Mademoiselle At Arms, Elizabeth Bailey [bearly read books txt] 📗

go in? Charvill is there. I’ve just seen him.’

‘You have seen him? Exactement. And me, I wish to know why you have seen him. What is it that you wish from me? You would like to arrest me for spying? Very well, arrest me. I do not care, but only that you will leave my affairs to me.’

She ended on a note of sheer frustration, clenched fists beating the air. Gerald sighed. ‘You’re right. It is perfectly intrusive of me, and I quite see that you must be sick to death of running into such an interfering busybody all the time.’ He regarded her thoughtfully. ‘I’ll make you an offer.’

‘What offer?’ she asked, suspicion rife in her voice.

‘If you are not going to visit Charvill today, I’ll escort you back to the convent in Golden Square.’

Shock spread across her lovely features. Then she uttered a strangled, ‘Espéce de bête!’ and burst into tears.

‘Oh my God,’ uttered Gerald in some dismay. ‘Not in the open street.’ He turned to the goggling footman and thrust him towards the coach. ‘Open the door, fool!’

Then he had Melusine by the shoulders and was hustling her into the hackney. With a curt command to her cavalier to get up on the box and give the direction to the interested coachman, he jumped in beside the girl and shut them both into privacy.

Turning to Melusine, he grabbed both her wrists and held her away from him, as if afraid that she might go for him.

‘Laisse-moi,’ she threw at him, her brief attack of sobs already ended, although the trace of tears on her cheeks bore witness to its sincerity. ‘Let go!’

‘Do you take me for a fool?’ Gerald demanded. ‘Don’t concern yourself. It is a precaution merely. I have to see if you carry any more weapons.’

‘How can I have more? You have taken my pistol. You have taken my dagger. You have taken even my knife. Do you think a jeune demoiselle may possess more weapons than this?’

‘Most young ladies would not be in possession of any weapons,’ Gerald said tartly. ‘You, Mademoiselle Charvill, are as unlike most of your sex as you can be. I’m taking no chances.’

She tried to shake his hands off her wrists, but Gerald held them fast and tutted at her.

‘Bête,’ she flung at him. ‘You do not dare look in my clothes.’

‘Oh, don’t I? What do you have under all those petticoats, a holster?’

‘But yes, and they are empty.’

‘They? How many are there?’

‘Oh, peste.’ She struggled. ‘You have said you do not wish to hurt me.’

‘I also said, if you remember, that I could not promise not to do so. Now keep still. You will only make me hurt you the more.’

‘But I have told you I have not another dagger, even a little one.’

‘A dagger, is it then?’

The girl froze. ‘What do you mean?’

Gerald grinned. ‘In fact you admitted only that you had no more weapons. But you have, haven’t you?’ He tutted again. ‘You have a knack of saying just the wrong thing.’

‘To you,’ she said angrily. ‘Because you are a bête, and a pig, and imbecile.’

‘I am whatever you like,’ he agreed pleasantly, ‘but nothing is going to stop me from searching for this dagger. And meanwhile, we’ll just have these no doubt potentially lethal little claws of yours out of harm’s way.’

So saying, he pulled her forward, slipping her arms about his back. The strong fingers of one hand secured both her wrists there, and Melusine found herself chest to chest with him as he threw off his hat, and began to pat at her petticoat, searching for tell-tale protrusions.

Melusine was unable to repulse him—even had she tried. The thought did not occur to her, for all thought had flown out of her head. She could not say a word, much less move. All the fury had left her, swamped by an inexplicable flood of warmth. Her cheeks seemed to burn, her veins ran riot, and her heart was beating so fast that she was sure he must feel it through his scarlet coat. His face, as he looked down where his hand sought for a weapon concealed in her petticoat, was so close that she could see only the line of his firm jaw, the drag of his powdered hair that drew it into the military pigtail, and the black ribbon that adorned it.

Then the incredible happened. The major’s hand stilled. Slowly, he drew back his head and looked into her face. His eyes swept down and Melusine felt the quiver at her lips where he gazed. His glance came up again and met hers. Melusine saw fire in his eyes and a streak of heat rushed through her to match it. And then she could see nothing at all for his lips founds hers.

The kiss was powerfully moving. Drowning, her brain dizzy, Melusine clung to the source of the flooding warmth, her hands, no longer forcibly held, moving without will about the firm back. Her feathered hat fell from her head and down her back, and she felt fingers writhing in the mass of her hair and caressing the flesh of her neck beneath so that she shivered uncontrollably. A strong arm pulled her closer, and the lips that mouthed her own in tender touches sent her senses reeling. They pressed more insistently, forcing her lips open.

A moistened velvet touch found her tongue. A shaft of searing heat plunged downward. Shocked, Melusine shot out of that blanketing warmth of sensation. Dieu du ciel! Gerald was kissing her!

She struggled to be free, and the arms that held her loosened, the lips leaving hers.

It was a moment or two before Gerald, opening his eyes on the girl’s astounded expression, recollected himself sufficiently to pull out of the extraordinary impact she’d had on him. He stared at her stupidly, forgetting to guard against the tactics he had come to expect from her. Until he felt a sharpness digging into his coat at the point of his heart.

He glanced down between the still narrow distance that lay between Melusine and himself, and discovered her hand there, a very small dagger within it. His glance swept up again and found her staring at him with much of her usual defiance, if a touch less of her customary assurance.

‘Ah, there is the little menace itself,’ he drawled, recovering some of his own sangfroid.

‘Yes, th-there it is,’ she uttered, stumbling a little over the words. ‘And n-never would you have f-found it. It has instead found you.’

‘So I see. It was not quite the search I intended,’ he said with a touch of self-mockery as he released her, ‘but success comes in all sorts of unexpected ways.’

‘Success?’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘You kissed me that you might make me find it for you instead?’

‘I had no such intention. I certainly didn’t mean to kiss you.’

‘Parbleu, you deserve I should stick this dagger in you this minute.’

Gerald raised his brows. ‘For kissing you, or for not meaning to do so?’

‘Imbecile,’ exclaimed Melusine impatiently. ‘You should not kiss me at all, and undoubtedly I should kill you.’

‘Undoubtedly,’ Gerald agreed. He held her eyes. ‘Why don’t you?’

Melusine frowned at him, grasping the dagger more firmly. ‘You wish to die?’

‘Not in the least. But I shan’t try to stop you. You have threatened to kill me for nothing, I know not how many times. Now I have done something for which you might be pardoned if you did kill me. So here is your chance, Mademoiselle Charvill.’

He held his hands out of the way, surrendering his chest for her assault. Her eyes flashed and she withdrew the dagger, pulling away from him.

‘But it is idiot. Certainly I cannot kill you if you tell me to do so.’

‘Only in hot blood, eh?’ grinned Gerald.

‘Exactement.’

Gerald held out his hand, and she meekly gave the dagger up to him. He did not pocket it, but sat hefting it lightly from hand to hand, watching the girl thoughtfully.

‘I might have killed you,’ she snapped, ‘if only you did not say anything. For my blood you made it very hot indeed.’

‘Did I so?’ Gerald said, amused. ‘I assure you it was mutual.’

Which effectually silenced her. She blushed prettily, and in a moment regained command of her tongue.

‘Why did you kiss me?’

‘I don’t know,’ Gerald admitted.

‘There you have soldiers. For nothing they kiss.’

‘Oh, do they?’ Gerald said, sudden wrath kindling. ‘I suppose I need not ask to which other soldier you refer.’

‘That is not your affair. En tout cas, we are not talking of that kiss, but of this one.’

‘Must we talk of it? I’m trying to forget it.’

Melusine glared. ‘I find you excessively rude. Why should you wish to forget it? Unless it is that you did not enjoy it.’

‘I didn’t say I did not enjoy it,’ Gerald protested.

She smiled. ‘Eh bien, does that mean that you will do it again?’

‘Not if I can help it,’ Gerald uttered, alarmed.

‘Ah.’ Melusine sighed in a satisfied way. ‘So it is that you could not help it. That can be very useful, that.’

‘You little fiend,’ exclaimed Gerald wrathfully. ‘If you imagine you’re going to use one ungentlemanly act to manipulate me, you very much mistake the matter.’

‘Yes, but when I think about this, I do not think I can do so,’ she said candidly. ‘For that, I must conceal that I also have enjoyed the kiss.’

‘It’s too late for that,’ Gerald told her evenly. ‘But the fact remains that you should not have enjoyed it, you were quite right to threaten to kill me, and I—God help me!—should not have kissed you at all.’

‘Then why,’ demanded Melusine, ‘did you do it?’

Gerald closed his eyes. ‘Here we go again.’

She giggled suddenly. ‘Gérard, you are a great fool.’

‘Indeed, I’m beginning to think so,’ he said ruefully. ‘But I’m hanged if I know why you find it so amusing.’

‘But it is stupide. Each time that we meet I try to kill you. Each time also we quarrel, and even if you are laughing very much, you become angry. And still you interest yourself in my affairs. And when I ask you why it is you do so, you have no answer.’

‘Now you come to mention it, it is stupid,’ Gerald said, struck. ‘Hilary was right. He will have it that I’ve taken leave of my senses.’

‘That is silly. Certainly you have a reason.’ She eyed him. ‘It does not seem to me that you can be an emissary for that pig.’

‘You mean Valade? Certainly not.’

A little sigh escaped her. ‘I did not think so.’

Gerald reached out and took her hand, enclosing it between both his own. ‘Can’t you trust me a little?’

His touch sent shivers running through her, but Melusine did not withdraw her hand. ‘I do not know. I am used, you understand, to guard my secret. And Leonardo told me never to trust any man.’

‘Leonardo again,’ Gerald muttered and, to her disappointment, dropped her hand. ‘Who in the name of heaven is this Leonardo? And why did he kiss you?’

‘He was an Italian soldier, and he wanted to kiss me,’ Melusine said, goaded. ‘He wanted me also to run away with him, and I wish very much that I had done so.’

‘What, a common soldier?’

‘He was not a common soldier. He was an officer, and a person of very great sense, and altogether a desirable parti.’

‘He doesn’t sound like a desirable parti. How did you meet him?’

‘He was wounded and came to the convent for sanctuary,’ Melusine told him, stung by his criticism into revealing more than she had intended.

‘If he needed