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His family name was tainted, and Laurent had wallowed in the muck. He couldn’t right his father’s wrongs. Why should he try to clean a stain that would never be wiped free? Why not simply add to the dirt, become the man everyone thought he was already?
No onelovedthe Marquis de Montagne. Men might have envied him. Women might have desired him. Courtiers might have pitied his bad blood or cursed his relationship with the royal family or lusted after the money and favors he won. But no one loved him. No one but his sister Amélie had loved him, and she’d died because they’d been playing together.
“I don’t want you to hate me,” he said, almost before he knew the words were out of his mouth. And then he was across the room, standing before her without knowing he had even moved.
“Yes, you do, and you needn’t explain. I know what you are doing and why. I suppose I wish I’d realized this would happen before we went to bed.”
“Would you have refused me?”
She glanced up at him, her violet eyes hard with the anger she was taking great pains to hide. “No.” She shook her head, almost as though she were chastising herself. “No, but...”
He moved closer, and she shot him a wary look.
“But?” he prodded.
“But I might not have given so much of myself.”
Pain lanced through him at her admission. She’d given herself to him completely, and he’d taken that trust and stomped on it. How could he make amends when his every instinct told him making her hate him was the correct course of action?
“Honoria, next time—”
She laughed. “Next time? Oh, there will be no next time. I forgot where we were and what we were doing.” She gestured to the Temple, casting its shadow on the floor of their lodgings in the fading light. “I will not forget again.”
He wrapped an arm around her before she could squirm away. “Let me go!”
He caught her hand and kissed her fist. “If I didn’t care about you, I wouldn’t do this.”
“Oh, yes! You only hurt me because you care.”
“And because I’m selfish. Because I want to protect myself. If I don’t keep you away, I’ll go mad imagining my mouth on yours, my skin sliding against your skin, the way your eyes go dark and hazy when I make you climax.”
“Laurent.” Her eyes flashed a warning, but her voice was breathless, betraying the effect he had on her. He should stop this now. He should step away, but he did not have the resolve to let her go when he had her in his arms.
“What you do to me,” he murmured before wrapping a hand in her hair and taking her mouth with his. And there was the heat again, the flash of fire, the hard jolt of arousal. It was a fever raging through him, driving him mad with wanting her. The kiss turned hard and fierce as he pushed her up against the wall and lifted her skirts to touch the silk of her thighs. He could not live without the feel of her skin on his fingertips.
A loud rap on the door sent them both stumbling apart.
Honoria seemed to recover first, smoothing her skirts and her hair. “Are you expecting anyone?”
Laurent shook his head. “It must be someone from the League,” he said in a low voice. She still looked rumpled and as though she had just been thoroughly kissed, but if the visitor at the door was anyone other than a member of the League, that might work in their favor. “Who is it?” Laurent called. He tensed, praying it was not the National Guard or an emissary of the Committee of Public Safety.
“It’s Phillipe, your cousin from Burgundy,” came the answer.
Laurent felt his shoulders slump and Honoria blew out a breath. It was the League. This was the agreed-upon code.
Laurent crossed the room and pulled the door open. Ffoulkes stood in the corridor, looking both patriotic and fashionable in red and white striped trousers, blue waistcoat, red carmagnole, and a large cockade pinned to his breast. “Cousin! It is so good to see you.”
To Laurent’s surprise, Ffoulkes embraced him. “Pretend you are happy to see me and let me inside. The sooner all of these eyes are off me, the better.” He hissed the words in Laurent’s ear before ending the embrace with hard slap on the shoulder.
Laurent moved inside and closed the door behind Ffoulkes, bolting it. When he turned back, Ffoulkes stood surveying the room, hands on hips. “This is cozy.” He crossed to the window, peered out at the Temple, then down at the notes Laurent and Honoria had taken.
“Sir Andrew,” Honoria said, making a slight curtsy. “We are so glad to see you.”
He gave her a long look. “Are you?”
“Yes. We’ve noted the routines and procedures at the Temple for the past two days, and we even spotted the princess walking in the gardens. We have been busy.”
Ffoulkes, who hadn’t ceased walking about the lodgings and taking in everything else, pushed open the door of the bedchamber. “Yes, I can see you have been busy.”
