Wicked Becomes You (11 page)

“Very generous of you,” he said dryly. “Where have you been going, then?”

She tried out a one-shouldered shrug, the sort that he favored. All it did was awaken a cramp in her neck. “All the places one might think to find an Englishman in Paris.”

The waiter reappeared with a tall glass of beer. She wanted to try one, and she was finished with disguising her desires. She said to the boy, “Une canette, s’il vous plaît.”

“That would be the larger size,” Alex said mildly.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s why I ordered it. Only a brother would mention that,” she added.

“A brother would also carry you back to the hotel when you passed out, but you may rest easy on that count: I won’t bother.”

She smiled despite herself. Alex was the only man she’d ever known who seemed to positively
invite
one’s rudeness. Before, this had always unnerved her about him; the obligation had been upon her to ignore his provocations. But now, for the first time, she could answer with equal flippancy, and the effect was strangely heady, more intoxicating even than the wine had been. “I have a good head, you know.”

“Yes, I hear you once drank two whole glasses of the stuff.”

“And
I’ve
heard that sarcasm is no substitute for cleverness.”

“Have you heard this? Kidnapped heiresses are not just the stuff of novels.”

“Kidnapped?” A laugh escaped her. “Wouldn’t that be a lovely piece of irony! Abandoned by two men, and kidnapped by a third!”

He paused. “You shouldn’t be out on your own,” he said in a different, more serious tone. “That’s all I mean. The world is not so kind as it looks in Mayfair.”

“Does it look kind in Mayfair?” she asked blandly. “Perhaps I had a bad view, last week, when I found myself standing alone at the altar.”

“I’m not speaking of wounded feelings,” he said quietly. “Things do happen. You need only think on your brother to realize that.”

She glanced up at him, startled. He held her look, but his very impassivity betrayed an awareness of the moment’s significance. They had never spoken of Richard’s death. All the details about it had come through the twins.

She wanted to be flippant again, to turn the mood back into banter. But instead she found herself saying, “I miss him.”

“Yes,” he said at length. “So do I.”

The sobriety of his reply further dampened her spirits. Richard had been dear to him as well.

It was Alex who had returned the ring to her.

She had felt so grateful to him for it that day. Even amidst all the other mad, grieving ideas that had raced through her head, she had still wanted to hug him, to cry onto his shoulder, for the favor of returning the ring.

“I can’t believe I gave it away,” she whispered.

He shrugged. Apparently he did not even need to ask what she meant. “You thought to wed the man, Gwen.”

There was no censure in his tone. And Elma and the twins had said the same. But perhaps that was the worst part: she
had
felt justified in giving Thomas the ring.

How willingly she had deluded herself! She’d not even had the courage to recognize her own hypocrisy. Thinking on it turned her stomach now. It was like that childhood game, in which one whirled in circles, round and round, until one managed to convince oneself that the sky and earth had switched places and the horizon was so close that one could touch it. But when one came to a stop, the world caught up and everything slammed into place, stolid and unchanged. Everything returned to the way it had been. Nothing new at all. And the nausea in one’s stomach was born half of wonder, half of fear:
How did I convince myself, even for a moment, that things were different? I knew the truth all the time.

Her order arrived, jarring her from her thoughts. The beer foam presented her with a bit of a dilemma. She decided to plow through it, and ended up wiping suds from her nose.

Alex was smiling faintly. “
Oui
?”

“
Oui
,” she said, because she liked the smile, and the fact that he was not chiding her. It tasted like rotgut, though.

He spoke slowly. “I sense that you’re on somewhat of a larger mission, here in Paris.”

She gave him a bland smile. “I do intend to try new things, if that’s what you mean. Life is too short to spend simply
behaving
oneself, don’t you think?” On a laugh, she added, “But perhaps you’ve never tried that, Alex. Maybe
you
should be my example.”

He propped his elbow on the table and cupped his chin in his hand. “I would advise you to look elsewhere, for I can lead you nowhere good.”

“Perhaps I don’t want to go anywhere good.”

His smile slipped into something more contemplative. “But the only place I’d have a use for you is in bed.”

She froze, glass pressed to her mouth. Surely he didn’t mean . . .

“Oh, you have it right,” he said. “I mean that in a purely sexual way. Nothing brotherly about it.”

The word registered like a physical shock. She put her glass down hastily lest she drop it, then cast a panicked glance around. Nobody looked to be eavesdropping.

His laughter snapped her attention back to him. “You don’t have it in you to do this, Gwen.”

The sound of her name went through her like an electric current. He had a lovely voice, low and smooth.
Gwen
. She’d never realized how pretty her name could sound. “What—what do you mean?” Good Lord! What would his sisters have said if they’d been able to hear this conversation? Alex, interested in her in a purely sexual way! “I don’t have it in me to do what?”

“To rebel,” he said.

“You’re mistaken. I intend to live for myself now.”

He inclined his head. “I don’t debate your motives,” he said. “But living for yourself requires you to stop caring about what others expect from you.”

“Yes,” she said. “I know. Perhaps I
want
to be judged.” Last night, Elma had been abuzz with news of some duke, newly widowed—a fact less startling when one learned he was seventy. But his age had not stopped Elma from formulating a grand plan to rehabilitate Gwen into a duchess. Nor would it stop the man from courting her, probably. Elma assured her that his ancient-and-doddering grace was simply
desperate
for funds. “Perhaps ruin would please me,” she said. She was done with purchasing grooms.

What would it take to drive off these men, anyway? A scandal of Hippodrome proportions? Only something truly heinous would counteract the appeal of her three million pounds. Poison, murder, devil worship. The sight of an altar.

“If it’s done right, ruin would surely please you,” Alex said with open amusement. “But the consequences wouldn’t. You’re a kitten, Gwen, and I say that with no censure whatsoever. You live to be smiled at, to charm people. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, so long as you choose the right people to charm. It’s the choice that has been your failing to date.”

The words stung, but only because, until so recently, they had been true. Why charm anyone? What a futile exercise it seemed now! People blew away like dandelion thistles, carried off by death or indifference or sheer, inexplicable whim. Why bother to grasp at them? One would only be disappointed eventually.

And of all people,
Alex
certainly understood this. He’d spent his entire adult life avoiding his home and family. What hypocrisy for him to encourage her to do what he never bothered with! “I am telling you right now,” she said fiercely. “I no longer care.”

He sat back in his chair, setting his fist to his mouth as he studied her. “All right,” he said at length. “Let’s test it, shall we?”

“Yes,” she said immediately. “Why not? Give me your fiercest frown. Chastise me as harshly as you please.”

“Oh, but I’m the last person to disapprove of you. I’m a blackguard, aren’t I? No, what we need”—here he glanced around the café—“is a group of fine, upstanding citizens for you to offend. There,” he said, and lifted his brow and chin to indicate someone over her shoulder.

She twisted in her seat. A family of American tourists had taken the table behind them. The balding man was puffing comfortably on his cigar as he flipped through
The World
, utterly ignoring the glare from his portly wife, whose jowls and thick pearl choker gave her the look of a collared dog. Their daughter, a snub-nosed beauty in a walking gown made of ribbed bengaline silk, heaved a long-suffering sigh and looked off toward the pavement. Her dress was very fashionable in cut and cloth, but its quality was disguised by its color—an unfortunate, vulgar purple.

Gwen turned back. “What do you propose? Shall I . . . approach them and apologize? My father invented that dye, you know. It never did favors to anyone’s complexion.”

“Dear God, Gwen. The point is to be
shocking
. Not to invent new ways to ingratiate yourself.”

“But it
would
be shocking! A conversation without first being properly introduced . . .” She trailed off as his smile took on an unkind edge. “All right,” she said on a deep breath. He wanted shocking?

She plucked up her soiled serviette and tossed it over her shoulder.

Heart thundering, she waited for an outcry. She’d tossed a dirty napkin onto them—fifty years ago, such offenses had started duels.

A long moment passed. No exclamation rose from the offended party. Alex yawned into his palm. Frowning, she peeked over her shoulder.

Her napkin sat directly behind the young girl’s chair. The girl, oblivious, inspected the hem of her glove.

“Works better when you aim,” said Alex. “Shall I demonstrate?” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dipped it into her wine, then began to ball it up.

“No! You can’t do that. Wine stains fabric!” When he grinned and opened his hand, letting the handkerchief drop onto the table, she felt her patience snap. “This is very childish,” she said, “and pointless to boot. I said I wished to live freely, not to throw things at people. ”

“No,” he said evenly, “you said you no longer cared for others’ censure.”

“One entails the other.”

He inclined his head. “Precisely my point. So, can you follow through with it? Try the wineglass.”

“The wineglass? But it would break!”

“True,” he said thoughtfully. “And quite loudly, to boot.” He picked up her glass and extended his hand into the aisle.

His fingers opened.

The glass shattered.

“Oh, dear,” she heard the American girl murmur. The other patrons glanced over, some of them blushing with vicarious embarrassment.

It wasn’t so bad, really. Gwen looked at him and shrugged.

He smiled back at her and lifted his glass as though in a toast. “To waking the dead,” he said, and then dropped it onto the ground as well.

Shouts went up. The matron at the table behind her said in a very loud voice that he had done it deliberately. The man with the curaçao shot to his feet, cursing in language Gwen could not follow, although she did gather he was offended by the splatter on his pant leg.

“You’re quite red,” Alex said mildly. “Feeling a bit . . . uncomfortable?” With a casual rap of his knuckles, he knocked her water glass off the table.

At this point, people on the pavement began to stop and gawk.

Gwen sat frozen. Alex propped his forearms on the table, leaning in confidentially. “We seem to have run out of minor glassware. There’s always the pitcher, of course. Or if it’s real drama you want, I can tip over the table.”

“No,” she snapped.

“Oh, I do beg your pardon—would you like to give it a go yourself?”

“This is not
rude
. This is wanton destruction!”

He shrugged. “A table, a glass, a lady’s character . . . all of them break so easily. Pity, that.”

A clawlike grip caught her arm. The waiter ranted incoherently down at her, spittle flying from his lips.

Alex reached over and took hold of the waiter’s wrist, saying something sharp and short.

The waiter spat back a guttural curse.

Alex’s knuckles whitened, and the waiter gasped, his fingers loosening. Gwen inched out of his grip and Alex’s hand dropped. He sat back in his chair.

The waiter clutched his wrist to his chest now, launching into a flurry of agitated French that she could not follow—save the mention of
les gardes municipaux
.

Police.

That meant police.

She came to her feet, clawing at the chatelaine bag clipped to her waist, wherein sat all her money. Her stammered apology did not assemble grammatically. “Get up!” she cried at Alex. Why was he
smiling
?
“He’s going to summon the police!”

He tipped his head to listen. “Why, yes, so he is. Apparently we’re a public nuisance.” He nodded once. “I always did suspect you’d be a nuisance, Gwen.”

Pounds. Pence. Francs, yes, finally! She shoved a banknote into the waiter’s hand. He took a look at it, fell abruptly quiet, and began to bow to her profusely as he backed away.

Murmurs went up from the crowd on the pavement. Suddenly everybody was looking at her very queerly.

Alex began to laugh.