Chapter Seven

T he country fair reminded Ram of those his parents had hosted when he was a boy. Mummers on parade, funny costumes, long feathers in their hats. Young girls in muslins, the colors of the rainbow. The village tradesmen in their lean-to stalls, hawking their wares. The revelry of those hoisting high their mugs of fermented cider, beer, and wine.

Ram and Amber strolled through the throng along with Georges. The two young girls trailed behind the three adults. Georges's son Edouard walked along with a young friend.

Ram tried to throw himself into the gaiety. In a quandary, he had no other choice but to do the next most logical thing.

He took in Amber's delight in the festivities. Her carefree attitude had grown in her each day since they left Varennes. Today, it had come upon her in fuller flush, as if dawn slowly appeared over the mountain of her fear and fortitude. It suffused her, mind and body, and endured. In the sunlight that illuminated her flawless skin and dancing, dark eyes, amid the music that had her humming or singing along in a joy he imagined she'd not felt in a long time, she sparkled like a rare ruby.

He warned himself, as he usually did nearly each hour, to take his gaze from her. To fake circumspection. To appear polite. A gentleman. To act as most husbands would to their wives, attuned, bored—indifferent.

He had pretended false emotions before. Apathy, silliness, or enchantment all came easily to him. He could not say why, other than his mother had always enjoyed plays and invited troupes to their country house with such regularity that he could recite Shakespeare's monologues, badly but nonetheless recognizably, by age ten. Such expertise had befitted him in his work for Scarlett.

He could render expert aspects of libertine, misfit, misanthrope, miser, and even clown. He'd polished his impressions of such behavior when he attended Eton. His acting skills were later confirmed by his friend Ashley and that man's cousin, Fournier. Those two men's descriptions of the buffoons, charlatans, and overly righteous who attended Heidelberg University had inspired Ram to further heights. Furthermore, he was no fool about the characteristics, in particular, of men who seduced women for pleasure or on wagers or just for the challenge of it.

Here with Amber, however, over the weeks, he realized he'd been stripped down. He had become invested in her survival. Dedicated to her welfare. Appreciative of her character. Minus the fa?ade of paid guard, he was naked to her. A man who could not let her go. A man who would not leave her. No matter the price he had to pay.

She was a woman who valued truth. Valor, yes. But honesty was her core essential. For him to hide from her that he revered her was wrong. To hide from her that he admired her was sad. To hide from her that he wanted to taste her was vital to his mission and hers. And yet he ached in his bones to take her in his arms and cradle her there. Spirit her away to the coast, or to Flanders, or up the Rhine to Amsterdam and home.

But she would not go.

He had broached the subject in the past, and she had flatly refused. She had no logic for it. She had run from Paris because she was marked for death. But she remained. And Ram wondered if, in her quiet moments, she pondered returning to challenge Vaillancourt, if only to call herself valiant. If only to lose…and call herself martyr.

That last was foolhardy.

That last he would not allow. She was much too noble to surrender to blackguards who had no higher goal than power. She was too much woman to allow her to sacrifice herself on an altar of politics.

So as she reflected, he served as her guard, her friend—and her fake husband. Each day, he yearned to be more. Each day, he sublimated what he must do to report to Ashley about the muskets, to care instead for his duty to Amber.

Yet there was nothing for it. He was caught in a web he could not escape.

He lived with her, ate with her, slept with her. Each moment was innocent. Designed that way. Decreed that way. Agreed that way. Yet each movement of hers was a tease to his psyche. A charm to his groin. It mattered not what she did, he wanted to absorb everything she was. Each look, each sigh, each bright, shining laugh.

He was a prisoner to her aura. Worse, to his imaginings.

He could watch her slip into her shoes and long to wrap his fingers around her slim ankles. Slide his hands up her calves, caress her thighs, and open her wide and wet and hot to him. He could glimpse her applying a hand cream she'd bought in the town apothecary shop and long to put his lips around her fingertips. He'd nip them, lick them, and suck her into his rabid desire for her. He could admire how she discussed the fine art of whisking a good custard crème, and instead want to eat her up. Put her to the fine white linen tablecloth, ask the Boyers to quickly depart, and spread her legs and arms out for him like the finest delicacy. There he would entertain her with sweet tales of his boyhood, and woo her with wicked adventures of his manhood. He'd take down her bodice, push aside her corset, trail kisses down her deep cleavage and cup the wealth of her bounteous breasts. He would lave her nipples and stroke her silken stomach, make her writhe and want his mouth on her creamy folds. Pet her engorged pearl and sink inside her sweet—

"Shall we do it?"

He stared at her.

"Ramsey?" She always called to him in an affectionate tone in front of the Boyers. She had paused in the midst of the fairgrounds. People danced around them.

"Of course. Anything you want." Whatever the hell it was, he'd give it to her.

She chastised him with narrowed eyes, then grabbed his hand. "Come along, then. Let's see if you have the skill."

If she only knew what skills he wished to offer her, she would run like a deer from a salivating buck. But those sensuous skills had to die a prompt death, didn't they?

He sighed and went where she led.

She glanced at him. "What roils you?"

Dismayed that she perceived enough of his inner turmoil to ask, he glanced toward the flowing river beyond and frowned. "I wish we were somewhere we could truly enjoy this celebration."

"You think we are not?"

He squeezed her hands in reassurance. "No. We are. I am simply being cautious."

"Good," she said, but she glanced around, her joy in the moment gone.

"The dunking contest." He nodded toward a tall tin water barrel before them. Atop a ledge above the barrel sat a young lad on a rickety woven chair. One young woman below giggled as she taunted him, attesting she was going to hit the swinging ball with her own flat club so that he would splash into the barrel. "Can you hit that moving ball?"

"I'd rather win a stein of beer." Amber pointed just beyond to the archery contest. "There."

"Are you any good?" He paused, hands on his hips.

She narrowed her long-lashed eyes at him. "I am the very best."

He blew out a breath, and beneath it he muttered, "Why should I be surprised?"

"I heard that," she scolded with a playful toss of her head. Today, with the new spring-green gown they'd had sewn by the modiste in Buzancy, she wore no hat. Her wild red curls had grown longer since he found her in Varennes. Today, she'd caught them up in jade ribbons, and in the willowy June breeze, they danced. The look transformed her to be years younger. Beside him, she strolled toward the villagers, who took up the offered bows, quivers, and gloves and stood in line waiting their chance.

Four contenders tried their luck at a time. The crowd encouraged them as they took their places, nocked their bows, and took up the proper stance. Then the chief monitor called the mark, the ready, and the go. The crowd oohed and aahed, then jeered and cheered when one of the latest four appeared to have hit the target more closely to the center. When those four moved off, the four in front of Amber and Ram advanced in line.

Amber craned her elegant neck to see what had been posted at the front. "I say, this contest is popular. The beer must be very good."

"If certain people knew you worked for beer," he said with a pained expression, "they'd have the best laugh."

"If only what you and I did were so easy."

"Full of decisions too complicated to be rewarded with simple alcohol," he complained in a deadly serious tone. Vaillancourt was after her, but once he had her in his grasp, he would press for more, wouldn't he? Fouché was Vaillancourt's superior, ruthless in his professional role, but at heart a family man. He was no fool who'd allow his deputy to keep so valuable a suspected agent as his mistress. So, of course, Amber would die once Vaillancourt grew tired of her. Or Fouché got tired of Vaillancourt.

"There are rewards for what we do," she challenged Ram with a hint of humor. "Big ones. You know it."

He scoffed. "Such as?"

She frowned and turned away from him to finger the protective leather gloves upon the nearby table. Woodsmen had donated them for the competition.

The man in charge of the lineup called for the current four contenders to nock their arrows. The crowd cheered and crowed, scoffing at the losers and yelling congratulations to the winner of that round.

Ram moved forward with Amber into the next group of four who would compete. Why would she consider rewards…unless she debated whether to return to Paris? Was she not telling him everything?

He had to know what drove her allegiance to her cause. Whatever it was, it had to be more than an ethereal devotion to a democracy that seemed as celestial as it was unrealistic here in France.

He took her arm. "Tell me one big reward."

She pressed her lips together, frowning at him. "I would get to foil someone who thinks he is superior, capable of anything, everything."

"Who?"

She glared at him with hell in her eyes. "A rapist."

The way she said it gave him to understand it was she who had been the rapist's victim. "Amber—" he began.

"Do not." She put up a hand. "I will win this. Then we will go to the river and talk."

*

The crowd encouraged the new set of four. Amber took her place at the end of the group, then on cue she assumed her stance and nocked her first arrow.

Anger clouded her vision. Of course she debated returning to Paris. How Ram perceived that of her had her questioning her ability to mask all her thoughts. He should not be able to understand her so well. But then, they were alike, he and she. Deceivers, actors. Yet honest with each other.

The moderator called the shot.

She let fly her arrow.

The center! All points to her!

She grinned and cast a glance down the targets. No other arrows had landed as perfectly.

She primed the next arrow.

The shot was called.

She pulled, aimed, let loose.

The mark—again—was hers!

Ram stood to one side, his gaze boring into her. She tried to close him out. How dare he worm his way into her consciousness!

The call.

The shot.

Hers, off bull's-eye this time.

Miffed, she turned over her bow, quiver, and gloves. To hell with the beer.

She marched toward the rushing river.

Ram strode beside her.

She felt exposed to him. Safe from others because of him, but suddenly insecure near Ram.

Very.

Yet she needed to be satisfied with him. It was a paradox. She knew not how to live without a proper answer…and she knew not how to serve herself. How to approach him. How to go on.

Big, bold, gentlemanly Ram, who stood as a bulwark against the world, was an enigma. Most men she'd encountered since the age of fifteen were assertive, even aggressive, in putting themselves in her path. They'd announced in no uncertain terms their interest. It was sexual.

They said the most ridiculous things to her. Not "You're lovely" or "Would you care to take a stroll in the garden?" but overt, licentious bits that, when she was young, frightened her. When she grew older and Aunt Cecily had taught her ways to put down a rabid fellow, Amber became more circumspect. She could smile and, wordlessly, tell the man to give over. She knew how, also courtesy of Aunt Cecily, to subdue a more insistent man by calmly insulting his pride and leaving the scene, public as it most likely had been.

Maurice had exhibited none of those characteristics. At an age double hers, he assumed a paternal attitude toward her when first they met. He had come to Paris to meet other vintners to discuss expanding their markets, and her aunt had invited him to a soiree. She introduced him to Amber that afternoon. On the next one, Maurice saved her from one man who pawed her in Aunt Cecily's garden. Maurice's actions were bold, grabbing the fellow by the scruff and throwing him toward the door. His words to her were paternal…until days later, she had kissed him for his kindness, and his lips returned an emotion priceless in its tenderness.

She had been his wife for a little over a year, suffered the miscarriage of their baby, cried in his arms—and, in time, with him she learned to laugh again. Only last Christmas had he turned ill, taken to his bed, and quietly, relentlessly slipped away from her. Alone she had cried, mourning him until she could not stand or eat, until she did not know her name. Augustine and her aunt had urged her back to health, only for her to return to Society and be accosted by Rene Vaillancourt her first night back. Then, with no respect for the dead, he had pulled her into an empty room and threatened to have her.

"Eventually," he had said, his sly elegance a hellish offense to her grief, "you and all you know will be mine."

She had been warned of the deputy's power. Her aunt saw it and had foretold his interest. For years, Amber had seen his desire for her across many a crowded salon, his long-lashed mercenary eyes riveted to her like a lizard, bold and unwavering even when Maurice was alive. Such arrogance she had never met. Shaken to her core each time, she had avoided his every approach. Then when he had the audacity to stride up to her, a woman still in mourning, she had heard his vehement words—and fled.

Without notice to anyone.

Without regret.

With only self-preservation in mind.

After belonging to a man she adored, her flesh froze at the touch of that man. She'd gone to ice at the probability that he could take her to his bed and afterward, himself replete, take her to a cold, dark room and beat from her the system that had fed Scarlett Hawthorne's British government with the information that could save millions from disaster.

And now, when she had relished the safety given by a paragon of a man, she was foolish to consider—even for a moment—that she was strong enough, stupid enough, to return and withstand the storm that Vaillancourt would bring upon her.

No. She would not go.

Could not.

Here with Godfrey DuClare, Lord Ramsey, twelfth of his line, she would remain.

But how was she to go on with him? Honorable and honest, polite, he was now more distant and such a gentleman. Very much like Maurice, but then not at all.

Ram was quite extraordinary. One day, if she ever had the opportunity, she must thank Scarlett Hawthorne for her assignment of this man to her survival.

If indeed that did occur.

It won't. I might die at this espionage business.

And, for protecting me, Ram too.

But Ram must live. I will see to it. Somehow…

Meanwhile, I will learn to live with my own guilt for having left the service I was so proud of.

Live for each day, Maurice had whispered to her as he lay dying.

And today was for living. This moment. With this man.

She took the path to the river. It wended this way and that, the rustle of the leaves in the lush forest like a symphony of tiny violins urging her onward. As those sounds blended with the tinkle of the river as it gushed upon the shore, she felt delightful shivers enliven her. The banks of the Meuse spread gently down. She stopped feet away from the sparkling, curling waters.

She sat, removing her slippers and her stockings. The gown she wore today was one of those from Buzancy, and she did not want to ruin it. Nothing for it, then—she would have to hike up her gown.

She bit her lip, knowing she would display her bare calves, a thing not done by true ladies. But then, she was a woman—a widow, too—who had not upheld propriety in her actions, wasn't she? She was a spy, an agent for the British Crown. She could show a little leg. Her poor partner—agent for the Crown that he was—would have to bear it.

She would push the boundaries of their relationship.

"You are fortunate you can lift up your skirts." He stood beside her, assessing the river rushing past.

"You could remove your breeches," she said with a toss of her hair.

He crossed his arms and peered down his perfect, straight nose at her.

She giggled. "Come in. Remove your boots. Roll up your breeches. You need the refreshment!" She beckoned him with her fingers and gave him a wink. Oh, I am bad.

He scoffed, but in those well-fitting breeches his accoutrements bulged beautifully.

She widened her eyes at him. "No pillow at hand here, sir!"

He blushed—and she adored the boy who lived in him that he would honor her so. Then he sat down on a log. "None!"

She threw back her head to chuckle. "Impressive!"

"Go." He indicated the river. "Get in and stop baiting me."

She lifted her skirts and deliberately gave him a view of her legs, from knees to bare feet. "I want to be fair."

"Well," he said, his gaze locked on her ankles, "that ship sailed long ago."

"Have you had many women?" she blurted, taking a few steps to let her toes freeze in the water. She had lost sight of him as she walked, surprised and yet not, at the gush of her own desire for him warm and wet between her folds.

"Enough to know what I am about. And what I am not."

"You are not about anything lately." He had not made any advances on her. Only that one reference to him pleasuring himself. She must not continue with this dialogue.

"By necessity, madame."

"Thank you for that," she said so softly that she wondered if he heard.

He did not respond.

She dared not turn to look at him, but she did want to know more about him. His past, his personal affairs.

"Have you had many men?" he asked her, closer behind her than she expected, his tone wistful, demanding.

"That's fair," she said as she stepped into the bracing water that flowed between her legs. "No. I had only my husband, Maurice."

"I have enjoyed the pleasure of a few ladies."

She smiled to herself. "No wives?"

"None."

"No permanent lovers?"

"None now. In the past, I had one lady, but when I came abroad, of necessity we parted. I wrote a generous pension. She was a very congenial companion, sorry to see me leave."

Amber walked gingerly further into the river, the bottom covered in smooth stones. The cool current added to a new rush of wet desire for him. And yet to want him, to have him, would be so wrong, so against their agreement and the necessity for clarity in what they must do together.

She turned, walking along the grass away from the river and him.

That she was committed to dealing with her guilt for leaving Paris meant she would wander the earth. He could not, would not be, by her side forever. A lifetime of protecting her was too much to ask. At some point, she would let him go, encourage him to leave her.

Now, today, she wanted him. If her desire was simple female lust, she could accept that in herself. She had found immense pleasure in it with Maurice.

But she feared that to want this man meant she might also need him as hers, as permanently as she had needed Maurice.

The price here was higher, harder to pay, yet as needy as she was, she would not lie to herself. She stopped and put her hands to her cheeks. The sun was not that hot. Her body was. To have him would be so…easy. To deny herself his loving again and again would not be.

For she knew, just as a wild cat in heat knows when a male tracks her, Ram desired her.

Facing away from him, she also knew it was right to give him only a portion of what he wanted. Answers to who and what she really was. And why. And so she said, "You asked me before what keeps me devoted to my work."

She felt his warmth as he came up behind her. She squeezed her thighs together in abject want. She had the urge to turn, embrace him, and follow the demands of desire pulsing in her belly. To have him fill her would be the satisfaction she needed.

And so unfair to him.

To me, as well. Taking from him more than he should give.

His arms went around her, and he pressed his body, big and strong, to her back, his cock, long and turgid, against her derriere. She let out her breath, at ease, at her leisure, in his embrace.

"Tell me, then." His voice could melt her. His gruff tones, so resonant with care, bored into her lonely heart like a flaming iron through a block of ice. "Help me understand you."

"My aunt always kept me safe. I never knew what terror was, what nightmares could come to a girl from others. I had no parents. Not really. I remember them hardly at all. Just my aunt saving me at nine. My aunt, always there, always ready with a smile, help, a golden word."

He settled her backward more comfortably. His lips nestled near her ear, his words moist breaths of compassion on her tender flesh. "What happened?"

"Carmes."

He grunted. "Someone hurt you."

Not a question, a statement. But it was wrong.

"Not me. Dear God, no. Not me. But one I did not know very well but whom I saw beaten to death." She gulped to keep the horror down. To speak of the beatings, the rapes, turned her stomach. To speak of how Vaillancourt had stood by watching the brutal death of young Diane Massey was hideous. She deflected to the subject that was less upsetting. "My aunt saved me from the guards. Greedy, insatiable men who took the post to take what they could from women caught in a net. Tangled, stuck. It was…"

He squeezed her tightly to him.

She sighed, her head falling back, her neck arching. My, how she wanted him. Her belly quivered.

He dipped his head and put his mouth to the spot behind her ear. His attitude was reverent, nigh unto a benediction. Tears scalded her eyes as she realized he did not know how her body pulsed to have him inside her. "Tell me nothing, my sweet woman. I should not have asked. I wish not to terrorize you or to make you remember."

He turned the talk from her craving for him to her reason to spy. She shook her head. She was saved. She was damned.

"Many men behind the consulate collaborated with those during the Terror who put innocents in prisons, like Carmes. Barras, Talleyrand, Fouché, and Vaillancourt."

"I suspected," he whispered.

"What happened to everyone in Carmes should not go unpunished. To men and women. To my friends… And most people have no means to do so. But I can." She spun in his arms. "You know as well as I that if all power is given to one man or a few, they grow fat on it."

He pushed her hair from her cheeks and lifted her chin. But his gaze was on her lips. "I do," he breathed.

"You are noble to help me."

"Am I?" He gave a sad little laugh. "Like you, I have my motivation."

"To aid your own network—to protect me."

Now his magnetic blue eyes held to hers. "From others. All others."

"But now?" What did she ask? She should not venture into his mind, his secrets. Men's thoughts were dangerous, and she knew it so well. She had much evidence.

He cupped her cheeks, stroking her skin and thrumming her senses. "My first duty was to guard you. Now it is to save you, and I do believe that means to save you from yourself."

The tears that had burned her eyes escaped her lashes. "Are you telling me we cannot run forever?"

"Sweetheart, you know we can't."

His endearment filled her with a thirst to reply in kind. Yet she could not lead him on. She was now a woman without a cause. One only on the run. "But what else is there for me?"

He inhaled and wrapped her close, her head against his mighty shoulder, his big hand splayed into her hair. "Freedom."

"Boredom," she shot back.

"You would be useful to others with your knowledge of people, customs, language, and the turn of events."

She blinked, struck with the novel idea. "Far away? What good would I do?"

"Much."

"You are so sure," she chided him.

"Look what we have accomplished here. What we could do elsewhere."

"No," she insisted. She would not tie him to her forever and see him die because of it.

"Then Sedan! Verdun," he offered.

"No."

"Karlsruhe."

"No!"

He set his jaw. "Even the Rhine, Amsterdam. London!"

She shook her head. "I don't want to go. I have no one in any of those places. No friends. No family."

"You will have me." He pointed to himself.

I must not take you for such simple emotions as fear or gratitude. "I cannot live off your grace and favor."

"Why not? I am a man of circumstance. I can give all that I have."

His words, so reminiscent of his mother's definition of love, thrilled her—and sent dismay through her.

Ram could not love her. Should not. A woman adrift from herself, she would be his ruin. "You are too generous."

He flinched. "Think on it."

She had insulted him, and in small compensation, she hugged him closer.

He planted a kiss to her forehead. "But for now, we will return to the Boyers' house and dress for dinner."