Beauty Like the Night

by Joanna Bourne

  Hawker and Papa had stepped closer to Wellington. A phalanx of former officers—who’d alerted them?—some in uniform, some in stylish evening wear, gathered at that end of the ballroom and effectively blocked access.

  Around her the men and women who ruled England engaged in the great sport of the ton. Gossip. She could pick out words on their lips. Enough to guess at the conversations.

  Lady Penbrush’s lorgnette followed her in the dance. “The de Cabrillac seems to have recovered from the shock, whatever it was.”

  “It would take more than a drunken waiter to shock her.” That was elderly, clever Mr. Tuttsell at her side, as usual.

  “Of course, she’s French.”

  “One makes allowances.”

  “And she is a de Cabrillac.”

  “True.”

  On the other side of the room, plump Mrs. Summerton spoke into her sister’s ear. “Such a pretty little fortune.”

  “Not for the Carlingtons, I think.” Sly smiles exchanged. “I told Adele she wouldn’t get the chit for Robin. A bit beyond his touch.”

  “Now he pouts about it in public and tells tales. So ill-bred of him.”

  “Say what you will of the de Cabrillacs, they’re never vulgar.”

  Further on, a slender dandy murmured to Mrs. Frobisher, “She told me she wasn’t dancing. She’s changed her mind.”

  “Who’s that with her?”

  “The embassy people are calling him Comte Deverney.”

  “Deverney? I have heard of the Deverneys. An old title. One of her relatives, perhaps?”

  “My dear, do I scent a family arrangement in the wind?”

  “High time they settled that woman, if you ask me.”

  If she’d hoped to become invisible on the dance floor, she had not succeeded. On every side women whispered behind their fans and envied her the place in Deverney’s arms. He was handsome and moved with the grace of an athlete, but the room was full of pleasant men who knew how to dance. He held himself with the pride of a man of ancient lineage, but the ballroom was stuffed with aristocrats.

  Women saw that glint of reckless sensuality in him. The promise that he would not only please a woman in bed but make her laugh while he did it.

  She didn’t let herself imagine what Deverney would be like in bed. She wouldn’t let her mind visit that country.

  Deverney smiled down at her. “Have you defended England sufficiently for the night? Can we sleep easily in our beds?”

  She was brushing her fingertips lightly along his shoulder. She stopped that. “Do you know, I have spent a long weary hour today convincing people Raoul Deverney had no interest in what was planned here tonight. Now I’m not sure.”

  “Be sure. I follow no causes that would lead me to harm that man.” Deverney glanced toward Wellington.

  “You know too much.”

  “I’d be a fool if I didn’t guess what just happened. But it’s nothing to do with me. I am the least political of creatures. When the great events of history knock at my door I send the butler to tell them I’m not at home.”

  “Yet here you are.”

  “Dancing with you, mademoiselle.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not? These retired generals, these members of Parliament and lords of the realm don’t interest me. You do. Did I compliment your gown?”

  “Not yet,” she said.

  “It admirably hides the color of fresh blood. Good planning on your part. I also admire your quick and efficient way with a hidden knife. You are so very violent. I had no idea.”

  “The French continue to be masters of the flowery accolade.”

  “The English continue to bewilder me.” His smile was genial as fine brandy, with the same bite underneath. “Your family”—his eyes flickered to where Papa stood—“set you in the path of a large man with a gun. You deal with that, alone. They remove the poor fellow but leave you to unravel the tedious social knot that results. Alone. Not one of these grim men scowling in my direction stomps across the room to rescue you from me.”

  “Perhaps they consider you harmless.”

  “I am cut to the quick.”

  “My intention, monsieur. My intention.”

  There. Wellington left his place and walked from the ballroom. The old soldier marked the end of action on this battlefield and released his troops. Papa disappeared with him. Pax melted into the edges of the crowd and followed. Felicity was nowhere in sight. She must have gone ahead. They’d see Wellington to the street and into his coach and away.

  Hawker remained behind for a few minutes, searching faces in the crowd, watching for any last revealing expression. When he knew she was looking, he signaled, Done here. Go home, in the sign language of the London criminal underworld. He knew it because he’d been a criminal. She was fluent because he’d taught it to her when she was five.

  Maybe Deverney felt the relaxation in her muscles. He knew the instant she was relieved from duty. He changed. She felt him let go of watchfulness and suspicion. Felt him become part of the music. His smile invited her to follow him into the waltz. And she did.

  She plucked her own mind away from the worries of the evening as a woman disentangles her skirt from a thorn bush, point by clinging point, and gave herself to the dance. She let herself pretend she and Deverney danced alone under these bright chandeliers with no expectation crowding around them. Pretend there were no eyes watching her and no grave responsibilities to live up to.

  One single waltz. Nothing important. Nothing she’d regret later. She could indulge herself for a short time. It was harmless. Harmless.

  Or perhaps not. Their eyes met and locked.

  Deverney was no longer urbane and amusing and French. He had become a hidalgo of the line of the knights of El Cid, descendant of Barbary corsairs, heir to the Romans and to the northern barbarians who drove the Romans out. He looked, to put it succinctly, proud as the devil.

  He waltzed like the devil too. A particularly skilled devil who seduced honest wives and maidens with his dancing. Who was, perhaps, intent upon seducing her.

  He succeeded somewhat. More than somewhat, if truth be told. Though she was neither wife nor maiden.

  Suddenly and fiercely, she wanted him. What she felt was not the almost-innocent stirring any woman might feel for a handsome man. Not what young girls giggled about in the retiring room after a waltz, bright heads together, whispering of mysterious pleasures. Not what a chaste wife would feel for a passing stranger. More proof, if proof were needed, that she was not exactly a virtuous woman. Probably proof she was an idiot.

  I know a mistake when I make it.

  She was no stranger to this sort of wanting. When she was nineteen, on assignment among the French army, she’d fallen in love with a French officer she was spying upon. An enemy. Month after month, from battlefield to battlefield across Spain, she’d followed him and loved him to the edge of madness and reported on him for the British Military Intelligence and betrayed him.

  When he died in battle, she’d thought she would die too.

  The French battalion commander himself had come to their tent the day after Gaëtan’s death when she sat staring out into the camp, doing nothing at all.

  The battalion commander had said many words. She was without a protector, he said. Perhaps he offered himself. She didn’t remember clearly. She knew she’d answered, “No,” and “No,” to everything. After the burial of the dead she’d taken her horse and ridden from camp, MacDonald a few dozen paces behind her, silent.

  There were weeks after that she couldn’t account for and didn’t remember well. She had been in the mountains and the women of the small villages had been kind.

  Eventually she’d gone back to her work for Military Intelligence. She traveled Spain, a dedicated spy, using many names, playing many roles. Eventually she’d come home to En
gland, trailing little rumors of scandal and of heroics in the war, to take her place among the great families of the London ton. She’d made a life that was partly work that mattered and partly harmless play among the frivolous. She’d never loved another man.

  With care, planning, and determination, she set about dwindling to a spinster. If madness and desire visited her, she could ignore them as she ignored any other weakness. She was in control of herself.

  Feeling these foolish things while she danced with Raoul Deverney was an indulgence she might allow herself for the space of a waltz. Afterward, she’d pack away untidy emotions and get on with her life. As she always did.

  Eleven

  THE waltz reached its last notes and ended with a flourish. She held on to the warm feeling, not letting herself think about anything in particular. Deverney still held her, but the waltz was done.

  Voices rose. The crowd rearranged itself. Musicians plucked strings, tuning. She and Deverney had ended the dance near the corridor that led to the library and card room. The library door was open. A little privacy waited inside. He took her arm and was encouraging in that direction, so she went with him. She was curious what he’d say next. Not truth, necessarily, but almost certainly something fraught with interest.

  The library was a masculine room with leather armchairs, dark wood, and a globe. And books, of course. It was otherwise empty. He closed the door behind them. “I’ll come to your office early.”

  “Wait till I send for you. I’m busy and I don’t have a chair to—”

  He surprised her then. Carefully he set his index finger to her lips. A startling, electric touch. A shock. He’d removed his gloves and the skin of his hand was warm and rough. He looked thoughtful, like a man studying a chessboard.

  “I won’t kiss you,” he said. The tip of his finger slid to rest gently, just barely tugging on her bottom lip. “But damn, I want to.”

  “We will not indulge in that.”

  “No.”

  “We will not begin the lightest flirtation.” She’d step away from him. In a minute. “I don’t sneak into corners and kiss men at parties.”

  “Wise policy.”

  “I don’t kiss men like you at all.” But she ached warmly everywhere important when she said it. She ached significantly.

  “You’re wiser than I am,” he said. “That’s something else I admire.” He went back to outlining her lips with his finger. “I’ve changed my mind about a kiss. Have you?”

  “Yes.” Only a whisper, but that was enough. She was about to do something moderately stupid. Stupid but harmless. It was all a piece with that foolish dance. How much trouble could she get into twenty feet from the ballroom when anyone could walk in?

  Slowly, he leaned to take her mouth and give her a secret library kiss. A flirtatious kiss. Raoul Deverney gauged it nicely. He was offhand, knowledgeable, assured.

  Pleasant. This is pleasant. I didn’t have to worry—

  Then she did have to worry. Because this was not flirtation.

  Before she could list the many ways in which this was different from flirting, she stopped thinking altogether. Traitors opened the defenses of her body. Invaders poured across the barricades. Vandals took the portcullis and lowered the drawbridge. The barbarian horde surged through.

  Kissing Raoul Deverney was invasion and maybe an earthquake or two wrapped up in fire. She was stunningly aware of his lips and her lips finding various ways to fit together. Maybe he was planning all this. She wasn’t.

  She stood on tiptoe to pull him toward her.

  I’m safe. Foolish but safe. Nothing could happen between them here.

  This was an exploration. A scouting party. A limited incursion into unknown territory. It didn’t mean anything. She could do this because it didn’t mean anything. It would be only this one time. Only . . .

  She stopped listening to her own excuses. Then she stopped making them. At some point, his tongue caressed her lips. His teeth nipped the outer shell of her ear and wandered off onto the sensitive skin at the nape of her neck, under her hair. At some point, she tongued across his face and tasted soap and clean skin and invisible stubble. That taste and texture let loose an elemental hot pang inside her that drove her body hungrily against him. In further dispatches from the field, his cock was fully aroused and rigid.

  I will stop this before someone comes in.

  “Enough,” she whispered.

  “One more kiss.” He took his time with it. She did not keep count of the seconds. She just let herself enjoy them.

  At the end he held her chin in his outstretched fingers. His eyes were complex jewels, fringed by long dark lashes.

  He said, “That was unwise.”

  “Beyond unwise by several miles. We left unwise back at the crossroads.”

  “I had not expected my evening to end in such poor judgment. I have more control than this.” His thumb barely touched the soft skin under her jaw before he said goodbye to touching her, altogether. He stepped back. “You’re about to say something I won’t like. I see it in your face.”

  “Don’t come to my office tomorrow, Monsieur Deverney. I’ll take Pilar’s case. I’m working for her. Not you.”

  “I have some of the answers you’re looking for. Don’t let a harmless kiss be more important than murder and kidnapping.”

  “If I need you I’ll send for you.” But I will not. You are chaos in my veins. You are madness. I will not disrupt my life for any man. Certainly not for you.

  “I’ll be at your office early tomorrow. This isn’t the place to discuss anything.”

  “Stay away.”

  “A feat beyond my skill, querida.” He dropped his hand from its touch upon her. “Find one of your ferocious colleagues to see you home. The night is full of killers, you not the least among them.” He pushed the door open. “Au revoir.”

  Au revoir. To meet again.

  In his mouth it was in the nature of a challenge, rather than saying goodbye.

  Twelve

  A footman opened the door onto the street and Sévie went out into the cool night to stand in lamplight and torchlight on the steps of Carlington House. She wasn’t the only one leaving the ball. Now that Wellington had departed, a dozen other guests were going onward to their second event of the evening.

  She took her place among departing guests, more than a little unusual in that she was a woman alone. But she had a long-cultivated reputation for eccentricity and no one was really surprised.

  Far down the street Papa’s carriage pulled into the far end of the line. She’d have a little wait. It wasn’t as if she had nothing to keep her mind busy.

  A lost girl. Pilar. Only twelve, but she’d be treated as a woman if she’d landed in one of the brothels of this city. Sanchia Deverney—Sanchia Gavarre she’d be called in Spain—dead. Not an admirable woman. Deverney, an unfathomable man, deep in plots, who insisted they’d met once in Spain. Anyone that comfortable in a ransacked office was probably a criminal himself.

  At the end of the first day of an investigation she usually had a neat flock of facts lined up in logical order. She’d be sorting truths from lies. Some insight about the dramatis personae would be emerging.

  This time, she’d reached the twenty-four-hour mark and her hands were still empty. Worse than empty. She knew less than nothing because her judgment was entangled in emotion. She’d lost her detachment.

  Deverney wrapped her in confusion. He seduced her with every word, look, and touch. He implied he was equally attracted and equally dismayed about it. She found that hard to believe.

  She added Deverney’s pretense of bemused fascination to her list of matters to consider.

  Lively boys from stable and kitchen of Carlington House ran past her, looking for the next coaches and coachmen to motion into line. At the curb the assembled Symingtons—father, mother, aunt,
two sons, one daughter, and a harried genteel companion—loaded themselves into two fashionable town carriages with more inefficiency than one would believe possible.

  She’d put her office in order tomorrow. How could she think with everything in that state? MacDonald could send the furniture for repair. She’d meet Tweed for lunch and talk to him about the autopsy. She’d come back to search this place inch by inch. She’d—

  Behind her, a man said, “Sévie.”

  She’d hoped to avoid this.

  “You have to talk to me,” Robin said.

  She turned to face him. Raised an eyebrow. “No, I don’t.” It was easy to look as if she’d been interrupted in the middle of more important thoughts. That was true, after all. She created an expression of impatience, boredom, and haughty displeasure.

  Why was Robin talking to her at all? Why had he come without a pack of sniggering friends?

  He took her arm. Not gently. “Come back to the house. We have to talk.” He glanced around pointedly. “Somewhere private.”

  “No.”

  “Listen to me. I’m—”

  She took two of his fingers and twisted his hand from its grip on her sleeve.

  He didn’t yelp. Score one point for public school training. He cradled his hand and glared at her. “You don’t have to break a man’s wrist.”

  He’d feel that for a day or two. “It’s not broken. It will be if you lay hands on me again. What do you want, Robin?”

  His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “What the devil were you up to in there? What did you do?” That was genuine bewilderment and panic. Robin Carlington didn’t have the depths to counterfeit them. Odd that Robin should be the Carlington to detect the undercurrents of the evening. He’d never struck her as particularly perceptive.