Лорен Уиллиг - The Orchid Affair

Laura rolled her eyes. “The lengths to which I had to go to seduce you.”

André found himself grinning like a schoolboy. “I like you,” he said, in between kissing her and kissing her again. “I like you so damn much.”

“I don’t entirely dislike you, either,” Laura conceded, although the words were rather impeded by his mouth being in the way.

André reached up to yank off his cravat. “No second thoughts?”

Laura spread his collar open, pushing the edges of the shirt aside to kiss his throat. “None. Nor third nor fourth. When I make a decision,” she said firmly, “it stays made.”

She looked so adorably smug that André had to kiss her again, just because.

Propping himself up on one elbow, he traced the lines at the side of her eyes. “You really are rather terrifying, you know. But in a good way.”

The lines crinkled beneath his finger. “You certainly do know how to flatter a woman.”

André dipped in for a kiss. “I’m not so inadept as all that.” He tugged at the tie holding the neck of her nightdress together. “If I were flattering you, I would have told you that your skin is like honey.”

He ran a finger down the side of her breast and felt her shiver in response.

“Or I might have said that there’s witchcraft in the curve of your neck.” He suited action to words, tracing the area in question with his lips. He tugged with his teeth at her earlobe. “Your ears are rather nice too.”

She laughed, but shakily, since by that point he had moved from the lobe to exploring the inside of her ear with his tongue.

“And then there’s your hair,” he said. He didn’t bother with anything so complex as untying; he simply eased the tie off the bottom of her braid, his fingers moving to separate the interwoven strands, fanning it out around her. “You have beautiful hair.” He ran his fingers through it, tracing the wild curls and waves. “Like Eve’s wild, wanton locks.”

“I thought Eve was blond,” said Laura breathlessly.

“Not in this version,” said André firmly, following the contours of a curl down to her breast. He brushed the nipple with her hair, watching it pucker in response. “In this version, the temptress was quite definitely brunette.”

“Are you mocking me?” There was something uncertain in her voice, uncertain and heart-wrenchingly vulnerable.

“Do you really think I’m mocking you?” He’d never been less inclined to mock anything in his life. “Here.” He grabbed her hand and lowered it to the placket of his breeches. “Feel. This is how much I’m mocking you.”

They stared at each other, frozen, each sizing up the other. Her lips were already red and swollen with kisses, her cheeks flushed. The feel of her hand against him was a Mephistophelean sort of torment.

“Do you think I’m a cad?” André asked.

“No.” Her hand tightened. André couldn’t tell if it was meant consciously or not. He gritted his teeth against a groan. “Just that you’re honest.”

“André gave a rough laugh. “That’s a strange word to apply, given what you know of me.”

She rose on one elbow, he hair falling about his face. “There’s honesty and there’s honesty,” she said. “If nothing else, this is honest, what we have together right now. Just us. No dissembling. No pretense.”

“Just us,” he agreed. “Right now.”

Sometime later, they lay together in the sweaty sheets by the dying light of the fire, André playing idly with Laura’s hair while she curled up against his chest. They had lain this way a dozen times over the past week, but never like this. Being naked did make rather a difference.

André yawned and pillowed his cheek against Laura’s hair. At this moment, he was a very happy man.

“I don’t think we should tell anyone,” Laura said abruptly.

“Hmm?” Sated and sleepy, André was only half paying attention.

“That we’re—well . . .”

“Lovers?” he contributed. “That would be rather odd if we weren’t, considering that we’re supposed to be married.”

Laura propped herself up, her hair falling across his chest. André reached out to toy with the ends of it. “That’s not who I meant. I meant our lot.”

“Daubier?” André curled a lock of dark hair behind her ear. “I doubt he’ll act the outraged father about this.”

“It’s not Daubier I’m worried about.” Laura absently untucked the hair he had just tucked. “It’s Jeannette and your children.”

“Pierre-André is a little young yet for the birds and the bees,” said André mildly. “As for Gabrielle—” That didn’t even bear thinking about.

Laura went doggedly back to her theme. “Children pick up on things, even if they don’t entirely understand them. Gabrielle and I have only just made our peace. I don’t need her coming after me with a dagger.”

“The daggers are pasteboard.”

“Paper cuts hurt.”

There was honesty and there was honesty, she had said. Odd that after playing a part for so long, this subterfuge should seem more repugnant to him than others.

“All right.” André smoothed back her hair. “If that’s what you want.”

With a contented sigh, Laura eased down against him. “Mmm-hmm,” she said, rubbing her cheek against his chest. “It shouldn’t be too hard. We’re already sharing a room and have been from the beginning. As long as we’re discreet outside of bed, no one need be any the wiser.”

“Let me get this straight,” said André. “We’re pretending to be lovers pretending not to be lovers.”

“Is that right? Or have you got it upside down?” Laura frowned into his chest. “I’m too tired to work it out.”

“Do you think we’ll be able to keep it under wraps?” he said meditatively.

“I don’t see why not.” Laura pressed the back of her hand against her mouth to suppress a yawn. “You’ve led a double life before. How hard can it be?”

“I wasn’t sleeping with Fouché.”

“I should hope not. His wife wouldn’t have been amused.”

André tilted his chin down to look at her. All he could see was the tangled mass of her hair. “You have a surprisingly bawdy sense of humor.”

Laura snuggled more firmly into his chest. “I had a surprisingly unconventional upbringing.”

“I did rather get that.” He thought of her as he had first seen her, the very definition of the word spinster. The image was unreconcilable with the woman in his arms, all lush curves and surprising talents. “How did you manage all these years?”

“What do you mean?”

“Being prim.” He tightened his arms around her, enjoying the squish of her breasts against his chest. “You do a very good job of acting prim, you know.”

“Years and years of practice.” Her hair tickled his chest as she turned her head, searching for a more comfortable spot. “It was sheer self-defense at first. After a time it became habit.”

“Hmm,” said André, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. “I like your new habits better.”

Laura’s blurred voice emerged from the vicinity of his chest. “What makes you think you’re going to become a habit?”

“I’ll just have to make sure of it, won’t I? But not right now,” he added with a yawn. “I’m not as young as I used to be. Remind me in the morning.”

“Maybe,” she murmured. “If you’re very, very lucky.”

André rested his cheek against her head. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so peaceful or so comfortable. “I’m already very, very lucky.”

He was three-quarters asleep when Laura’s voice, so low as to be almost inaudible, drifted up to him.

“It’s nice not to have to,” she said, almost as if to herself.

“What?” André asked sleepily.

“Pretend,” she said.

André hugged her tighter, putting into touch what he couldn’t into words.

“Mmm-hmm,” he agreed, and together, they drifted into sleep.

“Only a few hours left to go,” said Laura, fastening the tie of her ruff behind her neck. Her fingers fumbled on the familiar strings.

Turning her around, André took over the task for her. “Nervous?” he asked.

Laura tried to shoot him a sarcastic look but was stymied by several layers of starched fabric. “I can’t imagine why I would be,” she said acerbically.

After a month and half on the road, they were backstage in the theatre at Dieppe, preparing to go on for what would be, with any luck, their final performance with the Commedia dell’Aruzzio.

Laura would never be an inspired actress, but she had, over the past month, become a reasonably competent one. The stage no longer held the same terror for her. Their flight from France, however, was a different matter entirely. True, they had made it this far, but there was still the boat to England to be dealt with.

Of what would happen when they arrived in England, Laura tried not to think.

So far, their haphazard escape had gone almost unnervingly well. After Beauvais, they had taken again to the back roads for a week (Laura could only assume Cécile had seen the same notices she and André had seen) before venturing again into towns large and small for a performance here and a performance there, seldom staying in any place longer than two nights at a time. They had fallen into a pattern of sorts. In the mornings, she gave lessons to Gabrielle and Pierre-André. In the evenings, they rehearsed or performed, depending on their situation. And at night, she and André retired to the privacy of their wagon.

March dripped away into April. The grass began to look more green than gray, and the first of the wildflowers took advantage of the thaw to stake their claims on the fields and roadsides. There were no more notices on the town hall wall, no signs of pursuit. Laura wasn’t naïve enough to hope that the First Consul’s agents had given up the chase, but if they were chasing, they were being remarkably laggardly about it.