Something didn't feel right. But it was a game they'd both agreed to play. Gabrielle slipped off the bed and went toward the connecting door.

"Oh… and Gabrielle…" His voice arrested her as she turned the knob. "Don't get dressed."

Now, what did he have in mine'? His instructions so far indicated he intended to hold her to the very letter of the wager as well as its spirit and she couldn't help her initial response, that little spurt of annoyed resistance coming on the heels of a vague stirring of unease.

Gabrielle wrapped herself in a cashmere shawl against the morning cold and sat on her accustomed seat in the window to await his summons. As she relaxed, little prickles of excitement began to stir the downy hairs on the nape of her neck and flutter in the pit of her stomach. Twenty-four hours was a long time… and Nathaniel was an inspired lover with an extravagant sense of fantasy.

Silence, she was to discover as the long morning moved into afternoon, had the most powerful effect on the senses. It facilitated an extraordinary concentration on touch and feel, on taste and sight and smell. She imagined it was like moving in the womb, as Nathaniel rolled her beneath him with a fluid maneuver of her body that didn't disturb the union of their loins, and she felt the coolness of the sheets against her back, where before there had been the softness of the fire-warmed air of the bedchamber, and his body pressed into hers, molding the planes and concavities of his torso to the softer curves and indentations beneath him.

And in this closed world of silent concentration, she found herself focusing intensely on Nathaniel, and she could feel currents in his body that disturbed the smooth rhythms of their lovemaking. Sometimes, she detected a distance in him, as if, while his body played on hers, he himself was absent, was looking down upon their twisting, sinuous forms with a cool objectivity. The realization would chill her and then he would move over her again, would make some quiet demand that intensified their mutual pleasure, and the disturbance would pass.

Passive compliance, she also discovered throughout those long hours, had the same effect as the silence, or perhaps the one facilitated the other. She had only to be in this coupling. Her self didn't have to inhabit her body; indeed, her self was only an ever-shifting pool of sensations. She obeyed the authoritative touch, the soft-voiced command, and only once or twice did an uneasy resistance rustle through her, a tiny disturbance like a light breeze in autumnal leaves; when the body on hers felt as if it belonged to a stranger.

It was dusk before Nathaniel broke the spell. He was sprawled on the long couch beneath the windows, Gabrielle's bright head resting on his belly as she knelt on the floor beside the sofa, one languid hand stroking intimately between his thighs.

His gaze fell on the Chippendale clock on the wall above the fireplace. It was six o'clock. He moved his hand down, twisting his fingers in the dark red curls, turning her head on his belly so that she was looking toward him. Her eyes were heavy with fulfillment, her features somehow smudged, no longer sharply delineated on the pale, translucent skin.

"Enough, now," he said quietly, and yet his voice sounded shockingly loud after the long hours of silence in the firelit intimacy of their love chamber.

Gabrielle smiled dreamily, her eyes asking a question.

"You may speak," Nathaniel pronounced.

"I think I've forgotten how to. Perhaps it's tomorrow rather than today."

Nathaniel shook his head and said nothing.

Again Gabrielle felt that dart of unease. His eyes were unreadable as they looked down into her face, and she was used to seeing warm tenderness, a languid glow of satiation in their brown depths after such an excess of sensual joy.

But perhaps she was imagining it. They had been strange hours, eliciting new responses. Nathaniel had led them into uncharted territory, and unfamiliar emotions were to be discovered in such a landscape.

Without moving her position or ceasing her stroking attentions, she attempted to reassert the comforting realities of every day. "I seem to be hungry."

To her relief, Nathaniel responded in the same tone, and the ordinary contours of the room reappeared and she was conscious of the prickle of the carpet beneath her knees and the dampness of his skin under her cheek.

"Me too," he said briskly. He caught her busy hand and put it away from him. "Now move your head, woman." He heaved himself upright and swung his legs off the sofa, looking around the disheveled room, where a bathtub of long-cold water still stood before the fire, and a table bore the remains of a cold chicken and a bowl of fruit.

Bending, he caught Gabrielle beneath the arms and hauled her upright. She swayed and leaned against him, nudging at his thighs with one knee.

"That'll do," Nathaniel instructed, taking her waist and moving her aside. He filled two glasses from a depleted wine bottle and handed one to her. "Drink this."

Gabrielle sipped and regarded him with a quizzically raised eyebrow."So what now, Sir Spymaster? You'veanother twelve hours to enjoy your prize."

"No," Nathaniel said. "I'm declaring a moratorium.”

"Oh? Why so?"She was puzzled and takenaback.

"Because it doesn't seementirely fair," hesaid, reaching for a dressing gown andshrugging into it. "Iwon the wager under false pretenses."

"What?" Gabrielle became suddenly conscious of her own nakedness as Nathaniel wrapped the robe around himself, tying the girdle securely. The atmosphere in the room was fractured in some way, and she felt an overwhelming sense ofvulnerability.

"I've decided to take you into the network," he stated calmly. "So, one could say that Icheated you out of your winnings."

Gabrielle stood very still, trying to make sense of this. "Then you didn't play fair," she said finally in tones of hurt confusion.

"Fair play, my dear, is not to be expected in the world of espionage," hepointed out in a voice like sere leaves. His eyes raked her face, looking for a conscious flash in her eyes, a hint of color in her cheeks, but there was nothing. Gabrielle de Beaucaire knew the underworld and the many dark faces of man, and she wore the velvet cloak of deceit as easily as he wore it himself.

"No, I suppose it's not," she said, suddenly matter-of-fact, going toward her own door. She paused, her hand on the latch as an explanation occurred to her for the strange, disturbing moments. "Was there some kind of test embodied in the last hours, Nathaniel?"

"I wanted to see whether I could trust you to play with the team," he said casually. "Whether you could control your own vigorous responses and follow the direction of a leader." He smiled. "It seems you can… in bed, at least. I'm willing to assume you'll be able to do it in other situations."

Gabrielle went into her own room. Distaste nibbled at her soul at the thought that all the while he'd been watching her, assessing her, as she lay open to him, her defenses down, utterly trusting in the loving congress that had always been inviolate, untouched by her own muddled emotions. He'd used sex to discover something about her. Surely he could have chosen some other arena.

But she'd succeeded. That was the important thing. Coldly, she concentrated on that fact. From now on she'd have access to the spymaster's world.

Nathaniel found himself staring at the closed door. Despite the ruthless pragmatism that had lain behind the scenario he had engineered that day, he was as stirred by her as ever. She had been more exciting in the role she'd played at his direction than he could ever have believed possible. Absorbing herself into the fantasy with her own brand of erotic magic.