregard which bordered on insanity.
That
Rolfe was more fearless than was wise. He had faced down his adversary knowing full well that she had the power to annihilate him. Hadn't he told Zoë that his pistol—the one he had kicked to Francoise on command—had been loaded? And hadn't Francoise had that very same pistol in her own hand?

Those two, decided Zoë, were cast in the heroic mold. They had been well matched. It was more than that. Like two seasoned Roman gladiators of old, they had gloried in every thrust and parry of their spine-chilling contest. While she —would she ever forget it?
— had fainted clean away from sheer panic.
Just to think of it made her blush in
mortification.

Hero.
Rolfe was a hero. And if Francoise had chosen a different course, she would have been mourned as a heroine. Of such were martyrs made. One must, of course, admire them in their different ways. They were above ordinary mortals such as
herself
. They were giants. When she measured herself against them, she felt like a veritable dwarf. She wondered how soon it would be before Rolfe took her measure and found her wanting.

Toward the end of June, Leon embarked on the first leg of the long journey which would take him to find Claire. It was time, thought Rolfe, to set his house in order, time to make amends to Zoë for all the unpleasantness she had been made to endure in the past. In short, he proposed that they remove to his estate in Kent.

Zoë heard this suggestion with the deepest misgivings. She could not forget the humiliation she had suffered at the hands of Rolfe's mother, or the pain of Rolfe's rejection. He had, quite literally, deposited her at the Abbey like so much baggage and then he had returned to town to pursue his own pleasures.

Rolfe watched Zoë's expression with veiled interest. The closer their carriage drew to the Abbey, the more finely drawn her features became. Her flow of small-talk gradually dried up. He had a fair idea of what was going through her head.

"Things will be very different this time," he told her. "For one thing, I shall be there to lend my support."

She looked at him, then, with those huge eyes of hers. "Won't you have business to attend to in town?" She was remembering the last time when Rolfe's excuse for staying away was that the press of business necessitated his presence in London.

"That business is over," he said. "You must know that I was working with Housard even then to unmask the members of
La Compagnie.
Now that I've resigned from that side of things, I'm free to pursue the life I love. At heart, I'm a farmer, Zoë. You'll see."

For a moment her eyes warmed and a smile touched her lips, but only for a moment.

"What is it?" asked Rolfe.

"I was thinking of Francoise."

Rolfe captured Zoë's hands in a comforting clasp. Zoë's knowledge of Francoise was very sketchy and Rolfe was determined that it should remain so. She knew only that her friend had been
Le Patron,
the mastermind behind a society fanatical to Revolutionary principles. She knew nothing of Francoise's lust for wealth and how she had used
La Compagnie
to pursue her own ends.

Zoë also knew nothing of a communication from Housard which had reached Rolfe via the War Office. Housard had been making inquiries into Francoise's background. He was almost sure that
La Compagnie
was the conception of Francoise's father. When he had gone to guillotine, one of his sons had stepped into his shoes. How and when Francoise had taken over the reins of the society was a matter of speculation.

"Don't waste your sympathy on Francoise," said Rolfe quietly. "She was quite without scruples." He was remembering how Francoise intended to snuff out Zoë's life without batting an eyelash.

"I don't," said Zoë. She was remembering how Francoise had trained the pistol on Rolfe without a tremor. After an interval, she observed faintly, "If
Valaze
had not appeared when he
did . . .
oh God . . . I can't be sorry that Francoise met with her just desserts. All the same, I am glad that you were not the one to mete out justice."

Rolfe patted Zoë consolingly. He chose not to reveal that if the boy had not killed Francoise he would have been compelled to do the deed with his own hand. When he and
Le Patron
had faced each other in that room, they had both known that no quarter would be asked or given.

Observing Zoë's pensive little face, Rolfe exerted himself to lead the conversation into more pleasant channels. He succeeded remarkably well. It was only as the coach began the descent toward the Abbey that she remembered the coming ordeal.

She approached the door to the drawing room with drooping shoulders and flagging steps. Rolfe's hand on her elbow allowed no delay. He swept her inside. The small buzz of conversation suddenly died. Then, as if on cue, in perfect unison, the cry arose.

"Welcome home, Zoë. Welcome home!"

Later that night, in the privacy of their chamber, Zoë said to her husband, "You arranged the whole thing!"

"I did," he admitted, meeting her eyes in the looking glass. His fingers deftly undid the row of tiny buttons at the back of his wife's gown.

The gown loosened and Zoë stepped out of it. She threw it on the back of a chair.

Rolfe moved to the bed where he stretched full length on top of the feather coverlet. Locking his
hands behind his head, he watched Zoë as she began to disrobe, and reflected that she could not possibly know how each artless movement inflamed a man's senses to fever pitch.

In the act of stepping out of her petticoats, Zoë paused. "You came on ahead. You must have done."

Rolfe grinned. "Those two days I left you to attend to business? I came down here to set my house in order. As I told you, kitten, things are going to be very different this time around."