She settled back in her chair and smiled at him. “I’m observant,” she said. “I watched you play before.”
“Yet you lost.”
“Your beauty must have distracted me,” she said. “Now I’ve grown used to it. Now I can discern the ways you signal whether it’s going well or badly for you.”
“I thought I gave no signals,” he said.
She waved a hand. “You nearly don’t. It was very hard for me to decipher you—and I’ve been playing cards since I was a child.”
“Have you, indeed?” he said. “I’ve always thought of shopkeepers as respectable citizens, not much given to vices, especially gambling.”
“Then you haven’t been paying attention,” she said. “Frascati’s teemed with ordinary citizen-clerks and tradesmen. But to men like you and Émilien, they’re invisible.”
“The one thing you are not is invisible.”
“There you’re wrong,” she said. “I’ve passed within a few yards of you, on more than one occasion, and you didn’t look twice.”
He sat up straighter. “That’s impossible.”
She took up the cards and shuffled them, her hands quick, smooth, expert. “Let me see. On Sunday at about four o’clock, you were riding with a handsome lady in the Bois de Boulogne. On Monday at seven o’clock, you were in one of the latticed boxes at the Académie Royale de Musique. On Tuesday shortly after noon, you were strolling through the galleries of the Palais Royal.”
“You said I wasn’t your sole purpose for coming to Paris,” he said. “Yet you’ve been following me. Or should I say stalking me?”
“I’ve been stalking fashionable people. They all go to the same places. And you’re hard to miss.”
“So are you.”
“That depends on whether I wish to be noticed or not,” she said. “When I don’t wish to be noticed, I don’t dress this way.” One graceful hand indicated the low bodice of the crimson gown. His diamond stickpin twinkled at him from the center of the V to which the bodice dipped. She lay the cards, precisely stacked now, on the table in front of her, and folded her hands.
“A good dressmaker can dress anybody,” she said. “Sometimes we’re required to dress women who prefer not to call attention to themselves, for one reason or another.” She brought her folded hands up and rested her elbows on the table and her chin on her entwined fingers. “That you failed to notice me in any of those places ought to prove to you that I’m the greatest dressmaker in the world.”
“Is it always business with you?” he said.
“I work for a living,” she said. She turned her head, and he watched her gaze sweep over the various bodies draped over furniture and sprawled on the floor. The look spoke the volumes she left unsaid.
He was nettled, more than he ought to be. Otherwise he would have pretended not to understand. But these were the people with whom he customarily associated, and her mocking half smile was extremely irritating. Provoked, he said it for her before he could catch himself: “Unlike me and these other dissolute aristocrats, you mean. The bourgeoisie is so tediously self-righteous.”
She shrugged, calling his attention to her smooth shoulders, and unfolded her hands. “Yes, we’re great bores, always thinking about money and success.” She took out her purse and scooped her winnings into it, a clear signal that the evening was over for her.
He rose and came round the table to move her chair. He gathered up her shawl, which had slid down her arm. As he did so, he let his fingers graze her bare shoulder.
He heard the faint hitch in her breath, and a bolt of pleasure wiped out his irritation. The feeling was fierce—fiercer than it ought to have been after so slight a touch and so obvious a ploy. But then, she gave so little away that to achieve this much was a great deal.
Though no one about them was conscious, he bent his head close to her ear and said, in a low voice, “You haven’t told me when I’ll see you again. Longchamp, the first time. Frascati’s this night. Where next?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, moving a little away. “Tomorrow—tonight, rather—I must attend the Comtesse de Chirac’s ball. I suspect that gathering will be too staid for you.”
For a moment he could only stare at her, his eyes wide and his mouth open. Then he realized he was gaping at her like a yokel watching a circus. But he’d no sooner erased all signs of surprise than he wondered why he bothered. What was the use, with her, of pretending that nothing surprised him when everything did? She was the least predictable woman he’d ever met. And at this moment he felt like one of the men who’d walked into a lamp post.
He said, slowly and carefully, because surely he’d misunderstood, “You’ve been invited to Madame de Chirac’s ball?”
She made a small adjustment to her shawl. “I did not say I was invited.”
“But you’re going. Uninvited.”
She looked up at him, and the dark eyes flashed. “How else?”
“How about not going where you’re not invited?”
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “It’s the most important event of the social season.”
“It’s also the most exclusive event of the social season,” he said. “The king will be there. People negotiate and plot and blackmail each other for months in advance to get an invitation. Did it not occur to you that an uninvited guest is very liable to be noticed?”
“Didn’t I pass by you a dozen times undetected?” she said. “Do you think I can’t attend a ball without calling attention to myself?”
“Not this ball,” he said. “Unless you were planning to go disguised as a servant?”
“Where’s the fun in that?” she said.
“You’ll never get through the door,” he said. “If you do, you’ll be discovered immediately thereafter. If you’re lucky, they’ll merely throw you into the street. Madame de Chirac is not a woman to trifle with. If she’s not amused—and she rarely is—she’ll claim you’re an assassin.” The accusation might well be taken seriously, for France was unsettled, and one heard rumblings of another revolution. “At best you’ll end up in jail, and she’ll make sure no one remembers you’re there. At worst, you’ll make the personal acquaintance of Madame Guillotine. I don’t see the fun in that.”
“I won’t be discovered,” she said.
“You’re mad,” he said.
“The richest women in Paris will be there,” she said. “They’ll be wearing creations by Paris’s greatest modistes. It’s the greatest fashion competition of the year—a notch above Longchamp. I must see those dresses.”
“You can’t stand outside with the rest of the crowd and watch them go in?”
Her chin went up and her eyes narrowed. Emotion flashed in those dark depths, but when she spoke, her voice was as cool and as haughty as the comtesse’s. “Like the child with her nose pressed to the bakery shop window? I think not. I mean to examine those gowns closely as well as study the jewelry and coiffures. Such opportunities do not come along every day. I’ve been planning for it for weeks.”
She’d said she was a determined woman. He’d understood—to a point—her wishing to dress Clara. Dressing a duchess would be highly profitable. But to run this risk—she, an English nobody—with the Comtesse de Chirac, stupendously high in the instep and one of the most formidable women in Paris? And to do so at a time like this, when the city was in a state of ferment on account of an impending trial of some alleged traitors, and nobles like the comtesse saw assassins lurking in every shadowy corner?
It was a mad chance to take, merely for a little shop.
Yet Madame Noirot had announced her lunatic intention as cool as you please, with a gleam in her eye. And why should this surprise him? She was a gambler. This gamble, clearly, was of vast importance to her.
“You may have slipped into other parties unnoticed but you won’t get into this one,” he said.
“You think they’ll know I’m a nobody shopkeeper?” she said. “You think I can’t fool them? You think I can’t make them see what I want them to see?”
“Others, perhaps. Not Madame de Chirac. You haven’t a prayer.”
He thought perhaps she did have a prayer, but he was goading her, wanting to know what else she’d reveal of herself.
“Then I reckon you’ll simply have to see for yourself,” she said. “That is, I presume you’ve been invited?”
He glanced down at his diamond stickpin, winking up at him from the deep neckline of her red dress. Her bosom was rising and falling more rapidly than before.
“Oddly enough, I have,” he said. “In her view, we English are an inferior species, but for some reason, she makes an exception of me. It must be all my deceitful French names.”
“Then I’ll see you there.” She started to turn away.
“I hope not,” he said. “It would pain me to see you manhandled by the gendarmes, even if that would enliven an exceedingly dull evening.”
“You have a dramatic imagination,” she said. “In the unlikely event they don’t let me inside, they’ll merely send me away. They won’t want to make a scene with a mob outside. The mob, after all, might take my side.”
“It’s a silly risk to take,” he said. “All for your little shop.”
“Silly,” she repeated quietly. “My little shop.” She looked up at the leering demigods and satyrs cavorting on the ceiling. When her gaze returned to him it was cool and steady, belying the swift in-and-out of her breathing. She was angry but she controlled it wonderfully.
He wondered what that anger would be like, let loose.
“That little shop is my livelihood,” she said. “And not only mine. You haven’t the remotest idea what it took to gain a foothold in London. You haven’t the least notion what it’s taken to make headway against the established shops. You’ve no inkling of what we contend with: not merely other dressmakers—and they’re a treacherous lot—but the conservatism of your class. French grandmothers dress with more taste than do your countrywomen. It’s like a war, sometimes—and so, yes, that’s all I think about, and yes, I’ll do whatever is necessary to raise the reputation of my shop. And if I’m thrown into the street or into jail, all I’ll think about is how to take advantage of the publicity.”
“For clothes,” he said. “Does it not strike you as absurd, to go to such lengths, when English women, as you say, are oblivious to style? Why not give them what they want?”
“Because I can make them more than what they want,” she said. “I can make them unforgettable. Have you drifted so far beyond the everyday concerns of life that you can’t understand? Is nothing in this world truly important to you, important enough to make you stick to it, in spite of obstacles? But what a silly question. If you had a purpose in life, you would give yourself to it, instead of frittering away your days in Paris.”
He should have realized she’d strike back, but he’d been so caught up in her passion for her dreary work that she took him unawares. An image flashed in his mind of the world he’d fled—the little, dull world and his empty days and nights and the pointless amusements he’d tried to fill them with. He recalled Lord Warford telling him, You seem determined to fritter away your life.
He felt an instant’s shame, then anger, because she’d stung him.
Reacting unthinkingly to the sting, he said, “Indeed, it’s all sport to me. So much so that I’ll make you a wager. Another round of cards, madame. Vingt et Un—with or without variations, as you choose. This time, if you win, I shall take you myself to the Comtesse de Chirac’s ball.”
Her eyes sparked—with anger or pride or perhaps simple dislike. He couldn’t tell and, at the moment, didn’t care.
“Sport, indeed,” she said. “One rash wager after another. I wonder what you think you’ll prove. But you don’t think, do you? Certainly you haven’t stopped to ask yourself what your friends will think.”
He hardly heard what she was saying. He was drinking in the signs of emotion—the color coming and going in her face, and the sparks in her eyes, and the rise and fall of her bosom. And all the while he was keenly aware of the place where her sharp little needle had stabbed him.
“Nothing to prove,” he said. “I only want you to lose. And when you lose, you’ll admit defeat with a kiss.”
“A kiss!” She laughed. “A mere kiss from a shopkeeper. That’s paltry stakes, indeed, compared to your dignity.”
“A proper kiss would not be mere, madame, or paltry,” he said. “You may not pay with a peck on the cheek. You’ll pay with the sort of kiss you’d give a man to whom you’ve surrendered.” And if he couldn’t make her surrender with a kiss, he might as well go back to London this night. “Considering your precious respectability, that’s high stakes for you, I know.”
One flash from her dark eyes before her face turned into a beautiful mask, cool, impervious. But he’d had a glimpse of the turbulence within, and now he couldn’t walk away if his life depended on it.
“It’s nothing to me,” she said. “Haven’t you been paying attention, your grace? You haven’t a prayer of winning against me.”
“Then you’ve everything to gain,” he said. “Easy entrée into the most exclusive, most boring ball in Paris.”
She shook her head pityingly. “Very well. Never say I didn’t warn you.”
She returned to her chair and sat.
He sat opposite.
“Any game you like,” she said. “In any way you like. It won’t matter. I’ll win—and it will be most amusing.”
She pushed the cards toward him.
“Deal,” she said.
At the time of the French Revolution, Marcelline’s aristocratic grandfather had kept his head by keeping his head. Generations of Noirots—the name he’d taken after fleeing France—had inherited the same cool self-containment and ruthless practicality.
True, her passions ran dark and deep, as was typical of her family, on both sides. Like them, though, she was quite good at hiding what she felt. She’d had to teach her sisters the skill. She, apparently, had been born with it.
But the casually disparaging way Clevedon referred to her shop and her profession made her blood boil.
That was noble blood, too, running in her veins—no matter that hers was the most corrupt blue blood in all of Europe. But Noirot was a common name, as common as dirt, which was why Grandpapa had chosen it. Now, most of the family was gone, taking their infamy with them.
Notorious or not, her family was as old as Clevedon’s—and she doubted all his ancestors had been saints. The only difference at the moment was that he was rich without having to work for it and she had to work for every farthing.
She knew it was absurd to let him provoke her. She knew her customers looked down on her. They all behaved the way Lady Renfrew and Mrs. Sharp did, speaking as though she and her sisters were invisible. To the upper orders, shopkeepers were simply another variety of servants. She’d always found that useful, and sometimes amusing.
But he . . .
Never mind. The question now was whether to let him win or lose.
Her pride couldn’t let him win. She wanted to crush him, his vanity, his casual superiority.
But his losing meant a serious inconvenience. She could hardly enter a ball on the Duke of Clevedon’s arm without setting off a firestorm of gossip—exactly what she didn’t want to do.
Yet she couldn’t let him win.
“We play the deck,” he said. “We play each deal, but with one difference: We don’t show our cards until the end. Then, whoever has won the most deals wins the game.”
Not being able to see the cards as they played through would make it harder to calculate the odds.
But she could read him, and he couldn’t read her. Moreover, the game he proposed could be
played quickly. Soon enough she’d be able to tell whether he was playing recklessly.
The first deal. Two cards to each. He dealt her a natural—ace of diamonds and knave of hearts. But he stood at two cards as well, which he never did if they totaled less than seventeen. Next deal she had the ace of hearts, a four, and a three. The next time she stood at seventeen, with clubs. Then another natural—ace of spades and king of hearts. And next the queen of hearts and nine of diamonds.
On it went. He often drew three cards to her two. But he was intent, as he hadn’t been previously, and by this time, she could no longer detect the flicker in his green eyes that told her he didn’t like his cards.
She was aware of her heart beating faster with every deal, though her cards were good for the most part. Twenty-one once, twice, thrice. Most of the other hands were good. But he played calmly, for all his concentration, and she couldn’t be absolutely sure his luck was worse.
Ten deals played it out.
Then they turned their cards over, slapping them down smartly, smiling coolly at each other across the table as they did so, each of them confident.
A glance at the spread-out cards told her she’d beat him all but four times, and one of those was a tie.
Not that she needed to see the cards laid out to know who’d won. She had only to observe his stillness, and the blank way he regarded the cards. He looked utterly flummoxed.
It lasted but an instant before he became the jaded man of the world again; but in that look she glimpsed the boy he used to be, and for a moment she regretted everything: that they’d met in the way they’d done, that they were worlds apart, that she hadn’t known him before he lost his innocence . . .
Then he looked up and met her gaze, and in his green eyes she saw awareness dawn—at last—of the problem he’d created for himself.
Once again, he recovered in an instant. If he was at a loss—as surely he must be—there was no further sign. Like her, he was used to covering up. She should have covered up, too. He ought to have second thoughts. It was no more than she expected. His consternation, however faintly evidenced, rankled all the same, and more than it ought to have done.