“Usually she does,” Diana said, “but I’ve been encouraging her to sleep with me since we got back from Aubynwood. It’s been lonely here.”
Smiling with satisfaction, Gervase transferred his stroking from Tiger’s stomach to Diana’s. She could see why the cat enjoyed it so much. If she’d been equipped to purr, she would have done so.
“What kind of a mother lures her son’s pet away?” he teased.
Diana felt the muscles in her midriff tighten. “Please don’t say that, even in jest. I wonder all the time if I am doing the right things for him.”
“I’m sorry. It’s hard to joke about what is most important to us.” He propped himself on one elbow as he lengthened his caresses. “From what I’ve seen, you’re doing a wonderful job. Geoffrey is intelligent and happy and confident.” After a moment’s thought he added, “He’s not afraid of you.”
It was an odd remark. She set it aside to ponder it later. “I try so hard to do what is best for him. I fear that I try too hard. It was easier when he was small, but as he gets older he needs so much more than I can give him. That was one of the main reasons I came to London.”
“And the other reasons?”
She looked deep into the clear gray eyes that could be both ice and fire. “Why, to find you,” she said slowly, “although I didn’t realize it at the time.” It was the exact truth, more so than Gervase could possibly know.
Suffering from neglect, Tiger hopped up and stood on Diana’s chest, mittened forepaws firm. She stroked the sleek feline body. “Have you ever studied a cat hair, Gervase?”
“I can’t say that I have.” While he liked cats, he wasn’t keen on having one come between him and his mistress.
She held up two long hairs that had come off in her hand. “Look at the alternating bands of color.”
Curiously he examined the hairs she held in her fingertips. One had five distinct color changes between the pale shank and the dark tip; the other was mostly dark except for a white dot below the tip. “In order to create these tabby stripes, every single hair on that cat’s body is different,” she mused. “Have you ever wondered how God keeps it all straight?”
He laughed. “I’ve never thought of it in those terms.”
She looked at him, serious now. “Do you believe in fate, that there is an underlying pattern to our lives?”
He drew himself up until his head was level with hers. “You’re raising all sorts of questions I’ve never considered.”
Her intense blue gaze caught his. “But think of it. I had never been to one of Harriette Wilson’s evenings, nor had you. Don’t you believe there must have been a reason, something drawing us both to that point in time and place?”
He hesitated, remembering the irresistible pull he had felt when he first saw her, the absolute desire. But that was, after all, simply desire. “No. It was only chance.”
She laid one hand lightly over his heart. “I think it was meant to be.”
Her touch aroused him, but he still disagreed with her words. “If we hadn’t met, I would have found another mistress, you would have found another protector. That would have been my loss, but perhaps your gain.”
Her lapis eyes were deep with ancient feminine mystery. “No other man would have been right. It had to be you.” As he watched her uneasily, she smiled. “Poor love, I’m making you uncomfortable again. Never mind. Perhaps someday you will think differently. Tonight is not for philosophy.”
With gentle firmness she pushed the indignant cat over the edge of the bed, then bent down and feathered kisses down Gervase’s torso. He leaned back on the pillows, his breath quickening as her soft lips moved slowly down his abdomen. He believed in chance, not destiny, but he would not deny that meeting Diana was one of the luckiest chances of his life.
* * *
On the surface, nothing had changed. Since Parliament was in session and Gervase sat in the House of Lords, he was busier than ever, but he still visited Diana often. He would leave before dawn and she would ache at the loss, but neither of them ever suggested that he stay. The barriers that had lowered briefly at Aubynwood were now firmly back in place.
They rode early in the mornings when weather permitted, Geoffrey joining them if it was not a school day. They might almost have been a family. Diana was delighted at how well they got along, even though she feared future consequences to Geoffrey if Gervase disappeared from both of their lives.
On the surface all was tranquility, but Diana felt the tensions building beneath the calm. When he thought she was unaware of it, Gervase would stare at her, his expression dense and unreadable. The thread of emotion that connected them drew tighter, and she sensed a dark, deep mood in him. His lovemaking was urgent and demanding, and he would raise her to such heights of passion that she would almost lose her sense of who she was.
Almost, but not quite. A deep, primitive part of her being wanted to let go, to melt and let him shape her to his will, but self-preservation was stronger. She dared not trust him unless he loved her, and he dared not admit to love.
Diana drifted, taking each day as it came, treasuring each moment with her son and her lover and her friends. She knew it was cowardly of her not to force the crisis that must come, but she had a fatalistic belief that matters would resolve in their own time. She could only pray that when the hidden tensions exploded, in the aftermath she and Gervase could be free of their dark pasts. Free to love one another.
Chapter Fifteen
In the spring of 1808 the first faint cracks in Napoleon’s empire appeared on the Iberian Peninsula. The emperor forced the popular Spanish king, Ferdinand VII, to abdicate and placed his own brother Joseph on the throne. Infuriated, Spain burst into flames of insurrection. Gervase, in his small office in Whitehall, gathered and evaluated information and rejoiced.
In April, Sir Arthur Wellesley had been promoted to lieutenant-general and assigned troops to aid a Venezuelan revolutionary. But then Spain and Portugal sent delegations to Britain asking for aid against Napoleon, and Wellesley’s destination was changed to the Peninsula. Gervase had used what influence he had on his former commander’s behalf and had no doubt that the general would justify the faith of his supporters.
