Chapter 13
Fox’s paw: The vulgar pronunciation of the French words faux pâs. He made a confounded fox’s paw.
A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
Francis Grose
Within the space between one heartbeat and the next, Mariana’s world transformed into a wonderland composed entirely of helium and ether. She wasn’t certain it was exclusively the effect of the absinthe, either, instead suspecting it might be her act of disobedience fueling the feeling.
No, that wasn’t the best characterization of the feeling or herself. Disobedience was the act of a child attempting to assert power and control.
She was no child; she was an adult woman. Perhaps downing a glassful of an unfamiliar liquid emitting an unearthly green glow wasn’t the most adult way to assert her independence, but Nick’s steady, gray gaze told her she’d gotten her point across loud and clear. Except, how utterly unsurprised he looked.
She took a self-conscious glance around the table. A dozen pairs of eyes regarded her with equal parts bemusement and astonishment, awaiting her next move. Then the moment evaporated as they seemed to realize in unison that she had no more moves.
The men continued their conversations while the mistresses’ eyes lingered half a beat longer, assessing, indulgent, but not warm. The peculiar Englishwoman was dismissed, her novelty gone as quickly as it had come. Raucous music and the general cacophony of café esprit roared back to life, and the outside world tumbled in.
It mattered not. Particularly not when the air around her became as light and weightless as if gravity no longer had a claim on her. Her fingers wrapped around the seat of her chair as a cascade of floaty warmth washed over her. She had imbibed a bit too much wine—or whiskey, as the occasion allowed—more times than a lady would dare admit, but this feeling was that and more.
“Where does it come from?” she heard her voice asking.
“Grande wormwood,” Nick tossed over his shoulder.
“No. Not where, but where? What world? Surely not ours. I feel as if . . . as if I’ve lassoed a shooting star.”
She might have detected a roll of Nick’s eyes before he turned away, but it mattered not. She had no use for the here and now, but for epiphany, bright and true: only Nick had done the touching. These last three nights, he’d touched some part of her body, but she hadn’t touched his. It had been years since she last felt him.
Her eyes traveled the broad width of his back. Was he different now? He’d been lean and angular, but the angles these days cut a little sharper. This was a harder man from a decade ago. How had it escaped her notice all those Christmases, Easters, and birthdays? She wanted to feel him. Not through layers of jacket, vest, and shirt, but skin to skin.
Her gaze wandered over the other women, the other lorettes, her odd sense of kinship with them increasing. Then, she noticed it: they weren’t simply on the receiving end of being stroked. These women gave back in subtle ways: fingertips feathering against a thin sliver of bare skin at the back of a neck; rouged lips pressed against an ear, whispering a promise for later that only the two of them would ever know; hands finding their ways inside jacket pockets, inside trouser pockets . . .
A tingling sensation fluttered out from her belly. She didn’t have to sit here like a demure little nothing all night. Before her was an opportunity to take what she wanted. And right now what she wanted was a touch of Nick.
She moved her chair closer to his and half draped herself against him. The muscles in his back went rigid. Good. Still, this level of touch wasn’t enough to satisfy.
With that thought in mind, her hand found its way to his thigh, and, like the muscles in his back, those, too, contracted beneath her touch. She resisted the urge to test their rigidity with a squeeze. Instead, her hand began snaking its way up the solid length of muscle, her fingers soon locating his trouser pocket. It slipped inside.
Shocked by her own boldness, she hesitated, her breath hitching in her chest. She watched his profile for a reaction, any tic or tell that revealed an effect on him, her effect on him. Nothing. His face remained frustratingly impassive. But his heart—which she felt, pressed as she was against his back—revealed the opposite of impassivity. His heart beat hard and fast, mirroring the thunder of her own. Oh, he felt it, too.
Her fingers resumed their progress, feeling their way deeper inside his pocket. Did he feel a light increasing in luminescence inside of him until he was glowing with a warm river of sensation, wet and wondrous?
Hmm, that last bit might have been the absinthe.
Oh, delicious anticipation. An image of his manhood flashed across her mind. She remembered it as hard and true and ever at the ready. Was that still the case?
“Am I invisible enough now?” she whispered into his ear.
A vise grip, sudden and steely, clamped around her wrist and removed her hand from his pocket, firmly returning it to her lap.
He half-turned in his chair and faced her. His eyes gave nothing away, and it occurred to her that they should. They should show anger, dismay, desire, disgust . . . something. Yet they revealed nothing, which could be a tell in itself. He wasn’t allowing himself to reveal himself. How was it that she’d never perceived this particular skill in her husband? She’d thought he felt nothing, but she was beginning to suspect it was rather the opposite.
“I don’t feel an ounce of shame for what I just attempted,” she whispered. She’d never been the sort of girl who minded very much getting into trouble. “Wasn’t I behaving like another one of the mistresses? Like another one of your mistresses?” He remained stoic and silent. “Indignation and shame are such muddy emotions. In fact, I feel the opposite of muddy. In fact, I’ve never felt so pure in my life.”
“That is the absinthe speaking.”
“Is it? And is your absinthe speaking to me right now?”
“Mariana—”
“Oh, stuff the scold. I wasn’t being serious. Well, not entirely.”
No longer did she feel like remaining hostage to Nick’s too-steady gaze. She wanted to enjoy the night. Never in her life had she felt so at one with the people around her. It was as if they stood together on a plane of existence known only to them. It felt miraculous.
Her musing was cut short when her gaze fell upon a familiar figure. At first, she didn’t believe her eyes. She was viewing the world through the lens of the Green Fairy, after all. “Nick,” she whispered, enough urgency in her voice to regain his attention.
“Yes, Mariana,” he returned. She didn’t care for his long-suffering tone.
“Aren’t you concerned this is the sort of place someone you know would frequent? Perhaps someone like the Comte de Villefranche?”
“Villefranche wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like this,” Nick returned. “His elevated ideals don’t venture far from on high and down into the realm of reality.”
Mariana felt an unruly smile bloom across her face. She knew something Nick didn’t. “Then how is it that I just watched him walk through the front entrance?”
Nick froze. “Is he alone?”
“Yes.”
“Has he spotted you?”
“Not yet.” Her eyes locked onto Villefranche’s tall, wooden form as he navigated the room between various groupings of people with whom he was clearly acquainted. “I do believe you’ve underestimated your opponent.”
“Is he behind me?”
“Directly.”
“Look at me,” Nick commanded.
Mariana tore her gaze away from the Comte de Villefranche and found Nick’s steely gray eyes. He reached out and cupped the back of her head, his long fingers threading through her loose hair, fingers warm and capable and distractingly male.
“Follow my lead,” he said for the second time tonight.
Without another word, he pulled her into him, and his mouth was upon hers in what only outwardly could be characterized as a kiss, so cold and unyielding were his lips.
It lasted no more than a thrice of seconds before she broke away, panting. “I thought we were better at kissing than that,” burst from her.
“Has he passed?” Nick asked, refusing to be distracted by their utterly, utterly terrible kiss.
Mariana had never felt so disappointed in her life.
But she remembered her role and located Villefranche’s receding back. “He’s just stepping outside through the front entrance”—Bemusement crinkled her eyebrows together—“with a woman. I guess his high ideals take a roll down in the hay every once in a while.”
Nick pushed away from the table and stood, dragging her up with him. Without a single adieu, they were off, navigating the haphazard café at a pace surely never seen in its loose environ. Her flimsy scrap of a shawl slipped off her shoulders, forgotten forever to the night as there was no stopping Nick’s forward momentum. And all of this done without a single disturbance to the firm set of his features.
In a thrice, they were speeding down a short, back corridor. Nick’s hand still clamped around hers, he used the other to push open the door at the corridor’s end.
Two strides later, Mariana found herself in a narrow, dark alley devoid of light and dense with soft, feathery mist. Even as the uneven rhythms of her breath raced in her ears, the world slowed, and stillness enveloped them. The raucous café faded into a past that was becoming increasingly distant, even as the absinthe pulsed lightning flashes through her veins. Only the present where his hand held hers mattered.
“Are we following Villefranche?”
Nick shook his head, a wild light flickering in the gray depths of his eyes. Through the fog of their shared past came the memory that his wildness had always driven her equally wild for him.
“You thought we were better than that?” he asked on a step forward. Inches separated them. His hand held onto hers as the other reached up and stroked the side of her face. His fingers felt wonderfully cool against her cheeks, hot with inebriation and . . . desire.
She opened her mouth to speak, but words refused to form. There was nothing left to say. Only something left to do. Her hand reached up, found the back of his neck, and pulled his mouth toward hers.
A soft growl sounded as his lips claimed hers with a pent-up ferocity that had been vibrating between them for three straight nights. A kiss never felt so good, so ravishing, so hedonistic, so right. No, it wasn’t right. Yet somehow its very wrongness made it all the better.
The full, unforgiving length of his body pressed forward and pinned her against the damp, stone wall. Her eyes fluttered shut, and all she could do was feel the contrasting sensations of pleasure and pain swirling together. Her entire being transformed into a bundle of exposed nerve endings whose only function was to give and receive pleasure. What else was there?
His fingertips trailed down her neck, across her clavicle, and hesitated at the swell of her breasts. A plaintive cry erupted in her throat, and her back arched, pressing her further into his body. She wanted more than a kiss.
One hand cupped her bottom, pulling her into full, erotic contact with his erect shaft, the other slipped inside her bodice and lifted a breast out of the confining fabric before squeezing her taut peak between thumb and forefinger. Instinctively, her leg wrapped around his waist as his manhood ground into her. Her body alternately screamed and ached for more . . . for everything.
Drat these layers of clothes between them.
He broke the kiss and took her breast into his mouth. Her head arced back, and a long moan escaped her.
“We are better than that,” he murmured, his hand snaking up her bare thigh. “Do you require additional proof?”
“Yes,” she exhaled, a plea to the heavens above.
The heavens ignored her entreaty, for the next moment, Nick went stock still and pressed a staying finger against her lips before she could cry out in protest. She followed his gaze and found what had caught his attention. A gendarme stood, not five feet away, patiently awaiting their attention.
Mariana knew she should feel absolutely mortified, face flaming with embarrassment and shame. But she felt not a bit of it. She’d only just coaxed Nick into lowering his defenses and revealing something true about himself—that he desired her . . . madly, wildly—and this officer of the silly law had come along and denied her. She didn’t feel ashamed; she felt thwarted.
The gendarme motioned for Nick to step aside with him. “Monsieur, s’il vous plait?”
Nick straightened and locked eyes with Mariana for the briefest moment, the message in them clear: she was to stay put and keep quiet. She was to prove she’d learned her lesson and make herself invisible.
Ha. That ship had sailed.
She watched his wildness recede and the civilized take over as his fingers ran through his shorn hair and smoothed it down. She suppressed the desire to reach out and stay his hand. Desire and possibility faded fast, replaced by a devastating sense of impossibility. Desire wasn’t enough to fix what ailed her and Nick. It never had been.
She instantly sobered. “Neither wife nor whore,” fell from her lips.
~ ~ ~
Nick felt the words with the force of a slap, but he had no time for them now. The gendarme was waiting. Appeasement must be his first concern. Mariana would come later.
He closed his eyes and inhaled. No, Mariana wouldn’t come later. Not like that, anyway. There would be no appeasement tonight, or ever, for them.
He moved away from her. “You may want to”—He darted a glance toward her bare breasts—“adjust yourself.” The gendarme was getting an eyeful.
Nick stepped toward the officer of the law, a practiced, sheepish smile on his lips. Oui, he knew this wasn’t the place, but sometimes a man had . . . needs. It was the gendarme’s turn to smile sheepishly, tapping an empty hand against his thigh. Oui, oui, but next time. Oui, oui, next time. The gendarme’s hand returned to his pocket richer than it had been a few minutes earlier.
The gendarme strolled away, a satisfied whistle on his lips, and Nick again faced Mariana. There couldn’t be a next time. As he watched her arrange her hair, slender arms raised and breasts all but exposed to the night sky, and anyone else who happened along, the resolution rang hollow.
“This scheme isn’t going to plan.” He adjusted his cravat. “You’re not exactly spy material.”
“Ah, I see.”
Startled, he glanced up, expecting to find her vibrating with betrayal and disappointment—it seemed his destiny ever to disappoint her—except he read neither emotion there. He read challenge in her eyes.
“I find Paris suits me,” she continued.
“This is bigger than us,” he pressed, except even he could hear that his words lacked conviction. He wasn’t certain anything was bigger than he and Mariana. Not even the fates of France and England were more important—not in this moment.
“There is no us, Nick. There never was.”
He flinched. Even he knew that wasn’t true. Once upon a time, there had been a them, and it had been a glorious frolic in delusion—until reality had come knocking.
Again, he called upon the requisite words. “The stability of Europe is at stake here.”
A brittle laugh escaped her. “And, of course, you’re the only man who can insure Continental stability. You always did overestimate your control over a situation.”
A sudden, hot urge to tweak her overcame him. “Not always.” The words came out a hard growl. “There are certain situations I control very well.”
~ ~ ~
A blush warmed Mariana’s cheeks, and she glanced away, hoping to hide her body’s reaction to his words, to the promise in his eyes when he spoke them. It was a desire that must be quelled. They had gone too far tonight.
Not far enough, her body protested.
Nick stepped out into the street and hailed an approaching hackney. A staying hand held out to the driver, he turned and waved her toward the conveyance. Her feet felt mired in sludge as she crossed the few feet between where she’d stood and the open door. The absinthe had sailed away into the ether without her, leaving her earthbound and deflated.
Yes, absinthe. She wouldn’t consider what else could bring on this feeling of gloom. What was the word from earlier? Crapulent. It was the perfect word. Absolute crapulence.
His arm, angled at the elbow, extended and awaited her hand, so he could assist her into the carriage.
Memory, unbidden and unwelcome, pushed at the corners of her mind. Once, she’d stood like this, her hand poised above his forearm; she’d been dressed in virginal ivory and he in tailored blacks and whites. Their “I do’s” just spoken, they’d faced the aisle before them, friends and family to each side. Her shaky, silk-gloved hand had lowered to a light rest on woolen superfine, and the gratification of having well and truly caught him swelled up. This gorgeous, cunning, untamed man was hers, forever.
Bitterness mingled with memory. A flash was all it had been; there had been no substance, no lasting truth in it. She ignored his waiting forearm and grabbed hold of the carriage’s open window frame, mounting the first step unassisted.
“It was a foolish idea, Mariana, to think that you—”
“Could be useful?” she finished for him.
“You are useful, just not to—”
“You?” She stood perpendicular to him, her gaze fast on the interior of the carriage. “Well, isn’t it your job to make me so?”
“Mariana—”
“One more lesson, Nick,” she said, hating her inability to keep an imploring note out of her voice.
After a moment’s hesitation, he said, “One more lesson.”
She finished her ascent into the carriage, and Nick shut the door behind her. He gave the boot two quick taps, and it lurched into motion.
Mariana resisted the urge to peer out the window and watch Nick recede into the distance until he blended with the shadows. Instead, she pressed her back flat against unforgiving leather and turned her thoughts to her nerve endings.
Not ten minutes ago, she’d been focused on their pleasure. Yet it was the other side of a raw nerve ending that claimed her attention now that the pleasure had receded: pain. As a midnight Paris streamed past her window, she sensed a nascent, yet familiar, pain held at bay, a pain she would rather avoid.
If this was truly the case, then why had she all but begged for another lesson? She knew why. It was for the same nervy, hedonistic reason she’d staked her locket last night.
While there was a fifty percent chance she would find pain once she reached the end of this particular nerve, there was another fifty percent chance she would find pleasure there. After all, she’d vowed to follow Nick’s example and ignore their past. Such a gloomy past was better left in gloomy London. This Paris idyll was a time and place for unreality to rule the day.
And if a few nerve endings were pleasured along the way, well, wasn’t that what Paris was for? People risked more for less.
She shifted uncomfortably on her seat.
A risk greater than a heart? a tiny thought nagged.