Jane Feather - Velvet

" D ' accord,"she replied with an impatient shrug, swinging off her mount. "I'll tether him to the rail."

Nathaniel said nothing. What he had to say couldn't be said on an open deck. Gabrielle had simply followed her own impulses as she always did, and he wondered vaguely why he hadn't expected this. She'd accepted his refusal in Tilsit with too much docility, and he should have been warned. Then he noticed that blood was dripping from her arm, leaving a sticky trail across the bottom of the ferry. Presumably, as she'd plunged into the fray, one of his assailant's knives had nicked her arm.

He pulled off his cravat. "You're bleeding all over the place. Let me bind it for the moment and I'll look at it properly when we get where we're going." He fastened the cravat tightly around the gash. "Just where are we going?"

"Copenhagen," she said with a weary sigh. "That vessel in the middle of the bay… the Kattegat."

Nathaniel sank down on the bottom of the ferry, propping his back against the rail, and lifted his face to the sun. A slight breeze offered some relief from the scorching heat and carried away some of the noxious stench of Silute. Gabrielle tethered her horse and came and sat down beside him.

She wasn't fool enough to believe that Nathaniel's present silence meant that he had nothing to say. The storm would break when he was good and ready, so she kept her own counsel until then.

Rowers pulled the ferry across the short stretch of water to the Kattegat. Gabrielle followed the master up a swinging rope ladder, Nathaniel on her heels.

"We'll manage the horse," the master said. "There's a cabin to starboard for you two… uh-" His straight eye rested on Gabrielle in open speculation, running down her figure. Her cloak was thrown back from her shoulders, and the britches and shirt offered little concealment to the rich curves of her tall body. "Gentlemen…" he added with something suspiciously like a leer.

Gabrielle kept her expression haughtily impassive, and Nathaniel stared out to sea, apparently stone deaf.

The master shrugged. "Not that it's any of my business. You pay your passage and I ask no questions." He held out his hand. "Forty livres, I believe was agreed upon."

Nathaniel's breath whistled through his teeth, but Gabrielle calmly withdrew the pouch from inside her shirt and shook out the required sum into the master's open hand. "I believe you'll find that to be correct. Be careful with my horse."

The master solemnly counted the coins, then turned and shouted orders to his seamen. Within half an hour Gabrielle's terrified horse had been hoisted aboard in a canvas sling and securely tethered in the stern of the boat.

Only then did Nathaniel speak. "Come below." It was a sharp command.

Gabrielle followed him down the companionway and into a small, sparsely furnished but clean cabin with a small porthole and two bunks set into the bulwark.

Nathaniel closed the door with a controlled slam and stood with his shoulders against it, regarding Gabrielle in fulminating silence. "Dear God," he exclaimed at last, "you ought to be beaten, Gabrielle!"

"Well, that's a fine thing to say, when I've just saved your skin," she retorted. "And for the second time too."

"I wonder why it is that my skin needs saving only when you're around," he declared dourly.

"Oh, that is so unjust," she protested. "It has nothing to do with me, and you know it."

He did, but was not yet ready to admit to anything. "I forbade you absolutely to come with me."

"Did you?" She glanced around the cabin with an air of interest. "Which bunk do you want?"

He ignored this. "Just what story did you spin to explain leaving your godfather?"

"The truth," she said, smiling blandly.

"What!"

"My godfather has infinite tolerance for the weaknesses of the flesh," she told him in perfect truth. "I told him I wished to pursue a liaison with Benedict Lubienski. I told him we were intending to spend some private time in Danzig, and I would decide where I would go next when we had satisfied each other."

Nathaniel stared at her. It was so damnably reasonable. She was no ingenue. She was a widow who'd had lovers in the past. Talleyrand was a man of the world. Napoleon had his Marie Walewska. Josephine wrote to him daily with endless protestations of jealousy. Talleyrand had innumerable liaisons. There was absolutely no reason why such a story shouldn't be believed… particularly when it bore the mark of truth.

"So I rode out ahead of you," she continued into his stupefied silence. "And arranged passage to Copenhagen on this ship. And then Iassume we'll be able to get passage on an English commercial vessel to London, don't you think?"

She had simply put his own plan into operation. Simply and most efficiently.

"Come here and let me take a proper look at that gash on your arm," he said.

"Oh, it's all right… it's just a flesh wound," she responded cheerfully, recognizing his tacit acceptance and agreement in this oblique change of subject and perfectly prepared to settle for just that.

"I said come here!"Nathaniel bellowed, his temper finally loosened from the reins.

Gabrielle crossed the small space in two hasty steps. "There's no need to shout at me like that."

"I don't seem to have any other way of expressing my frustration," he gritted, unwrapping the cravat from her arm.

"I love you," Gabrielle said calmly. "And I've made my choice, and I'm afraid you're stuck with me. I'm quite happy to wait while you become accustomed to the idea, but I'm afraid you'll have to get used to it in my company. Because where you go, I go."

Nathaniel observed judiciously, “This may be a flesh wound, but it needs washing."

"Does it?" she responded, regarding him with her head on one side. "Have you become accustomed to the idea yet?"

Nathaniel dropped her arm and took her head between his hands, his fingers twisting in her hair. "Yes," he said savagely. "I know when I'm defeated. I accept the fact that I'm stuck with you. We'll see if that Danish robber on deck has the authority to perform a marriage service."

"Is that a proposal, sir?"

"No, it's not a proposal. It's a damn statement. It's past time I took the initiative around here."

"Oh, well, be my guest," Gabrielle said. "Imust say I'm getting a little tired of making all the decisions."

His fingers tightened in her hair, holding her head in a viselike grip. His eyes burned with a passionate intensity. "You are sure, Gabrielle? Sure you love me… sure you embrace all Istand for? Sure you're willing to trust me with your love?"

"Yes," she affirmed. "I'm certain of all those things. Are you also certain?"

Nathaniel nodded. "I'm still terrified, but Iknow that Ilove you and Iwill do everything Ican to make you happy."

He brought his mouth to hers, and Gabrielle thought, the instant before she was lost in the hard assertion of his kiss, that it was only the smallest white lie, the most technical of deceptions on which their future rested.

An ant was crawling up the hack of Mr. Jeffrys's rusty black gown. In a minute it would reach his shoulder and then crawl onto his neck. He had a scrawny neck, like a chicken's, and it was dirty too. His white collar always had a dark ring around it.

Jake dreamily watched the ant's progress, wondering what the schoolmaster would do when it touched his skin. Perhaps he wouldn't notice and it would crawl down inside his shirt and bite him.