‘Leonardo again,’ he growled. ‘What was Leonardo to you?’
Melusine was instantly on the defensive. ‘Laisse-moi.’
‘Damn you, answer me!’
Her eyes flashed. ‘It is not your affair.’
‘Was it yours?’
Insulted beyond bearing, Melusine lost her temper. ‘Dieu du ciel, for what do you take me?’
‘I don’t know,’ he threw at her. ‘That’s why I’m asking.’
The fury welled. ‘You wish a reason for jealousy? Eh bien, you may have it. Leonardo he was my—’
‘Don’t say it,’ Gerald cut in hoarsely. There was a pause, while the steel grey eyes sliced at her. Then pain entered their depths. ‘You wound me to the heart, Melusine.’
Releasing her, he turned and walked swiftly towards the door. For an instant, Melusine watched him go. Then instinct took over. With a cry of distress, she dropped the pistol and flew after him, racing past him to the door. Flinging her back against it, she put her hands out, barring his way.
‘Gérard, do not go,’ she cried, breathless. ‘Me, I am tout à fait stupide. You make me angry, and I lie. Voilà tout. Leonardo was to me nothing at all.’
There was a kind of aching hunger in Gerald’s gaze. ‘Do you swear it? There’s no knowing if one can believe you.’
‘I do not lie to you now,’ she said, near frantic at the thought of losing him. Yet her hands dropped, and she sighed deeply. ‘You do not understand, Gérard. Leonardo was to me perhaps like a father, not a lover as you think.’
‘I don’t want to think it,’ he said, and she thrilled to the savagery in his tone.
‘You are jealous!’
‘Yes,’ he agreed simply. ‘Because I love you. I can’t help it.’
Melusine’s eyes misted. ‘You said it. And I have no more the pistol.’
She was seized by two strong hands and drawn close. Gerald’s gaze bored into hers.
‘Tell me the truth, Melusine.’
‘Of Leonardo? Yes, I will tell you.’ She spoke with difficulty, holding down the rising emotion that threatened to overwhelm her. ‘He was very kind to me. Not like my father. Nor my grandfathers both. To them all I am nothing. They do not come for me, to find me and bring me home. And for Suzanne and the vicomte, I am nothing. I am no one, Gérard.’
Gerald did not speak, but there was a look in his face that made Melusine glad she had at last had the courage to confide in him. The jealous burn at his eyes subsided and his finger came up. She felt the softest touch caress her cheek, and a wave of tenderness engulfed Melusine. Her hand came up and she laced her fingers with his.
‘That is why I have come to England, you understand. To—to find myself. Because Leonardo, he made me see that I can be someone.’
‘You were always someone, Melusine. Even if you didn’t know it.’
The gentleness in his voice nearly overset her. ‘It did not seem to me that it was so. Until Leonardo.’ Then all at once remembrance made her smile. ‘En tout cas, it is not reasonable that I could be at all in love with him. He is extremely old—forty at least—and he has a belly excessively fat. Also he is ugly. And I was altogether disgusted when he kissed me.’
‘How shocking,’ Gerald returned, grinning. ‘I trust you were not altogether disgusted when I kissed you.’
‘But I have told you not,’ she protested. ‘And if it is true that you love me, I do not know why it is that you do not kiss me again at once.’
‘I would have done, only you threatened to blow off my head,’ Gerald reminded her, laughing.
‘Do not be imbecile. Do I blow off the head of a man with whom I am in love?’
‘That,’ said Gerald, disengaging his hand and at last drawing her into his arms, ‘deserves a reward.’
Melusine drowned in his kiss. Her heartbeat raced, her limbs turned to water, and it was only by a miracle and the strength of the arms that held her that she remained standing on her feet.
It was some time later, after a series of these devastating assaults, that Melusine found herself seated on the sofa lately vacated by Lucilla and Captain Roding, cuddled firmly in the arms of a major of militia reduced quite to idiocy.
‘—and I love your raven hair, and your bright blue eyes, and your very kissable lips—’ suiting the action to the words ‘—and I love the crazy way you speak English, and the way you curse at me. I love you calling me Gérard and idiot, and I love you when you threaten me with every weapon under the sun, and—’
‘Pah!’ interrupted Melusine, scorn in her voice. ‘I do not believe you. You make a game with me, imbecile.’
‘And I love the way you call me imbecile,’ finished Gerald.
Melusine giggled, and tucked her hand into his. ‘Certainly you are imbecile. If I did not love you en désespoir, I would assuredly blow off your head.’
‘That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. Why do you think I’m indulging in all this very un-English love talk?’
‘But you are idiot, Gérard. The pistol, it was not loaded.’
‘You mean I need not have said it? Damnation.’
‘But I have still a dagger,’ Melusine warned.
‘Oh, have you? Well, in that case, I love your little booted feet, and your ridiculously long eyelashes, and—’
