Why, she thought, he was not misunderstanding her at all. He was only pretending to do so. A flush moved through her; instinctively she recognized that his descent into pretense spelled a triumph for her. “And what—” Her mouth had gone dry. She licked her lips, and as he glanced down to watch her tongue, his own mouth seemed to harden. “What if I asked you to kiss me again?”
His free hand rose, knuckles brushing lightly down her jaw. “An interesting approach,” he said. His thumb settled against her lower lip, exerting the slightest pressure. Her lips parted. She tasted the salt of his skin, and her entire body seemed to contract to the awareness of it. She leaned forward, instinctively, and touched the tip of her tongue to his thumb.
The breath hissed from him. He removed his hand and sat back. “Bit risky, though, for your first night of adventure.” His voice sounded strained.
“I am in the mood for risk,” she whispered.
His eyes narrowed. “I suggest something subtler.”
“I’m not playing,” she said.
He gripped her chin with sudden, startling firmness. “Better to play,” he said. “Between us, at least.”
She did not move, did not lower her eyes. “Why?”
He let out a breath that bordered on a laugh. “Surely I needn’t list all the reasons. You know me well enough. You think I have an interest in debutantes?”
“No,” she said. “But I am no longer a debutante.”
“There’s also the small matter of your brother.”
“Richard?” The name was like a slap. She sat back out of his grip. “What does he have to do with this?”
His eyes held hers, steady and unflinching. “If we’re not pretending,” he said, “then we must be speaking honestly, no? I told my sisters the full story of my quarrel with him the night he died. They must have told you.”
“Yes,” she said. “But he was wrong, of course—”
“Oh, you and I both know that. But we also know, then, what he wished for you—and what he most ardently did not wish.”
“Meaning you,” she said.
“Meaning anyone like me,” he said impatiently. “Richard knew me well. He knew you well. And while his alarm was mistaken, it would certainly have been justified, were his suspicions correct.”
“So you mean to say that I . . . disrespect his memory somehow? By asking you to kiss me?” The thought was outrageous. “Richard wanted me to be happy, Alex. That was all he wanted. And I’m pursuing my happiness, right here, now. If a scandal is what it requires, then surely he would prefer me to pursue one with you than with some no-name stranger!”
“I see,” he said at length. “You think to use me as your avenue to ruin, then?”
“You yourself said it: three million pounds.” Her voice sounded suddenly bitter. But what woman in the history of the world had ever had to justify her own seduction to convince a man like this to take advantage of her? It seemed so unjust. He must be trying to embarrass her. “It will take a great deal to undo my appeal. A man with your reputation would come in handy.”
His eyes narrowed. “How charming. To which aspect of my reputation do you refer?”
“Recall, we are being honest,” she bit out. “I refer to the fact that you are a well-known rake.”
“Ah, yes.” He sat back in his chair, smiling unpleasantly. In his hand he turned the beer glass back and forth, making the barest pause after each twirl, lending the movement a contemplative flavor. “It’s true, I suppose. And of all my accomplishments, I am of course flattered that you deign to find useful this one, oh-so-impressive achievement. But if it’s sex you want, there are several men in London who can’t keep their trousers up. No need to follow me to Paris for it.”
Her cheeks ached with the force of her blush. “Do not mock me,” she managed. “You have earned your reputation.”
“No, no, I don’t mock you,” he said soberly. “Indeed, as a businessman, I applaud your strategy; very economical, very thrifty. No doubt a mere brush against my coattails would blacken the halo of a saint. But you must forgive me if I have no interest in being used to suit your purposes. As you point out, I have a name to uphold, and falling victim to a virgin’s machinations would put me in very poor company.”
She glared at him. “What do you mean? What sort of company?”
He tossed back the rest of his beer. “Trent,” he said when he’d swallowed. “Pennington. Every sad toff whom you’ve contemplated purchasing in order to have your title.”
“Purchasing—”
“Do you deny it? I thought we were being honest.”
She could match his sarcasm. “I tell you now, if a title appealed to me, it was merely because I knew that once I had one, no one would dare to speak to me like this.”
He shocked her by laughing. “Nobody ever speaks to you like this, Gwen.” He carefully placed his glass onto the table. “You’ve taken pains to ensure that. These smiles you don’t mean, these compliments you waste on people who don’t deserve them, even this sad little habit of devaluing your own worth—you’re as manipulative as any financier. Only your method is different.”
“And my motive,” she said furiously. “Unlike you, Mr. Ramsey, we do not all appraise a person like some commodity from which we might stand to make a profit. I wanted a family; I wanted a home. But I never tried to undertake a marriage that would benefit only me. Now my aims have changed, but I am no less committed to a fair exchange. If you don’t wish to help me, I will simply find someone who does.”
“The hell you will,” he said grimly.
“I should like to see you stop me.”
He spoke slowly. “Perhaps you haven’t been attending to my reputation as closely as you claim. Otherwise I don’t think you would imagine yourself a match for me.”
The breath hissed through her clenched teeth. “I hardly think myself a match for you. I have a far better regard for myself.”
“Oh? As I said, I could argue that point.”
“I do not want to hear it.”
“I’m certain you don’t.” He glanced beyond her, as if bored with the conversation, and his expression suddenly shifted, his eyes narrowing before his face went absolutely blank.
The transformation was dramatic enough that a thread of curiosity fractured her anger. She turned to follow his regard. He was looking at the girl in the low-cut blue gown. The girl had found a new object for her attentions now—a handsome blond man in a well-cut tail coat. Together with his companions, he was twitting her into giggling, teasing the hem of her skirts with the tip of his gold-knobbed cane.
“Stay here a minute,” Alex said. And then, with a hard look: “I mean it. Do not leave this seat.”
With no further explanation, he rose and walked away.
In disbelief, she twisted to follow his progress. He made directly for the blond man, but his path was impeded by the man’s friends, who stepped forward and exchanged words with him. Meanwhile, the blond took the girl’s arm and strolled around this scene, onward in Gwen’s direction.
Alex took a step after him. The other men interceded. One of them gestured toward the interior of the building. After a visible hesitation and a brief, unreadable glance toward Gwen, Alex pivoted and followed them.
Take her here and abandon her, would he?
She looked wildly around. Alone, in the Moulin Rouge! Amidst all these people!
She jerked up her chin, staring fixedly at the elephant. She would be fine. She did not need Alex’s company, or anybody else’s, for that matter. She could manage very well on her own.
The elephant’s face looked sad. Why had the artist chosen to paint it that way? Its great, dark eyes fixed woefully on some point in the distance, enduring without enthusiasm the antics of stupid boys climbing in and out of its belly. Poor, dumb creature! It looked so resigned. And so lonely.
A terrible wave of pity rose in her. Tears came to her eyes, which seemed beyond stupid; impatiently she pressed her fingertips to her eyelids. What nonsense. It was only a statue. Those eyes were the work of a very talented artist.
Still, something about the scene suddenly felt unbearable. The knot in her throat was growing. She came to her feet, planning to go after Alex, or to leave and hail a cab herself—
—and as she turned, she bumped directly into the blond man whom Alex had tried to approach. The girl clinging to his arm flashed Gwen a hostile look, but the gentleman stopped immediately and sketched a short bow. “Pardon me, mademoiselle,” he said in English. “I didn’t see you there.”
“No, no, it was my fault,” Gwen said. She should have realized he was a fellow countryman when he’d given Alex the cut. He had the ruddy, wholesome good looks that bespoke the playing fields at public schools, and summers spent scrambling across the countryside with howling hounds in tow. “Please accept my apologies, sir.”
His brow lifted. Her accent startled him, maybe. One didn’t expect to hear such posh tones emerging from an unaccompanied woman—not here, at least.
This realization revived her anger. Her hand closed over the visceral memory of her stinging palm, all those endless raps from the ruler. We do not say “tha,” Miss Gwendolyn. We say “you.”
Why, she thought, I have been a trained, talking dog. No wonder Alex showed contempt to her. For all her life, she had done as she was told, and when she had yapped for attention, it had taken but a word to make her sit quietly.
“Perhaps you can tell me,” the gentleman said, “since my companion seems to know no English.” He glanced at said companion, releasing her elbow with a smile, ignoring her quick protest. “Was there not meant to be singing, tonight?”
Gwen felt the girl’s glower as a hot pressure on her cheek. “Yes, but not until midnight.” It seemed unnecessary to add that this information came from her guidebook rather than any firsthand knowledge.
He nodded slowly. “What a pity,” he said. “I shall have to find something else to occupy my time.”
His accent wasn’t quite as good as hers. She heard it now—some buried, rural inflection that wormed up through his vowels, sabotaging him at the occasional syllable. For some reason, the realization emboldened her. “I have a very nice singing voice,” she said. “Alas, I know no lyrics for this sort of music.”
“Oh?” The Englishman turned his body just enough to give the French girl his back. This marked signal made her cross her arms over her chest, then whirl and stalk away. “Allow me to introduce myself,” he said pleasantly. “I am Mr. Rollo Barrington, of Manchester.”
“Far from home,” she said lightly.
“And all the better for it,” he said, eyeing her. “I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Manchester, but I always say that escape is the only verb that properly describes one’s departure from it.”
She laughed. “And how does one term one’s departure from Paris, then?”
“Punishment,” he said with a smile. “I say, mademoiselle—might I make a bold proposal? The surroundings certainly encourage it.”
Through the double doors standing open to the ballroom, she spied Alex wending his way back through the crowd. Her heartbeat stuttered, then quickened. “You may attempt boldness, sir. I do not promise to encourage it.”
He had a charming laugh, light and free of malice. “Then I will gather up my courage, and ask if I might have the honor of watching you drink a glass of champagne.”
She hesitated. Alex expected to find her exactly where he had left her. Of course he did. Trained dogs did not wander, after all.
Fresh anger lurched through her. It felt stronger and even headier than the beer she’d been drinking.
She produced a smile. “I suppose you may watch me drink champagne,” she said. “But I have two conditions.”
Mr. Barrington sketched a bow. “I pray I may meet your terms.”
“Oh, my terms are very simple,” she said. Amazing how well her smile worked! The gentleman leaned toward her, now, his manner attentive and intrigued. She felt another heady rush—of satisfaction; of power; perhaps of relief. Alex would learn he did not know her as well as he thought. “First, you must allow me the same honor, for champagne is never meant to be drunk alone. And second, you must guarantee that we drink to celebrate an achievement.”
He laughed. “And what achievement might that be, dare I ask?”
“Why, your success in smuggling me into that elephant.”
A bribe of five francs satisfied the lad standing guard by the elephant’s trunk. Gwen entered first. The short flight of iron stairs led to a carpeted platform lit by bluish gas lamps, with a red velvet love seat at the center. Exotic silks covered the walls, shades of scarlet and teal and saffron embellished with silver embroidery and fringed with gold coins. At the end of the platform stood a large wooden screen, intricately carved, concealing the remainder of the space. From somewhere behind it came the rhythmic jingling of bells.
“Not yet,” Mr. Barrington called out. The smell of pomade and cigars surrounded her, and then his gloved hand closed over her elbow, giving her heart a startled lurch. “Careful,” he murmured. “The floorboards are uneven.”
Alone, in the dark, with a stranger: this was certainly a proper adventure. Gwen stepped forward, out of Mr. Barrington’s grasp, but only to examine the lamps set into the walls: cunning brass sconces, inlaid with squares of red and yellow glass. Remembering how Alex had trailed his finger down the wine bottle at the café, she put her fingertip to the lamp, tracing the pattern engraved into the brass. Casting Mr. Barrington a flirtatious glance over her shoulder, she asked, “What is this space for? Do you know?”
He lifted his brows. “In the natural order of things? Digestion, I believe.”
She laughed and turned back, put at ease by the joke. “And in the unnatural order? Or can’t we speak of it?” Oh, that was very daring, she thought.
“Oh, we may speak of anything you like, mademoiselle. But first, tell me whom I have the honor of escorting into this pachyderm.”
Her smile lingered. Once again she felt the full measure of courage she’d experienced at dinner, before Alex had sunk all her fun. “A woman who isn’t afraid of beasts.” Or brutes, she added silently.
Mr. Barrington had a fine, square chin, with a cleft that became visible when he laughed. “Have you encountered so many, then?”
“Oh, every day! Beasts have a taste for young ladies, you know.”
“But one can’t blame them when the young lady is so fetching.” He took a step toward her. “I hope none have taken a bite from you, here in Paris?”
“You would not believe how well I wield a parasol.”
“Yet I don’t think you carry one tonight,” he said. “Defenseless as you are, a monster might get ideas.”
A nervous laugh escaped her. “How lucky I am to have the escort of a gentleman, then.”
“A gentleman,” he repeated, and now he sounded distinctly amused. “Was it in search of civilization, then, that you walked into the belly of this creature?”
She stared at him. On a deep breath, she said, “No. It was not.”
His eyes narrowed. He meant to kiss her now; she could see it in the firming of his mouth. Well, she’d succeeded, then. Why else had she come up here with him if not to have a kiss? She was not a nice girl anymore; she was out to satisfy her curiosity. She could kiss as many gentlemen as she liked, provided they cooperated.
But did she want to kiss him? She couldn’t even say. It seemed a daring thing to do—to kiss a man inside the elephant at the Moulin Rouge, the most notorious dance hall on the Continent. Such things only happened to wild women, heroines in novels, somebody’s wicked cousin; her friends would never believe it. She would have to work hard, tomorrow, to believe it herself. Perhaps it would change her understanding of herself. She would look in the mirror and see the stamp of this bravery, this absolute sophistication.
His hand cupped her jaw. She wished his fingers did not feel so damp. He wore his pomade too thick, as well; the sweet scent was overpowering in this small space. Her heart tripped and beat faster as he lifted her chin. He had a mole at the corner of his nose, just behind the curve of his nostril. A racing heart was the hallmark of passion but all she felt was terribly, terribly anxious.
A dark hair was beginning to sprout from his mole.
She screwed her eyes shut. She need not look. She could imagine he was someone else. Alex, perhaps—but with a different and far superior personality.
After a moment, when nothing happened, she opened her eyes again. To her puzzlement, Mr. Barrington had not drawn any closer. He turned her face now toward the light, examining her with a frown. “Do I know you from somewhere?” he asked.
Oh, goodness. He might well have seen her picture in the London newspapers. There had been a photograph published when her engagement had been announced—each of them. “No,” she said.
“Yes,” he said slowly, his fingers tightening, “I feel certain I do.”
“Mr. Barrington,” she said. How clumsy his grip was; it had become a hair shy of painful, now. “I think it very likely we move in different circles.”
“But you look so familiar . . . what did you say your name was?”
She sighed. What ailed these men that made them tarry and waffle, so? Gentlemen in novels seized ladies and ravished them directly. But Alex hemmed and hawed and then stalked away, and this one insisted on babbling. Couldn’t he simply kiss her and be done with it? The longer she had to look at him, the more stray hairs became apparent. “I didn’t say. But my name is—Lily.” That was the name of the girl in the novel she’d read, who had kissed a stranger beneath the stars and fallen in love. The hero, of course, had not sported a mole.
“Lily,” he echoed. “Miss Lily . . . ?”
“Goodrick,” she finished promptly. The surname of the author.
His eyes narrowed. “Lily Goodrick,” he said, as though testing the syllables. “Miss Lily Goodrick.”
“Mr. Rollo Barrington,” she said helpfully. “There. Now we are acquainted.”
He recovered his smile. His thumb stroked down her chin. Nothing ailed him, really, that a pair of tweezers would not cure. “Miss Goodrick, you’re an enchanting little piece. Do you know that?”
“Remove your hand.”
She started violently at the sound of Alex’s voice. But Mr. Barrington did not look away from her. “Mr. de Grey,” he said lightly. Mr. de Grey? “Did my men not make it clear to you? I am in Paris for pleasure. I have no interest in discussing business.”
“Fair enough,” Alex replied calmly. “However, if you do not remove your hand, we’ll soon be discussing how you might reattach it to your wrist.”
“Oh?” Mr. Barrington released her with a curious little smile. He stepped backward and brushed down his jacket, then slid his hands into his pockets. “Prior claim, is it?”
Alex stepped between them, a tall, broad-shouldered bulwark, but the hard look he gave her seemed less than reassuring. “Yes,” he said curtly. A muscle ticked in his jaw.
Mr. Barrington nodded agreeably. “And you, Miss Goodrick—are you in accord with this claim? I confess, I was thinking to propose that we take a tour of Montmartre in the moonlight. But if you bid me, I will abandon that hope.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it. Montmartre. Was there any other word better able to kindle the imagination? Here she was, in the epicenter of everything scandalous in Paris! Who would not wish for a tour?
Alex took her elbow and delivered a slight, prompting squeeze. A quick glance upward revealed him to be scowling in the very brotherly manner he professed not to own. She did so love a white knight who abandoned her, then acted very ill-tempered upon discovering that she’d found other pursuits to occupy herself.
“Answer him,” he said softly.
She gave him a wide-eyed, innocent look. “But what shall I say, monsieur? After all, it isn’t as if I can claim to have had any long acquaintance with”—glancing toward Mr. Barrington, she delicately cleared her throat—“Mr. de Grey.”
“Oh, not any long acquaintance,” Alex said, “but certainly a thorough one.” His hand slid around her waist and curved firmly over her hip, turning her toward him. She jerked upright from surprise, and he pressed his mouth to hers.
His lips took hers softly, suggestively. They clung, teasing her mouth to open to him.
He was kissing her in front of Mr. Barrington.
He broke away, delivering a soft, hot kiss to the side of her neck, dragging his mouth up to her ear on a hot breath. His teeth closed gently on her lobe. “Behave,” he whispered.
As he withdrew, he gave her a smile. Such a smile—amused, playful, thoroughly wicked. She had never seen it before. This was the smile he gave the women he seduced.
It knocked all possible responses straight from her mind.
Only one certainty remained: she was most definitely not going to behave. The results of that were far more boring.
“I suppose,” she said on a sigh to Mr. Barrington, “that I will admit to some knowledge of Mr. de Grey, now that he reminds me of it. But his attentions are so inconstant, he can hardly blame me for forgetting.”
Mr. Barrington’s face cleared. He gave her a sunny smile of perfect understanding. “I am hard-pressed to imagine any man so foolish as to neglect you, Miss Goodrick.”
Alex’s warm palm cupped her neck, his fingertips dragging lightly down her nape. “Oh, she isn’t neglected,” he murmured, and the roughness in his voice, combined with his touch, sent a small, involuntary shiver over her skin. “She simply likes to complain.”
Mr. Barrington locked eyes with Alex. “In a soprano?” he asked. “Or a mezzo, would you say?”
Alex’s hand paused. She divined that as a sign of his confusion. He had no idea she sang. It was a talent inherited from her mother, and one that Mama had never encouraged. “Neither,” she said.
“A contralto?” Mr. Barrington looked delighted, although it was to Alex that he directed his smile. “Oh, really, Miss Goodrick, now I must hear you sing.”
Alex matched the smile with one of his own. “Must,” he repeated evenly. “That can be a dangerous word, I find.”
The brief, fraught silence that followed unnerved Gwen. “I have lately been on tour in the Americas,” she said, attempting to restore the atmosphere to a lighter mood. “I meant to give my voice a rest, but perhaps, as a token of friendship . . .”
Alex laughed softly. She slanted him a glance, and his eyes met hers, warm, dancing. “Concluded in San Francisco, didn’t it?” he asked. “Your tour, I mean.”
His collusion briefly threw her off. She regained her smile. “Of course not,” she said warmly. “The cards and drink are rotting your mind, poor man. Absinthe and roulette,” she confided to Mr. Barrington. “Terrible plagues. He is thinking of two years ago, when I was crowned Queen of the Barbary Coast. But this season, I went no further than Chicago. Earthquakes do not agree with me.”
“And a wise woman, too,” Mr. Barrington said approvingly. “Come now, say you’ll both accompany me to the Chat Noir. We can leave at once, and perhaps convince Miss Goodrick to take the stage.”
Before she could decide how to reply, a jingling stomp sounded. From behind the screen appeared a dark-haired woman who folded her bare arms over her chest—but not before Gwen got a very good glimpse of what lay beneath: in a word, flesh.
The slits in her diaphanous rainbow skirts appeared to stop where her hip bones began.
Goodness. If that was what people were coming inside the elephant for, Gwen thought she had a good deal of ground to cover before she even approached the meaning of daring.
“Do I dance?” the woman demanded in heavily accented French. “Or do you go elsewhere? Others are waiting.”
“Oh, dear, our most abject apologies,” Mr. Barrington said. He reached into his coat and produced a banknote, which she snatched up with a sniff before trouncing back behind the screen. “Well?” he asked them. “I confess, I will perish of curiosity if I do not hear Miss Goodrick’s voice now.”
“As will I,” Alex said, and then defied all her expectations by adding, “but I suppose it is up to the lady.”
He looked to her with a slight smile.
Why, he didn’t think she could sing. He was counting on her to produce an excuse.
She smiled back at him. “To Le Chat Noir, then.”
Paris’s most infamous café-chantant was small, dark, and narrow, a maze of protruding knees and misplaced elbows and the glowing heads of cigarettes. The walls were covered with bric-a-brac, old copper pans nailed haphazardly next to rusting suits of fake armor, and between these were pinned various scrawled drawings, prints cut out from magazines, the occasional dried flower, somebody’s handkerchief. In the corner, a young man in a heavily patched velvet jacket was adding to the collection by drawing on the wall in charcoal.
Alex accepted a glass of brandy from one of the waiters, who wore green coats and cocked hats, in a mocking nod to the outfits of Parisian academics. Age and the pungent damp had warped the floorboards, so the three-legged tables sat at drunken slants; when he sat down his drink, it slid an inch before stopping.
The server loitered at the table a moment to exchange pleasantries with Barrington, who had been greeted, on the way inside, by several hearty slaps from various rough-hewn patrons.
“I do love bohemia,” Barrington sighed when the waiter moved on. “It makes one long to be a boy again, to begin anew.”
Alex didn’t judge him a day over thirty-five. A bit early to be mourning for lost boyhood. “Were you a bohemian in your youth, then?”
“No, never. But if given the opportunity to revise? I think I would make a fine vagabond.”
“Curious sentiment,” Alex said, “coming from a man who trades in property.”
Barrington threw him an amused look. “I told you, I discuss no business when in Paris.” His regard returned to the piano, where Gwen was conferring with the accompanist.
Alex was braced for disaster there. It had purchased him access to the man across from him, but the final balance between cost and profit would have to calculated later. Elma Beecham had seen them off this evening with a cheery Godspeed, but she had not imagined their itinerary continuing well into the small hours of the night. Nor would she have suspected that her charge would be masquerading as some sort of music hall temptress, and taking every secret opportunity to try to wrestle her neckline lower than the milliner had ever intended.
For that matter, he did not like the way Barrington watched her. The man showed no evidence of being dangerous, but he certainly had proven himself to be acquisitive.
Gwen shook out her skirts, squared her shoulders, and mounted the stage. Nobody took note of her. The place was filled to the rafters, but by reputation, the crowd at Chat Noir proved notoriously difficult to impress. It had its favorite composers and singers and poets—those who earned their fame through regular recitals here—but the rest, it either did a kindness by ignoring, or a savage cruelty by dismissing, in the middle of performances, at very high and often profanity-laced volume.
Sink or swim, Alex supposed: every fledgling learned the same way.
Gwen’s breasts rose and fell on a long breath. Nervous, no doubt. She looked across the crowd at him, and he barely recognized the smile that curved her lips. Perhaps it was a trick of the dim light and her adjusted neckline and this role she’d decided to play, but it occurred to him, suddenly, that he might not know her as well as he thought.
He lifted his glass to her. A mischievous angle took over her smile. She transferred it then to Barrington, who promptly bowed from the waist and sketched a pretty flourish with his hand.
Bohemian, hell. The man was practically a relic of the Regency, with that gesture.
I really should be in Lima, Alex thought, and he took a long swallow of his drink.
The pianist launched into the first bars of the melody. Bizet—the Habanera aria from Carmen. Christ. Unfortunate choice. It required a certain earthiness that she would never manage to pull off.
And then Gwen opened her mouth and began to sing.
Glass to lips, he froze.
From the very first bar, it became clear why she’d kept him, and everyone else, ignorant of her talent: her voice did not belong in drawing rooms.
Table by table, silence spread.
“Quand je vous aimerai?” she sang. “When will I love you? Heavens, I’ve no idea. Maybe never, maybe tomorrow . . . but certainly not today!”
An odd panic fleeted through him—an irrational impulse to stand and leave, or to plug his ears like a frightened boy.
A cheer went up from the back. Her lashes fluttered in startled, gratified reply. Then she threw a wink at the audience.
More cheers, now. God help him, her hand was slipping toward her skirts. She hiked up her hem, flashing an ankle as she launched into the next verse.
“Love is a rebellious bird that nobody can tame. You will call her in vain, if it suits her better to refuse . . .”
As she twirled, her skirts rose higher yet. She was wearing white silk stockings embroidered with scarlet flowers. Her calves were as slim and firm as a can-can dancer’s.
He felt certain that he had not needed to know this.
Indeed, he had not needed to know what her voice sounded like, either. It seemed to wrap around him as sinuously as her arms had done, pressing like a palm against his throat, soft and hot, poised equally to caress or to throttle him. There was power in that voice—power too rich and dark for a sheltered, untested debutante.
But she was not untested, of course. How hard he had tried to forget this: that she had lost and suffered, just as he had. If her smiles came easily, that was not a testament to shallowness or inexperience. It was a testament to her peculiar, unfaltering strength.
“My God,” Barrington breathed. “Where did you find this girl, de Grey? That’s no common music hall voice.”
Alex drew a long breath. Oh, the music hall might be a good start. But Barrington was right. A voice such as hers—as low and smoky as an army encampment, able to transform a mildly risqué French aria into a pornographic fantasy—probably deserved a rarer setting. A harem, say.
Or his bed.
He felt a smile twist his lips. Yes, better to think of that—of beds, and bare limbs, and sweat. Wiser, safer, to focus on what he could slot under the common label of lust.
She dropped her skirts and spun, hands lifting in mimicry of a flamenco dancer, her voice low and silken. “Love is the child of Bohemia; it has never, ever recognized any law . . .”
Richard’s mother had briefly been an actress.
This piece of information disgorged itself wholesale into his consciousness. He could not recall the conversation in which he’d learned it, or any of the details, but he felt certain he was correct.
A strange sensation passed through him. He looked at Gwen with new eyes now. She was doing more on that stage than having a little fun, as she’d put it. She was flaunting something that she had spent most of her life learning to conceal.
His will seemed to split apart beneath the revelation, as neatly halved as beneath a blade.
He rather liked her as she’d been. The Gwen he knew was manageable.
Then again, he’d always thought she could be a great deal more.
He cleared his throat and massaged one wrist. His pulse was banging like a jackhammer. Idiot. All right, bully for Gwen; she was cutting up her heels now in a very fine fashion. But her talents, her courage, had nothing to do with him.
As the pianist segued into the passage that would rightly be sung by the opera chorus, Gwen lifted her hand and curled her fingers in invitation to the crowd. First one man, and then another, picked up the lyrics; as they sang, her eyes found his, sly humor tipping her smile to one side.
The smile jarred him. For a brief moment, he felt thoroughly disoriented—as on those rare occasions when he looked into a window pane and realized, between one blink and the next, that what he had mistaken for a reflection was, in fact, the true scene behind the glass. He forced his attention away from her, though it balked and wanted to linger; he focused on mundane moorings, on the words the drunkards were singing at her bidding. And as he listened with ferocious single-mindedness, understanding suddenly dawned on him.
He laughed out loud. No wonder this song appealed to her. “If you don’t love me, then I love you,” the men were singing, “and if I love you, you’d best beware!” It made a fine summary of Gwen’s love life, to date.
She took a visible breath and slid back into the song, her voice spinning effortlessly through the scales, rough and sweet as raw sugar. “The bird you thought you had in your palm beat its wings and soared away,” she purred. “Wait for love, and she remains ever distant; stop waiting, and she’s there beside you.”
Monsanto, Alex thought. What was Monsanto up to, in Peru? Had he managed to steal the shipping contracts, yet?
What the hell. I can afford to lose them.
Christ. That was not the damned point. He bolted half his glass as the song came to a thunderous close. Frenzied applause broke out. “I say,” Barrington said, raising his voice over the racket, “that was splendid!”
Alex suddenly could not muster the energy to reply. Gwen was bowing, laughing, her face brighter than the gaslights behind her. He watched her as he took another drink. Had he just finished running a dozen miles at full speed, he would have felt precisely as he did just now: exhausted, dry-mouthed, and also wholly awake, thrummingly alive, his every vein invigorated by a fresh current of rushing blood.
Idiocy. Idiot. He should feel nothing like invigorated. He was losing. Fight, then. He never submitted gracefully to defeat.
Losing? Losing what? Irritated with himself, he set down his glass. He was done with liquor for the night.
“You two really must come down to Côte Bleue,” Barrington said. “A small estate I picked up on the Riviera, recently.”
“Perhaps,” Alex said absently. Gwen started down the stairs, and several of the young poetic sorts piled forward to meet her.
Not surprising. Even he could admit to admiring her. Her intention, here, did not seem so dissimilar to those of the rogue artists whom he sponsored. Having glimpsed a vision of something different and better, she wanted to transform that vision into reality. But the invention she was undertaking was herself.
It was, perhaps, the only damned thing she could have done that would have won his instant and entire interest.
“Really, I must insist you come,” Barrington said. “I’m having a small house party this weekend; I think you’d find the company quite enjoyable.”
Alex made a noncommittal noise. He would sit here. No need to rise, to go to her. She would cast him a look if she required his help. “Policy of mine, Barrington: I travel to escape British company, not chase it down.”
“Oh, but I’m quite of the same mind,” Barrington said. “I’ve in mind a few Italians, and an artist or two from Paris should be hanging about. Very small, as I said. Select.”
One of the poets went down on his knee before Gwen. The sound of her laughter traveled across the room, as musical as her singing. How had he not realized she could sing? Her laughter alone should have betrayed her.
“Do think about it,” Barrington pressed. “And if Miss Goodrick would consent to sing a song or two, she’d be well rewarded for it.”
At that, Alex looked Barrington in the eyes. “She is not available for purchase.”
Barrington tempered his smile. “Genius is never for sale. And never fear, sir; I see how closely she holds you in her affection.” The remark raised Alex’s hackles; it seemed, to him, to carry a note of underlying sarcasm. “However, talent does require nourishment, and if Miss Goodrick has an eye for beauty, she’ll find Côte Bleue a natural wonder. Only an hour from Monte Carlo, at that—entertainment abounds for a gambler as well.”
Alex bestirred himself to produce a smile. An invitation to the man’s house was an ideal opportunity to get to the bottom of Gerry’s mystery, and he was never one to waste opportunities—particularly those that would save him a great deal of time in the long run. “I will put the question to Miss Goodrick,” he said with a shrug. “Her wish, as you may gather, is my command.”