Her eyes narrowed. ‘Ah, yes? To what do I pretend?’
‘That,’ Gerald said regretfully, ‘I have not yet been able to fathom.’
‘And you will not,’ came triumphantly from the cherry lips. ‘So now you will please to go away and leave me to my business.’
‘But I am not stopping you from carrying on your business. Why don’t you 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.’
