Jane Feather - Velvet

"His lordship… where is he?" She offered no explanations, clinging to the doorjamh as her legs threatened to give way.

"He be gone, m'lady, two hours since. Said 'e wouldn't be back for a few months."

"What time is high tide?" The sea was such a factor in the lives of these people of the tidal marshes along the Hampshire coastline that most people knew the tide table as they knew the days of the week.

The man stepped outside and looked up at the sky, where a crescent moon swung low over the river. "Ten o'clock, I believe, m'lady."

The relief was so great that Gabrielle almost sat down on the step. But she knew that once she stopped moving, she wouldn't be able to get up again for hours.

"Take this horse to the stable and saddle me another," she commanded. "Quickly!"

"Aye, m'lady." The old man shuffled off with infuriating slowness, and Gabrielle dug deep for a strength she didn't think she had, but found something.

"Never mind, I'll do it," she said, taking the horse's bridle. "Just follow me and look after this one."

Fifteen minutes later she rode out of the stableyard, one of Nathaniel's hunters moving eagerly beneath her. Her fatigue now enclosed her in a mind-numbing grayness, and she could feel herself swaying, her thighs barely exerting any pressure on the saddle. If the hunter decided he didn't have a master on his back, he could well charge off on frolics of his own and she'd be helpless to prevent him. Fortunately he was a well-mannered animal and cantered easily down the lane, responding to the barest guiding nudge of her thighs or flicks of the reins.

Lymington Quay was quieter than Gabrielle had expected, but her blood sang with relief when she saw the Curlewtied up in her usual spot at the quayside. She was dark with no sign of her crew, but the sound of raucous voices, laughter, and singing came from the Black Swan. Maybe Nathaniel was in the tap room with the Curlew's crew. It would be like him.

High tide was an hour away. She slipped from the hunter's back and leaned against him for a minute, resting her forehead against the saddle, smelling the rich leathet and the pungency of warm horseflesh. Curiously, it seemed to soothe the nausea.

Should she go into the inn and seek out Nathaniel?

But the thought of confronting him in her present weakness in the midst of a crowd of probably inebriated strange men was more than she could manage. She would go aboard the Curlewand wait for him there. It was going to be a grim encounter at best; at least it would be relatively private there, and there'd be no fear of her missing him.

She beckoned a yawning lad standing in the light spilling from one of the inn's windows, and handed the hunter over to him, to be stabled until she collected him later. Then she went aboard the Curlew.

Immediately the combined odors of tar, fish, and the crude oil they used in the lamps swamped her, and she retched feebly over the side until the spasm passed. She dug into her pocket and pulled out a hunk of bread from her picnic. Breaking off a piece, she chewed it slowly and it had the usual soothing effect.

She stumbled down the companionway into the small, well-remembered cabin, the scene of Jake's hideous sickness. The cot beckoned, and with a groan she tumbled onto it, heedless of the rough ticking of the straw mattress beneath her cheek, or the smelly wool of the thin blanket that she dragged over her…

She awoke to a dimly lit, moving, alien world that made no sense. Her sleep had been so heavy that for minutes she couldn't move her limbs although her brain was giving the right orders. Finally she was able to turn her head and open her eyes.

Nathaniel was sitting at the small table in the middle of the cabin, a glass of cognac in his hand, watching her with a face of granite, and everything rushed upon her in a dizzying flood of memory and panic. She tried to sit up and the nausea hit her. With a groan she fell back again.

Nathaniel spoke, every soft word weighted with lethal menace. "You were warned. And by God, Gabrielle, you're going to pay for this. Get up!"

She couldn't get up, not yet, not without throwing up. "You don't understand-"

"Get up!"

Oh, God! She thrust her hand into her pocket and found the last piece of bread.

Nathaniel stood up in one swift, angry movement, sweeping the glass to the floor. It crashed against the metal bolt of the table and broke.

"If I have to put you on your feet, Gabrielle, you are going to wish you'd never been born!"

Gabrielle crammed the bread into her mouth as he advanced on her, and with one desperate, fervent prayer that her stomach would behave, sat up, swinging her legs over the edge of the cot.

"On your feet." Nathaniel stood over her, his face a mask of fury, his eyes deadly.

She swallowed the bread almost whole. Her head was spinning and she was suddenly more frightened than she had ever been in her life. If he was like this now, when he believed she'd merely defied his prohibition, what was he going to do when he learned the truth?

"Listen," she said, her voice thin. "You have to listen to me… why I'm here."

"On your feet," he repeated with the same soft savagery.

Gabrielle stood up slowly as the words tumbled in desperate explanation from her lips. "Fouche… Fouche has broken one of your agents in Calais. He knows all the landing places in Normandy… the boats you use… I came to warn you."

Nathaniel face was bloodless in the dim lamplight, his eyes now dark holes in his ghastly complexion. "So you areworking for Fouche," he said in a voice devoid of emotion.

"No!" Gabrielle shook her head vigorously. "No, not Fouche, never Fouche.”

"Then you're working for Talleyrand," he stated in the same flat voice.

"Yes. But-"

"Whore!"He hit her with his open palm, and she fell back on the bed, her hand pressed to her cheek, her eyes stunned.

"Whore," he repeated. "I trusted you. I believed in you. I loved you, God forgive me." He bent and grabbed her arms, pulling her up.

He was submerged in a rage so wild, Gabrielle couldn't recognize him. This was not the Nathaniel Praed she knew-father, lover, husband, friend-a man of humor and great passions, abiding loyalties and deep privacies. This man had moved into a world where ordinary rules didn't apply and where ordinary human sensibilities were suspended.

Somehow she had to bring him back before something dreadful, irrevocable, happened.

"Please, Nathaniel," she cried as his fingers bit deep into her arms and his unseeing eyes blazed with a ruthless rage. "Please.I'm having a baby!" It was a desperate plea, and for a minute she thought he hadn't heard. And then his hands dropped from her arms and Nathaniel reinhabited his eyes.

"You're pregnant?"

She nodded, relief washing through her, turning her legs to jelly. She sat on the cot, conscious of the stinging in her cheek and the deep ache in her arms where his fingers had bruised.

"Please, will you listen to me. I have to tell you everything and maybe you'll understand a little."

Nathaniel stepped back from her. There was still bitter hostility in his eyes, but he was in control of himself. He said nothing. Gabrielle swallowed. She was about to betray her godfather, but this time she must think only of herself-and Nathaniel, and Jake-and the child she carried.

"It begins with a man you knew as le lievre noir.…"

Half an hour later the story was told and the silence in the dim, fusty cabin was weighted with the words and emotions of that half hour.

"You used me," Nathaniel said finally. "You've been using me from the first moment we met. Even your gift of love, the allegiance you swore… everything. It was all part of it."