The Princess in His Bed (34 page)

The instant she made it to the hallway, she tore after the man with her diamonds.

Mathias stopped short in front of his carriage and raked a hand through his hair.
Merde
.
Merde
.
Merde!
He hated seeing the Comte de Rochemore lose everything. This was the first time since Charles’s death he’d seen a loss of that magnitude.
Jésus-Christ
, the man had four daughters! He’d never come up with a dowry for them now. Tonight he’d sealed their fate. There would be no marriages. No children. For any of them. All four young women would have no choice but to enter a convent and live out the remainder of their days in the cloister.

Whether they wished it or not.

Curling his fingers, Mathias let loose a string of expletives. He was so overwrought, he wanted to slam his fist into something. Anything.

This game had to stop. He wanted it to stop. But he didn’t want to be the one to bring Basset to an end anymore. He thought when Sard had approached him, this would be easy.

It was gut-wrenching.

He’d started all this for Charles, thinking this was the least he could do for him. After watching Rochemore sink farther and farther into debt at the Basset table tonight, he decided he’d done enough for his friend.

Charles could have done a million things differently, not the least of which was having the courage to deal with the aftermath of his financial losses.

Instead, he’d chosen to abandon his wife and child after he’d driven them into poverty.

Mathias was tired of torturing himself over his death. Tired of wondering if he could have done more. Seen more sooner. He’d spent months letting it eat at him. It was Charles who should be the one consoling his wife and child.

He should never have left his family to fend for themselves, destitute.

Mathias had stepped forward and purchased a town house in the city for Charles’s wife, Marie, and the child, so they’d have a home to live in. He even gave Marie a monthly allowance.

He was sick to death of the weight he felt in his chest over Charles’s untimely death.

The last thing he wanted to do was to enter another gaming den. Tomorrow he’d have another meeting with that weasel Valette, and would have to give up more names.

Which brought him to a different dilemma. Silvie. A willful woman who didn’t have enough good sense to walk away from a losing table.

He’d had to watch that fiasco, too. Her tension and horror mounted with each hand she lost. He didn’t want to sense it. Or notice it at all. Normally he didn’t notice a woman beyond her physical attributes, and yet he was attuned to Silvie. And the carnal heat between them.

She had him utterly enthralled at every level. He wanted her so badly, his sac ached.

This attraction to her was the last thing he needed.

Especially when he was an informant for the King’s Lieutenant General of Police on a mission to report the names of those who regularly frequented Navers’s gaming den. He wanted to do just that—and be done with the matter.

But this mysterious woman was convoluting matters considerably.

Silvie was playing games—beyond Basset. He didn’t know what to make of her secrets. He didn’t know how to snap the fascination. Or how to ignore the sexual pull between them.

He couldn’t tell her the details of his mission—especially to a woman he knew nothing about. And he certainly couldn’t seem to impress it on her to stay away from Navers’s Hôtel.

“Montfort!” A female voice grabbed his attention. He turned around and saw Silvie racing toward him. He knew it was only a matter of time before she came after him. He had her gems, after all. They were important to her. He’d seen the devastation in her eyes when she’d lost them.

She stopped before him, her breathing quick. “I need to speak to you,” she said.

“Yes, well, I need to shake you for your fool-headed play. What did you think you were doing in there? I thought you had some experience in the game. You don’t stay and continue to lose money when you’ve no luck on your side to speak of!”

She lowered her eyes. “Yes, you’re right, of course.” Her response was soft, her manner demure. And he was stunned. Since when did this woman become so docile?

“I really must speak to you,” she repeated and looked around. They were alone in the courtyard, save for the horses and the drivers. “But not here. Come to my town house. Tonight. I’ll meet you there.”

With that she stalked away briskly.

Mathias was drained and angry and, now thanks to her, his cock was hard—for a woman in men’s clothing.
Excellent
. Before Charles took his own life, Mathias had a normal existence. He attended the theater, was welcomed in all the best Salons in Paris, and actually had women who gave him their name as well as their bodies. And yet here he was, covertly working to topple a Duc and turn in his peers, all the while panting after another man’s mistress who was cloaked in secrecy. If he had any good sense at all, he’d get in his carriage and go home, but wild horses couldn’t keep him from Silvie’s town house or from hearing what she had to tell him.

He was going to demystify this mystifying beauty and get her out of his system.

This wasn’t going to get any more involved than it already was.

5

The moment Mathias arrived at Silvie’s town house, he was asked by the majordomo to follow him.

As the man led him across the grand vestibule, Mathias tried his level best to learn the name of the lady of the house from the servant. To learn how long she’d been living in the town house. Hell, to learn anything about her at all. Although no one else seemed to know anything about the Marquis de Gaillard’s new mistress, surely the majordomo did.

It proved to be a futile exercise. The somber servant was tight-lipped.

They began climbing the stairs. Mathias realized he wasn’t heading to a drawing room. He was being led to her private apartments.

His greedy cock thickened further and strained harder against the inside of his breeches. Easy now. He never knew what to expect with this woman. She wasn’t the most predictable of females. He wasn’t about to make any assumptions.

Reaching one of the doors in the corridor, the servant knocked and opened it upon hearing his mistress’s bidding.

Mathias stepped in. The servant closed the door behind him, leaving Mathias standing in an antechamber, with chairs of light blue damask. He looked around. The room was empty.

“In here, please,” he heard her say from the bedchamber.

His heart began to race.
Merde
. He was acting as if he was some nervous youth about to fuck his first woman.

Entering the bedchamber, he found her standing near the large four-poster bed. In a rich red and white gown, her hair in long dark curls cascading onto her creamy shoulders, she was breathtaking to behold.

Dressed in feminine attire that showed off her fine female attributes, she was utterly entrancing. What was conspicuously absent was her jewelry. She wore none.

She’d had on a few fine pieces the other day, so he knew she owned some. In no way was he going to presume it was omitted on purpose because she anticipated sex and didn’t want it getting in the way.

Mathias was going to let her take the initial lead, then take over, moving one slow seductive step at a time.

In her bedchamber, alone with her, mere feet from her bed, he’d do absolutely nothing that would jeopardize this moment.

She had her hands folded before her. He watched as she smoothed her skirts and refolded them.
She’s nervous
.
All the more reason to take it slow
.

“Thank you for coming,” she said.

“You’re welcome.” He offered nothing more, but simply waited for her next words. Her next move.

She smoothed her skirts again and paused, almost as though she was grappling with her next words. Finally she said, “I find myself in a bit of a situation.”

“Oh? And what situation is that?”

She bit her lush bottom lip and dropped her gaze to the floor briefly before she lifted her chin, looked him straight in the eye, and said, “I need my diamonds back.”

Mathias held his tongue. Any response and she likely wouldn’t elaborate. He wanted her as much as he wanted to know about her.

For the life of him, he couldn’t understand what all the secrecy was about.

Moreover, he doubted Gaillard cared a whit if his mistress played some Basset—illegal or not. So why the desire to disguise herself?

His silence worked. She continued. “The diamonds are . . . very important to me, you see. I cannot lose them. I am willing to compensate you for them.”

His groin tightened. Every fiber in his being anticipated exactly what compensation she was offering. Still he kept silent.

His gaze dropped to her hands. He noted she was clutching them tightly.
Dieu
, he knew the diamonds were important to her, but he hadn’t anticipated her being in such distress over them. It was palpable.

“If . . .” She stopped and started anew. “You give me back my diamonds, and I’ll . . . rather . . .”

Out with it, Gabrielle
, she told herself and pushed the rest of the words off her tongue. “I’ll be . . . yours for the night.”

The flare of hot interest in his eyes made her sex clench. All right. She’d admit it. She was hardly the sacrificial lamb here.

You know as well as I do any carnal encounter between us would be heated, intense, and delicious.
His words had been haunting her for days and even more so at night.

The King would select her husband soon. She’d heard that copulation with a husband for the purposes of procreation was entirely different from sex with a lover. Before she was married to a man who would likely ship her off to some isolated château, she wanted to know what it would be like to couple with a man who heated her blood the way this man did.

The more she’d contemplated the proposition on the way home, the more it held appeal. She’d enjoy an amorous encounter, experience firsthand some of the physical pleasure she’d heard about, and gain back her diamonds.

The benefit to her was twofold.

Slowly, he approached, all that tall strong masculine beauty coming her way. Gripped by anticipation, her insides quivered.

Mathias stopped before her, forcing her to lift her chin in order to look him in the eye. Dear God, how she loved his height. No, more than just his height. There was so much about him that she found physically appealing. His gaze dipped briefly down to her décolletage, her nipples hardening at the mere glance.

Mathias slipped his warm fingers under her chin, leaned in, and slowly grazed his lips up the side of her neck. She closed her eyes, her breathing instantly quickening. The sensations felt so good, so decadent.

“You’re going to let me have you any way I want?” he murmured in her ear.

There were different ways? “Yes . . .”

“And you want two diamonds for your body . . . for one night?” His hot mouth retraced its tantalizing path, ever so lightly back down her neck to the curve of her shoulder.

“Hmm? Oh, yes . . . two . . .” She licked her lips. “Both diamonds.” This was so much better than anything anyone described.

Lifting his head, he hauled her up against him and claimed her mouth, his tongue slipping past her lips on her gasp. She fisted his justacorps and held on as his tongue swirled and stroked hers with mind-spinning intensity. He tasted so good. No, he tasted better than good. Better than anything she’d ever known. Hungry for more, she matched him stroke for stroke with the same famished zeal. She’d never been kissed before, never knew a man this exhilarating. She rubbed herself against the hard bulge pushing against her belly. His groan spiked her need and moistened her sex, the light pulsing between her legs growing stronger with each skillful sweep of his tongue. She’d no idea how this man had the ability to awaken her long-dormant body, to set every nerve ending quivering with excitement.