Susan Johnson (11 page)

She marveled at the boyish virtue in his expression, his modest tone, the deference in his pose; he was a superb actor. “Have you ever kissed a woman?” she inquired, watching the subtle play of emotion on his face.

He moved his head slightly in negation, his lashes lowered.

“Have you ever been nude like this with a woman?”

He didn’t answer at first and then said, as though reluctant, “Only with my governess.”

Teo’s brows rose. “How old were you?”

“Fourteen.” A declaration without any nuance of drama, without a modicum of hesitation.

Was it possible his answer was grounded in reality? Teo wondered, her curiosity piqued. “How old was your governess?”

He shrugged faintly. “I’m not sure. Twenty or thirty.”

His reply had the ring of truth. In the eyes of an adolescent, a decade would be indistinguishable. “Did she touch you?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

He nodded.

A perverse thrill surged through her body. “I thought you said you’ve never been with a woman.”

“I was never actually
with
her,” he clarified, his ambiguity simply put.

“What was her name?”

His gaze suddenly went shuttered; she’d asked the wrong question. “I don’t remember,” he said in a normal tone of voice, lying back against the pillows.

“Are we still playing?” she inquired, questioning his disengagement.

“As long as you want,
ma chère
,” he murmured, his smile wicked this time, not virtuous.

“I was thinking about touching you myself.”

“I’d be very grateful,” he replied.

“Perhaps I should kiss you first—since you’re a tyro in love. How would that be?”

Closing his eyes, he shifted upward in a fluid stirring of muscle and she gazed for a moment at the pure beauty of his face and form and didn’t wonder that his governess had been unable to keep her mind on her duties.

His lips were warm and smooth when her mouth touched his and chastely closed. Balancing herself on her knees, she placed her hands on his shoulders to steady herself and felt the tension in his body.

It gave her a strange sense of power.

Exerting a mild pressure on his mouth, she forced his lips open, slid her tongue past his teeth, licked his tongue with a flickering caress. He made a sound—a soft growl in his throat that vibrated with tantalizing pulsations deep inside her.

He tasted of sweet coffee and lust, of promised pleasures, and she thought for a fleeting moment of resisting such assurance. But her libido had more potent urges, outvoting reserve, propelling her forward in a languid swaying dip that brought her plump breasts in direct contact with his chest.

When his hands came up to softly fondle her breasts, she squirmed under the shimmering sensations, and a spontaneous pulsation flowed through her vulva. Her soft moan slipped into his mouth and he recognized the sound, knew his role of tyro was suspended.

Slipping his fingers around her nipples, he lightly squeezed, delicately massaged the crests to a taut hardness, flicked and rubbed them with a deft expertise that spiraled a flurry of heat downward, that opened and moistened her and caused her breathing to become an audible sound in the stillness. Sliding his mouth downward, he nuzzled her throat, told her what he was going to do to her in a husky deep whisper—the words explicit, arousing, having to do with submission and need. He bit the soft flesh behind her ear, marking her, holding her like a male animal about to mount a female—primal, possessive.

“I should say no.” She shivered under his touch, knowing he knew why she shivered, wondering if a female had ever resisted him.

“But you can’t.” He slid a finger delicately over her clitoris and her back arched against the staggering sensation. Offering neither platitudes nor apologies, he stroked her breasts and clitoris, her thighs and bottom, between her thighs and deep inside her sweet, scented passage until she was almost fainting for him.

And then abruptly he did what he’d come here to do. He tumbled her back onto the bed and thrust himself into her hard, hard, terrifyingly intent, his powerful rhythm propelling hers, her panting cries music to his ears, driving him, goading him, his gyrations raw, harsh, different from the finesse he’d perfected in all the boudoirs of his past. But his obsession was different too, without explanation or equivalent. And he pounded into her like a madman, demented, forcing her, taking her.

She began coming, crying out in a frenzy he recognized
because her screams echoed the silent ones inside his head and he responded to her climax with a violent desperation as if she couldn’t go on without him. And he met her in a long, long coming that tore the breath from his lungs and jolted his body and left him gasping for air.

The sound of marching was heard from the street outside—an omen, a warning, reality intruding into the replete silence.

He cradled her head and licked the tears from her face with light touches of his tongue and offered his love between rough, raucous breaths, his eyes still wild, heated. Then he whispered, “Don’t move,” and extricating himself from her embrace and the bed, he walked from window to window pulling the heavy velvet drapes closed, shutting out the tread of marching feet. He lit two candelabra to illuminate the room before returning to the bed, before lying down beside her and drawing her back into his arms. “I don’t want to hear that,” he muttered. He wanted sanctuary and oblivion; he wanted forgetfulness.

His mouth covered hers and she felt his penis rise between them in a slow surging undulation, standing hard again, wanting her. Helpless against the unspeakable pleasure washing over her, she wondered if she’d ever have enough of him, if the molten heat inside her would eventually melt her away, vaporize her. “Hurry, hurry,” she whispered, opening her thighs, clutching at him, “I want to come.”

“There,” he breathed, his eyes full of dark flame, a thrilling urgency flaring through his body as he entered her. “We’re here,” he added, feeling her engulf him, plunging deep inside her, his brain beginning to lift away, the spreading brilliance swelling, swelling, his ears attuned to her sweet, defenseless whimpers.

It was a soft, soft coming that time—warm and slow and pure. And he held her on his lap afterward and said, “That was nice.”

Teo laughed and happily rubbed her cheek against his. “I think I’ll keep you.”

“Was I on trial?” he impudently inquired.

“And if you were?” Cheeky, unabashed.

“I would have added to my repertoire.”

“Things you learned from your governess?”

He didn’t reply.

“Where is she now?”

Again, she didn’t think he was going to answer but then he gruffly said, “I’m not sure.”

He knew; she could tell by his tone. “I don’t believe you.”

He pondered a moment, weighing courtesy against his reluctance. “She returned to France,” he simply said.

“And?”

“And I don’t want to talk about it.”

“What if I insist?”

“Why would you?”

“Out of flagrant jealousy.”

“There’s nothing to be jealous of.”

“You cared for her.” If he didn’t there would be no need to protect her so.

“I don’t know what I felt,” he lied, remembering how he waited for Camille to come to him each night, how he adored her.

“What did she look like?”

“How can it matter?”

“I want to know because your voice changes when you talk of her,” she quietly said.

He lifted her from his lap. “I don’t ask you about your past.”

“Ask me if you like.”

“I don’t want to,” he said, rising from the bed, crossing the room to an armoire set against the wall. She watched him pull a silk dressing gown from inside and slip it on,
reminding herself a sensible woman would let the subject drop.

“Tell me her name.”

“Jesus,” he muttered, glaring at her, reaching for a bottle. “Do you want some?” he asked, wrenching the cork free.

She shook her head.

Shrugging, he poured a glass full of cognac and drank half of it before sitting down across the room.

“Are we having a fight?”

“No.”

“Are you angry?”

“No.”

“Do you love me?”

He hesitated the merest fraction. “Yes,” he said with a smile.

“That’s a relief,” Teo murmured, stretching languidly. “I thought I might have to apologize profusely,” she said, rolling over into a provocative Fragonard pose.

“I saw the original Mademoiselle O’Brien,” Duras noted, a half smile gracing his fine mouth. “You’re too slender.”

“Was she fat?” Teo sat up, her gaze direct.

“Pleasingly plump.”

“Do you know every woman of note?”

“Hardly.”

“How many countries have you traveled in?” she asked, rising from the bed.

He laughed at her benign interpretation of his travel itineraries, filled as they were with warfare of one kind or another. “Too many,” he declared, watching her approach.

“Did you travel with your governess?”

She was standing before him so he had to look up, a faint frown drawing his brows together. “I traveled with her for two years,” he curtly said. “My family traveled with her—my sister, my father and mother, myself, from Gibraltar to Constantinople, from Alexandria to Sicily and every port between. Do you feel better now?”

“And you loved her.”

“I suppose I did.”

“Where is she?”

He sighed, every adolescent yearning, every impossible dream painfully recalled. “In Antibes. She married a judge.”

“She left you to marry a judge?”

She married a judge after he left her. “Yes,” he said.

“And you missed her.”

“I joined the army.”

“And you missed her.”

“Yes.”

“How romantic,” Teo gently murmured.

Lifting his glass to his mouth, he tipped the remaining cognac down his throat, thinking of the bluntly unromantic consequences of his youthful affair. Camille had become pregnant; his father had refused to let him marry her and she’d been set ashore at Marseilles weeping and alone. The fortune his father had settled on her had bought her a husband of note who was willing to look the other way when a child was born months premature. “And now this conversation is over,” he brusquely said.

“Thank you for telling me.”

He dipped his head in brief acknowledgment and reached for the cognac. But it took several more drinks before the old memories were safely locked away again, before Teo coaxed a smile from him.

She opened the drapes and windows after a time when the troops had all passed by and a golden light flooded the room. The spring air brought with it a clean, clear sense of renewal as if the world were all washed and fresh. And Camille receded from his consciousness; even Jourdan’s worrying plight yielded to more pleasant
carpe diem
sensations.

They sat together before the open windows, warmed by
the sun, holding each other, gently kissing, speaking of deliberately noncontentious subjects. And they made love before long because carnal desire, unimpeded by the past or future, burned unsated inside them and neither could forget how desperately impermanent their refuge. How few hours remained to them.

Too soon, the world intervened as they knew it would when Cholet brought an urgent message from Jourdan. Apologizing, the pressure of circumstances already evident in his voice, Duras tossed on a dressing gown and went downstairs to meet with his aide. Teo quickly followed, tying her robe sash as she descended the stairs.

He didn’t ask her to leave when she appeared in the doorway of the dining room, but motioned her to a chair. Intent on the map Cholet had brought, its corners already tacked to the table, Duras leaned over one section, marking it heavily with red ink.

He was dictating to Cholet as he drew arrows and cross-hatches, tracing the march and dispositions of his columns. “Have Bonnay leave a small garrison in Martinsbruck and bring the army back. We need Lecourbe at Schwyz to guard the passes from Italy. Bonnay should be able to bring up more than half our men in”—he shot a glance at Cholet who was writing as fast as he could—“eighteen hours at rapid speed. Unfortunately, we won’t have the artillery for two days. The commissary train has to be recalled too. Send off riders to Bonnay, Lecourbe, the commissary wagons, and Jourdan of course. Damn him! I knew this was going to happen.”

Jourdan had encountered Prince Schwarzenberg’s corps and suddenly realized they formed the advance guard of the archduke’s army. He’d sent a pressing message to Duras asking him to threaten the archduke’s flank by attacking Bregenz at the east end of Lake Constance.

“I told him a month ago my reports had the archduke’s
army on collision course with him.
Merde
,” Duras growled. “And the army’s in the Tyrol. To deal with this potential disaster, I’ll need a temporary office set up here,” he briskly went on. “Send over the maps, Lauzun, and some clerks. It’s fine,” Duras added, responding to Cholet’s look of surprise when he first noticed Teo in the corner of the room. “It’s fine,” he softly repeated, the nuance of authority crystal clear.

“Yes, sir,” his aide quickly replied, gathering up his papers.

“Have our cook brought over too,” Duras instructed. “We’ll set up some kind of a field kitchen downstairs to feed the staff. And I’ll need a surgeon for this wrist,” he casually added, his makeshift bandage soaked with blood. “See that the riders are on their way in ten minutes. That’s critical. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” the young subaltern replied, and with a precision salute he left.

“A new graduate of Fontainebleau,” Duras said, amusement in his eyes. “I was never that punctilious but then the enlisted men in the Royal Army were never expected to be that fine and corsairs lead a rather undisciplined life.”

“Yet you win all the campaigns.” His reputation was known throughout Europe, as was the rumor he’d once been a corsair.

“I like to win. My father subscribed to the same credo.”

“
My
father thought he could win against the mighty Russian empire.”

“And he couldn’t.”

She shook her head. “He kept a regiment at bay for six months, though.”