Chapter 9
Sharp: Subtle, acute, quick-witted; also a sharper or cheat, in opposition to a flat, dupe, or gull. Sharp’s the word and quick’s the motion with him; said of anyone very attentive to his own interest, and apt to take all advantages.
A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
Francis Grose
Even with all the twists and turns the night had delivered, Mariana gleaned from Nick’s startled expression that he wasn’t prepared for this one. He’d expected her, like any sheltered lady of her class, to accuse him of subjecting her to a night filled with vice and perversity. Instead, she’d chosen to keep playing, to further the game, to push it to its edge. She would learn tonight’s lesson before their game was done.
Her hand reached beneath the table and emerged dangling her other garter. He unclipped sapphire and gold cuff studs and tossed them onto the felt. Play was ready to resume.
Silently, he shuffled the cards. Silently, he dealt them. Silently, he won when she folded. Silently, he slid the winnings into his growing pile.
Silently, Mariana stewed.
Gathering her composure, she finally spoke. “Tell me what I’m doing wrong.”
“Show me your cards.”
She lay them face up on the felt.
“You were going for a straight.”
“Yes?”
“I know your hand by the way you bet. If you have a pair, you raise with two coins. If you have a better hand, you raise with five coins. You’re too predictable. You cannot be predictable in espionage.”
She wanted to bristle at the word predictable, but she didn’t rise to it. “Then how did Villefranche become embroiled in this intrigue? He’s one of the most predictable people I’ve ever encountered.”
“Perhaps that was why he was chosen.”
“Chosen?”
“He reports to someone with more power and connections. On the other hand, he could simply be a bloodthirsty anarchist.”
“That’s one theory. Try another.”
“He’s a scion of the Orléans family. They’re a powerful family, but not in power. He may wish to correct that imbalance.”
Mariana shook her head. “That doesn’t ring true either. He doesn’t strike me as hungry for power. Tell me,” she continued, “have you visited the museums in Paris?”
Nick’s eyebrows crinkled together in confusion at the sudden conversational switch. Then his eyes narrowed. “Is this about the Woolly Mammoth?”
“They’re woolly and have large tusks. How was that question for the unpredictable?”
Nick dropped his cards face up on the felt. She showed a pair of sevens and felt a sly smile tilt the corners of her mouth. He’d folded with a pair of Jacks. She’d won the hand and caught her first windfall of the night.
Duplicity, guile . . . She was beginning to understand how to win at this game.
Nick glared down at his mistake and conceded with a grudging, “Well done.” He took in hand a newly shuffled deck of cards, ready to deal.
Riding a gratifying wave of triumph, Mariana was just about to slide his cuff studs into the kitty when she hesitated. A nervy feeling began to get the better of her, a feeling that made the room feel bright and shiny and teeming with possibility.
She would stake her locket. She didn’t need to. And she most definitely didn’t want Nick to have it or see what lay inside, but she couldn’t resist wagering her most precious asset. She wanted to play for high stakes. She hadn’t felt this alive . . . ever. Perhaps the bourbon had been going down too smoothly.
“In the last few years, I’ve discovered something about myself.” Blood zinging through her veins, she unclasped her locket and dropped it into the kitty. “I am quite taken with the history of our earth. It seems that The Progressive School for Young Ladies and the Education of Their Minds has worked its magic on my mind, too. Can you imagine?”
“I can imagine,” he replied, meeting her wager with the sapphire and gold buttons that matched his lost cuff studs.
“There’s a word for what I am. Autodidact. It’s my dirty little secret.” She could ignore the fact that his shirt fell the scantest inch open, revealing the fine trail of hair running down the hollow of his ridged stomach to the top of his trousers. “Check.”
Charged up with a feeling of invincibility, she lay her cards face up on the felt—a full house.
“Well done—again,” he bit out.
With a simple nod of acknowledgement, she accepted his paltry congratulation and slid her winnings toward her growing pile of loot. “That isn’t to say I’m suddenly a bluestocking.” She picked up the thread of their conversation as if the hand she’d just won was a triviality, as if she wasn’t exhilarated by it. It was a heady feeling, beating a man like Nick.
She reached for the decanter of bourbon at her elbow—when had that appeared on the table?—and topped her glass before shooting it back like a seasoned riverboat gambler. She might be developing a taste for hedonism.
“If I may be blunt?”
She liked the way his voice sounded just now. All affectation was gone, and there was no hint of patronization either. The tone conceded they were two well-matched adults. “Are you ever not blunt with me?”
“You’re dressed like the most expensive courtesan in Paris.” His intense, gray gaze held hers. “It’s a fair bet that no one would mistake you for a bluestocking.”
Her lips stretched into a too-wide smile. She should be offended by his words, but they delighted her. He’d only confirmed what she’d known for some minutes now. He was distracted by her state of dishabille.
Her fingers absently toyed with the top of her chemise, brushing against the exposed skin above her corseted breasts. Nick averted his gaze and shifted in his chair.
She leaned forward. “I really want to see that Woolly Mammoth.” The words might sound playful in the moment, but she couldn’t be more earnest.
“Be careful where you voice your wishes,” he began in a voice low and intense and utterly serious as his gaze again captured hers. “There are men who would stop at nothing to give you what you want. Men break laws, walk across flames, and even start wars to give a woman like you everything she wants.”
“A woman like me?” she whispered from inside the spell he’d woven around her with his words. “A man like whom, Nick?”
The air went completely still. The world could have stopped spinning on its axis, and she wouldn’t have noticed.
“I think you’ve mastered duplicity and guile,” he spoke into the quiet before shooting to his feet and breaking the spell.
Mariana assessed the man towering over the table. He was agitated, which perversely calmed her. “You think me so without guile?”
She rose, one slow inch at a time, until they stood facing each other like combatants. His eyes remained steady, too steady, on hers. He was trying not to glance down at her scantily clad body. She liked to think she’d chosen tonight’s undergarments without him in mind, but she knew the truth.
She leaned across the table to retrieve her clothing. If he received an eyeful of the effect of gravity on corseted cleavage, then so be it. She reclined in her chair and lifted a foot, slipping her toes inside a stocking and unrolling the length of silk up her leg. His eyes lingered hot upon the bare skin of her thigh just above where the stocking ended.
She reached for the other stocking. “It feels as though we haven’t discussed anything substantive.”
“There are many ways to have a conversation,” he said, his voice rough and intimate. “Sometimes we communicate more about ourselves by what we don’t say.” A moment passed. “And in the language of our bodies.”
A lightning bolt of desire shot through Mariana. And she’d thought she was in control. Rather, intoxication, bright and pervasive, flowed through her, as if she’d downed the entire decanter of bourbon in a single swallow. Its hot glow had found its way into her bloodstream, transforming her body into a vessel incandescent with brilliant light. She lifted her other leg and touched toes to silk.
Her eyes lifted and met raw craving within his. The space between their bodies no longer mattered. “And what is my body communicating right now?”
“Mariana . . .”
The rest of his words slipped away. His eyes did his talking when they lowered to her pointed toes and raked up her ankles before lingering on her exposed thighs for a moment too long. Her core throbbed and ached. Unhurried, his gaze continued over her hips, her breasts, her collarbone, and her parted lips before reaching her eyes. Piercing gray burned into her, leaving no doubt about the message she’d communicated, and the one he’d received. Her breath came shallow and quick as exhilaration surged through her. Contrary to what she’d assumed for the past decade, Nick wasn’t immune to her.
In three decisive strides, he moved to her side of the table, erasing all distance between them. She remained in her chair, her head tilted back to take in the length of this gorgeous man—all long lines and strong angles. He reached over and lifted her necklace off the table. Its locket swung like a pendulum between them.
Her hand flew to her chest for confirmation that the locket wasn’t there. How had she forgotten it? The man before her was how.
“Do you mind?” she asked, rising to her stocking feet. Oh. Scant inches separated their bodies. The outside world felt as distant as if they’d created a world of two, its sole occupants her and him. She couldn’t look away.
~ ~ ~
Nick could have handed over the necklace. He should have handed over the necklace. Instead, he reached for the curve of Mariana’s hip and guided her around until her back faced him. He stood poised to drape the necklace around her elegant neck and allow its locket to resume its rightful place between the ripe curve of her breasts.
It was another instance of what he should have done. But a feeling too basic to deny overrode his intellect: he wanted her—badly.
Without thought for their past or their future, he lowered his head and touched his lips to her bare skin. Her back arched, and her shoulder blades slid together. His hand reached around her waist to the flat of her belly, steadying them both as his tongue flicked across her salty flesh.
“Nick . . .” His name emerged from her lips, not on a scold, but on a sigh. She was waiting, anticipating. She felt the same intense desire.
He sensed it in the stillness of her body and heard it in the hitch of her breath. His tongue traced the ridge of her spine and up her graceful neck until it reached her earlobe, drawing the tender flesh between his lips and teeth for a testing nip. Her head tilted to the side, granting him access to more of her. He released a soft groan into her ear, and goose bumps rose beneath his touch. The rigid length of his cock thrummed in anticipation of what came next.
That ridiculous bed behind them dominated this room for a reason. It wasn’t a bed constructed for a good sleep. It was a bed constructed for a good tup.
She was a single ragged breath away from giving in to this need . . . But that breath never came. Her hand covered his. At first a feather light touch, it became viselike as her fingers clamped around his hand and lifted it off her body.
Reactively, he took one, two steps backward. She turned to face him, a rosy blush tinting her skin, her breath coming fast and hard.
Oh, yes, she wanted it, too. But it was she who had put a stop to the madness. Her lips were a firm, determined line as she reached for her dress and slipped the drab garment over her head. Her movements, quick and efficient, contrasted sharply with the soft and languorous moment just left behind.
Thoroughly unbalanced, Nick felt like a rank amateur. And he was supposed to be the teacher. He’d lost focus, pure and simple. It was the sort of gaffe that could cost him his life in more tenuous circumstances. His body aching and bitter with unrequited desire, he snatched up his evening jacket.
Blast. Tonight had served but one useful purpose: a reminder of the man he became around her—the man who could never have enough of her.
A rapid succession of knocks sounded on the door, turning into a haranguing of the door. Necklace still in hand, he pocketed it as he strode to answer before the door came off its hinges.
After a short exchange with a drunk who had the wrong room, Nick turned to find a dressed and expectant Mariana standing with reticule primly held before her. The previous interlude had been wiped from existence. Wasn’t that the fiction best for them both?
“My apologies for the necessity of such dicey accommodation,” he pronounced superciliously, breaking last night’s promise. He needed to batten down his defenses against her. “This place must be quite a come down from your usual milieu for entertainments.”
He caught a glimpse of bewilderment on her face, but before he could examine it, it turned into something else—something harder and less vulnerable. “I am certain you know nothing of my milieus, Nick.”
With those words, their past was again their present, implacable and insurmountable. He could forget that for a wild moment a different outcome had felt possible, even inevitable.
“I believe we’ve covered duplicity and guile sufficiently,” he found himself saying.
“Until our next lesson?” she asked. “Soon, the seduction begins.” She swept past him and out the door.
He rushed to the doorway and peered down the corridor’s narrow distance long after she’d disappeared down the stairs, leaving behind only a faint wisp of her scent and a familiar desire that neither time nor distance had erased.
Soon, the seduction begins. Or had it already? He’d never met a more seductive woman in his life.
Never met? Of course, they’d met. It was such a small word for everything they’d done. They were married, after all. Except the Mariana he’d left ten years ago hadn’t yet developed into this woman. She’d always been irresistible to him, but not a seductress.
Seductress. The word landed with a crash. She wasn’t here to seduce him; she was here to seduce another man. The smack of reality struck him hard.
He would do well to remember its impact.