Slowly he bent her body backward with the pressure of his own until she lay stretched out on the cool, hard surface of the table, her mouth still joined with his, her hands on his shoulders.

He reached beneath her skirt. At the brushing touch of his fingers, she leaped beneath him, and he knew it would take but a whispering breath to carry her over the edge of bliss.

Why? he wondered. Why this desperate passion tonight? But the questions were fleeting as his own body responded to Gabrielle's urgency.

He drew back long enough to pull down her lacy undergarment, to release his own body from confinement.

Gabrielle's eyes held his, and they were filled with the wonder of anticipation.

He gathered her against him, crushing her to him as the turbulence raged around them, swallowed them, then receded, leaving them stranded on the sands of fulfillment.

Nathaniel let her fall back on the table and slowly straightened, his breathing ragged, his head whirling. Gabrielle lay unmoving in an abandoned sprawl, her rich skirts rucked up around her waist, long, bare thighs gleaming pale against the dark wood beneath her, diamonds glittering in the lamplight, the dark red hair tumbling loose, the black feathers escaping from the securing pins.

She looked like some wildly exotic bird come to rest after a long and exhausting flight. Leaning over, he stroked the curve of her cheek with one finger. "Come back, sweetheart."

Her eyelashes fluttered and her eyes opened. She looked up at him, her expression dazed, then she smiled. "I think I just died again."

"You were possessed by some madness," he said, taking her hands and pulling her into a sitting position. "How dare you come here, Gabrielle." But there was little force behind the statement. Shaking his head, he pulled up his britches. "Do you have any idea how you've compromised us both?"

Gabrielle struggled to regain her senses after that explosion of sexuality. How could she ever have been afraid she might have to feign a response?

"Nonsense," she said after a minute. "This kind of thing is going on all over Tilsit. People are crisscrossing the town, hopping from bed to bed-"

"How do you know that?"

"I heard," she said loftily.

Nathaniel examined her with a puzzled frown. She seemed completely unaware of her semi-nakedness, and the contrast of that dishevelment with her elaborate dress and those priceless diamonds. "Just what, in the name of goodness, brought that on so suddenly? Or don't you know?"

"I've brought you a present," she said. "You might find it strange… but-"

"I don't think I can concentrate until you tidy yourself up." Nathaniel picked up her discarded drawers and slipped them over her feet, then he lifted her off the desk and pulled them up over her hips. "Straighten your skirt."

Gabrielle shook down the crumpled silk and put her hands to her head, where unruly ringlets escaped in a cloud. She plucked out the feathers and tossed them onto the table, then released her hair from its pins and shook it free to her shoulders, combing her fingers through the tangles. The routine process calmed her and gave her time to collect her thoughts.

"Any better?"

"Some," he said. "I think the problem really lay with the feathers. They were more than a little incongruous." He picked one up and ran it through his fingers. "You're going to need the attentions of your maid again before you go to the Prussian residence."

"I don't think I'm going," Gabrielle said. "Do you have a glass of wine?"

"I managed to persuade Tolstoy to part with some of his precious supply of port." Nathaniel opened a cupboard in the dresser and took out a bottle and two thick, rather dusty glasses. "This place lacks for amenities, I'm afraid." He wiped the glasses with his handkerchief before filling them.

"The bed's a little small," Gabrielle observed, taking the glass from him.

"But the table compensates," he observed with a half-smile. A tumult of speculation was going on behind his eyes, but there was no indication on his face. What strange gift lay behind this wild visit? Gabrielle was deeply disturbed, and by a lot more than the exigencies of lust.

"So?" he prompted. "Where's my strange present?"

Gabrielle sipped her port and then said, "It's a gift of information."

A great stillness entered Nathaniel, but his eves remained calmly on her face.

"There are some secret articles to be appended to the treaty. One of them commits Alexander to mediate a peace between England and France. If the English refuse, then Russia will declare war on England and join France and her allies in the Continental Blockade, bringing Denmark and Sweden with her."

Nathaniel said nothing for a long time. Napoleon had forced all the nations subjected to France to join a naval blockade designed to starve England into submission. Her prosperity, indeed her lifeblood, depended on overseas trade. With all the ports of Europe closed to her, she would be unable to trade, and the nation of shopkeepers, as Napoleon referred to them, would be brought to their knees. The blockade was already biting deeply into the nation's economic foundation, but while Russia was at war with France, the Baltic ports had remained open to English commercial shipping. If the Scandinavian nations in hegemony to Russia were forced to join the blockade, then they could close off the Baltic and there would be no outlets for British trade. She would indeed starve to death.

Nathaniel also knew that no amount of Russian mediation would convince the English government to make peace with Napoleon, so war with Russia and the closing of the Baltic ports was inevitable under the terms of the secret articles.

Gabrielle had just given him a piece of information of such outstanding value that for a minute he couldn't fully comprehend its consequences.

"Why would you tell me this?" he asked finally.

"It's a gift, I told you." She twisted the stem of her wineglass. "A lover's gift."

"You would betray your own country?”

She shook her head. "I told you once I didn't believe Napoleon was good for France."

"But you spied for France." It was a flat reminder.

"I spied with my lover for France. Now I give you the lover's gift of a piece of priceless information." Was he believing her? He should; it was only the truth. She didn't want to look at him, to read his expression, but she forced herself to do so.

So the lover hadalso been a spy. He'd wondered about that in the brothel in Paris. Knowing Gabrielle as he did, it seemed inevitable that she would have embraced every aspect of her lover's life.

Nathaniel leaned back against the table, his glass in his hand, his eyes resting unwaveringly on her face. "A gift of love?" he asked.

"I love you," she said simply. "I know now that I can't endure to be separated from you. And I can't be with you when we're on opposite sides in this war. I've always been torn between two allegiances. Now I have chosen."

Nathaniel drew a deep shuddering breath. The power of that simple declaration shook him to his core, and for the moment he was unable to absorb it, to see how it affected them both. "How did you discover this?" he asked as if she hadn't said what she'd said.

Gabrielle gave him her explanation.

"You're very fond of your godfather," Nathaniel probed, still unable to accept the simplicity of her declaration. "Why would you choose to betray him?"

"I don't believe this does," Gabrielle replied steadily. She wondered absently if Nathaniel had heard what she'd said. He wasn't reacting to it in any way.

She kept her voice calm and matter-of-fact as she offered an explanation as close to the truth as she could get without revealing Talleyrand's true goals. "He too believes in a strong, united Europe. I have no idea what deep plans he has, except that he's not in favor of an alliance between Russia and France. He's attempting to circumvent the Russian negotiators-I know that for a fact-and from what I do know of Talleyrand, I'd lay any odds that he's no more in favor of the secret articles than England would be."