Wicked Becomes You

by Meredith Duran

  He laughed out loud. No wonder this song appealed to her. “If you don’t love me, then I love you,” the men were singing, “and if I love you, you’d best beware!” It made a fine summary of Gwen’s love life, to date.

  She took a visible breath and slid back into the song, her voice spinning effortlessly through the scales, rough and sweet as raw sugar. “The bird you thought you had in your palm beat its wings and soared away,” she purred. “Wait for love, and she remains ever distant; stop waiting, and she’s there beside you.”

  Monsanto, Alex thought. What was Monsanto up to, in Peru? Had he managed to steal the shipping contracts, yet?

  What the hell. I can afford to lose them.

  Christ. That was not the damned point. He bolted half his glass as the song came to a thunderous close. Frenzied applause broke out. “I say,” Barrington said, raising his voice over the racket, “that was splendid!”

  Alex suddenly could not muster the energy to reply. Gwen was bowing, laughing, her face brighter than the gaslights behind her. He watched her as he took another drink. Had he just finished running a dozen miles at full speed, he would have felt precisely as he did just now: exhausted, dry-mouthed, and also wholly awake, thrummingly alive, his every vein invigorated by a fresh current of rushing blood.

  Idiocy. Idiot. He should feel nothing like invigorated. He was losing. Fight, then. He never submitted gracefully to defeat.

  Losing? Losing what? Irritated with himself, he set down his glass. He was done with liquor for the night.

  “You two really must come down to Côte Bleue,” Barrington said. “A small estate I picked up on the Riviera, recently.”

  “Perhaps,” Alex said absently. Gwen started down the stairs, and several of the young poetic sorts piled forward to meet her.

  Not surprising. Even he could admit to admiring her. Her intention, here, did not seem so dissimilar to those of the rogue artists whom he sponsored. Having glimpsed a vision of something different and better, she wanted to transform that vision into reality. But the invention she was undertaking was herself.

  It was, perhaps, the only damned thing she could have done that would have won his instant and entire interest.

  “Really, I must insist you come,” Barrington said. “I’m having a small house party this weekend; I think you’d find the company quite enjoyable.”

  Alex made a noncommittal noise. He would sit here. No need to rise, to go to her. She would cast him a look if she required his help. “Policy of mine, Barrington: I travel to escape British company, not chase it down.”

  “Oh, but I’m quite of the same mind,” Barrington said. “I’ve in mind a few Italians, and an artist or two from Paris should be hanging about. Very small, as I said. Select.”

  One of the poets went down on his knee before Gwen. The sound of her laughter traveled across the room, as musical as her singing. How had he not realized she could sing? Her laughter alone should have betrayed her.

  “Do think about it,” Barrington pressed. “And if Miss Goodrick would consent to sing a song or two, she’d be well rewarded for it.”

  At that, Alex looked Barrington in the eyes. “She is not available for purchase.”

  Barrington tempered his smile. “Genius is never for sale. And never fear, sir; I see how closely she holds you in her affection.” The remark raised Alex’s hackles; it seemed, to him, to carry a note of underlying sarcasm. “However, talent does require nourishment, and if Miss Goodrick has an eye for beauty, she’ll find Côte Bleue a natural wonder. Only an hour from Monte Carlo, at that—entertainment abounds for a gambler as well.”

  Alex bestirred himself to produce a smile. An invitation to the man’s house was an ideal opportunity to get to the bottom of Gerry’s mystery, and he was never one to waste opportunities—particularly those that would save him a great deal of time in the long run. “I will put the question to Miss Goodrick,” he said with a shrug. “Her wish, as you may gather, is my command.”

  Chapter Eight

  Gwen finally wended her way back to the table. With Barrington having extended an invitation to his home, Alex saw no need to linger, but he waited as she drank a glass of wine, and watched with veiled interest as she deftly managed Barrington’s compliments.

  She had accused him, not without cause, of appraising people like commodities, but it required a deliberate and sustained effort to view her so cold-bloodedly. She would never convince anybody of being a professional courtesan: he was certain of that. Laughter lifted her long face from merely pretty to beautiful, but her blushes came too readily. No one would believe she had professional experience in lovemaking.

  Still, she had unexpected talents, and a very unexpected ability to enjoy a masquerade. A bohemian artist . . . he thought she might manage that pretense for a weekend.

  He was still undecided when they left the café shortly before dawn. Barrington had offered a ride, which they declined. Gwen floated out ahead of him. She was in the grip of some dreamy silence, but as he helped her into the cab, she leaned back out and spoke abruptly. “You haven’t told me what you thought of my performance.”

  “Perhaps you can guess.”

  “No,” she said. “You must tell me.”

  He smiled a little. “Or what? You won’t let me inside?”

  She stared at him, unspeaking, and some quality in her silence lent the moment an uncanny flavor. While the darkness of the interior concealed her body, the streetlight behind them illuminated the pale oval of her face, gilding her cheeks in shades of amber and ghostly blue. The effect was . . . arresting. Vermeer had used natural light to paint women in this way, faces emerging from the shadows, forcing the viewer’s eye to focus on what was most important: the look of grace. The mouth firmed in determination. The eyes poised to behold a revelation.

  But God knew Gwen was waiting in vain if she looked to him for it. And surely she knew that, too. He rubbed his hand over his chest, which felt strangely tight, no doubt from the smoky air inside. “Didn’t get your fill of praise inside, then?”

  Her unabashed laugh broke apart the weird mood. “Never,” she said.

  “Well, at least you’ve mastered immodesty.” He smiled and unbent. “I would say the Barbary Coast chose well.”

  In response, she flushed and sat back into the vehicle.

  A few blocks from her hotel, Alex stopped the driver so they could walk the rest of the way. He wanted to make sure Barrington was not following them; it would not do to have the man discover her identity. “Fresh air,” he said as he helped her down to the quay. “Even in this stench, there’s a bit of it.”

  As they strolled beneath the elms that lined the embankment of the river, she drew a long, testing breath. “I rather like the smell,” she said as she took his arm. “Somebody’s burning . . . dung, I believe? It reminds me of the countryside.”

  “And that’s a good thing?”

  She gave him a peering, incredulous look. “You dislike the country?”

  “I’m not particularly fond of it.”

  “But whyever not? You spend the holidays there—and I know you grew up at Weston Hall. That’s a beautiful estate.”

  He paused. “No doubt it is. But the countryside tends to make me feel . . .” As if I’m suffocating, he thought. “Bored,” he said instead. “Cities are full of life. Ambition.” It was to the city men went when inspired by the possibility for change. Conversely, the very appeal of the country, so far as he could gather, rested on ideas of staidness, stability, stagnancy. It came close to his idea of a prison, did English country life—rotting quietly in the middle of nowhere, dining every evening before the same view that he would see from his deathbed, amidst company that had known him from the day he was born.

  As a boy, of course, he’d been told that he would be lucky to enjoy such a fate.

  “I find the country a very lazy cousin to the city,” he continued. “Can you disagree? Had the viscount not come to Paris—had he gone instead to . . . Suffolk,
say—would you have managed to have such an adventure tonight?”

  “Of course not.” She made a thoughtful pause. “I suppose you’re right. My home is in the country, you know. But I never thought to go there.”

  “Your home? Do you mean Heaton Dale?”

  “Of course,” she said in surprise. “Where else?”

  He hadn’t realized that she thought of that place as home. It was a monstrous, Palladian palace, the construction of which had become the subject of great mockery amongst his mother’s friends fifteen years ago. Some arriviste’s attempt at a bourgeois Buckingham, his mother had called it. I wonder if Mr. Maudsley plans to cast his own crown?

  “Do you spend much time there?” The place, as far as he knew, had stood empty since her parents’ death. Certainly Richard hadn’t lived there. He’d mocked its pretensions more viciously than anyone else had.

  “Oh, occasionally I spend a day or two. Never long, but I had hoped—well.” Gwen pulled a face. “I’ve just redesigned the gardens. Trent adored Tudor mazes, but Thomas preferred the Chinese style. Heavens, I pulled up the entire back lawn for that boor!”

  Ah. “You’d planned to live there, after marriage.”

  “Where else?” She gave a light laugh. “It wasn’t as if my fiancés—either of them—had a better option to offer. Odd, isn’t it? Both gentlemen had a dozen houses to their names, but not a single one fit to inhabit.”

  “Hmm. May I suggest, Gwen, that when you next undertake to marry—”

  “Oh, please, let’s not even speak of it.”

  “—that you make a requirement,” he finished. “Consider nobody who cannot claim at least one roof without holes.”

  “A good policy, I suppose.” She gave her head a little shake. “But why are we even speaking of such matters? We’re in Paris, of all places! Paris at sunrise! I’d be terribly greedy to be dreaming about the country when surrounded by this!” She swept out her hands, then did a little twirl down the pavement.

  The twirl looked like manufactured good cheer—her first placating routine of the evening, in fact. Almost, he made a sarcastic remark. Paris, for all its charms, was one of the filthier cities of the world. And sunrise was no large wonder: he could testify, firsthand, that it happened every morning.

  But then her face did light up, as though the act had become real, and, caught off guard as he was, he felt his damned bloody heart trip; he was grateful that her attention no longer fixed upon him, for he had no idea what she would have seen in his face, had she looked.

  Instead, she gazed past him, then around them, turning a slower circle, head tipping in scrutiny. She was admiring the sleeping street, he supposed, the darkened windows in the stony faces of the Gothic and medieval facades—and the bits of trash fluttering along the embankment. Fair enough, they did tangle with some very pretty early wildflowers sprouting through the cracks in the pavement. Rogue flowers. The saffron petals formed a colorful, illicit trail up the walk as far as the eye could see, until one’s attention was hijacked by the tower of Notre Dame, demanding the eye follow it upward to the heavens. The night sky was ripening into peach on the eastern horizon, promising a day of warmth ahead. On the Seine, the glow of the rising sun spread in ripples of gold.

  A lilac petal was drifting past him. On impulse, he reached out to catch it. “Yes,” he murmured. “I suppose it is beautiful.”

  She turned back, mouth quirked. “Alex, you do not even have to suppose. I will vouch for it—or bribe you to believe it, if you prefer. I do not hesitate to do such things now, you know; I have grown thoroughly wicked in the night.”

  He laughed. “God help us,” he said, and tossed the petal at her. “Wicked becomes you a bit too well, Miss Maudsley.”

  She laughed back and batted the petal away. “And there’s the pot calling the kettle black!” she said before slapping her hand over a jaw-cracking yawn. When her hand dropped, her expression grew serious. She looked again toward the tower of Notre Dame. “It’s not really so wicked, though, is it? To want to live like this?”

  “Like this?” he echoed.

  “To want to live . . . freely,” she said. “Even as a woman.”

  There was a vulnerable note in her voice, longing entwined with the faintest note of fear. She turned her face to him, then, and he saw the hope there, written in her eyes.

  She should not trust him with such sights. It would be so easy to crush her now—to laugh at her and say, You think what you’ve done is wicked? It was child’s play, sweetheart. This is not freedom. This is simply the sort of lark available to a woman with three million pounds.

  He opened his mouth, then closed it.

  He would not speak the words to her. It would make him a hypocrite of the lowest order. For all the ways he could pick apart her phrasing, he did know what she meant. What she was feeling . . . it was the same yearning that had driven him away from England the very moment that university had concluded. His first sunrise over the Atlantic, the sea spray in his face, he’d leaned so far over the rail into the wind that a passing sailor had cried out in alarm.

  How odd. He’d forgotten that exhilaration. How long since he’d last felt it? Its diminishment had probably been inevitable. In those early years, he’d boarded ships for sheer curiosity about the destination. Now he looked at a map and saw no names unfamiliar to him. His travels had become a matter of routine and obligation.

  The sticky strands of fatigue seemed to twine together and constrict around his brain. He set his teeth against a profound tug of exhaustion. Think. Answer her.

  But his sluggish mind was still stuck on the other matter. How had he come to the point where a week in Paris struck him as nothing more than an irritating delay between various and equally irritating business commitments?

  He had a brief flash of a hamster on a wheel. A caged hamster. A hamster in a cage. Round and round and round it ran.

  “Won’t you answer me?” she asked softly.

  He took a long breath. “My apologies. I’m . . . a bit tired. Is it wicked to live like this . . .”

  Would it be so wicked if the next time she touched him, he did not stop her?

  He cleared his throat. “I suppose the answer depends on whom you ask.”

  Her eyes were clear and steady. “I am asking you.”

  “Then here’s a lesson for you,” he said. He looked toward the sunrise. “The only person to ask is yourself.”

  By the time Gwen woke, sunlight had conquered the molded ceiling. It put the time at well past noon. The smell of eggs seeped inside from the sitting room, growing steadily stronger, as if they’d started to rot.

  She had a fuzzy memory of Elma shaking her awake for breakfast and saying, “We have an appointment at Laferrière at ten o’clock, dear. Why on earth are you still abed?”

  Oh, no. Gwen pushed herself upright against the headboard, recalling the full extent of it now.

  Thanks to her grogginess, she’d not thought to lie to Elma about what had happened last night. Elma had been furious. For the first time in Gwen’s memory, she had lifted her voice. Gwen could not recall the full extent of the lecture, only that it had touched on hoydens, irresponsible bounders who encouraged them, and the horrors of rabble-rousing more generally.

  She also recalled the crack of the door as Elma had slammed out of the suite.

  She clamped a hand over her eyes. She should apologize, of course. She did not think she could bear having Elma angry with her.

  But it would be a lie if she said she regretted a single thing about last night. Even falling asleep to the sunrise had seemed romantic! Cozy beneath the covers, she’d fought to keep her eyes open as long as possible, concentrating on the singing feeling inside her, the wild giddy thrill of everything that had happened. Remember this, she had thought. That I can feel this way! So light and unworried. I never knew it before.

  A knock came at the door. Michaels, her lady’s maid, poked her head into the room. “Mail and the newspaper, miss.”


  The number of letters surprised her. She flipped through them as the door closed. One from Caroline, who probably wanted expatriate gossip. Another from Belinda, who had been entertaining her by proposing ever more novel forms of persecution for Thomas. Lady Anne had sent a note; her daily condolences were beginning to smack of schadenfreude. The Earl of Whitson paid me particular attention at the Flintons’ ball last night, she wrote. Everyone says I am likely to wed before the end of the season. Of course, my only regret would be your inability to attend.

  What a clever way to be disinvited from one’s bridesmaid’s future, imaginary wedding!

  The fourth letter bore an unfamiliar, starkly angular penmanship. When she opened it, she discovered it was from Alex.

  Her heart skipped a beat. He had thrown a petal at her this morning, on the banks of the Seine, and when he’d laughed, the sound had stolen her breath. In the golden light of early morning, he had looked impossibly handsome. But also younger—friendlier, somehow—and more playful, too. He had looked, in short, like somebody who might be speaking to her as an equal.

  She had not wanted the night to end. She had wanted to keep walking with him along the river. He’d been as much a part of her intoxication as the wine she’d drunk at Le Chat Noir.

  Gwen, he had written, I hope this letter finds you in no lower spirits than did the sunrise. I write to you in lieu of a call because of a pressing appointment with the Peruvian ambassador. However, the contents of this note are no doubt too indelicate to be safely committed to paper, so I hope you will recognize the trust I place in you by committing them to ink. I ask you to destroy the letter after reading it.

  In short, I have a proposition for you. But first, it will require an explanation of my main cause for visiting Paris . . .

  By the time she’d finished the letter and cast it into the fire, she was a-thrill again with all the excitement of the evening before. What a wicked and marvelous plan he proposed! And to think that he would ask her, of all people, to help him!