Velvet by Jane Feather Page B

didn’t encourage callers, and paid no calls himself. He had a reputation for being a somewhat surly recluse. There would be gossip, of course, but it wouldn’t worry him.
    But what of Jake? Oh, the boy was too young to hear the tittle-tattle, and certainly too young to speculate on his father’s visitor. He’d be in the nursery and the schoolroom most of the time anyway.
    Gabrielle said suddenly, “What of your son, though?”
    It was as if she’d been in his thoughts. “What do you know of Jake?” he demanded sharply.
    She shrugged. “Nothing, really. Miles simply mentioned him in passing.”
    “And did he tell you of Helen?” His tone was still sharp.
    “Only that she’d died.” She decided against telling him what Miles had told her of Nathaniel’s grief and his difficulties with fatherhood. It was no concern of hers anyway. “It was a word in passing. I wasn’t particularly interested, and in fact, I’m not now. Interludes should have no attachments to the past and no strings to the future. Don’t you agree?”
    “You’re an extraordinary woman.” Nathaniel frowned. “You have none of the softnesses of your sex.”
    How could you know? I saw my mother in the tumbril on the way to the guillotine. How much softness can survive in the soul of an eight-year-old after that? And what was left was leached from my soul with Guillaume’s blood as he died in my arms
. She turned her head away with a sudden movement to hide from him both the grief and the fierce anger in her eyes, and she spoke lightly, revealing nothing in her voice.
    “One reason you might reconsider the question of employing me, Sir Spymaster,” she said. “Since it’s the softness of women you object to.”
    “Is that what this is about?” His voice was cold and flat as he suddenly suspected manipulation.
    She shook her head. “No.” She said this with so much conviction that she realized with dismay that a part of herself meant it. The seduction had taken on a life of its own, and she was as much a victim of her plan as Nathaniel.
    She rested her head on the squabs and regarded him through narrowed eyes. “No, I’m as much taken by surprise as you are. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to give up trying to persuade you to change your mind, sir.”
    Nathaniel’s expression was inscrutable, showing nothing of his thoughts. A wise man recognized when to drop his prejudices. Gabrielle de Beaucaire had courage, ingenuity, nerve, and audacity—everything essential for a good spy—except that she was a woman. For several years he’d been trying to place someone in the inner circles of Napoleon’s government. This woman could be the perfect answer.
    But was she genuine? She had convinced Simon, but Nathaniel ultimately trusted no one’s judgment but his own when so many lives were at risk. She could be a plant. Her contacts in France were every bit as strong as her contacts here. She was as much French as she was English. And seduction and betrayal were the oldest tricks in the business.
    If she was genuine, then she was a gift that only a stubborn fool would refuse. At Burley Manor he would have all the time he needed to test her out.
    Deliberately, his expression lightened and a glimmer of amusement appeared in his steady gaze. “Your powers of persuasion are fearsome, madame. I can see I shall have my work cut out to withstand them.”
    “I’ll make a small wager that you won’t succeed,” she said with a mischievous grin.
    “Stakes?”
    “Oh …” She pursed her lips, considering. “Let’s say at the end of two weeks the loser puts him or herself entirely at the disposal of the winner for twenty-four hours.”
    Nathaniel smiled slowly. “Now, those are stakes worth winning.”
    “They might even be worth losing,” she murmured with a lascivious chuckle that sent the blood coursing hot and swift through his veins.
    “You have a wager, my wanton brigand.”
    So far so good
. Gabrielle inclined her head in silent