C. Harris - Why Kings Confess

He snagged her arm, hauling her back around to look at him. Her color was high, her fine brown eyes snapping with anger. He said, “What happened today wasn’t about threatening you. It was about demeaning me, about making me feel his power and emphasizing my own weakness. If you go see him now, you’ll be helping him to shame me. It’d be like saying I can’t even take care of myself, let alone you.”

She drew in a quick breath that parted her lips and jerked her chest. “You saved my life. I never meant to bring you danger. But that’s what I have done.”

He gave her what he hoped came off as a cocky smile. “I’m not as helpless as you and Sampson Bullock seem inclined to believe.”

“I know you’re not helpless.”

Their gazes met, held. She was still so close to him. And somewhere along the line, without him quite noticing it, the conversation had subtly shifted. Perhaps not so much in words, but in focus. He realized he was still holding the towel and awkwardly set it aside, suddenly at a loss for what to do with his hands.

He was painfully attuned to the subtle charge of raw awareness in the room, conscious of each breath he drew, of the rhythm of his blood pumping through every part of his being, of her nearness. He watched her pulse beat at the base of her slim white throat, and the moment was so powerful he found himself wishing it could stretch out and last forever. And then, just when he feared it would, she reached to cup her palm against his cheek. Tipping her head, she brushed her mouth against his, and he felt himself tremble.

He told himself not to be a fool, that it was a kiss of gratitude, that she couldn’t be thinking of him as a man-not the kind of man a woman kissed with passion and took into her own body. Then he saw the saucy smile that lifted her lips, and he forgot to breathe.

She took his hand and led him into the room she had made her own. A single candle had been lit against the drab gloom, casting a warm golden glow over the bed’s simple counterpane.

He started to say something, but she pressed two fingers to his lips.

“Shhh,” she said.

She let go of his hand and took a step back, her gaze locked with his. He watched her arms come up, her fingers working as she loosened the ties of her gown. She let it fall into a puddle on the floor at her feet. Her petticoat followed. She untied her shift, and with exquisite care, clenched her hands in the fine linen. Then she swept her arms up and over her head, stripping it away.

She stood before him naked except for her stockings and garters. She was so finely made, her skin so fair and soft, with a faint sprinkling of cinnamon across the mounds of her small high breasts. Her limbs were long and impossibly slender, her waist and hips narrow, the juncture of her legs a fiery triangle.

“I love you,” he said.

“No, you don’t. You don’t know me.”

“I know you.”

She shook her head. But she was still smiling.

Reaching out, he fisted his hand in the heavy fall of her hair, drawing her to him.

She pressed her naked body hard against the length of him, her mouth opening beneath his as the kiss became a savage, breathless onslaught that went on and on. She tore at his clothes, working to rid him of his waistcoat, his shirt. He felt her fingertips skim his naked back, and the sensation was so raw that he cried out. Then she moved to the buttons of his flap, her hands brushing the exquisitely sensitive flesh of his groin, and he almost lost control.

He said, “I don’t know if I can do this. It’s been so long-”

She laughed and pushed him down on his back, his wounded head cradled by her soft pillow, her flesh glowing golden in the candlelight as she straddled him. “Then let me do it.”

She bent her head to kiss him again, and touched him tenderly. And when the time was right, she put him inside her.

He felt her envelop him with her warmth and her love, and he surrendered himself to her, to his passion and her gift of herself. Only, it came to him, as her head fell back, her mouth open and her eyes closed, as the rhythmic contractions of her inner body pulled him over into the abyss with her, that what she had really given him was the gift of himself.

• • •

Afterward, when they lay cradled in each other’s arms, they spoke of many things, of his childhood in Ireland, of her days with the Grand Army in Spain, of her frustration as a physician unable to practice the full range of medicine in England.

“You could go back to Italy,” he said, even though the very suggestion tore at his gut and tightened his throat, so that he felt as if he were strangling again. “Or Germany. They have a long tradition of female physicians in Germany too, don’t they?”

“They do, yes.”

She was silent for a moment. She lay on her side, her elbow bent, her head propped up on one fist as she traced a delicate pattern across his bare chest with her free hand. After a moment, she said, “There’s something I haven’t told you. Something I believe may help explain what happened to my brother.”

He had been lying lost in a pleasant, half-dreamy state of warmth and quiet contentment. Now he found himself instantly alert.

He listened as she told him. Then he said, “You need to take this to Devlin.”

She pushed up on both hands so she could stare down at him. “Are you mad? Lord Jarvis is his wife’s father!”

“He is, yes. But Devlin is not Jarvis’s ally. Far from it, in fact. If anyone can find your brother’s killer, it’s Devlin. He’ll not be letting Jarvis’s involvement turn him from his purpose-and he’ll not be betraying you to his lordship either, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Her gaze met his. “I don’t trust him.”

He caught up the heavy lock of hair that had tumbled forward to half hide her face. “One of these days you’re going to be needing to tell me what happened between the two of you, in Portugal. But not now. This isn’t about the past. It’s about the men and women who are dying here, in London, today. First your brother, then Karmele, now Foucher. If you know anything that can stop it, you must tell Devlin.”

“You trust him?”

“With my life.”

Her lips parted, trembled with uncertainty and proud stubbornness and an onslaught of memories he could only guess at. Then she nodded, and he found himself both humbled and inspired in a way he could not have defined.

T hat evening, Sebastian was in the library reading Augustin Barruel’s work on the Revolution when he heard a peal at the front door. Lifting his head, he listened to a woman’s soft French voice. A moment later, Morey appeared in the doorway.

“A Madame Sauvage to see you, my lord. She says it is in regards to the murder of her brother, Monsieur Damion Pelletan.” The majordomo’s expression remained remarkably bland. But then, he had been in Sebastian’s employ for more than two years; like Tom and Calhoun, he wasn’t easily overset.

“Show her in,” said Sebastian, and set aside his book.

He came from behind his desk as Alexi Sauvage entered the room. She drew up just inside the doorway, one hand knotted in the strap of her reticule, the other holding close the worn plaid shawl she had wrapped around her shoulders.

“Please, have a seat,” he said, indicating the chairs before the fire.

She shook her head. “What I have to say will not take long. I am only here because of Paul.”

Paul.

His reaction to her use of Gibson’s given name must have shown on his face, because her chin came up. “He says that I should trust you, that I have been wrong to keep back information that might help you to make sense of what happened to Damion. That Jarvis is your enemy too.” She paused, then added, “I hope he is right.”