“I love you,” she whispered, knowing how inadequate the words were, but having no others.
Gervase raised his face to kiss her. “I’ll never know why,” he said huskily. “But I no more intend to question that than I would question the sun or the sea or the wind for existing.”
After the kiss, he settled back on the pillow with a rueful chuckle. “In spite of what I just said, I find that I do want to question. Wanting to understand is my besetting sin. Or at least, one of them.”
She laughed and slid down beside him on the mattress, tugging him until they lay face-to-face. “Ask away, love, though I don’t promise a rational answer.”
His shadowed face was somber. “You said that . . . after our marriage you hated me, and then you didn’t anymore. I can understand the hatred. You had every right to that. What I can’t understand is why it ended.”
She closed her eyes, remembering that time. “The answer to that actuallyislogical, at least to a woman. I hated you until I began to feel my child move inside me. It was such a wondrous thing that there was no more room for hatred.”
She opened her eyes. “And to hold my son in my arms . . . it was a miracle. I decided then that any man who could father so sweet a baby couldn’t be all bad. Yes, you’d behaved wickedly, but that didn’t make you a wicked man.”
Her eyes distant, she searched for words. “When I came to London, it was with the desire to find a man I could love. Though technically it meant that I would be an adulteress, you were not quite real to me. I did not feel like a wife.
“Then I met and recognized you as my husband. I knew I must learn to know you better, that I could not seek another man until I was absolutely sure that my marriage was meaningless. And when I came to know you”—she smiled into his eyes—“I fell in love.”
He pulled the blanket up to tuck it around her shoulders tenderly. “I still can’t understand that.”
Diana had never tried to define why she loved him, even to herself, but after a moment’s reflection, she said, “Around you, I feel . . . safe and protected. I knew that if you could ever bring yourself to love me, you would never stop. That you would always be there for me in the future. That I would always be able to rely on you.”
A dark expression showed in his eyes, and she knew he was remembering both Mull and his blind assault of the night before. She raised a hand and cupped his cheek, feeling a faint prickle of whiskers under her palm.
“To be human is to be capable of violence under extreme circumstances,” she said gravely. “I am no more a saint than you. I abhor violence and am a coward. I doubt I could have killed Veseul to save my own life. Yet I could kill for the life of someone I love.”
“For which I’m very grateful!”
Diana frowned. “I’ve just realized that I wouldn’t change what happened on Mull even if I could. If not for that night, I wouldn’t have Geoffrey, and I wouldn’t have you. Surviving the pain and anger has given me the love and the life I’d dreamed of as a child.” She gave Gervase a smile of infinite sweetness. “I always knew that if you would let me in behind those walls, you would shelter me forever.”
He rubbed his face against her palm. “You were right. You knew a great deal more about how my mind works than I did.”
“Not your mind,” she said gently. “Your heart.”
His expression became still. “Once more you’re right. I didn’t realize myself how much I had tangled lust and love together.” He toyed with a strand of her hair, twining it around his finger as he thought. “You became an obsession. It frightened me because I felt that I was losing control, that I would be at your mercy. That fear came out as jealousy and possessiveness.”
He stroked back a larger tress of hair, exposing her shapely neck. “You have a dangerous kind of beauty, Diana. It’s almost impossible for a man to think clearly near you. For months I persuaded myself that my need for you was merely physical desire.”
He bent for another kiss, his breath mingling with hers. “But what really drew me was your warmth. Your endless, blessed warmth, like a life-saving fire in a night of eternal dark and cold. Even when desire is temporarily exhausted, I want and need you as much as I ever have. That has nothing to do with lust, and everything to do with love.”
“Your strength and my warmth.” She lifted her hand and lightly touched the shallow scrape on his ribs where Veseul’s sword had grazed him. Oh, yes, Gervase was strong, his strength so much a part of him that he was not even aware of it. But she was aware, and felt safer now than she ever had before. “Today we saved each other. Now do you believe me about fate? That, as unlikely as it seemed when we first met, we were meant to be together?”
With wry humor he said, “This is all too improbable to be chance, so I think I must believe you.” More seriously, he continued. “The first time I saw you in London, you touched my heart, but I had to call it by a different name. Chance might have produced the wedding in Mull, but perhaps only divine plan could have made our marriage real after such a disastrous beginning.”
Wrapping one arm around his chest to pull herself even closer, she said what should have been said months earlier, when he had needed to hear it. “You need never be jealous about me, Gervase. I came to London to find a man, and after we met, I knew that man was you. There had never been anyone else before, and there never will be again.”
“Because I believe that,” he said, his deep voice thick with emotion, “the obsession is gone. Jealousy came from fear of losing you. It’s vanished in the presence of love and trust.”
Diana raised her face for another kiss, then rolled over, her back fitting against his front in the way that was so particularly comfortable. As she was settling in, she remembered what the count had said. “I’m not sure what he meant, but Veseul was raving about destroying Wellesley.”
As closely as possible she repeated what he had said, adding, “Do you think it means anything?”
Frowning, Gervase evaluated her words. “I hadn’t the evidence to prove it, but I’ve believed that Veseul was the most dangerous French spy in England, a man who called himself the Phoenix. He was clever and he was received everywhere. It’s quite conceivable that he was plotting against Wellesley. I think the army inquiry will acquit him and he will be given another command, but Veseul could have fabricated some scandal that would discredit Wellesley permanently.”
His voice hard, he added, “There will be no more damage from that direction.” One of his hands cupped her breast as his mind continued to work. “I suspect that he overheard us talking in Vauxhall that night before I left, which is how the French knew I was coming. As for the information that I left overnight in your drawing room being discovered . . . Is there any servant in your house who might be an informant for Veseul?”
As pleasurable sensations spread from her breast, it was hard for Diana to think clearly, but she tried. “We have a French cook. She talked her way into the position and I’ve never understood why. She is good enough to command the kitchen of a much larger establishment.”
“Perhaps that’s the answer,” Gervase agreed, his hand stroking lower on her body. “Now that Veseul is dead it probably doesn’t matter, especially since you will be leaving the house on Charles Street.”
