A radish flew past, launched from somewhere down the table by a fork made unsteady by too much wine. It landed in Elma’s glass, drawing a multinational cry from up and down the table: Oh lá lá, Youpi, Gut gemacht!
Flushing, Elma lifted the glass in a triumphant toast. The balding gallant at her right promptly offered his own in exchange. She turned toward her admirer, leaving all Alex’s attention for Gwen, who was still laughing.
It was a lovely, uninhibited sound, and it turned the heads of the glowering Austrians, who unbent and gave her a smile. Alex smiled a little himself. Her laughter held an elated note, expressive of more than simple amusement. Listening to her, one had the impression that she was thrilled to be in the world, and saw no shortage of wonders to delight her.
She glanced to him as she fell silent, but her dark eyes still sparkled with mirth. “I like these flying radishes,” she said. Her cheeks glowed from the wine, and in the dim lighting, her hair looked the russet shade of autumn leaves. She looked invitingly, irresistibly warm, a bonfire on a frozen winter night. “I don’t think I’d approve of flying cabbage,” she added, “but radishes, I’ll gladly encourage.”
He cleared his throat. “Live wildly,” he said. “Throw one yourself.”
“Perhaps I will.” Her expression was arch. “Certainly I proved that I was capable of it yesterday.”
There were a dozen obvious places to touch her. The hollow of her throat. The curve of her brow. Beneath her lower lip—that faint shadow in the shape of a downturned half-moon, marking the spot where her pointed chin began to jut outward.
He’d counted them all before. They made an excellent list of reasons to keep the hell away from her.
“Yesterday proved that you know how to buy your way out of trouble,” he said. “Not much else.”
“Oh?” Lifting her brow, she reached out and put one slim finger beneath his chin.
He’d not been expecting it. His breath caught from sheer surprise.
For other reasons, every muscle in his body tightened as well.
“I know how to flirt,” she murmured. “The Italian has been teaching me.”
He reached up and caught hold of her hand. If he stood up now, he’d become the sort of spectacle more often provided by fourteen-year-old boys. “You’re drunk,” he said. “Enjoying it?”
She laughed softly. Her eyes were a warm, rich brown, the color of loam upturned in the planting season. “I haven’t decided yet.”
His thumb discovered its own will, pressing slowly into the warm, soft cavern of her palm. Hot and soft, slightly moist; her sweat would be more fragrant than any perfume. “You’ll have to let me know,” he said, and his own hushed voice startled some distant part of him; he sounded drunk himself.
Her eyes dilated slightly as he stroked her palm. He was watching for it. He was watching for everything and anything in her: his senses felt like strands suddenly twined together and snapped taut with great force, anchored somehow into her flesh, so every small movement she made reverberated along his nerves. Which was . . .
Which was unnerving as hell.
I know how to flirt, she had told him. Warned him, more like.
“This is not flirting.” His voice was laconic enough to focus his mind. He dropped her hand abruptly and ran his own over his mouth. He looked toward Elma—ostensibly. But in truth, he was simply testing his ability to look at, to focus on, anything other than Gwen.
Jesus Christ.
The insomnia was rotting his brain.
When her hand touched his sleeve, he had to restrain himself from knocking it away. “What?” he asked curtly. Now would be a good time for Elma to become anxious again, but she was too busy being admired by the American at her elbow.
“What did I do wrong?”
He turned back in disbelief. Gwen did not look at all rattled by what had passed between them. Far from it. Christ, she was grinning.
“You said it wasn’t flirting,” she said earnestly. “I wish to know where I went wrong. Did I not seem drawn to you? Was I not complimentary enough?”
“It wasn’t flirting,” he said curtly, “because you gave the impression that if I slapped a coin down on the table, you’d lift your skirts directly.”
A second too late, he regretted the words. They were born of an anger that he was too old to misinterpret: his goddamned vanity was pricked by how unaffected she seemed.
She stiffened and went pale.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “Forgive me, Gwen. That was a spiteful remark.”
“Yes,” she said. Her lower lip trembled.
“Which would have been fine,” he added, “if it had been clever, but it wasn’t. You flirted very well. I’ll admit it.”
Her attempt at a smile failed. “Don’t patronize me, Alex. We are not all born knowing how to be sophisticated. Some of us must learn these tricks.” She stared at her plate now. “I don’t—I’m not looking to seduce anyone, of course. But I told you, I just want to . . . have a bit of fun.”
The words made him feel suddenly impatient. Fun. What a naïve little goal. By some witchy stroke of luck, she was able to get under his skin; perhaps if he were twenty, he’d enjoy becoming her entertainment for a week or two. If he were a different man entirely, he might make good use of her innocence, turning her desire against her and netting three million pounds for his trouble.
The thought lingered, troubling him. Taking advantage of her would be so easy. “Gwen,” he began, but when she glanced up, he trailed off. Be careful, he wanted to say. Of everyone.
But what purchase would such a warning have? He remembered too well the sharp little laugh she’d given yesterday at the idea of being kidnapped.
His conscience stirred. Uncomfortable, creaking sensation. When he found the viscount, he was going to show that piece of shit exactly what happened to men who betrayed their word.
Well, it all came down to the ring. Once he got it back, there would be no excuse for Gwen to linger in Paris. Back under his sisters’ aegis, she’d be fine.
She tipped her chin defiantly. “Mr. Carrega has offered to take me onto the town tonight.”
The Italian lad? Why did she bother to inform him of this? Did she want him to play the brother and forbid her to go? She really needed to make up her mind about that.
“I am considering accepting his invitation,” she added.
“How intelligent of you,” he said courteously.
Her jaw squared. “Nobody else has offered.”
“What a pity. Did you want somebody to offer? Perhaps you should hold up a placard in the lobby to advertise.”
Her sigh sounded impatient. “You have not offered.”
“I have other things to do with my time than squire around debutantes,” he said. “However, if you would muster the courage to ask me, I might just take you anyway. I imagine it would be amusing, watching your eyes pop like saucers.” Indeed, the experience would serve her well when it came to picking another groom. Strip away a bit of that naiveté, and she would not go into the next match so blindly.
Her eyes did not pop. They narrowed. “I’m not sure I want your company.”
“Then viva l’italia,” he said, and took a long drink of his wine. Of course, there was no way in hell that Elma would let her go with the Italian, and Gwen knew it.
“But yes,” she said. “If you’d take me out for a bit of fun, I would be grateful.”
He nodded and set down the glass, then looked around the room, this collection of various over-moneyed European riffraff eating and drinking themselves into a stupor. “This isn’t the right place to begin,” he said. “We’ll go to Pigalle, shall we?” Why not? Wasn’t as if he needed to sleep.
Her smile caught him off-guard. It made something curious and sweet stir in his chest. “Brilliant! Pigalle it is. But—” She leaned to whisper, and he caught the scent of her, the warm stir of air from her décolletage, and as simple as that, he was hard again. “Let’s tell Elma we’re goin
g to the boulevards instead.”
Gwen took Alex’s arm and stepped down from the carriage into a tremendous din—screams clashing with whistles and clanging bells, snatches of rollicking music, drunken choruses of song. A girl in bicycle bloomers went running past, inserting herself between two gentlemen, grabbing an elbow from each and then shrieking with laughter as they swung her off her feet. The air smelled of tobacco smoke and roasting chestnuts from the street vendors’ braziers. A lilac petal drifted past, pink as a rose in the livid glare.
“Wrong way,” Alex said mildly, and steered her by the elbow to look behind her.
Her jaw dropped.
Above her towered the red-thatched windmill of the Moulin Rouge, its great, electrified blades slowly revolving against a backdrop of low-hanging, scarlet-tinged clouds. Red bulbs flashed along the blades’ edges, and blinked in multilayered strings along the windows and doorways. The combined force of these lamps cast a crimson glare over the crowd passing beneath them, throbbing across the white cutaway jackets and spats of young men, drawing glitter from the stoles and beaded feathers of the women who loitered by the entrance.
“Good heavens,” she said. She felt as electrified as the lights.
“Gwen. Can you not think of a less pious exclamation?”
She slanted a glance at him. “Stars?”
He laughed. “Hopeless. Onward, then.” He proffered his elbow.
Strange that she should feel a moment of shyness as she took it. She stole a glance at his profile as he led her forward. The twins always insisted that he not wear a beard; they admired his jaw greatly, and Gwen supposed they weren’t wrong. It had a sharp, square definition, and made a pleasant frame for his long, mobile, very wicked mouth. But his looks were not what held her interest now. It was his agreement to take her here, although he clearly hadn’t wanted to—and perhaps, also, the stroke of his hand over hers at dinner—that seemed to have set off this fever in her. Every time she looked at him now, some hot, pulsing feeling seized her.
It felt curiously like jealousy.
He doesn’t try to be scandalous, Caroline had once said. He simply can’t be bothered with worrying about what’s proper.
Even now, navigating this chaos—two boys careened past, hooting; a bicycle swerved out of their way—he seemed so at ease. He was not pretending, she realized. His composedness operated at some muscular level. It made sense, in a way: a man who traveled the world must make a home of his body. Alex carried his certainty, his sense of belonging, in his bones.
Like a turtle carrying its shell, she thought. The silliness of the comparison made her swallow a giggle. Still, how comfortable it must be to live as he did! She had no idea how to acquire such confidence, but he made her realize that this was her aim.
They passed under the archway into a hot, cloistered hall done up in red velvet and brass gilding. A false redhead wearing a bored grimace sat inside a glass-boxed booth, collecting money. Alex surrendered two francs for broad cards. The music from the interior was very loud, a vigorous schottische punctuated by muffled cries and laughter.
Alex handed her a card, then stood looking down at her, a slight smile playing over his lips. “All right,” he said. “Chin up, Maudsley. Your fall from grace draws nigh.”
She laughed. “What fall? I intend to jump.”
Two steps onward, the corridor opened abruptly onto a grand dance floor encircled by small tables, flanked by tiers of boxed seating that rose up several stories. Electric chandeliers glared onto the crush of people filling the floor. The blasting music made the floor vibrate. The gleam of lurid red satin drew her attention, and then the sparkle of champagne flutes, the shine of black silk tall-hats, skipping flashes of light across paste jewelry at throats and wrists. At the left, on a stage festooned by scarlet silk drapery and long yellow banners, several women formed a dance line, twirling so madly that their ruffled skirts lifted over their legs, exposing ribboned socks that ended at their bare knees. The denizens of the orchestra pit beneath them were very gentlemanly, Gwen thought, not to look up.
They stepped a foot into the crowd, and a shattering explosion pierced the din, followed immediately by another. She startled before realizing that someone nearby must be throwing glasses against the wall.
“How fortunate,” she began, laughing, and then realized she would need to raise her voice considerably. “How fortunate,” she shouted, “that I practiced breaking things yesterday!”
Alex cupped his ear. “What’s that?” he yelled.
She took a deep breath. “I said how fortunate—”
His laughter brought her to a halt. He’d heard her perfectly. She stuck out her tongue at him.
He leaned down and put his mouth against her ear. The touch startled her to a dead stop. “Watch out,” he said, his voice low and startlingly quiet, his breath hot. “Someone’s going to take that as an invitation.”
Goose bumps broke out on her arms. It sounded less like a warning than a promise.
As he straightened, a shiver moved through her. She touched her tingling ear and looked blankly away—and then blinked and peered harder at the stage. One by one, each of the dancers gave a great whoop, threw up her arms, and—Gwen went on tiptoes to confirm it—slid straight down to the floor, one leg stretched flat before her, the other extended behind.
Oh, no. If that was what the cancan required, she would not be learning it.
Without warning, Alex yanked her into his body. A high-kicking dancer pranced past, her slippered foot sailing past Gwen’s ear. “What a dangerous dance,” Gwen said in bewilderment. “Someone will lose an eye!”
He sputtered out a laugh, then nodded and yelled, “Outside, then, before we’re blinded by chorus girls.”
She started to protest, and then realized he did not mean for them to leave; he was leading her past the bandstand, toward a set of doors that opened onto a garden.
She took a grateful breath as they stepped into the warm night air. Strings of colored lanterns illuminated the grounds, and as a mild breeze blew over her, it loosed the sound of a thousand tiny bells, shivering and silvery, strung from the lime trees at the garden’s edge. She took a step, and then stopped dead, too startled even to squeak: a monkey had just raced past her skirts.
“They’re tame,” Alex said. “But I wouldn’t try to pet one.”
She gave him an astonished look—then did a double take. “There is an elephant behind you,” she whispered. The giant stucco beast towered over the small stage to its right. Save for its height—it might have outmatched a three-story building—it looked startlingly lifelike, its hide painted in mottled shades of gray, its great, drooping wrinkles scored by the hand of a very talented sculptor.
“Yes,” he whispered back. “A very overburdened elephant, with an orchestra in his rib cage and an Egyptian dancer in his belly. Alas, ladies are not allowed inside.” The flash of his white teeth lent this piece of information a pleasurable air of scandal.
“How unjust,” she murmured. At the front feet of the elephant, a fortune-teller was cooing destinies. Tucked under his tail was a refreshment stand. Nearby, a small queue was forming to play a machine made of painted wooden dials. A young lady pulled the lever on the side of the box; the wooden wheels spun round, coming to rest on various images: an apple, a pig, a tree. The result disappointed the audience, who hissed sympathetically.
“Beer?” Alex asked.
She nodded mutely.
They procured two glasses of Allsopp from the stand, but when they turned away, a freckled girl in a blue gown that barely covered her breasts bounded up and caught hold of Alex’s sleeve. She spoke in a colloquial patter that Gwen could not follow, and he replied at an unintelligible clip, sounding polite but amused. From the vehement shake of her curling black head and the tug she gave to his cuff, the girl disagreed. But she was having trouble maintaining her pout; it continually broke into a smile.
He glanced at Gwen, one brow lifting apologetically, and then step
ped sharply free of the girl’s grasp. The girl spared her a glare before whirling away and stalking back into the ballroom.
“What did she want?” Gwen asked.
His lips canted as he handed her a glass. “Company.”
“Oh.” To her irritation, she felt a blush heat her face. “But—she knew I was with you!”
“I don’t think that bothered her,” he said, laughing.
It took a moment to follow the implication of this statement. Then, as she followed him to a nearby table, her hand flew to her mouth. No! Surely she was misunderstanding him!
To hide her shocked expression, she pretended a close interest in the vase of orange tulips sitting atop the tablecloth. Such a strangely domestic appointment amidst this bohemian scene. Her eyes rose again to the spectacle of the elephant, from which spilled a peculiar, foreign melody. A few couples were twirling to the song on the small, canopied dance floor.
A curious amazement washed over her. I am doing this. I am drinking beer at a Parisian pleasure club. And yes, it was Alex who had pressed a bock upon her and was now sitting at her side, watching her with evident curiosity but no visible judgment whatsoever.
Her disbelief shifted into something giddier. How generous of him to take her at her word—to respect her desire for adventure despite his obvious skepticism at dinner! She found herself smiling up at him, utterly afire with gratitude. “Have you come here often, then?”
He shook his head slightly. His eyes fell to her mouth briefly before he looked back to the dancers. “Never, in fact.”
“How do you know it so well, then?”
His laughter seemed to brush against her skin, a tangible thing that made her stomach contract. He smiled at her, and it was a gypsy’s smile, taunting her for the staidness of her own small world. “They’re all very much the same, Gwen. The Bal Bullier, the Moulin, the Pere Chateau . . .”
“Well, thank you for agreeing to escort me,” she said. “I know you didn’t wish to do so. All this must be very routine and boring for you.”
He made an impatient noise. “If you mean to be wicked, here’s my first piece of advice: never fish for compliments by demeaning yourself. Assume there is no place I’d rather be than by your side.”