Wicked Becomes You

  Alex sensed some movement from Gwen. Stay still, he willed her. He could not risk looking to her to telegraph the message. He did not want to lead Barrington’s attention back to her. “I’m no emissary of my brother,” he said. Christ. How pathetic that he’d not remembered this truth before bringing Gwen along. He’d risked her, here, thinking himself in aid of his brother, when his brother was—what? The victim of a swindle? Common blackmail? What the hell was going on here? How had Barrington convinced him to part with the lands?

  “Then explain yourself,” said Barrington. “Or shall I ask the lady to explain?”

  Thoughts of Gerry evaporated. “She knows nothing.” He watched Barrington intently. The man was nervous. The corners of his mouth were twitching. Earlier, Alex had mistaken that tic for a very irritating smile. “And I discuss nothing with a gun trained on me.”

  “Forgive my approach,” the other man said dryly. “Your deception does not inspire politesse. Although why I bother, I don’t know. Indeed, why do I bother? Weston is a gutless sack. If he hired you to play the man in his stead—well, I am sorry for you. Would that you had stuck to your own game; I can’t afford distractions right now.”

  Instinct was everything. Alex could sense, in the minute shading of the man’s voice, the slightest shift in his posture, that he had made a decision, and it boded no good for anyone. “All right,” he said quietly, intention coiling through him. One single kick—

  “You’re an ass,” Gwen burst out, and smashed a pot onto Barrington’s head.

  Alex sprang. Barrington staggered a pace and backhanded Gwen.

  She fell into the desk, and some low, animalistic, unfamiliar noise ripped from Alex’s throat as he collided with Barrington and took them both to the ground. He seized the man’s wrist and pinned it, evading a knee to his balls on the way. Barrington’s limbs thrashed like an eel’s, but he had no practice in sparring. His grip around the pistol was white-knuckled. If Alex slammed his hand into the floor, if the gun fired, guards would come running. He placed his right knee on the man’s testicles, his left knee on the man’s left arm, and his left hand—yes, by God, you son of a bitch—on the man’s throat, squeezing, squeezing, until Barrington’s eyes rolled back in his head and his body went slack.

  Take the gun. Relatch the safety. Gwen, by the desk. Face warm. No visible cuts.

  Lashes fluttered.

  Alex took a long, shuddering breath. Hand shaking, he cupped her cheek. Jesus God he had come here for goddamned Gerry’s sake and she’d ended up crumpled on the floor. He was going to put a gun to his brother’s head. “Gwen,” he repeated, not recognizing his voice; hoarse, fit only for a thread of sound.

  Her eyes came fully open. They rolled immediately to the left. Toward Barrington.

  “Forget him.” He helped her into a sitting position. “Look toward the ocean,” he said.

  “I’m fine,” she whispered.

  “The view is lovely,” he said, and whipped free the cords that tied the curtains away from the window pane.

  She cleared her throat. “Alex, the documents—”

  “Is the moon full?” he asked. Efficiently he tied Barrington’s wrists together. “I think we were due for a full moon tonight.”

  She did not reply. He watched his hands looping the rope over Barrington’s ankles. No blood spilled, but it put him in mind of butchery all the same. He would have hog-tied and gutted this man gladly, whatever Gerry had done to invite this. The kosher style—strung from the heels to slowly bleed out.

  His hands began to shake again.

  “Yes, it’s a full moon. Are you all right?”

  It took a moment for these words to penetrate. “Brilliant,” he said.

  “Only that it seems an odd time for small talk, you know.”

  He fitted the second cord between the man’s teeth, coiling it around Barrington’s skull twice, then round his neck once, before running it behind his back, drawing the loops of wrist and ankles tight. Barrington wasn’t going anywhere until someone came and found him. If he struggled, he would choke himself.

  Let him struggle. Alex dragged him behind the screen for added concealment.

  He turned back on a deep breath, preparing to pick Gwen up—his arms already focused on the feel of her, the reassurance of having her completely within his purview. Then he would be able to think again. This rage was so visceral that it numbed one. It lifted the hairs on his neck.

  But Gwen was already on her feet, industriously stuffing her reticule with documents. Her quick glance upward ascertained that he was through with Barrington. She held up the reticule.

  “These are maps,” she said. “This might explain it.”

  He stared at her. “I’m going to carry you out of here,” he said.

  She tipped her head, and then, as if only now remembering, touched her cheek where Barrington had hit her. “It’s only my face,” she said. “I can walk.”

  “I’m going to carry you,” he repeated.

  “But these maps, Alex—”

  “Fuck the maps,” he said.

  Her eyes widened. She studied him a moment, and then stuck the reticule under her arm. “All right,” she said, and stepped toward him. “I suppose I do feel a bit faint.”

  They were halfway down the stairs when Gwen felt Alex’s grip tighten. She lifted her head and spied a guard approaching them. Beneath the shadow cast by the brim of his bowler hat, the leer on his lips bespoke his misapprehension of Alex’s embrace.

  “Put me down,” she whispered after the guard had passed them. He had turned in the direction of Barrington’s private wing.

  “Just lie back,” Alex said, and his tone was so unaccustomedly harsh that she recoiled. And was pinned, by one large and bullying hand, against his chest, where this hand kept her firmly.

  “But if he finds Barrington—”

  “We’ll go directly to the stables,” he said under his breath. “Tell the lad to take us to Monte Carlo.”

  He carried her through the lobby as if she weighed nothing. The butler opened the door with no remark, clearly accustomed to odd goings-on. Down the short flight of stairs. Now gravel crunched beneath Alex’s footsteps as he walked the path around the house. The moon hung overhead in a star-studded sky so black that it looked depthless.

  She closed her eyes. From the distance came the dull crash of the tide against the cliffs and the babble of guests somewhere nearer by. The sun had taken its warmth with it; the deep breath she took held a bite more familiar to her in autumn, and the scent of the pepper trees, and Alex: starch from his shirtsleeves, the tang of his sweat. He was a warm, solid presence, the strength in him undeniable. She had the sense of great struggles being waged inside him, but it seemed clear that questions were not going to unlock his tongue. All he wanted from her was to lie still in his grip.

  Through her free-floating thoughts, this last observation refused to pass. It stopped squarely at the forefront of her brain. He was gripping her so tightly that she could hardly move. This was what he wanted.

  Amazement made her jerk. His hand tightened briefly, as if in warning.

  She caught her breath. She felt as though some soundless, enclosing bubble had burst abruptly, baring her senses to a new and altered and far more vibrant scene. His embrace was fierce, unyielding, but also comfortable—more than comfortable. His arms were strong and adept and he wanted them around her.

  Heavens, she must be the shallowest woman in the world. She should find no joy in this moment. As adventures went, tonight was an awful and violent entertainment. If the guard found Barrington before they managed to leave the grounds . . .

  “All right,” he said quietly, and set her on her feet. “The Monte Carlo party is running late, it seems. Our good fortune.” Taking her hand, he led her around the corner.

  A handful of guests in their evening finery stood under the portico, waiting to board Barrington’s carriage. Francesca Rizzardi spotted them immediately. “To the casino?” she called. r />
  “Where else?” Alex sounded suddenly mischievous, playful, eager for a night of good fun.

  “Then you’ve arrived just in time!” Signora Rizzardi laughed. “But we’ll have to crush in like sardines!”

  “Oh, I’ve no objection to it.” Alex flashed the lady a suggestive smile. “Unless . . .” He turned to Gwen, his mouth quirked, his brow lifted.

  She forced her own lips into a smile. “Darling,” she said, and laid a hand on his arm. “So long as I’m crushed into you, I can think of no better way to travel.”

  It came out credibly, probably because it wasn’t a lie.

  Alex kept his eyes on the house until the carriage turned onto the coast road, which sloped downward past an embankment that blocked his view. He was watching for signs of alarm—as if alarm would make itself so visible. Hell. What did he imagine? An explosion of lights? The sudden howling of dogs? Barrington was not so well equipped. He traveled well-guarded but clearly he had little experience of hostile negotiations. Only a fool invited into his house a man whom he knew to be deceiving him.

  Barrington was not the only fool here.

  Alex took a long breath. This urge to violence was new to him. It made his muscles jump at odd intervals. He knew how to inflict pain, but until now he’d not understood the possible pleasure in it.

  So casually he’d decided to include Gwen in this idiocy. Accepting the invitation to Côte Bleue had seemed harmless. Such an economical way to put Gerard’s matter to rest. In his own mind, profit and cost had been the key considerations. And for Gwen? It would be a lark, a bit of fun, an escapade: such had been the terms in which he’d justified how she might profit by it. Profit. Always profit. Profit and entertainment; money and fun. Such bloodless words—bloodless, and boundless, too. Let the fun never end. May the profits never cease. Money knows no language. Let the world be your oyster. Go, go, go. Run. It had hurt to run as a boy but it never hurt now; he tested himself regularly.

  He could have gotten her killed. Gwen’s blood on his hands.

  Try to run from that.

  Gwen stirred at his side. Her hand settled on his arm, the lightest touch, recalling him to his role. He turned a bland smile onto the company. As the signora had predicted, they had piled in as closely and carelessly as children into a tree house, and about as cheerfully, besides. On the opposite bench, Francesca Rizzardi perched on her husband’s lap, gasping and exclaiming in Italian as every bump in the road threatened to unseat her. Between bumps, she was reading aloud from a newspaper her husband held open for her, some chronicle of doings about Monte Carlo: Lord This had left on the green cloth a total of fifteen thousand dollars, but vowed to have it back within the week; Sir That had suffered similar losses, then made an excellent run at trente et quarante, and now sailed onward to Lazlo forty thousand in the black.

  Beside the Rizzardis, Madame D’Argent, a dark-eyed and suspiciously youthful widow, cuddled the wall with a secret smile. Perhaps she knew these news items were nonsense—tales that the casino paid its mouthpieces to publish.

  A half hour’s journey lay before them on smooth, new roads. They might well arrive at the casino before Barrington’s men discovered their master. Then the task would be to discover a clever place to hide until morning, when the trains would start running again.

  He hadn’t a cent on him and he doubted Gwen did, either. Their letters of credit, made out in their true names, were hidden in their room. And one did not carry coins at a house party without raising eyebrows.

  Fleeing in the night like hares from hounds. Her face would be bruising, soon. The only place I’d have a use for you is in bed. He was a fool.

  Gwen gave a very convincing giggle—a reply to some joke that Alex had missed. Don’t laugh, he wanted to tell her. She had thrown her right leg atop his left knee upon boarding. She played her role beautifully, and he did not want her next to him. He wanted her as far away from him as possible. The opposite side of the earth. Be safe. Why the hell had she come with him? She had not one lick of sense in her head.

  Into Alex’s right side pressed the soft gut of a Spanish gentleman—de Cruz was his name. Shifting on the bench, Alex felt a telltale bulge in the inside pocket of the man’s jacket. “Look there,” he said, putting his finger to the window by de Cruz’s face. “Glorious moon.”

  De Cruz looked, surrendering a twenty-franc coin for the privilege.

  “It is so amusing,” Signora Rizzardi was opining, “to see the truth of the casino, as compared to those dreadful little notices that the churchmen post at Nice.” She had an elegant bone structure that lent her hazel eyes a faint slant; she put this slant to work in the teasing look she cast Alex. He kissed his fingertips in reply. Mechanical gesture. She fluttered her lashes. “Have you ever read those notices, Mr. de Grey? No? Oh, they are awful; I cannot bear to describe them!”

  “Please do,” Gwen said. Her tone was bright; nobody else would notice the rigidly erect posture of her spine, the tension in her shoulders. She had worn a backboard for six years. Whenever she felt uncertain, small or threatened or afraid, her posture was impossibly, painfully perfect. These things he knew about her—things which Gwen did not even suspect he knew—were innumerable. For a man that had understood her so little, Richard had loved her fiercely and talked of her often. And Alex had encouraged him—subtly, continuously. Over the years, what hadn’t he wanted to know?

  “No, no, Miss Goodrick! And I recommend you do not look for them. Oh . . . very well. They are lists of recent suicides, men supposedly broken at Monte Carlo’s tables, but you mustn’t believe half of the names. These priests make up the tales to scare people.”

  “They do?” Gwen pressed her fingertips to her lips with the appropriate show of shock. She is learning not to gape: so Richard had said. Such are the lessons a lady must learn in lieu of Latin. Her governess warns her she will swallow flies by accident.

  Why had he collected these pieces of information? For years, he had collected them; he had tried again and again to force the fragments safely into a picture, the pastel debutante, the standard drawing-room watercolor. But he had never managed to fit them together. And so he had carried them as so many souvenirs—as warnings, as reminders, of how easy it would be, if he did not take care, to fall into the comfortable, easy catatonia inhabited by unimaginative men. And then at some point the souvenirs had shifted in his hands and come to show him the life he might have had, had he been the sort of man she required. But he’d not been able to be that man; he had not wanted to become that sort of man; and this was the certainty that had pulled him back aboard ship—the mantra to which he had listened, as he had watched Southampton retreat, again, for another six months, another season, another year.

  “Perhaps they are lies,” the Spaniard said to Francesca Rizzardi. “But I think there must be some truth to these lists, as well.”

  “Indeed? But no,” the signora said. “How would such indigents gain entrance to Monte Carlo without the card of admission?”

  Gwen sat next to him right now, a warm, breathing presence, her bravery unflagging, as obvious and evident as the smile she wore. And it was a strange and almost unconquerable need in him, like the need to draw air into his lungs, to pull her closer. To hold her still. But he was always the one to leave, because there seemed to be no other choice. To stay would be to lose himself.

  His mind turned again to the coast, the receding shoreline. Had she been harmed tonight, no distance ever would have taken him far enough away to find himself again.

  “Perhaps they are not indigents to start,” said de Cruz. “Play-fever is real, you know. I have seen it. It can empty the deepest of pockets.”

  “Poor souls,” Gwen murmured.

  “A weak mind will break beneath any pressure,” the signora retorted. “I cannot spare sympathy for those who sabotage themselves.”

  “True, true,” the Spaniard said. “But I truly believe they are not in their own control. Men in the grips of the fever will gladly
risk what they can ill afford to lose.”

  Of course, Alex thought. They risked what they could not lose because they thought that they would profit by that risk.

  When she had fallen tonight something in him had broken—the frame in which he’d kept the pieces of her, perhaps. She had long since shattered the picture he’d tried to build from them.

  No profit was worth the risk of losing her again.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Gwen had heard a great deal about Monte Carlo’s famous gardens—the long emerald lawns dotted with peacocks, the fountains and footpaths to benches poised at scenic vistas over the ocean. She half expected that she and Alex would flee through them as soon as the carriage came to a stop, but instead he took her hand and led her up the broad white staircase into the casino proper, allowing her only a brief impression of flowering mimosa and the whispering of palm leaves stirred by the cool night air.

  In the lobby, a grand marble affair supported by Grecian pillars and run round by a balcony full of merrymakers, they paused to check their hats and gloves. A number of people milled in the lobby, speaking in hushed tones; underneath their voices ran the murmur of distant music. Monte Carlo. She felt dazed. Why were they lingering here? Above, at either end of the balcony, were great murals of the sunrise over a white-walled town—Monaco, she would guess.

  After Alex handed over his hat, he drew her a step apart from the others, reaching up to cup her face as though to caress her. When he leaned near, he murmured, “Have you any money?”

  Alarm jolted through her. “No,” she whispered. He hadn’t any, either?

  He nodded. “Stay near to me, then. I’ll play for ten minutes. The winnings should take us as far as Nice for the night.”