Susan Johnson (23 page)

“They won’t develop, and if they do, Mingen’s here. You said you wanted this baby.”

“The reality is more sobering.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.” He’d been gone for three weeks and before he’d left, talk of a child had been more wishful than actual. Turning from the window, he said, “I love you, Teo. There wasn’t a minute I didn’t miss you the past weeks. I almost sent for you a dozen times.”

“You should have.”

“I thought you were in bed.”

“I didn’t
have
to be in bed, but you were so insistent in your notes, I didn’t care to discuss it long distance.”

“Consider, darling,” he said with a sigh, “it may take me some time to become accustomed to—”

“The baby?” She watched him, apprehension in her eyes.

“The baby and your health,” he more explicitly defined. “I’ve never been a father before.”

“Do I need a signed note from Mingen?” she said with a relieved smile, better understanding his anxieties. “I’ve never been a mother before, but I
know
I’m feeling fine. How could I convince you? Should I show you how healthy I am?” she murmured, beginning to unclasp the brooch at her throat.

“Don’t,” he said, taut and brusque. “I’ve seen coquettes enough these last weeks.”

“Have you now?” Her green eyes flashed with temper.

“I didn’t say I touched them,” he gruffly replied, dropping into an upholstered chair, leaning back, closing his eyes. “Why are we fighting over this? Both of us will live if we don’t make love for a while.”

“I won’t.”

His eyes opened and his dark gaze drilled into her. “I’m not good at sharing.”

“I didn’t mean that. Will you hold me at least?” she implored. “I’ve counted the minutes until your return.”

He smiled ruefully and opened his arms.

“Tell me what you’ve seen in your travels,” she said, coming to sit on his lap, resting in his arms.

“Four hundred miles of undefended border,” he murmured, stroking the dark silk of her hair, contentment inundating his senses.

“Is that worrisome?”

He laughed, her word infinitely too benign. “Yes, but not at the moment. I was thinking more about breakfast in bed with you.”

“Or supper in bed?”

He chuckled. “Your appetite continues apace.”

“I wish yours did,” she purred.

“Hush, I’m trying to be abstemious.”

“Maybe we could have Mingen in attendance in case anything were to go amiss,” she teased.

He lifted her chin with a crooked finger and his stern gaze held hers. “Shameless hussy.”

“Vigée says all men are voyeurs.” Her eyes gleamed with amusement.

“
When
exactly did Vigée say that?”

“I overheard him at the monastery. He and a trooper were admiring a very realistic depiction of Saint Sebastian.”

“Is that all?” Duras said with relief, his history of shared amusements with Vigée bordering on the sensational.

“He said something about a brothel in Venice and some choirboys with regard to the painting.”

It took Duras a moment to catch his breath. “Vigée talks too much. I hope he said it was a staged performance and we were spectators.”

“Of course, darling. He also said your mistress was with you. Was her name Dorothea?”

“Cheeky tonight, aren’t you?”

“Did she like the young boys?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember; I don’t remember her.”

“I hope your memory of me will be more longstanding.”

“Until the oceans run dry, darling. Is that long enough?”

“Yes,” she said, reaching up to kiss him. And when he tried pulling away, she held his face hard between her hands and leisurely tasted and nibbled and purred against his mouth.

He could have disengaged himself; he thought about it a dozen times. But celibacy undermined his resolve and his hands came up, stroking her arms, her back, the warmth of her body and the feel of her making his heart beat faster.

She felt a small tremor shake his body, and encouraged, she began to unbutton his tunic, first one button, then another, sliding her hands under his jacket, running them across his chest. She began slipping his neckcloth open.

“No.” He caught her hands, but his voice was thick, shaky.

She was making him tremble, the way he did with her, and leaning forward against their hands, she kissed him, a light, undemanding kiss. “Let me kiss you at least,” she whispered, dropping another soft kiss on his temple. He didn’t answer, his grip only tightening on her hands, but she kissed him because he hadn’t said no, and the decorous contact deepened after a time to something less discretionary.

His erection was hard against her bottom, his breathing discomposed, his grip on her hands painful.

“You’re hurting me.”

“Sorry,” he said on a suffocated breath, releasing her. Leaning back in the chair, he shifted his hips so his erection slid away from direct contact with her. He took a deep breath. “I don’t want to do this.”

“You’re being selfish.”

His eyes widened and then a small smile warmed his mouth. “That’s a first.”

“Unfortunately for me,” she murmured, a repressed heat in her voice. “Am I supposed to be celibate for the next seven months?”

He stared at her for a moment, looked away to repress his hot-tempered response. When they returned to her, his eyes were cool, flinty hard. “I don’t fucking know,” he said in a low, poisonous voice. Grabbing her around her waist, he swung her off his lap and surged out of the chair. “I may never fucking know.” He was breathing hard when he set her on her feet. “What do you think of that.” It was a rhetorical question; he stalked away before she could think of an answer.

Furious, he crossed the large room and, arms braced against the window frame, stared unseeing at the panoramic view. She was asking too much, he fumed, seething with fury. Did she think he
wanted
to refuse her? Christ, he was ready to fuck anything that— He sighed. No point in going there; he was way past ready. And while he believed
what Mingen said on a rational level, the memory of Teo’s blood-soaked gown still shocked his psyche.

The reality of impending fatherhood also brought with it a complex host of memories, suppressed, silenced, all painful. He’d had a son once years ago, a tortured time for him when he couldn’t see Camille, couldn’t even write her. He’d only heard months after the birth, after it was too late, that his son had died. And he’d never even had a chance to see him.

When Teo came up beside him he didn’t move. She ran her fingertip over the back of his hand pressed against the window frame and watched the black hairs rise at her touch. He turned his head.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He shrugged, blew out an exasperated breath. “What a fucking mess.”

“Take your time. I can wait.”

The absurdity—that she could wait, that he’d want her to—made him smile. “I’m not sure this is humanly possible.”

“We can try,” she replied, heartened by his smile. Slipping under his arm, she slid her hands around his waist. “I think I can wait.” But her voice was teasing this time, her eyes mischievous, and he received the distinct impression that her concept of waiting had to do with milliseconds. “Dare I bring up Herr Mingen’s credentials and expertise?”

He put a hand over her mouth.

She licked a warm path up his palm.

He jerked his hand back.

“I’m finding you extremely difficult to seduce,” she murmured, her tone sultry, lush.

“This is hell,” he muttered, restlessly raking his fingers through his hair. His lower body shifted as he straightened and raised his arms, his erection making sudden contact with Teo’s body. He immediately stepped back but they both had felt it and the tenuous hold he’d maintained on his libido disintegrated.

No longer thinking, only feeling, he took her hand and rubbed her palm against the front of his breeches so she could feel his erection. “Touch me,” he said in a husky voice, pushing against her hand. “You can do that for me.”

She understood and fumbled to unfasten his breeches, an irrepressible lust gripping her senses. Breath held for a moment, she drew out his hard, jutting penis, fondly touched the silky tip—the magnet, the lodestone of her desire, the instrument of her pleasure. And it moved and swelled under her hand, stretched higher, the crest flaring, as if tempting her, showing off its splendor. She slid a fingertip down its magnificent length and his whole body tensed, anticipation, expectation, rutting need in every taut muscle. Lightly stroking him with both hands, she felt him respond and then her fingers closed around him and he moved against her fingers, forcing his own rhythm, taking charge of the steady flux and flow.

His eyes were closed, his back arched against the building rapture, when she bent her head, touched the satiny tip with her tongue because she selfishly wanted more. Sliding her tongue around the ridged flange, she drew the swollen head into her mouth, sucked it like a lollipop. He groaned, tangled his hands in her hair, and held her head firmly as she slowly drew him into her mouth, eased the length of him out, drew him in again.

“Jesus,” he thickly said, pushing her down on her knees, forcing himself deeper into her mouth, his grip so harsh she couldn’t move. She tried to pull back but he drove in so far she choked, gagged.

He immediately let her go, swearing as he dropped down beside her, and a second later he was kneeling on the floor holding her, stroking her. “Christ, I shouldn’t have done that.”

“It’s been too long. I’m dying too.”

He pushed her hair away from her face, wiped her
mouth with his sleeve, his smile sweet, warm. “I can help you there.”

“Maybe I don’t want that. Maybe I want the real thing.”

His smile broadened at her choice of words but his voice when he spoke was unyielding. “I can’t do that.”

“That or nothing,” she flatly said, famished for him. “You decide.”

He looked at her for a very long time, his expression unreadable, his gaze so empty of feeling she wondered if she’d just denied herself sex for the foreseeable future. “All right,” he said at last. “You win.”

He picked her up and carried her to the bed and when she started to say something he kissed her hard to stop the words because he didn’t want to deliberate anymore. And he didn’t care if she finished her sentence because he already knew she loved him.

A few short moments later, they were lying nude because he was very good at taking clothes off—one of his areas of expertise. She remarked on it with mild pique but he said, “I’m not going to fight at this stage,” poised as he was with the tip of his penis nuzzling her vulva. “Ask me later.”

But he was supremely cautious in his penetration, constraint the operative word, his libido tautly curbed, and the first few minutes she pleaded, “More—more—more—more,” because he was moving inside her as though she were made of glass. “Look … look … Will you look? Everything’s fine,” she hotly insisted, rolling away so he could see for himself.

“See,” she cried.

That tantalizing view, all pink and dewy wet and hotly eager, did more to reverse his perceptions than a thousand medical arguments.

He saw indeed.

And nothing more was required in terms of encouragement.
He reverted to his more natural self—a highly libidinous male with a gifted imagination and enduring stamina.

The lady was pleased, more than pleased.

Ecstatic.

Several times.

And he was delighted too and ravished on occasion. He had his lover back.

They had a few short days together in Zurich, a blissful, sweet interval in a time of great turmoil. Duras worked at breakneck speed during the days so he could be with Teo at night. And Teo filled her days with the children and her school.

The Austrians had forced the French troops guarding the Valtelline, a major line of communication between Switzerland and Italy, to abandon their positions and Duras countered by burning the Rhine bridge at Schaffhausen. The supplies promised from Paris weren’t arriving and the six demibrigades he’d expected from the Republic of Helvetia hadn’t appeared.

In the Grisons, some ten thousand peasants led by priests and encouraged by the Austrians seriously hampered communication and supply lines. With Austrian numerical
superiority already a source of concern, the Directory aggravated the situation by ordering Duras to send fifteen thousand men to the hard-pressed Army of Italy. Two days later Duras felt it necessary to evacuate all of the Grisons.

Although Duras hadn’t explicitly told her, Teo understood one of the corps under the archduke was already on the march. The news was everywhere in camp and the wives of the soldiers were preparing to follow their men; several battalions had moved east already.

The first week in May, von Hotze made a strong attack on Menard’s division at Feldkirch, driving it back across the upper Rhine and recapturing Chur. But the Austrians suffered heavy casualties and their progress was slow. Their next attack was delivered a week later when Nauendorff crossed the Rhine at several points between Waldshut and the Lake of Constance, establishing himself along the river Thur between Grossandelfingen and Pfyn, north of Winterthur.

This was a serious threat to Duras’s line of communications. He at once made plans to move his command post from Zurich to Winterthur.

“I’m going with you,” Teo simply said, as he entered their apartments the night before he was scheduled to leave. “And there’s no point in discussing it. If the soldiers’ wives can follow their husbands, so can I. I can help them, Andre. You know how difficult it can be for them to survive on the fringes of battle.”
¹³

The conversation had been ongoing since his return. And he’d not discovered a relevant argument now that worries about her health had been substantially negated. She worked long hours every day without apparent distress, her energy undiminished. “You know the rules, then,” he said, unbuttoning his jacket, then tossing it on the settee. “And when I order you back, you must go without argument. I won’t tell you until it’s absolutely necessary. I don’t want
the Austrians to capture you,” he finished, deliberately not mentioning Austria’s Russian allies.