by Laura Parker
As the nearby voice continued its litany of innuendo, Philadelphia turned her head until the sly features of the Marquis d’Edas came into her line of vision. He stood in the midst of a circle of ladies, one arm folded across his chest with the hand propping the elbow of the other arm, while he waved his free hand about to punctuate his speech. When had he entered the room? And why was he so pleased by her predicament? If he mentioned to the authorities his suspicions about her, she as well as Eduardo might wind up in jail.
“A moment!” she cried, desperate to forestall the action. “Am I to submit myself to this indignity? Non, I say! And non, again!” She swung to face Henry, feeling pangs of conscience at once more trading on his feeling for her but determined to save Eduardo and herself, whatever the cost. “Can you do nothing to prevent this, monsieur? Your aunt, what will she say when she learns what has happened to me?”
Henry moved to her side and took both her hands in his. “My dear mam’zelle, you may rest assured that I will protect you.”
“And Akbar?”
He glanced at the bearded heathen and wondered again why the man seemed to find him particularly distasteful. “He’s been accused of theft which is a matter for the police,” he said helplessly.
She snatched back her hands. “Very well, monsieur. I see where your loyalties lie. I will handle this myself.”
With a gesture of dismissal, she moved beyond him and crossed over to where the distraught lady who’d lost her pearls sat sobbing on her hostess’s sofa.
“Madame Oliphant, you will give me your attention for a moment, s’il vous plaît.”
The authority in her voice roused the weeping lady and she looked up at Philadelphia in bewildered hurt.
“Madame, you have falsely accused my servant of theft, and I request most urgently that you will recant your statement.”
“I won’t!” the lady said in injured affront. “My pearls are gone and I want them back!”
“Of course you do. I, myself, would despair if the de Ronsard diamonds were taken.” In afterthought, she raised her hand to verify that the brilliant collar still hung about her neck. “But I wouldn’t accuse you, madame, of taking them because you stood next to me when I discovered the loss.”
The lady’s eyes widened. “Why, I should think not!”
“Exactly. So, you will unaccuse my servant of theft.”
The lady gave her a resentful glance. “He’s been lurking in the hallway the entire evening. One has been forced to pass by him each time one leaves the salon.” She flicked a glance at Akbar and the sight of him made her shudder. “Look at him. He reminds one of the bearded Saracen infidels. I’m certain we should be protected from him.”
“He’s my protection, madame, and I trust him with my life as you would your husband.” Even as she said it, Philadelphia glanced about in the realization that Mrs. Oliphant’s husband had been curiously absent from the fray. “But where is Monsieur Oliphant?”
The lady’s gaze fell before the younger woman’s. “He isn’t here. He didn’t feel well this evening.”
“You are alone?”
She shot Philadelphia a hostile look. “Certainly not! I’ve been escorted by the Marquis d’Edas.”
“Ah.” Because she had no other weapon, Philadelphia imbued the word with all the significance she could muster. “The marquis witnessed the theft?”
Caught off guard, the woman stuttered, “Well, I—I, couldn’t say, exactly.”
“Then say approximately,” Philadelphia snapped, her nerves fraying under the strain. “Was the marquis with you when the theft occurred?”
“No, that is, I don’t know the precise moment when the pearls were taken. The marquis was the first to realize that they were missing.” She grew agitated. “The raspberry ice I’d eaten did not agree with me, and the marquis had gallantly offered to accompany me to the library where it was less crowded so that I might recover.” She looked vaguely about for the marquis and saw that he was staring at her with obvious distaste.
“Madame Oliphant is correct,” the marquis said as all eyes turned on him. “I, too, had been made uneasy by the presence of this turbaned savage. He deliberately stepped into our path as I escorted Madame Oliphant from the salon. It was after we’d entered the library that I noticed that the pearls were gone from Madame Oliphant’s neck. Then I remembered the jostling in the hallway by this man. My jeweled snuffbox was recently stolen by a thief who picked my pocket as he bumped into me on the street.” He fixed Philadelphia with a frosty, half-lidded gaze. “I’ve been told a light-fingered thief may secretly remove a ring from the finger while merely shaking hands.” He turned to his host. “I beg you, do not be offended by the comparison I have drawn, Monsieur Dogget. One does not expect such occurrences in our present surroundings, of course.”
Philadelphia also turned her attention to their host. “Tell me, Monsieur Dogget, these robberies in salons, they are rare occurrences in New York, n’est-ce pas!”
“Dear me, far from it,” Gerald Dogget answered. “Theft has become the plague of the New York social season.”
“It has?” Philadelphia struggled to hide a smile of grateful surprise at this piece of news. “But what has been done about it?”
“Often little can be done, if the gathering is small and those in attendance are well known to the hosts.”
“And you, monsieur, you have lost items to these thieves?”
“A gold pocket watch, an onyx ring, and some cash during the New Year’s Day festivities,” he said testily.
Eduardo had kept silent but now he chuckled as he saw where Philadelphia was directing the conversation.
“This thieving goes on in the best homes?” Philadelphia demanded of her host.
“Yes,” he answered begrudgingly.
“I lost my favorite watch at the Oliphants’ after the Easter parade,” Henry volunteered in a surprisingly cheerful tone for he had just realized what was dawning on the whole assembly; that Mademoiselle de Ronsard and her servant had been part of society only a few weeks while society thefts had been going on for months.
“So. I begin to understand,” she said triumphantly. As she looked slowly about the room, an embarrassed silence fell. “Theft is nothing new to you and yet, tonight, you choose to turn on the stranger in your midst because it’s easier to accuse me and mine than to search among yourselves for the real thief.”
When she’d stared down every eye, she turned with deliberate calculation to the marquis. “I must declare a truth to you good people. There is a thief among you! And it isn’t my servant!”
As her words sounded in the stunned silence, she turned quickly and walked over to Akbar and presented her hand that he might offer her his arm. “You will escort me home, Akbar. I am most thoroughly fatigued by the evening’s events.”
“A most interesting evening,” Eduardo observed in a bemused voice as the carriage they’d engaged pulled away from the curb.
Philadelphia sank back against the seat beside him, her voice trembling like her hands. “It was vile! Horrid! Humiliating! I’ve never been so frightened in my life!”
“You were magnificent.”
“I don’t feel magnificent! I feel like I’ve eaten spoiled meat!”
“It will pass. It is only nerves.”
“Oh! And for that I should be grateful?” She rounded on him in the narrow confines of the cab which forced her shoulder to be wedged tightly against his arm. “And you, you wanted a fight!”
“Perhaps,” he murmured, more interested in their touching than their conversation. How pleasant, he thought, were these moments when she forgot to be afraid and careful and proper.
“Are you mad? Your disguise might have been discovered.”
He grinned at her. “Why shouldn’t I defend myself? We have done nothing wrong.”
“Of course we have. I was there as a guest solely because the Doggets believe I am someone I’m not.”
He shifted his body slightly so that his shoulder rubbed hers. “Haven’t you noticed? Half of Fifth Avenue is passing itself off as what it isn’t. They are common people who struck it rich in some trade or another. Now they’ve sloughed off their old lives and are hard at work to manufacture new ones. It’s done in my country as well.” He shifted again, lifting one arm to stretch it along the seat behind her. “I made my fortune by scratching around in the dirt and finding pretty pebbles like the ones you wear around your neck.” He flicked the necklace with a finger. Did you ever ask your father where and how he began his fortune?”
“He was a banker,” Philadelphia answered.
“Before that what was he?” His fingers brushed the side of her neck. “Or were you always rich?”
She knit her brow in thought. “I don’t know.”
“Yet you never asked. Interesting.” He said the words with an impartiality that made them sound faintly damning. “You might not have liked the answer.”
Before she could switch moods to match his, he lightly dragged his fingertips up the nape of her neck and said, “At least we haven’t harmed anyone with our little deception.”
“Haven’t we?” she rejoined, faintly alarmed by the feel of his fingers tracing her nape. “What about Mrs. Ormstead?”
He considered this. “I believe she might second our little enterprise. She possesses spirit and the rare talent of finding amusement in the simplest experience.”
She stared at him, trying to fathom the reason for his amused tone. The reckless expression she glimpsed as they passed under a streetlight made her keenly aware of the pressure of his knee against hers. He looked like Akbar though the soft-voweled speech of Senhor Tavares addressed her, yet his gaze belonged to the half-naked stranger whose kiss had made her wonder if she knew him at all. She pressed herself into the corner of the carriage saying, “You’re the strangest man I ever met.”
He reached out and lightly drew a circle on her cheek with his forefinger. “I told you once before, menina, that I would rather you found me intriguing.”
She brushed his hand away from her cheek. “I don’t understand you.”
He gently took her face between his hands. “You understand everything, menina. Only you are afraid to admit it. For instance, you have this most amazing need to protect me, even when I am not in serious danger. Why do you suppose that is?”
“But I—”
He halted her words by brushing his thumb over her lips. “Hush, menina. You have already said a great many things this night. Now it’s my turn. I am not criticizing this protective spirit of yours. It is most endearing. But who, menina, will protect you from me?”
“Do I need protection?” she whispered, rapidly falling under the mesmerizing spell of the thumb that continued to stroke her lower lip.
“But certainly. You are alone with a man who isn’t your relative, or your servant. Foolish girl. Have you not been warned about such things as ravishment?”
“Yes,” she answered a little breathlessly and unconsciously licked her lower lip to relieve the tingling sensation his teasing touch provoked. “But I believed that you wouldn’t take advantage of me.”
“Ah. Menina, you wound me.” He watched, fascinated, as her tongue again darted out, this time accidentally grazing the tip of his thumb. “Am I not a man? May I not be moved to indiscretion by your nearness?”
He reached down and lifted one of her hands to slip it inside his brocade jacket where he held it palm-flat over his heart. “Do you not feel my blood pumping there? Am I not warm to touch? Does my body not tremble under the pressure of your hand?”
“Well,” she began evasively, “if you would allow me to remove my hand—”
“I believe I might die,” he answered with a chuckle. “I would show you just how warmly and strongly my blood runs elsewhere but we are not, I think, ready for that lesson.”
Philadelphia opened her mouth to finish her sentence but, remarkably, she found she couldn’t think of a single word. In fact, she couldn’t think at all. There was only an awareness of the slow hard pounding under her hand that communicated itself up her arm through tremulous muscle until her own heart caught the exaggerated rhythm.
“Don’t kiss me.” She didn’t know if the thought had crossed his mind but it had crossed hers—and the anticipation was unbearable.
“I could more easily stop breathing,” he said as he bent to her.
As their lips met he felt her flinch, and he drew back a little to look at her. Her eyes were screwed shut and she had compressed her lips as if in expectation of a mouthful of castor oil. “What’s this, menina? Am I so distasteful to you?”
She opened her eyes a fraction. “The beard. It scratches.”
With a Portuguese curse, he yanked off the offending bush. “Now then, menina, for your comfort and mine.”
Philadelphia shut her eyes again as he bent toward her, but for a very different reason this time. In the last instant she’d seen shining in his gaze a blend of amusement, affection, and—if her bewildered senses didn’t mislead her—something akin to the besotted adoration that afflicted Henry Wharton.
He’d kissed her before, a brief exchange in the Ormstead conservatory which had ended in a sneezing fit, and again in his attic room when anger had held equal sway with passion. But, from the moment their lips met, she knew this was an utterly new experience.
For a long moment the smooth warmth of his lips overlay hers like a seal of perfect peace, and the urge to draw back from him melted away under his gentle persuasion. Then his hands framed her cheeks, and he lifted her chin higher as he turned his head to one side to slant his mouth across hers. He moved his head slowly back and forth, teasing her with his lips as he had done earlier with his thumb.
Some instinct of feminine intuition whispered in a waspish but wise voice that this was the caress of an experienced lover, a sweet torment designed to embolden a shy partner, and that she should put an end to this at once. The voice went unheeded as he continued the subtle and yet inexorable abrasion. Soon he would stop himself as he had done before, she thought, and she would be free. Instead, her lips became so sensitive that each brush made her moan softly. When her moans turned to sighs through parted lips, he licked the newly exposed softness with long slow sweeps of his tongue.
Once, at a state fair, she’d been induced to touch an electromagnetic device said to imitate the production of lightning and had felt the current run like a live thing up through her fingertips. She’d snatched her hand away, horribly embarrassed by the intimate tingling that had flowed through her body and lifted the hair on her head and arms and … well. She’d never told a single soul of the sensation that had made her hurry home to inspect herself for evidence of the violation. Now the moist heat of his tongue pushed a pulsing current of delicious sensation every bit as strong along her skin and beneath where it invaded with equal intensity her lungs, her breasts, and her loins.
Finally his lips left her mouth, tracing the curve of her cheek to its crest, which he sucked gently, and then moved on until the icy touch of diamonds met his lips. With his teeth, he pulled the earring from her lobe and released it into her lap. Then he claimed his prize, the velvet shell of her ear. He pressed a kiss into it and then the tip of his tongue.
She gasped at the shock of it, but he moved away so quickly that he caught the last of her cry in his mouth.
There followed kiss after heavy drugging kiss that seemed to dissolve her muscle and melt every bone. When he finally lifted his head, there was no more strength left in her to think or imagine or even support her own weight, and she nodded forward to lean weakly against his chest.
“You should have told me,” he whispered beside her ear.
“Told you what?” she murmured.
“That you needed a thorough kissing.”
“But—I didn’t.”
“Oh, but you did, menina, and you should always have what you need.”
Philadelphia closed her eyes. She felt as though she were hanging over the edge of an abyss, her fingernails raking flinty granite in a desperate bid for purchase. His kisses left her exhilarated, yet with such marginal control that she had to set her teeth in her lower lip to keep from begging him for more.
“I don’t understand anything anymore,” she complained as an unforgivable tear bloomed from up under the sealed edges of her lashes. “Least of all myself.”
Eduardo lifted her head and smiled at the great perplexed misery on her face. “The answer is so simple, menina, that I believe I must demonstrate it for you very soon or go mad. But first I must, as you norteamericanos say, see a man about a dog.”
“I never say that,” she protested as he shifted on the seat and gently pressed her back into the corner.
“Mrs. Ormstead will wish to know all about the Doggets’ evening,” he said in a voice remarkably free of the sweet agony under which his body labored. “You can entertain her with stories of our misadventures while I am gone.”
“What will you do?” she asked, half-distracted by the discovery of a sticky substance clinging to her cheeks.
“Nothing that should concern you, menina.”
“Oh, very well, be mysterious. But don’t expect me to wait up for you. I shall be in bed.”
“Then when I return I will most certainly go straight to bed.”
The tone of his voice made her look up into his dark eyes which gleamed like dewy sloe plums. Afraid and unwilling to learn if, in reading between the lines of his declaration, there was a reference to his coming to her bed, she looked away in silence.
Eduardo longed to embrace her, to hold her close and make her believe what he sensed she was beginning to doubt—the sincerity of the passion he felt for her—even though the wet imprint of his kisses remained on her mouth. But he didn’t. The carriage was drawing up before the Ormstead mansion. If he touched her again, he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop and then the cabby would be treated to a sight that would be the talk of the Fifth Avenue hackney trade by morning.
