Lord Deverill's Heir, Catherine Coulter [the best motivational books .TXT] 📗

He shrugged indifferently and yawned. “Oh, it’s nothing, really,” he said. She smiled, lulled, again satisfied that his attention was focused upon her.

But he couldn’t let it go, not now. Time was growing short. He sensed that the earl wanted him gone, no, the damned earl wanted to kill him.

How could he have found out about Elsbeth? Why hadn’t he said anything to him? Why, in God’s name did he even care? But he did; Gervaise saw the anger, the banked rage in his eyes.

He had to hurry. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have said circumstances. My father merely told me some rather unusual stories about your mother. Are you not interested in your mother, Elsbeth?” There was gentle reproach in his voice. Like a trained dog, she heeded it immediately.

“Certainly, it is just that she died so very long ago, when I was but a baby. I have no memory of her at all. As to any stories about her, I should, naturally, be delighted to hear them.”

“Perhaps then sometime soon.” How very easily he could divert her thoughts, to call forth the insecure lonely child, striving so desperately to please. Though he was certain that he had bound her to him, he wondered if her loyalties to Lady Ann and to Arabella might render her incapable of doing what he wished.

He appeared to grow bored with the subject. It was enough for the moment that he had planted seeds of curiosity in her mind. He let his gaze wander up and down her body. He said nothing. In his experience, the woman believed he was thinking only of her body and praying that he believed her beautiful. He could not know that she was frantically searching her mind for something of interest to distract him, to keep him from thrusting into her body again. With sudden inspiration she said,

“Gervaise, I do think it wonderful that you care to know more about my mother. Did you know that my maid, Josette, was also my mother’s nurse?

She knew my mother from a baby, and indeed, accompanied her here to Evesham Abbey after her marriage to my father. She would know everything about my mother.”

He was looking vaguely at her white belly. God, how stupid he’d been.

Josette, of course. Now he would not need to count upon Elsbeth. Would not Josette feel loyalty to the de Trécassis family, to him? He felt a surge of confidence. Thinking to reward Elsbeth for providing him the answer, he spurred the cold embers of his passion and swept his hand between her thighs, glorying in the dampness of his own seed that clung to her. He jerked away his cloak and pulled her possessively against him.

For an instant he thought she pushed against his chest, but then she moaned softly against his neck, her lips soft and wet, and wrapped her arms about his shoulders.

“Yes,” he said, kissing her throat. “Oh, yes.” She wanted to cry, but she didn’t.

Elsbeth glanced at the small gilt clock on the table beside the copper bathtub, sighed contentedly, and lowered herself deeper into the warm, scented water. She felt supremely happy, even as she had scrubbed herself until the soft flesh between her thighs hurt. She stayed for a long time in the warm water, the violent, embarrassing man’s side of love all but forgotten, her mind soaring with unbounded pleasure into a romantic image of Gervaise as her dashing, gallant lover, the man she adored, more importantly, the man who adored her above all other women. Arabella included. He did not even know that Arabella was alive. Surely that had to mean something.

“Come, my lamb, it grows late. You would not wish to be late for dinner.” Elsbeth turned toward her rheumy-eyed maid, Josette, vaguely aware that there was an unusual sharpness in her withered voice.

“Come, mistress,” Josette repeated, waving a large towel toward Elsbeth.

“Ah, very well,” Elsbeth said, her voice all soft and vague, and rose, her arms outstretched.

“Really, my baby, you are a lady, not a grisette to flaunt her naked body.” She quickly bundled Elsbeth into the towel, averting her eyes as she did so.

Elsbeth eyed her faithful old maidservant with a secret woman’s smile.

How very old-fashioned she was, she thought, forgetting that but a short time before, she would never have emerged from her bath until Josette had positioned her towel before she’d stood up.

“Oh, do not scold me, Josette, for I’m much too happy. Finally, I’m alive. Finally, I know what I should know.” Josette grunted, pulled Elsbeth’s chemise over her head, and forced her arthritic fingers to tie the dainty ribbons. The pain in her fingers made her say crossly, “Just because you are now a rich young lady, with ten thousand pounds, it’s no reason for you to go bounding about screeching like a scullery maid.”

“I’m not screeching. Oh, I may as well tell you, you sharp-eyed old eagle, for you will know soon enough.” She whirled about and clasped Josette’s gnarled hands, pulling her wispy gray head close to her. “I am in love!”

Josette felt a bizarre moment of muddled confusion. No, it was not Magdalaine who was in love. Elsbeth? Surely that wasn’t possible. She grasped at the vague realities that filed in lopsided order through her mind and drew back with a gasp of shock. “Oh, no, my little pet. You cannot love the earl. He has wedded with Arabella.” She groped to remember. “He did marry Arabella, did he not?” Elsbeth gave a trill of laughter and hugged the familiar stoop-shouldered old woman. “Yes, indeed, the earl has married Arabella. It’s not the earl, no.”

“But there is no one else,” Josette said slowly, her mind squirreling about, finding nothing but more confusion. She wished that the dainty, smiling girl in front of her were not so very like Magdalaine. Such transports, such gaiety, when Magdalaine was in love.

“My cousin, of course. The comte. Gervaise. Is he not handsome and altogether wonderful?”

“The comte,” Josette repeated, her voice slower