“Why not?” His voice was a dark caress. “You like it.”
That was precisely why not. She didn’t dare take a deep breath or her breasts would press against his chest. She looked into his eyes, aware of the compulsion rising in her veins, that had always afflicted her when in his arms. Her senses might leap, alert and tense, but only in expectation; the more time she spent with him, the more often she was in his arms, the more she enjoyed, the more she was tempted, the less resistance she could muster. That had been the case long ago; she hadn’t thought that it still would be, yet it was.
What she saw in his eyes nearly made her heart stop, sent a lick of something like fear down her spine.
“Charles, listen to me. We are not, definitely not, revisiting the past.”
He didn’t smile, didn’t flash his pirate’s grin and return some teasing answer. Instead, he read her eyes, yet she sensed he assessed himself as well before replying, his voice deep and low, “It’s not the past I want to visit.”
In the ballroom the music ended with a flourish; somewhat to her surprise, he halted and released her, his palm sliding caressingly over her silk-clad hip, a last, illicit, heat-laden caress. Taking her hand, he set it on his sleeve. “Come. We’ve one more stranger to meet.”
Back inside, he led her to a group of younger gentlemen who’d been partnering the few young ladies present. Most of marriagable age were in London, but for various reasons a few remained.
The Trescowthicks’ youngest son Mark, an effete, foppish young man not long down from Oxford, was holding court surrounded by his local contemporaries and one other—a tall, thin, dark-complexioned man Penny had never seen before.
All the local youth accorded Charles a near-godlike status; they instantly came to attention. With his usual bonhomie, he nodded to each, acknowledging them by name, leaving most with their tongues tied.
Mark Trescowthick, stuttering, hurried to introduce his friend. “Phillipe, the Chevalier Gerond.”
The Chevalier bowed. Penny bobbed a curtsy. The Chevalier was, she judged, a few years older than Mark, somewhere in his midtwenties. He was as tall as Charles, but blade-thin, appearing rather elongated.
Charles nodded urbanely. “Chevalier—are you visiting our country, or…?”
“I have lived here most of my life—my family arrived among the earliest emigrés, fleeing the Terror.” His tone defensive, the Chevalier’s gaze traveled Charles’s face, taking in his un-English features.
Charles smiled faintly. “My mother, too, was an emigrée.”
“Ah.” The Chevalier nodded, and looked back to the other members of the group, but they were all waiting on Charles’s direction.
“What brings you to our neck of the woods, Chevalier? I would have thought London more…rewarding.”
The Chevalier flushed faintly, but met Charles’s eyes. “I have decisions to make—whether this peace will hold, and if so, whether I should return to France. There is nothing left of my family’s estate, but”—he shrugged—“the land is still there.” He looked over the room. “It is, if not quiet here, then peaceful. Mark was kind enough to invite me to stay for a few weeks—it seemed the perfect spot to consider and let my thoughts come clear.”
“I say!” Mark put in. “Charles was in France for years with the Guards. Perhaps he knows of your house and village?”
“I doubt it,” the Chevalier said. “It is near to St. Cloud—far, far from the battlefields.”
Charles confirmed he knew nothing of that area. He put a few questions to the local young men, asking after the shooting and fishing, enough to account for his approaching them, also enough to learn that the Chevalier had been at Branscombe Hall for the past five days. Having gained answers to their immediate questions, he steered her away.
The party was starting to break up, the first guests departing. They fell in with the general exodus. Chatting with others, they strolled side by side into the front hall; Penny noted that Nicholas was one of the first to make his bow to Lady Trescowthick and go quickly down the front steps and out into the night.
The Chevalier was in the ballroom behind them; she wondered if he and Nicholas had met…would meet, perhaps tonight. They could check in the stables when they reached Wallingham; Nicholas should be home well ahead of them.
After thanking Lady Trescowthick for an enjoyable evening—and despite their absorption it had been that—Charles handed her into the carriage and followed, shutting the door on the rest of the world.
She sat back in the shadows, waited only until the carriage was rolling to murmur, “What odds finding a French emigré, one who might shortly be returning to France, who just happens to have arrived in the neighborhood at much the same time as Nicholas, who we suspect is passing secrets to the French and might have some complicity in Gimby’s murder?”
“Indeed, but it never helps to leap to conclusions. Nicholas made every effort to socialize tonight, despite his preoccupation with something that’s causing him considerable concern, yet he didn’t single out any of our five visitors—I don’t think he spoke to the Chevalier at all.”
“If they already know each other, they wouldn’t go out of their way to make that known, would they?”
“Possibly not.” Charles wanted, very definitely, to get her mind off his investigation; he would much rather she focus on him, on them. Reaching out, he cupped her nape, and drew her to him.
Smoothly drew her lips to his, saw her eyes flare briefly before her lids fell. He held her to the kiss until she softened against him, then let the pleasure well and spill through them both.
She resisted for an instant, then surrendered and sank against him, and he almost groaned. Why with her was it so very different? She was the only woman who had ever had the power to make him ache lik
e this, with a weakness, a longing, a need so potent it made him feel helpless.