Gabrielle was aware that she was breathing rather fast and her palms were moist within her silk gloves. She was also aware that Czar Alexander was talking to her.
The need to respond to the emperor was her salvation. She murmured about honor and pleasure and made polite inquiries as to his health and contentment. Alexander held her hand for rather longer than strictly necessary and complimented her on her gown and the elegance of her salon. Then their imperial majesties moved down the twin lines of guests, Talleyrand limping beside them, presenting his guests.
Gabrielle turned to greet the knot of civilian courtiers who had accompanied the emperors. Alexander's aide-de-camp performed introductions, bowing deeply with each presentation.
Gabrielle held out her hand to one Benedict Lubienski, introduced as a Polish acquaintance of the aide-de-camp's.
For a moment she was mute, her mind as frozen as her tongue. He bowed over her hand. His fingers tightened on hers in powerful warning, and she found her voice.
"Are you here in an official capacity, sir?" she inquired, managing a flickering smile of courteous welcome.
"Not really, madame. The fate of Poland is dear to my heart, but I can't expect it to be under consideration during these negotiations."
"No, I imagine not." She withdrew her hand and turned to greet the next man, vaguely aware that she was smiling inanely and nodding her head as if she were a marionette with a slack string.
Nathaniel moved away, greeting acquaintances, smiling agreeably, saying little, and drawing even less attention to himself. He took a glass of champagne from a footman and joined the outskirts of a group standing beside the long windows that stood open to a terrace overlooking the river.
The broad sweep of water glittered under the myriad lamps of the town, and the raft with its white canvas pavilions was ablaze, strains of music coming from an orchestra playing in the smaller pavilion for the pleasure of Monsieur Talleyrand's guests.
He watched Gabrielle unobtrusively as she moved around the room. For one terrifying minute he'd thought she was going to give them away. Her hand in his had been shaking like a leaf in a gale, and her face had gone so white, he'd thought she was about to faint. If he could have warned her, he would have, but he'd discovered she was there only when he was on the way to the reception. It had been casually mentioned that Talleyrand's goddaughter was acting as the minister's hostess.
Forewarned had been forearmed, andyet he hadn't been totally prepared for her, for the moment when his eyes had locked with hers. It had taken all the years of living on the edge of danger to withstand the annihilation of reason and control, to keep from putting his hands on her body, from covering that wide, crookedly smiling mouth with his own.
The bodily memory of her, the thick, rich silk of her hair, the cool smoothness of her skin, the sweet fragrances of her honeyed core had haunted his lonely nights since he'd left her. But greater than passion's loss had been the absence of the essence of Gabrielle-of her laughter, and her temper, and her warmth, and her generous impulses, and her challenges.
And here she was, in the same room with him, as striking as ever, in a gown of deepest blue taffeta, sapphires at her throat, the dark red hair drawn up through a sapphire-studded comb, then tumbling in artful ringlets on either side of her face.
And he wanted her with the overpowering bodily hunger she had always aroused in him. He wanted to put her down on the parquet floor, raise those elegant rustling skirts, part the creamy, impossibly long thighs, lay his hand on their moist, heated apex…
He turned abruptly aside, stepping through the window onto the terrace, desperately hoping the cool air would dampen his now-embarrassing ardor. Of all the insane self-indulgences!
"How long have you been at the Russian court, Monsieur Lubienski?"
Gabrielle spoke at his shoulder, and he turned very slowly, a social smile on his lips.
"Several weeks, comtesse. I have many friends there, since I spent some months in Russia three years ago."
"I see." Presumably, before he became spymaster, he'd been an English agent in St. Petersburg. A Polish cover would be perfect. The Polish nobility mingled freely with the Russian, and it would explain both any lack of facility in the Russian language and his ease with French, since it was the lingua franca of both Russia and Poland.
"How are we to manage?" she demanded in a sudden urgent whisper, her hand brushing his black silk sleeve, her eyes molten lava. The past was forgotten in the desperation of their longing, the agony of their separation, the wonder of this meeting.
Nathaniel glanced around the terrace. Groups of people were drifting away from the overheated salons to enjoy the cool river breeze. Without answering, he clicked his heels and inclined his head in a formal bow, offering her his arm.
She laid her gloved hand on his arm, and they strolled the length of the terrace, Nathaniel making innocuous comments on the loveliness of the night, Gabrielle responding as best she could, but she was on fire, as if in the grip of a devastating fever, at the feel of his body so close to hers, the music of his voice, the special scent of his skin.
When they'd twice made public promenade of the length of the terrace and everyone was perfectly accustomed to the sight of them arm in arm, Nathaniel directed their steps toward a shadowy corner screened by a group of bay trees in wooden tubs.
Gabrielle forced herself to keep her pace to Nathaniel's slow, idling stride as she saw where he was heading. She wanted to leap forward into the dim privacy of the trees and lose herself in his body, but the spymaster, in the grip of the same compulsion, knew what he was doing. No one took any notice of them as they slid unobtrusively into the shadows.
"Dear God," Gabrielle whispered. "I can't bear it another minute." She flung her arms around his neck.
He wrapped her in his arms, lifting her off the ground as their mouths met, crushing her against him. Bearing her backward, he pressed her against the stone parapet of the terrace, his tongue driving into her mouth as they drank of each other's sweetness. Her body bent backward as he leaned over her as if all the better to devour her, and his hands pushed her skirt up to her waist, holding it there with his body. A fingernail snagged the delicate silk of her stocking, and his flat palm pushed up inside the leg of her drawers. This was no slow and easy exploration, but a rough and hungry revisiting of her body, damp and aching with its own passionate arousal.
She groaned against his mouth and bit his lip as his fingers delved deep within her. She pressed her loins against the hard mound of his erect flesh as if she could somehow achieve the fusion that was now such a desperate need.
"Come into me," she whispered. "You have to, now,Nathaniel."
"No… no… sweetheart. No." He withdrew his hand, pulled away from her, gazed at her in the dimness from his own passion-filled eyes. "Not here-it's not possible."
She sagged against the wall, her breathing ragged, her heart racing, her eyes closed as she fought to control the conflagration of her senses.
Nathaniel straightened her skirt, barely touching her as he did so, as if she were a burning brand that would set him alight.
"Where?" she breathed finally.
"Outside the town, along the river," he said with soft-voiced urgency. "Walk north, and I'll wait for you."
She nodded slowly as if the physical effort was almost too much for her.
"Go back now, ahead of me," he instructed, adjusting his cravat, smoothing his hair.
"But what must I look like?" She touched her lips that still sang with the memory of that consuming kiss.