Wicked Becomes You (10 page)

His tongue followed his teeth. It traced a hot path along the seam of her mouth. Her stomach fell away. She shut her eyes.
Oh
. He was tasting her, his lips molding hers lightly, persuasively. She cupped his cheek and found it hot, slightly rough beneath the stroke of her thumb. His hand pressed her waist, drawing her into his body, his chest hot against hers; she drew a startled breath and his tongue slipped inside her mouth.

Strange parts of her startled awake—her nape, her belly, the place between her legs. He tasted of Aunt Elma’s tea; she would never drink a cup so casually again. Her fingers found the soft abundance of his hair, winding into it and tightening. Such things she could do, now that she’d stopped worrying! She leaned against him, giving him all her weight, so much larger he was. On her toes, she rubbed against him. He made some muffled sound, and his mouth slipped to her neck. The light scrape of his teeth was followed by a soft, hot sucking; she felt herself dissolving like sugar into tea.

He turned her by the waist, his hands urging her downward. A seat cushion pressed against her bottom. Goodness, he was . . . kneeling down over her, his hands braced on either side of the chair, his mouth moving up her neck, returning now to her mouth. Her languor took a twist into something sharper and more demanding; she tightened her grip on him and opened her mouth again, hoping, perhaps, that his tongue—

He pulled out of her reach so abruptly that her open hands lingered in the air a moment before falling to her lap.

“There,” he said curtly. “That should satisfy your curiosity.”

Dazed, she peered up at him. The stony set of his jaw puzzled her. He’d enjoyed the kiss, hadn’t he? His chest was rising and falling rather rapidly. In all the novels she’d read, that was the hallmark of passion, and her own shortened breath seemed to confirm it.

Maybe he felt as though he’d betrayed her brother. Yes, that made sense. “I’m sorry,” she said hesitantly. “I baited you, I admit it. Surely Richard will know this was my fault.”

For a moment, he said nothing. And then, on a fierce exhalation, he said through his teeth, “Go back to
bed
, Gwen. You’re out of your cheery little mind.”

Turning on his heel, he strode for the door and slammed out.

Goodness! She’d never seen Alex lose his temper before.

Then again,
she
had never kissed a rake.

A smile formed under her hand. “O brave new world,” she murmured, and came to her feet. With or without companionship, she had a ticket to book for Paris.

Somebody in the corner laughed. “
Fais gaffe à toi!
” Watch yourself.

In all fairness, Alex thought, Bruneau had solid cause for complaint. They’d been circling each other for a good three minutes, right arms braced over their chests, elbows angled out to create a shield of muscle and bone. In proper form, Bruneau held his other arm high behind his head, aiding his balance as he kept his weight on his back foot in preparation to kick. But his arm was beginning to shake. Apparently he was not accustomed to opponents who proved loath to engage.

Then again, few men who practiced savate
loathed fighting as much as Alex did.

He took a deep breath of the hot, sweat-soaked air in the
salle d’armes
. When in Paris, he never permitted himself to miss the opportunity to train here. Had never done it in this state, though. Five days now, and not more than ten hours’ rest between them. He knew whom to blame.

He broke form, offering Bruneau a deliberate invitation.

Bruneau made an abortive lunge. It was transparently a ploy, and Alex did not flinch.

“Bloody
boy
,” the man growled in gutter French. “I do not come to play!”

He might have saved his breath; Alex hadn’t responded to a taunt since his first year at Rugby. That year, Richard’s background had made him, and any of his friends, a target for bullies. Richard had fought like a wildcat and raged against Alex’s reserve.
Why don’t you fight back? Didn’t your brother teach you? They say he could thrash George Steadman himself!

In reply, Alex had offered shrugs. Explaining had felt too complicated. He’d not known, then, how to fight without being angry—and the anger and the physical exertion combined would have defeated his lungs before the older boys could even raise a hand to him. Between wheezing and passing out, or learning to endure the pain, he’d chosen the latter.

The second year, of course, things had changed.

Alex shifted direction, circling counterclockwise now. The way one fought revealed one’s character, and yesterday morning, he’d seen Bruneau destroy three men in record time. The man was hot-tempered, confident, and impatient—not to fight, but to win. Victory was his sole purpose. In that regard, he was not dissimilar from Alex. If one was able to win, there was no point in fighting to lose.

The difference, then, lay in their approaches. For Bruneau, the effort of securing victory seemed like an irritating delay. Alex, on the other hand, was inclined to discount a victory that did not require a bit of hard work. One fought to prove oneself to one’s opponent, and a fight too quickly concluded often left the defeated party confused about the reasons for his defeat. He might be inclined to blame himself rather than to give credit solely to the man who had beaten him.

Alex sprang forward, just to see Bruneau jump. Recovering, Bruneau struck out his foot, but Alex had already skipped backward.

“Pathetic,” Bruneau sneered.

“Mm.” The other men in the
salle
had withdrawn to the walls to watch now, and their murmurs formed a distant, irrelevant background to the tremendous thunder of his heart. He was not going to lose this match. Bruneau had begun his training while still a boy, testing himself in the roughest lanes of the Latin Quarter; he also stood an inch taller, and savate
favored the long-limbed.

Alex had his own advantage, however. He bloody
loathed
fighting. Nine years he had been coming to this studio, and each time, when he crossed the threshold, he still fought the urge to vomit, just as he had that first year at Rugby whenever he’d seen Reginald Milton coming round the corner. Nothing like fear to sharpen a man’s reflexes. For useful effect, even anger could not rival it.

“Are you a coward?” Bruneau sneered.

Alex grinned. “Yes,” he said.

This remark snapped Bruneau’s patience. He sprang forward. Alex dodged the foot flashing past his head and spun to return the kick. Bruneau blocked it with a blow to his shin. As Alex fell back, grunting, the man whirled. His reverse kick smashed into Alex’s chest.

More sleep would have helped, here.
Damn you, Gwen.

He tried to shove her from his mind. For a week now, her memory had proved harder to shake than an African parasite—one of those worms, say, that rendered men blind.

He let the impact carry him, staggering a pace before he managed to regain his balance. As he pivoted, he found Bruneau’s fist heading toward his face. Mistake. Alex blocked the punch and slammed his elbow into Bruneau’s throat. The man lurched backward, wheezing.

Wouldn’t Gerry be proud. He always insisted that when it came to fists, Englishmen knew no rivals.

Bruneau recovered more quickly than the average giant. As he threw out his rear foot, Alex took a backward leap, saving his kneecap but sacrificing his balance. Here, as always in moments where defeat became a distinct possibility, he experienced a momentary clarity, an accord between body and mind that seemed to stop time itself. No choice but to fall. Didn’t mean he was down for good. He surrendered to gravity but managed to stagger just long enough for Bruneau to get the idea and come after him. Then he let himself plummet like a stone. His palms slammed into the floor.

Bruneau’s comprehension flashed across his bulbous face a split second before Alex swept out his foot and hooked the man’s ankles. The Parisian toppled backward. His head cracked against the floor.

For some curious reason, Parisians always assumed that Englishmen didn’t know that trick.

Alex shoved himself to his feet. God above, he felt good. It was a far finer start to the morning than coffee. He made a bow to acknowledge the applause, then stepped up to Bruneau, who was blinking muzzily at the ceiling. “All right?” he asked.

The man sat up, shook his head, then offered Alex a bleary smile. “You try that again,” he said, “and I will be waiting for it.”

“Tomorrow, then?” He seized Bruneau’s hand and hauled him to his feet.
Or perhaps now
, he almost added, for all at once, as adrenaline ebbed, an awareness of the larger world pressed in on him again: the salon with its swords strapped into crosses against the wall; the clatter of carts and the screams of street vendors filtering in through the single-paned windows; the irritating telegram from Belinda that had been delivered to his hotel suite this morning.

Instead, she had popped up in Paris, a turn of events that unleashed some irrational foreboding in him.
Foreboding
. It was the lowest and most pathetic order of worry, based on nothing more solid than a twinge in the gut. A cousin to indigestion. But there was no other word for the feeling encroaching upon him. Rightly Gwen belonged to the same lot of obligations that included his sisters and nieces—an easily managed group, requiring only gifts at the holidays, notes on birthdays, and the occasional postcard (preferably something with a horse or kitten: so Caroline’s littlest had recently informed him). She should not be in Paris.
He
should not be in Paris. He did not need to be checking on her, or playing his brother’s keeper. If Gerard had sold the lands to Rollo Barrington, let Rollo Barrington have his joy of them. Where Alex needed to be was in Lima, uncovering the plans that Monsanto was hatching.

But no. He was half a world away, tracking down a man named
Rollo
, for God’s sake, and plagued by a bunch of lunatics in the process. Gerry refused to account for his behavior. Nothing in Pennington’s background suggested that he could
afford
to flee such a sum of money. And Gwen—well, Jesus Christ. If she thought he kissed
about as well
as Trent, she’d suffered a serious blow to the brain, somewhere.

Bruneau delivered the obligatory slap to his back. (And now Gwen had him
daydreaming
, Alex realized with disgust.) Dutifully, he pounded the man in return. The Frenchman retreated a pace and uttered some respectful remark.

Properly it fell now to Alex to suggest a drink at the bar across the street, where they would trade stories of good fights and unfair opponents, and exchange jibes that would add spice to their rematch tomorrow. He would have been glad to buy a round—except, God damn it, he now had to track down not only Barrington but also one naïve heiress and her featherbrained chaperone.

He cursed the invention of the telegram.

All the life in the world teemed on the boulevards, jostling beneath tree limbs laden with lilacs. On the green benches that lined the pavement, dandies lounged in white coats with fur collars, their long mustaches framing cigarettes that they smoked with frowning care. Smartly dressed ladies hopped fearlessly from omnibuses, and servants shuffled past with their various charges—nannies escorting little boys in velvet knickerbockers and cuffs of Belgian lace; maids dragged by tonsured poodles, which lunged at the olive peddlers and made the girls selling fresh carnations shriek and jump away. Every lamppost in view was plastered with colorful playbills, and the boy at the newspaper kiosk cried the headlines continuously, with a voice long since grown hoarse.

Gwen sat beneath the striped awning of a charming little café, sipping a glass of wine and marveling. Twice before she had visited Paris, but she remembered none of this. Previously, her mornings had been swallowed by the dark corridors of the Louvre, her afternoons suffocated in the satin boudoirs of Laferriàre, Redferns, and Worth. Yesterday Elma had insisted they waste the evening in some dark little box at the Opera. But the truth of Paris was not to be found indoors. It was
here
, parading by for her enjoyment as the gentleman at the next table drank his curaçao and spared her not so much as a single look. The waiter had offered her absinthe, even!

She felt enormously pleased with herself. Her Baedeker’s guide decreed that the cafés on the south side of the boulevards were suitable for ladies, but the author certainly hadn’t assumed that she would be drinking her coffee
unchaperoned.

Smiling, she looked back to the newspaper spread open before her.
Galignani’s Messenger
printed a daily list of English newcomers to Paris; on Fridays, the list expanded to include notable departures to other spots on the Continent. A scan yielded no sign of Thomas’s name. He was probably still here, then. But where he might be skulking remained a mystery. Her concierge at the Grand Hôtel du Louvre had made discreet inquiries on her behalf, so she knew that he was not lodged there, nor at the Maurice, the Brighton, the Rivoli, or the Saint James and Albany. He had not even stopped in for a chop at Richard-Lucas. For an Englishman, he was proving remarkably unpredictable.

“Enjoying yourself?”

She twisted around from the waist, heart thumping. What on
earth
? “Alex!”

“None other,” he said. He made an excellent impression of a well-heeled Parisian: gray suit, gray waistcoat, gray felt hat, gray suede gloves—even a gray necktie, appropriately loosened in the manner of the locals. He looked expensive and sophisticated and, thanks to the dark circles beneath his eyes, utterly debauched to boot: a man who enjoyed his nights as thoroughly as his days.

He gestured toward the empty chair opposite her. She nodded. What else was she to do?

As he sat down, the cramped quarters forced his knee into her skirts. He gave her a startlingly broad smile. Perhaps his temperament changed with the country, just like his wardrobe. She tried to look away from his throat, but the sight drew her back again. Since her arrival to Paris yesterday, she’d witnessed a hundred gentlemen with ties thus draped. But on Alex, the effect was . . . startling. As if he’d been interrupted while undressing.

It occurred to her that the last time she had seen him, he’d just finished kissing her with expert skill. She felt her face warm.

He threw one long leg over the other and glanced around, utterly at ease, as though he had not just ambushed her in a foreign country. She held very still, overly conscious of her breathing, of the way her fingers itched to fidget. His cheekbones had a dramatic slope to them.

Loose ladies probably had fever dreams about his lips.

Those lips showed no signs of moving in speech.

“What are you
doing
here?” she burst out.

He lifted one brow as he looked back to her. “What a disingenuous question. I told you I was coming to Paris.” The smile that curved his mouth seemed to weigh a variety of improper possibilities. “Perhaps I should ask if you were following me.”

“What a silly question that would be,” she said irritably, “as I had
also
already expressed my intention to come here during our last conversation.”

His eyes narrowed. “I believe I stated mine first.”

“Yes, but
my
idea was born separately. It had nothing at all to do with you.”

“You—” He ran a hand over his face and muttered something beneath his breath which she could not make out. Then he sat back in the chair and pasted on a lazy smile. “Ah, what does it matter. Paris is big enough for the both of us.”

“Then why are you here at my café?”

A muscle ticked briefly in his jaw. “An excellent question,” he said finally. “My sisters have no faith in your chaperone, and apparently their suspicions are correct. She is napping beneath cucumber slices while you are wandering about collecting wine carafes.”

“So there’s my answer,” Gwen said triumphantly. “You found the note I left her.”

The corner of his mouth lifted, but it did not appear to be a sign of good humor. “Yes,” he said. “I found the note.”

“Well, I hope you haven’t come to harass me back to London. I believe I made my opinion very clear with regard to that ridiculous plan on being married by autumn.”

“Yes,” he said. “I have no intentions of inflicting you on anyone, Miss Maudsley. I only wish my sisters felt the same. I’ve come to Paris strictly on a holiday.” As if to illustrate this, he tipped his face up to the sun. A breeze swept over the table, and he closed his eyes and slid lower in his chair, stretching out like some giant, basking house cat.

“Hmm,” she said, wanting him to take note of her skepticism. To her knowledge, Alex had never gone anywhere for a motive as profitless as holidaying.

But his lashes did not so much as flicker at the sound. He covered a yawn with his palm. Perhaps he was telling the truth, then. Certainly she’d never seen him look so . . . carefree.

Indeed, this unusual repose freed her, for once, to look as closely as she liked at him. She decided that his lower lip should give her hope. It looked full enough to pull off a good pout—far too sensitive to belong to a bully.

Despite herself, she leaned forward. Really, his mouth was remarkable. Were men supposed to have such lips? They were a shade darker than his tanned skin, the upper a fraction longer than the lower, but not quite as full. The edges were so precisely defined that she could have traced them, given rice paper and a pen.

He spoke without opening his eyes, his sleepy voice giving her a dreadful start. “Have you found the viscount?”

She jerked back in her seat. “Not yet.”

His eyes opened directly on hers. “I told you I would find him for you. Do you think me incapable?”

Strange that she did not recall being unnerved by his eyes in the past. But they were a startling light blue and seemed to catch her like a fist around the throat. “I don’t doubt your skill,” she said. “And I know my brother would have appreciated your offer. But as I said, I have come to Paris for a variety of purposes, one of which is to make known to the viscount my
immense
distaste for his actions.” She paused. “I
had
written a letter about it, but somebody rudely intercepted it and forbade me to mail it.”

“Forbade you?” He looked amused. “Do you always listen to what others tell you to do? Seems rather
conventional
, to me.”

“I am a fledgling free spirit,” she said with a shrug. “My wings are still sprouting. But you’re quite right; I shall endeavor to ignore you
completely
in the future.” When he laughed, she added, “Even if you do persist in following me about in this brotherly mode.”

He laughed and sat up. “Brotherly?
Brotherly?
What lies have my sisters been telling you? I believe the last time I was properly
brotherly
, it was 1876, and Belinda had just skinned her knee.” The corner of his mouth lifted. “Do you need me to inspect your knees, Miss Maudsley?”

She lifted her chin. “My knees are quite fine.”

“Ah, good to know.” He laid his index finger on the carafe of burgundy sitting by her glass, drawing an idle path through the collected condensation. “One hopes they’ll remain so,” he said, “for I suspect you have very pretty knees, and running off can be dangerous. One tends to slip.”

She watched his hands. His fingers were long and elegant, well suited to musical instruments; she had seen them stroke piano keys with exquisite finesse. Apparently they could just as easily pummel a man until his jaw broke—or so people liked to whisper, when neither he nor the unfortunate Mr. Reginald Milton were in the room. As for Lady Milton, Reginald’s mother, she thought Alex the devil incarnate. But probably even she would admire his hands, so long as she did not know to whom they attached.

Gwen looked to her own fingers, knotted together limply in her lap. They were stubby, the hands of a washerwoman, not even figuratively: her paternal grandmother had been a scullery maid at an estate of the Roland family. She did not advertise this fact when supping with Baron and Lady Roland, of course.

The next time she saw them, perhaps she
would
mention it. “I do not ‘run off,’” she said firmly. “I am twenty-three years of age, you know. I suppose you could say that I have the right to simply
go
—when and wherever I please.”

“Admirable philosophy,” he murmured. His nail tapped the carafe. “You may want to try it sober, at first.”

She frowned. He glanced past her and jerked his chin. This somehow managed to draw the approach of the waiter, a skinny lad who wore his sandy hair parted horizontally, brushed forward over a set of enormous, winglike ears.

Alex’s request for
une bock
seemed to delight him. “Boum!” he cried, and blew away again.

Gwen scowled. Her order had not merited such enthusiasm
.

“Have you had a falling out with Mrs. Beecham?” Alex asked idly.

She looked at him blankly. “What? Of course not. Only last night we went to the Opera to see a show.” She grimaced. “Rather tragic, in fact.”

“Grim play, was it?”

“Oh, not at all. But neither she nor I could make sense of the French—this colloquial variety is dreadfully confusing—and then we ran out of small change for all the pourboires. It wasn’t our fault at all! The attendants in the cloakroom insisted on installing us in the seats with these rickety little footstools that used up all our coins. So when the ouvreuse came around to sell a playbill, we tried to deny her. Only apparently she was not asking a purchase so much as
demanding
it, and she made an awful scene. Such rudeness!” She shook her head. “I told Elma I shan’t go back. And I mean it, although she
will
try to convince me.”

He laughed. “She was not concerned about the opera so much as your refusal to accompany her on calls.”

“I thought she was napping.”

“Yes, but she briefly deigned to lift one of the cucumber slices.”

Gwen sighed and picked up her wine. A sip for courage, perhaps. “Elma has a hundred friends here and wishes to visit all of them. She has made a list, in fact, and it goes on for three pages, organized by location: today she works her way through the Faubourg Saint-Germain. Tomorrow, it is Rue de Varenne and Rue de Grenelle. Twelve, fifteen families at a time.” As the wine went down, she did her best not to grimace; the warmth of the sun had soured the burgundy. “At any rate, I count it a favor to leave her be. Everyone will want the latest gossip from London, and since I
am
the gossip
, she could hardly share it with me by her side.”