Lyon (8 page)

“He watches you differently than he does the others,” Lyon observed. “What's your relationship?”

Juliette cleared her throat and saw that Lyon, too, was contemplating Valmont. Finally, an opening.

“He's my guardian. Perhaps you've heard of him? His father owned a winemaking enterprise in Burgundy.”

Lyon's eyes pierced her. “Owned?”

“The phylloxera destroyed it three years ago.”

“Yes, of course. The Valmont family. They had over five hundred acres if I recall correctly?”

“
Oui.
Everyone in my family was employed there. If it still existed, we would be picking the vines today from sunup to sundown. I can't help but wonder how you find time to sojourn in Paris at such a busy time of year. Is the harvest completed earlier in Tuscany than in France?”

He shook his head at her quizzically, obviously wondering why she'd gone down this conversational path. “No,” he answered slowly. “Though it will be finished by the time I return home. There'll be other tasks to see to in preparation for winter as I'm sure you're aware.”

“Your vineyard…” She gazed up at him from beneath her lashes. “…how is it that it continues to thrive in the face of the scourge?”

An infinitesimal pause alerted her to the fact he'd recognized that there was an agenda behind her questioning. The effects of the tincture were making her interrogation clumsy.

“Did he tell you to ask?” He briefly jerked his jaw toward Valmont, his eyes never leaving her face.

Juliette opened her fan and collapsed it again in quick snaps. “Is it some secret? It's only natural that we all take an interest. You must know, of course, that the reason he fled to Paris is that his father's entire holdings were ruined by the infestation. Everything lost.”

“The father—” Lyon's brow knit as he searched for some memory.

“You no doubt heard that he killed himself, leaving debts. This…” She spread her arms to indicate the salon. “It's all that's left of the Valmont fortune. The fields his ancestors worked for decades now lie fallow. This is the first year since antiquity that there'll be virtually no grape harvest anywhere in France.”

Lyon nodded. “The story is the same for many vineyards throughout Europe. My family has contributed much in the way of study, experimentation, and financial support to those who've been devastated. But you may tell your keeper that, yes, our plots continue unscathed. And, no, we haven't found a cure. When we do, we'll share it.”

“So confident? Shall I infer that you are close to finding one?” she pressed.

His gaze narrowed and he leaned a forearm on the wall, cornering her. His scent was fresh, masculine, and his breath teased the hair by her ear as he murmured, “Answer my original question and I'll answer your question in return.”

“Please…it's not possible…here.”

Fleur and one of her admirers passed them, heading for the green door set along the wall nearby. She lay hand on Juliette's arm in brief acknowledgement before disappearing through the door and down a hall, where she would no doubt pleasure her companion. Arlette gazed longingly after her, but he lingered to mill at the sideboard, listening.

Lyon watched them go. “What's back there?”

“Private rooms. For private amusements. M. Valmont had them lavishly decorated last year, and they're quite impressive. Would you like to visit them?”

“With little Fleur?”

She tried to pretend to herself that it wasn't jealousy that filled her at the idea of him bedding her friend. “Or with one of the others who's more available at the moment.”

“You won't show them to me yourself? That's not part of your keeper's plans?”

She shrugged, affecting nonchalance. “He instructed me to show them to you if you wished to see them. However, I prefer to entertain only in the salon.”

He pushed the green door wide and put a hand at her lower back urging her in its direction. “Make an exception.”

Instinctively, her eyes searched out Valmont. Across the room, someone had engaged him at the card table in a game of
vingt-et-un.

She couldn't count on Satyr to return here again. Many guests were regulars, but sometimes newcomers came only once. This might be her only chance to learn more of what Valmont wanted. His questions must come first, but then she had questions of her own.

So she tapped her fan to her companion's chest and shot him a warning glance. “Very well. But not for a dalliance. For private conversation only, and I'm not certain how private we will be, even there.
Comprenez-vous
?”

He nodded and she picked up a candle and turned to lead him from the salon, half-expecting at any moment to hear Valmont protest. Though he'd suggested it, she knew he wouldn't like seeing her leave with this man he so envied. But he didn't interrupt them and she soon found herself in the quiet of the hall, breathing easier as the door to the salon swung shut behind them.

A guard stood sentry there, his presence rendering it relatively safe to be alone with a gentleman. Juliette nodded to him. He would remain posted within earshot of the rooms until the wee hours.

Lyon had followed her into the dim corridor and she felt him behind her when she paused at a door on the left. “First,” she announced, “we have the Moorish room.”

But a sign on the door read
occupé
. Though the night was young, someone had already retired here.

The sound of leather stinging flesh came from within, sharp and shocking. The flogger. It wasn't difficult to guess who was entertaining a client inside. Only one of the girls enjoyed such things—Gina.

“It appears to be in use,” Lyon noted. “Fleur?”

Juliette raised her chin, refusing to be embarrassed. “No—another girl. It doesn't matter,” she said crisply. “There are numerous other rooms of interest along this way.”

She rushed on to the next door, which bore no sign of occupation. Recalling its interior, she hesitated with her hand on the knob, belatedly thinking better of this choice. “Now that I consider it, there's yet another room farther on that you might prefer to view.”

Backing away, she found herself inadvertently pressed against him. Though he hadn't moved, a hard length now prodded her lower spine. She drew herself up, stilling like a doe sensing the presence of a predator.

His erection. Even through layers of clothing, she could feel it—immense and scalding hot. And topped with a crown that felt as fat and unforgiving as the knob under her fingers.

A broad hand settled at the bone of her hip and tightened reflexively, sending an erotic charge through her. The air between them crackled with tension as volatile as that before a lightning storm. For infinitesimal seconds, they stood that way, locked in silence.

“I want you,” he rumbled.

Juliette shook her head. “The guard.”

Lyon reached around her and gently covered cold fingers with warm ones, helping her to turn the handle. At his nudge, the door swung open before them. She automatically stepped inside the room. Forfeiting the shelter of his body, she immediately felt a chill. A fire had been laid in each room earlier, but in this one, it had died down.

Behind her, the door swung shut. She eyed the bed and him warily, expecting that he would force himself or his questions on her now that they were alone, and not sure how she would respond. But he only went to the corner grate and stirred the fire higher.

Her gaze went to the carved mantel that he now stood beside. It was possible they weren't truly alone here. Each room had secret portals through which the goings-on within could be monitored, supposedly a measure that insured the safety of both the women and their patrons.

Lighting the candles in the wall sconces with the one she held, she studied him, curious to gauge his reaction as he took in the decoration of the exotic room. Having already examined it in fascinated detail on her own, she knew precisely what it contained.

For instance, she knew that above the fireplace, in the frescoed eyes of a lecherous soldier, was a set of hidden peepholes. She lifted two carafes of wine from the cart and set them there on the mantel, adjusting them so their necks blocked the soldier's—and therefore any voyeur's—view of the room. As an extra measure, she opened her fan and propped it behind them.

“What is this chamber called?” Lyon asked at length, having finished stoking the fire. His voice was velvet, well suited to their sensual surroundings.

“The Pompeii Room. Its design is based on the excavations in the ancient Italian city of that name, near Naples.”

“Tell me what is done here in this room,” he prompted.

“I think you know.”

“But I would enjoy hearing it from your lips.”

She set her candle in an empty sconce and approached him. “Very well. Its design and the frescoes and statuary are meant to emulate the
Lupanare
, which are—”

“—the brothels of Pompeii.”

“Have you been there?” she asked in surprise.

“No, only heard of it from my eldest brother. He—Nicholas—collects antiquities and delights in visiting ruins and the like. We rarely leave our estate simultaneously, so our pursuits are solitary. But, go on. You were describing the purposes of this room?”

“Well, like the brothels, its decoration is intended to inspire lust as you might imagine. To encourage illicit intercourse and such.”

When his eyes shaded with amusement, she stiffened in affront. “You have a strange sense of humor, monsieur.”

“
Tu me comprends mal
. I meant a more particular description. For instance, what is done with these?” He indicated a selection of wood and leather dildos set alongside a goatskin filled with olive oil lubricant. A riding crop, restraints, and other devices were hung on the wall above them.

She gazed unwaveringly into those jeweled eyes of his. Once, her eyes had smiled as his did, but life had turned serious and she now guarded her laughter.

“I suppose some might say they are instruments utilized in gratifying unnatural lusts.”

“Unnatural?” His brows rose and his smile now seemed to mock her Catholic attitude. “But lust is one of the most natural instincts in Humankind is it not?”

She tried not to notice that he was standing before a wall fresco depicting Priapus, the ancient Greco-Roman god of sex and fertility. He lorded over a garden and sported an extremely elongated penis, which was meant as a threat to frighten off would-be thieves.

Lyon's gaze followed hers and he studied the scene. “According to my brother, the ruins at Pompeii have been found to be full of erotic art, frescoes, symbols, and inscriptions regarded by its excavators as pornographic. Even many recovered household items were decorated with prurient themes. The ubiquity of such objects would indicate that the sexual mores of the time were more liberal than ours of today.”

The sound of the lash cut the quiet in several staccato slashes. Gina whimpered.

Juliette cleared her throat. “I suppose. Shall we visit another room now, monsieur?”

“I'm content to hear more of this one.” He moved away from her along the wall, surveying the continuous fresco, which portrayed interconnected scenes of antiquity, each more debauched than the former. He paused before a painting of a low prostitute posing as if in wait for a customer. It was one of the oils from Valmont's ancestral home.

“A
prostibula
,” he said, reading from the small gilt plate in the center of the frame's bottom edge.

“A
‘morue'
, we call her in France. She who stands in front of her
stabulum
—a cell or stall—to be visited by men,” Juliette clarified, coming to stand beside him. “She doesn't look particularly happy about it, does she?”

His gaze cut to hers. “Would you be happy, in her place?”

From the adjoining room, a rhythmic thumping began, accompanied by feminine moans and ribald masculine grunts.

What the
prostibula
did was a baser form of what went on here in Valmont's establishment. Surely this man realized that.

“
Non,
” she replied.

Lyon turned back to study the expression of the woman in the painting. “You answer too quickly and without consideration. First, you must look at her. Really look. Imagine yourself in her situation. On a day that completely changes your life from what it was before.”

He circled her, moving to stand at her back, so they both faced the painting. He set his hands at her shoulders and his disembodied voice came, low and mesmerizing. “Imagine you are she, waiting there for a man. Any man. Hoping one will walk by and notice you.

“You are fairly new at this work and shy. You've had two customers this morning, but you know that if no one else comes, you do not eat that day. So you hope for more.