Wicked Becomes You

by Meredith Duran

  He led her across the lobby, to the small bureau where they wrote their names and nationalities in a great, velvet-covered ledger and received in return cards of admission permitting them entrance into the next suite of rooms.

  Card in hand, Alex made no pretense of waiting for the other guests. “Come,” he said to her, and they set out at a rapid pace past the doors to the Reading Room and the famous Concert Hall, where, by the sound of it, a Mozart symphony was underway. Liveried men bowed and opened a set of double doors to the next anteroom, a polished corridor overhung by a dark blue ceiling that boasted a carved pattern of interlocking gold stars. The hush inside was marked; the few visitors who sat on the gilt benches sipped tea and read newspapers. How odd: Monte Carlo felt rather like a library.

  On any other occasion, it might have stuck her as acutely unjust that she had no opportunity to explore this notorious place; that she was rushing past its main attractions with nary a glance backward. But all she wished now was to be gone. Barrington might be on the road this very moment. They had no money. No money! All her life, she’d had money in hand and the comforting knowledge of what that money could secure: smiles, service, swift exits. She felt painfully vulnerable without any.

  They passed through yet another gilded anteroom, even quieter than the first, before the double doors finally opened into the gaming salons. Here the silence was total, as if all the players at the long tables were holding their breath at once. Men and women hunkered into armchairs of crimson velvet, scowling down at their cards. She followed Alex across the Oriental carpet, past a boy of no more than twenty, who bit his knuckle and followed the roll of the roulette ball, round and round. Amidst all this fierce, wordless concentration, its bump and clatter seemed to make an outsized roar, grating along her nerves.

  At the end of the hall, Alex drew up. In this section, each table boasted a delicately engraved silver bowl. He meant to play trente et quarante, then. Gwen had heard of the game; Elma favored it because it had a better return than roulette.

  She went on tiptoe to speak into Alex’s ear. “Do you have any coin to gamble with?”

  “Only what I stole from the Spaniard.”

  Stole! She saw proof of her reaction in the slight smile that crossed his face. On a deep breath, she said, “And are you very good at gambling?”

  “Luck is always useful,” he murmured—and then surprised the breath out of her by lifting her hand to his mouth. His lips briefly pressed her gloved knuckles, a pressure as hot as a brand. For a moment, all her sharp anxiety seemed to tip into something hotter and far more pleasurable.

  With a wink, he released her and turned toward a free chair at one of the tables. Clutching her hand to her chest, she retreated to a vacant bench set by the wall.

  As she settled down, the croupier at Alex’s table intoned, “Messieurs, faites le jeu.” Alex produced a coin. She sat up, straining with no luck to make out the denomination.

  Whatever it was, Alex did not hesitate to place it as a bet—although perhaps he should, if their finances were such that he needed to gamble to pay their way out of Monte Carlo.

  Perhaps they could charm somebody into giving them a ride to Nice?

  She glanced nervously toward the door, then back to the game. The others at Alex’s table—two young, well-fed gentlemen; a roughened old man who, with his white beard and ruddy cheeks and stern demeanor, might have made a convincing sea captain; and a petite woman dressed in widow’s weeds, with a large jet pendant at her throat—proved more cautious in their judgment of luck and the board. The woman changed her bet twice before snatching her hands back into her lap, where Gwen suspected they continued to fidget amongst themselves.

  She wished Alex would look at her. What were they to do if Barrington appeared? The dim lighting from the chandeliers rebounded off the green baize tables, creating a sallow glow that played unflatteringly on the gamblers’ faces. She had never before seen Alex look pale.

  “Le jeu est fait; rien ne va plus,” said the croupier. The betting is finished; no more bets. With an elegant fillip of his hand, he began to deal the cards.

  She leaned forward and bit her lip. And from the corner of her eye, she saw a bowler hat.

  She turned on a soundless gasp. One of the liveried attendants had approached the man and stopped his advance, gesturing toward the hat. A sign in the lobby had proclaimed very clearly that hats were not allowed inside the Salle de Jeu.

  The man looked contemptuous. With a curse sharp and loud enough to penetrate the low, constant rumble of the roulette boards, he took off his hat and tossed it at the attendant’s feet.

  The attendant took a step back, chin tilting in offense. Another employee approached, speaking in tones too quiet to hear as he picked up the hat and returned it to the man.

  Alex was intent on the cards. She did not know whether she should rise to her feet to warn him, or go down on her knees to avoid notice. She did not recognize the man, but it seemed unwise, in this case, to hope for the best. His attitude and dress made him too likely to be one of Barrington’s men. Alex’s back was to the entry, though, so the man could not have noticed him, yet. There was a chance they could escape undetected—

  The man looked directly into her eyes. He shook off the attendant’s arm and pointed at her.

  “Red wins,” announced the croupier. He began to push money toward Alex, who pocketed the coins and notes.

  She rose to her feet. “Alex,” she said.

  The terror in her voice won his instant attention. He came to his feet and made a shallow bow to the table, then caught her arm and turned her toward the entry. “Where?” he said calmly.

  The evenness of his voice settled her somewhat. It was only one man, and they were in public now. “To the right. By the roulette tables, in the bowler hat. Oh, dear,” she added, for the man and the attendants now began to walk toward them, moving with silent purpose down one of the aisles formed by the long baize tables.

  Alex dropped her arm. “Cross the room and walk along the left wall,” he murmured. “Wait for me by the entrance. Do not leave the Salle without me.”

  “But—”

  “Go.”

  She picked up her skirts and made a sharp turn, hurrying past rows of oblivious players, beneath a line of chandeliers that muted the colors in the Oriental carpet beneath her slippers. This light played such strange tricks; for a moment, the room appeared to her somehow unreal, like one of those old, painted daguerreotypes, somebody else’s memory, nothing to do with her, oh, if only that had been the case and they had already been gone from here. Faster, she thought, but when she glanced over her shoulder, she stumbled to a stop: Alex was having a conversation with the group. Hands in pockets, weight on one foot, he looked quite at his leisure.

  The man in the bowler hat raised his voice. “—lying, I tell you—”

  The attendants caught him by the elbows. Alex shook his head, threw her a brief glance, then nodded toward the exit before strolling onward himself.

  She started forward again, agonizingly aware of the number of tables remaining to be passed before she reached the exit—five, and then four, and then three—and also of Alex’s progress, so unbelievably unhurried, on the opposite side of the room. The brief commotion, notable only because of the otherwise total silence, had attracted a few stares.

  Two tables.

  Another muffled curse pierced the tomblike silence of the room. More players laid down their cards.

  One table.

  She reached the entrance just as Alex did. He put his arm around her waist as the doors opened for them. “Head down,” he said softly as they exited the gaming salon.

  Ahead of them, at a distance enviably closer to the main exit, a couple strolled arm in arm. As the next pair of doors opened for them, Gwen released a breath: she did not see Barrington or his men anywhere down the long stretch before them. “Have we enough to get to Nice?”

  “Yes.”

  By some silent, mutual decision,
they picked up their pace. They had almost made it back to the lobby when a voice cried out, “Ramsey!”

  The shout seemed to ring off the marble floors. Gwen looked up and saw Barrington standing at attention beside a very startled Signora Rizzardi.

  “Music,” Alex said decisively. He knocked open the doors to the concert hall with an elbow and yanked her after him.

  The interior was dark, the great chandelier put out; she could make out nothing at first but rows upon rows of red velvet chairs, and then the backs of heads, all turned toward the spotlit stage where a huge orchestra was playing, seventy men at the least. Alex’s grip slid to her hand, tightening; she followed him blindly along the back of the theater as her vision clarified. The walls were covered in paintings of Greek deities, the ceiling ornately carved and gilded, and so far above them that she felt very small, suddenly—almost childish. She had a fleeting feeling, based perhaps on dim memory, that she was sliding about in the shadows while the adults, her parents, glittering people, threw a party to which she’d not been invited.

  They reached the very end of the back row. “Here,” Alex whispered, and she heard the faint snick of a latch, and then the door was opening into fresh air, and he was pulling her outside, into a small courtyard that appended the main entrance.

  Not until their feet touched the grass again did she breathe freely. And then, all at once, she wanted to run. To dance? Oh, something wild and rollicking! An escape in Monte Carlo! She turned to him to say something—maybe only to laugh—and he was already smiling at her and behind him she saw the man creeping up, the man from the stairway in Barrington’s house, and the glint of metal in his hand.

  Instinct was all. She threw herself forward into Alex, knocking him out of the path of the descending pistol butt. He stumbled back, and the guard missed her; he had not gauged for her height. “Bitch!” he snapped at her and swung back his hand.

  Alex hit him. She had never seen a man take a hit before. She had never gone to watch boxing. It was not appropriate for debutantes. She had not known the sound it made, the sickening crunch, the spray of blood it occasioned.

  The man dropped to the ground.

  “Bloody Christ,” Alex said, shaking out his hand, and for a confused moment she thought he was complaining of the pain, until he took her by the shoulder and turned her roughly toward him. “Stop doing that,” he said, and she shook her head. She had no idea what he meant.

  He made a sound low in his throat, and from the way he let go of her, she interpreted it as disgust. “Come,” he growled. “Let’s find a cab.”

  Barrington’s search made it inadvisable to stay at the best hotels, the second-rate hotels, the thoroughly average hotels, and also, to Gwen’s regret, any hotels that had proper names. Stepping down from the carriage at Nice, she dogged Alex through a tangle of streets that led off the main stretch, past a diminishing number of stationers’ stores with books on roulette in the windows, into an area where French flags no longer waved gaily from windows but hung in tattered strips from rusting poles. At a corner, they paused so he could shake awake a street urchin and ask, in rapid French, where a bed might be found. The boy looked as if he wouldn’t answer, but he grew friendlier once he had his Napoleon. “Madame Gauthier,” he said, and roused himself, on the promise of another coin, to show them the way.

  Gwen was braced for very shabby appointments, and Madame Gauthier’s unkempt appearance—she answered the door in a stained wrapper, with a shawl wrapped round her hair—did not invest greater confidence. But after retrieving a pitcher of water from one low shelf, the woman led them through a pleasant courtyard, whitewashed, with cactus growing at the edges, and then presented them with a room that was bare but clean: a bed large enough for two; a chamber pot; a washstand; a pitcher and glass. The plaster walls were cracked, but they were as white as marble.

  When the door closed behind their hostess, Gwen sank onto the bed. “Do you think we’re safe now?”

  Alex slid the bolt home, locking them inside, then leaned back against the door and fixed her with a cold, steady regard. “For the time being,” he said.

  She blinked. Far from the reassuring tone she’d expected, he spoke very sharply. And he was looking at her as though he were sizing her up for execution—his eyes narrowed and blazing, his jaw so rigid that it made an almost perfect square. “Are you . . . angry?” she asked in bewilderment.

  “Am I angry,” he repeated softly. The corner of his mouth tipped. It was a smile she never wished to see again. “What do you think, Gwen?”

  “I can’t think of a single reason—”

  “A single reason?” He paused for an audible breath. “Setting aside your stupid heroics on the lawn—you went into that room with him. With Barrington.” Each word was distinct, a chip of ice. “You walked off, alone, with a man whom you knew I did not trust.”

  Astonishment briefly paralyzed her. And then she shot up on a laugh of disbelief. “You think this was all my fault?” Of all the things they had to talk about—“I thought to have information from him. To ask a few questions—”

  “To have information?” He pushed himself straight, and if anything, he looked angrier. “I told you that I would do the goddamned investigating!”

  “Only—only to see his private rooms,” she said quickly. “To map out the house. And had you not been skulking about, I would have been safely in bed right now, having told you where to find his study! You see?”

  He stared at her.

  And in fact, she wasn’t quite right. Barrington had clearly known of Alex’s identity. “Well, he knew who you were,” she said weakly. “We didn’t realize that. So something was bound to happen. But, still—it wasn’t my fault.”

  “Bound to happen. Yes. Bound to happen to me.” He took a hard breath. “And tell me, what do you think would have happened to you? Had I not so fortuitously been ‘skulking about,’ do you think he would have let you leave?”

  “Yes! He’s a—” All right, clearly he wasn’t a gentleman. “He didn’t know that I was part of the deception,” she said.

  He didn’t seem to have heard her. “But perhaps I have it wrong,” he said. He spoke now with terrible pleasantness. “Was it a seduction you planned? Having given up on me, you turned your sights on him—”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” she said sharply. “I will tell you what would have happened. I would never have kissed him had I not seen you hiding there. And if he had kissed me, I would have refused him!”

  He laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. It raised the hairs on her nape. “Refused him.”

  “Yes!”

  “Simply walked away.”

  “Yes, that’s what I mean!”

  “Could you, then?” He took her hand and pulled her up to him. “Demonstrate for me,” he hissed in her ear. He snapped her around so expertly that despite her unpreparedness, or perhaps because of it, the result was like a move in a dance: she pivoted fluidly and gracefully, her back coming up against the full length of his body.

  He had positioned them before the small mirror over the washstand. In the reflection, he looked—different, somehow. And so did she, her cheeks flushed and her chest rising so rapidly. Like photographs of themselves, clichéd types: the rogue with the black reputation; the heiress ripe for plunder.

  She straightened her spine; she did not require his support. He pulled her right back against his chest.

  “Walk away, then.” His voice was low and rough. “Go ahead, Gwen. Try to break free.”

  She shoved at his arm. It was immovable. “I would have kicked him,” she said.

  “So try it.”

  “I have no desire to kick you!”

  “Do you imagine that you could?” Abruptly his regard in the mirror seemed neutral and detached—studying her with the idle curiosity of a stranger. “Have you never heard of my little hobby? I was sure my sisters would have mentioned that I go about kicking men for fun. Smash their jaws, on occasion. Men much larger and stronger t
han you have learned it firsthand.” His face darkened. His words took on a smooth, venomous lilt. “It’s a very economical way to fight. Barrington would have learned so tonight had you not felt the need to interfere.”

  She swallowed. Alex had dispatched Barrington with the speed and ease of a lion taking down some aged, limping gazelle. She might have been terrified by it had anyone else performed that cool dispatch. But Alex had done it. And she knew him.

  He was wrong, though, if he thought he could have taken Barrington without her help. A smashed jaw was one thing, but a gun could kill. This anger was unfair—and out of character, besides. Alex could be cruel, but he was never unfairly so.

  “He had a gun,” she said.

  His indrawn breath audibly shook. “Yes,” he said.

  She looked into his face in the mirror, met his eyes, and something in her—her stomach, her heart, God knew what—something turned over.

  He’d been frightened for her.

  God above. Alex had been frightened.

  She’d been clutching his forearm, braced against it. Her grip softened now. She tentatively stroked her hand down to his wrist, then back again. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “Alex, I’m fine.”

  His arm dropped. He stepped away from her. “I am amazed you have lived this long,” he said in a dead voice. “You have no value for yourself, do you? No value apart from the number assigned to you by your parents’ wealth.” He made a scornful noise. “Miss Three Million Pounds, to be squandered on whichever man deigns to give her attention this month.”

  A breath escaped her. He knew so well exactly how to wound her. “I should slap you for that,” she said faintly.

  “But you won’t, of course.” He shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it onto the floor. For a moment he looked at it, then he turned back to her, leaning against the wall, tall and elegant in his shirtsleeves. “You won’t because you recognize that it’s true. Poor Gwen. Life would be so much easier for you if all that ailed you was common stupidity.”

  “Stop it,” she said. “This is unfair of you, Alex. I was only trying to help—”