Ways to Be Wicked (18 page)

Sylvie laughed, and yet something in her was surprisingly, oddly moved. She could imagine the contempt of another man for a small drunken man; she imagined most men would not have listened, would have walked away out of disgust. She wondered whether it was innate curiosity or a streak of mischief that caused Tom to do it. She imagined it was the sort of thing that would get him into trouble as often as it would prove lucky.

And strangely she found herself thinking: Etienne would never be subjected to such a situation in his life. Etienne would never have to make such a choice.

“So I help him to his feet, and the thanks I get is this. ‘And if they’re
flowers,
you bloody idiot,’ he says to me when he’s on his feet, swaying like a damn flower himself. ‘They need to dance like flowers.
Erotic
flowers.’ ” He slurred the word extravagantly. “And I swear to you, Sylvie, right there, before my eyes. . . this little man begins to dance like—like—an erotic flower. Staggering about, waving his arms in the air.” Tom waved his arms about in wide loops.

Sylvie burst into laughter; she couldn’t help it.

Tom looked at her, smiling, savoring the sound, it seemed. “But even then...” He sat back in his chair. “Even then I could see what he was driving at.” He said it wonderingly, as though even now he marveled at it.

“So I took this little man by the arm, which he didn’t seem to like, as he kicked me in the ankles a few times, but his aim was poor, you see, because he was full of gin, and he missed more often than he struck home. And then I picked him up—Good God, but I cannot begin to tell you how the man stank—and he wriggled quite a bit. But I was able to hold him out from my body, seeing as how he’s small and was very thin at the time, not at all the sturdy fellow you see now, and so he didn’t manage to kick me in the baubles, though I assure you, he
did
try. And I got him back to my rooms, which were very near the Green Apple, and locked him into one, and let him dry out. Which wasn’t pretty at all,” Tom said grimly. “He kicked. He ranted. Said a lot of foul things about someone or something named ‘Beetle’ or ‘Beedle’ or some such.”

“Did you say. . . Beedle?” This was intriguing. Sylvie knew of a Mr. Beedle, and if the Mr. Beedles were one and the same, this went a long way toward answering a few questions about The General.

“Beedle,” Tom confirmed. “Never heard such swearing, not even during the war. But when The General was cleaned up and sober, he proved to be a right decent chap. Knew quite a bit about
organza,
in fact, and a lot more. He knew specific things—how to design costumes, beautiful ones. How to build sets. How to make wonderfully entertaining dances. As it so happened, our talents and tastes rather complemented each other. The Green Apple show became a great success with a quick change of costume and a few changes here and there to the dance. We had our erotic flowers. I gave him some of the money from the show. And he never took another drink.”

She was quiet for a moment. “Kind of you to do that for him,” Sylvie said softly.

“Perhaps,” he mused. “I think it was more luck and curiosity than kindness. But then, as I’ve said, I’ve always been lucky in my friends.”

“Friends like Biggsy the highwayman?” she couldn’t help but say acerbically.

“I warrant most of the other passengers on the coach would consider it rather lucky that I knew him,” he said with equanimity. “And Mick managed to drive
you
to the White Lily theater, didn’t he? Though I haven’t yet decided whether I consider that lucky.”

He smiled at her; she narrowed her eyes.

“Which brings me to my point, Miss Chapeau. I’ve known The General for a good many years, and during that time I’ve learned to rely upon his decidedly singular body of knowledge. So if he believes that you’re a ballet dancer...” He paused again. “I’m inclined think his opinion has merit.”

“Based simply upon his opinion?”

“That, and because, Miss Chapeau, you’re
clearly
not a lady.”

She was struck silent.

“I beg your pardon?” She nearly choked out the words.

He continued, seemingly oblivious to her outrage. “I’ve known many women...” He paused, tilted his head back as though they were parading across the ceiling, and a faint smile turned up his lips. “. . .
many
women,” he confirmed, wryly and emphatically. “Women from all walks of life. Some with titles, many without. And you are neither a lady nor in service. You are accustomed to being looked at and to getting your way, and you haven’t the air of a married woman, because you haven’t the air of someone accustomed to being...well, looked after.”

As this was startlingly true, Sylvie was rendered speechless.

“You’ve a different sort of confidence. Something explains this, and I’m not certain what it is. So I’ve told you a bit about me...why don’t you tell me why you’re in London.”

“I have come to London to visit...a relative,” she offered finally, tentatively. He deserved that much, she supposed. “I found my relative unexpectedly not at home.”

“Ah. So the...Chapeau...family was called away suddenly on urgent affairs? Perhaps they’ve gone to visit your cousins, the Pelisse family of Shropshire?” He asked it innocently.

She was tempted to laugh. Tom Shaughnessy was cleverer than she wanted him to be. She considered whether to confide in him:
My sister is married to a viscount, and apparently every opportunist in the land is claiming to be her sister, and, by the way, there’s a large, grand reward for the apprehension of these opportunists. You might have heard, as the rest of London seems to have. And didn’t you mention you needed a good deal of capital for your new theater?

“Their house was dark, there were no servants about, no one to allow you in?” he pressed. “No one expected you?”

“No,” she said shortly. “No servants.”

“And you will leave the White Lily when your relative returns?”

She hesitated. “Yes.”

He was quiet for a moment. “You don’t trust me. I was hoping you would.”

“No,” she said shortly, with a little smile.

And to his credit, after a moment, he smiled too. “Perhaps you shouldn’t.”

The flirtation was back in his words, but faintly, as though he was forcing it there to make her feel more comfortable. An odd little silence passed by. He cleared his throat.

“If you are in any danger, Miss Chapeau, you can tell me. I shan’t let you come to harm.”

He said it almost gently. But with absolute quiet conviction. And she understood now that this sentence, this offer, had been the entire point of his interrogation.

“Thank you,” she said finally. Feeling nearly shy.

Tom was watching her, his light eyes serious. “Your lover is a fool,” he said swiftly.

“He is
not
a—”

“Yes?”

Sylvie squeezed her eyes closed, infuriated. And then something fought up in her: a reluctant amusement at and admiration for his ability to find precisely the right places in her pride and temper to prod in order to get her to confess things. She suspected it was his particular talent. She preferred not to think of it as her particular weakness.

She opened her eyes, found him watching her, but strangely, not smiling. “Your temper, Miss Chapeau, may one day be the death of you. But it makes you truthful, I believe. And your lover...”

He waited, to give her one more opportunity to deny the existence of a love. She wouldn’t give him the pleasure of it.

“And your lover can’t be a very good one.”

She should have been outraged.

Instead:
Why?
She wanted to ask.
Is there something about me that betrays this? Are there different kinds of lovers? What makes a good lover? Do they scramble your wits and make you laugh one moment and furious the next and make you want to feast with your eyes upon the details of their faces?

Or do they take you, then fall asleep leaving you unsatisfied more often than not, and tell you they love you as often as they remark about the weather and promise everything you’ve always wanted? Safety and peace and wealth and comfort?

She decided to call his bluff. “What on earth makes you think so, Mr. Shaughnessy?” Her voice was light, nearly inviting.

The candle guttered in its glass globe. It changed the shadows in the room ever so slightly, made Sylvie aware that she had been sitting alone with him for perhaps too long.

“Because you are here with me right now and not with him.”

The logic of this seemed unassailable when delivered in a voice low and soft, nearly husky. He sounded gently patient. As though he’d been waiting for her to arrive at the answer on her own.

And then she tore her eyes away from his and took a deep breath, and the spell he’d managed to weave with his soft voice drifted away.

“I told you why I am in London, Mr. Shaughnessy. It has naught to do with him. Or with you.”

Another silence, as Tom seemed to be contemplating his next question.

“You admit you are an ambitious woman, Miss Chapeau.”

“Yes,” she said tersely.

“And your lover—”

“Will give me what I need.” She completed firmly for him.

Tom dropped his chin once, almost a nod, as if taking this in. He took up his quill, twirled it absently between his fingers. And then he looked up, and his voice was dangerously gentle.

“But what do you
want,
Miss Chapeau?”

Such a simple question. And yet, for a moment, it shocked her motionless.

Finally, she laughed shortly. “There’s no place in my life for ‘want’ in and of itself, Mr. Shaughnessy. And I have ...earned. . .
everything
I need.”

“And
everyone
you need?” he said ironically.

She stood quickly. “I should retire and leave you to your...your work.”

“Very well, Miss Chapeau. But wait—” He frowned suddenly. “There’s something...”

She paused, hovered, uncertain, sat again.

“You’ve ...a mark of some sort on your cheek.” He narrowed his eyes, as if trying to ascertain just what it might be. “. . . allow me to...”

He leaned over the desk toward her, suddenly. She held her breath, willing herself not to turn her head as those silver eyes came closer, knowing this was a dare. And yet her eyelashes fluttered, her eyes began to close, then did close. Her speeding heart made her breath come short, and each breath took in the scent of warm man, and each breath scrambled her senses just a little more. She waited.

“I was mistaken,” his voice came to her, softly, after what seemed an eternity. So close it seemed to be coming from somewhere inside her own body. The breath of his words brushed her cheek. “Perhaps...it was just a shadow.”

Her eyes opened again in time to watch his long body lean slowly back in his chair.

She had expected him to be wearing a faintly victorious smile.

Instead, he looked just as unsettled as she felt; his face had gone strangely taut. His eyes were darker now. Slate.

Sylvie was conscious that her shoulders were moving more rapidly with her breathing. The pierce of anticipation ebbed, leaving behind a peculiarly acute disappointment. As though a gift proffered had been yanked away.

“I believe you’ve crushed your quill, Mr. Shaughnessy.”

Tom glanced down at the mangle of feathers in his hand. And for a moment he looked genuinely puzzled.

And then he deposited his broken quill almost tenderly on his desk.

“Good night, Sylvie,” he said softly. “And it might be wise to keep in mind that I’m not a gentleman. I’m not obliged to play fair.”

Sylvie stood and whipped about so quickly that her skirts nearly tripped her. She took a swift step toward the door.

“And Sylvie—”

She paused but didn’t turn around.

“Sometimes. . . sometimes they’re one and the same.”

She knew he meant want and need.

And oddly, it sounded as though it was a revelation to him, too.

Chapter Eleven

F
OR TOM
, days had always passed quickly, but with the addition of visits to Kent to his week as well as preparations for the Venus show—they now had a song, there was a dance for the girls to rehearse, and the oyster was nearly complete and required his opinion—the rest of the week was a bit of a blur.

He saw Sylvie Chapeau every day, stoically smiling and patting fannies, learning to be a water nymph. He kept a safe distance, at the foot of the aisle, considering what it meant to
him
to want and need.

Toward the end of the week as Tom was ensconced in his office, poring over expenditures for The Gentleman’s Emporium and planning new ones, another message arrived.

He eyed it warily, but knew he had no choice but to open it: He broke the seal.

Lord Cambry offered his apologies, but regretted he could no longer invest in The Gentleman’s Emporium.

The words struck like an adder bite.

He’d scarcely had time to register them when he looked up and saw a woman dressed not as a fairy or a pirate or a water nymph, but in a walking dress, a rather nice one, and it took him a moment to recognize Molly. It wasn’t the sort of dress one could afford to have made on her salary unless one saved for a good, long time. He wondered, briefly, if the bordering-on-demure, well-cut gown meant that yet another girl had acquired a wealthy protector or a willing husband and had decided to retire from the White Lily.

The timing would be inconvenient regardless, given the role they planned for Molly in the Venus show. But Tom philosophically began considering alternatives— none of them Daisy Jones—even before he spoke.

“You’ve arrived early today, Molly, haven’t you?” he managed cheerily enough.

“Josephine needed ’elp wi’ the sewing, an’ so I offered to come in.”

Molly had never struck Tom as the type to volunteer for extra work. He frowned a little, bemused. “She needs additional help? Isn’t Sylvie helping her with the sewing? All the costumes have been sewn—it’s only mending, is it not?”

“Well, that’s just it, Mr. Shaughnessy. Sylvie ought to ’elp, but now she goes off to meet ’er lover midday of late, so Josephine asked fer me help.”

Time stopped. Tom’s breathing stopped as well.

“Sylvie goes off to meet her lover?” he managed to repeat levelly.

Molly fingered the corner of his desk. “Every day, middle o’ th’ day, Josephine says. Past few days.” Molly was the very picture of innocence. “All of a sudden, like. She leaves early, and comes back mussed and red in the face, like, and she looks...’appy.
Real
’appy.”

“Thank you, Molly.” Tom breathed in, breathed out, to get his lungs, his heart moving again. He didn’t want to hear any more. “This is interesting.”

She looks ’appy.

“Yer own needs bein’ met, Mr. Shaughnessy?” Molly asked frankly.

“Mr. Shaughnessy?” she repeated, when he didn’t answer her.

He did manage to get his mouth to turn up, but the motion was painful, seemed as unnatural as bending in half backward. “Your concern is touching, Molly, but I haven’t any complaints in that regard.”

“My concern
is
. . . touching, Mr. Shaughnessy,” she said quite seriously, with a duck of her head. She trailed a hand provocatively across her collarbone, then, very casually, down across one full breast.

He was a man, after all; he watched the hand’s entire journey. The trouble was, it all looked rather like choreography to him now.

“Thank you for considering my needs, Molly, and I
am
flattered. But I believe you know my policy.” He said the words firmly, with a small smile to soften them.

Leave,
he thought. He wanted her to leave so he could be alone with the alien sensation pressing inside his chest. If he didn’t know better, he would have called it an ache.

He kept his voice level. “You said you believe Sylvie creeps off to see her lover rather than doing the work she was hired to do? And this is why you’ve decided to pay me a visit?”

“Oh, yes,” Molly said somberly. “Right about this time o’day.”

The top half of the White Lily was divided into two spaces: one, the attic room in which Tom felt most comfortable, because smaller spaces made him feel more secure somehow. And the other, a room that hadn’t been used for decades for anything other than storage.

When he arrived, he discovered the determined sunlight filtering through the dust-caked windows, creating a sort of twilight in the room; the floor, he noticed, had been swept, barrels and crates pushed aside to create a clearing. A stage.

Tom hovered behind in the dark hallway as she left her room, closed the door behind her, and furtively, hurriedly took the stairs up a flight toward the attic room, her feet touching the stairs lightly as a cat. Inexplicably, as the day was warm and the heat had risen to fill the upper rooms with a sultry density, she had covered herself in a cloak. A disguise?

Or did she spread the cloak over the floor so she could lie upon it with her lover?

His hands squeezed closed into involuntary fists, echoing what his heart had done at the thought.

Still, he followed her, taking the stairs as lightly as he could, and keeping his head down. What did he intend to do? Leap out and cry
“A-ha!”

He should leave.

He couldn’t leave.

And then, at last, the foreign tightness in his chest eased a little when all he saw was Sylvie.

She was standing in the middle of the room, head down, shoulders back, arms curved out from her body as though she cradled a great invisible heart between them, the fingertips of each hand just shy of meeting below her belly. Her feet were pointed out, her hair pulled back, combed smooth and pinned so tightly the sun glanced off it as though the surface was mirrored—sable with a sheen of fire.

The cloak had been folded neatly and set aside; he saw it. And she wore a dress that, scandalously, remarkably, exquisitely, exposed a length of elegant ankle and calf. The reason for the disguise, he supposed. Fragile, the skirt of it seemed to hover like mist above her calves, looking ready to flutter up should she move or breathe.

Her throat was long and white, so fair he could see the faint blue trace of a vein in it. It should have made her seem vulnerable; instead, everything about how she held her body at the moment spoke of power and intent.

And for a moment, it seemed, he couldn’t know for certain whether the light radiated from her or came through the window, or if it was merely an agreed-upon exchange between Sylvie and the sun.

And then he noticed the smile. Faint, but so privately, confidently joyous Tom could nearly
feel
it. Nearly. It was both bitter and sweet, taut and rich, like the first bite of a plum, because he was certain he’d never worn that kind of smile, felt that kind of joy.

It was very like the smile one would give a longtime lover, he imagined.

The smile became softly inviting; she stretched her arms out toward some invisible partner, and balanced— floated—it seemed, on one leg.

Then she swiftly gathered her limbs together and pirouetted, rising all the way up on her toes, and like a dandelion caught in a breeze, covered the distance of that rough floor with leaping steps and turns, before stopping to arch backward, one knee drawn up, her body lithe as a ribbon. And he saw now that her dress was less a costume than very nearly a pair of wings, for it merely enhanced the sense that he was watching a creature of flight.

Mesmerized, Tom watched her, pressed back against the stairwell, breathing all but suspended, the better to hear, to feel her dance. He’d seen paintings of ballerinas before, but the dance itself never interested him; he’d considered it a conceit for those at court. And, of course, there wasn’t any money in it.

But now, something like awe and panic warred inside him, and amused him distantly. Truly, he felt as though he’d stumbled, sober, across an actual fairy, the sort his Irish mother had so fervently believed in and feared, not the sort that he and The General swarmed the stage with to ribald acclaim. Sylvie no longer seemed to belong to the same species as he did; she didn’t seem crafted of flesh and bone. Rather, suddenly she was made of fire or water, something that burned or flowed.

And Good God—just look at that. She could bend nearly in
half.

Backward.

The prurient possibilities of this did not escape him.

He could almost hear the music Sylvie moved to in his head, could feel the story of it as she danced. He sensed, even through the pleasure on her face, that she was meticulously counting the steps off in her head, each placement of her foot precise and calculated as it thumped lightly on the floor in satin slippers, or left the floor to sail through the air briefly, though to the viewer it would all seem entirely artless. She hadn’t mirrors to follow her movements; he wondered if she missed them. She must know from the way her body felt to her that the movements were correct, the way Josephine could play a song from feel.

And as he watched Sylvie’s arms floating upward, rippling, her delicate neck tilted back, he knew this was beautiful; he in fact knew that “beautiful” was an inadequate word for it. This was artistry, and in a way he resented it. For in watching it he felt every bit of his own roughness, the roughness he had ruthlessly wrestled into submission.

And at the same time, he knew learning to dance like this would have required pain and sacrifice and endless practice, a superhuman determination. The determination of someone who was resolved to be something, anything other than ordinary.

A determination, in fact, rather similar to his own.

The pieces fell into place: the source of this woman’s confidence, and her determination, perhaps, to move out of the shadows of the
demimonde.
Perhaps she, like he, was beginning to understand the limitations of the shadowy place within society they occupied. And perhaps this was the reason she had taken a lover, no doubt a wealthy one.

He will give me what I need,
she’d said.

Somehow, Tom had known from the moment she’d landed in his lap in the mail coach that this woman was far, far from ordinary. And now he realized why watching her wield cutlasses and pat derrieres...was rather like watching a unicorn pulling a plow.

Then again, he rather liked seeing Sylvie in her fairy wings. He rather liked seeing her dressed as a pirate and patting derrieres. Somehow, they all seemed simply aspects of her: the delicate, the ethereal, the magical. The dangerous, the wicked, the fearless.

Although he’d begun to suspect he’d rather like seeing her dressed in anything at all.

Tom watched, and knew the longer he watched, the greater the risk she would see him. And now he almost wished he hadn’t followed her, for he knew the image of her dancing, of that smile, would haunt him. He felt nearly as conflicted as if he’d actually caught her with a lover.

And in a way, he knew, he had.

She looks...’appy.

He backed slowly, carefully, down the stairs, wondering why he should feel guilty, why he should feel as though he’d been intruding, when everything in this theater belonged to him, including the room she’d cleared to become her own private stage. His own determination and passion had made it so.

He’d forgotten the final step that had always creaked just a little. And it made no exception for him this time.

Sylvie stopped dancing, turned, swiftly alert, when the stair creaked.

And she froze, her throat stopped, when she saw just a flash of bright hair and an unmistakable pair of shoulders vanishing from sight.

Sylvie arrived a bit late to rehearsal, shedding her ballet slippers and dress in her room in a frantic hurry, dressing in an empty dressing room, scrambling just in time to join the other girls onstage, her cutlass thumping against her hip as she ran.

The General had wanted to rehearse the pirates today, as he wasn’t satisfied with them just yet. Everyone was already in place aboard the great pirate ship, and with a warning disciplinary frown at Sylvie for her tardiness, The General waved a hand at Josephine. The music began.

This was when Sylvie noticed Tom Shaughnessy standing at the foot of the aisle. Stern-faced, distracted. Determined, it seemed, to pass judgment. Sylvie suspected she knew why, and her heart lurched in her chest, making her feel, perhaps appropriately, just a little seasick.

The girls all clambered aboard the little ship and prepared to walk down the gangplank, brandishing their cutlasses. The General had wisely separated Sylvie and Molly, and though he lamented the slightly uneven row of girls— as Sylvie was just an inch or so shorter than Molly—he was more committed to keeping relative peace. Daisy had already squeezed down into the hatch—today, thanks to skillful sawing, she only needed a little surreptitious assistance from two of the girls, who tamped down on her ample shoulders with the balls of their feet until Daisy’s great pirate hat finally disappeared from view—and Josephine began playing the bawdy sea chantey.

Two bars into the song, Daisy’s pirate hat and enormous bosom popped out of the hatch, and, using her hands and struggling just a little, she hoisted the rest of herself out onto the deck more or less gracefully and launched into the tune, which was only enhanced by the fact that she was breathing a little heavily from her exertions.

Now, thrust your sword, laddie, now thrust your

sword!

Send me, send me to my reward!

Meanwhile, Sylvie, with the rest of the piratesses, dutifully pointed and thrust and rubbed her cutlass.

Given the gaiety of the onstage entertainment, Tom Shaughnessy’s stern face glaring up from the foot of the aisle was tremendously jarring. Sylvie found herself unable to turn her lips up into the requisite smile. Grimly, she felt as though she were dancing before her executioner.

The General had taken one of the front-row seats to observe; his feet were draped over the seat in front of him.

But even he jumped when Tom gave a sudden thump with his walking stick.