Wicked Becomes You (12 page)

“What?” She felt near to stamping her foot. To
strangling
him. “What is so funny? I should say he was owed fifty francs for this mess!”

“Then you overpaid him tenfold,” he said as he rose. “That was a five-hundred-franc note. Seems we’ll have to work on your bribery skills.”

By God, she was sick of being laughed at! “Oh yes?” She turned and snatched up the pitcher of mazagran from the Americans’ table, ignoring the sharp
“Hey!”
from the man with the newspaper.

Alex lifted his brows.

Holding his eye, she threw it at his head.

He ducked, and the crowd behind the railing followed suit. The pitcher exploded against the pavement.

Utter silence.

“That was a bit much,” Alex said helpfully. “But at least you did take aim this time.”

A tap came at her shoulder. The young waiter, brow lifted, held out his hand imperiously.

“Another five hundred, do you think?” The amusement in Alex’s voice did nothing to cool her temper. In a minute she would not
believe
she’d just done this.

“One hundred,” she said to the boy, and dared him with her eyes to refuse the note.

He was not a fool. Sketching her another deep bow, he retreated once more, the note clutched in his hand.

She turned back to Alex. “I don’t require your help,” she said.

The dimple in his cheek betrayed his sober expression: he was biting back a smile. “
Mais non
,” he said. “If you’re going to do this, you’ll do it right. Next time, fifty francs should do nicely.”

It surprised Alex, then, to discover that Barrington had managed to set up camp in the Rue de Varenne. Generally speaking, the neighborhood jealously guarded its aristocratic provenance, making exceptions only for select Americans. To have found a house here, Barrington must have well-connected friends in very high places
.

But connections were not the only resource Barrington could claim. He also had a surprisingly large number of guards posted about his property. As Alex loitered on the corner, pretending to smoke a bulldog pipe—no better way to look like an English tourist, and thereby provide passersby with a reason to dismiss the importance of any other detail of his person—he noticed that a deliveryman and a mail carrier were both stopped and questioned before being allowed up to the front door. The mail carrier did not disappoint, voicing considerable outrage at this violation of his dignity. Said outrage prompted another man in a bowler hat to emerge from the shadows of the ground story, and a third to lean out the window.

Three men set to guard the entry. It seemed curious. English real estate barons generally did not require such security.

After a half hour or so, Alex decided against attempting to approach. Better to find out as much as possible about the man. The first and most obvious idea was to discover who had secured him that house.

And who better to ask than the doyenne of gossip herself? Today, Alex recalled, had been Elma Beecham’s social tour of the Rue de Varenne.

“No,” Elma said absently, “I don’t know who owns that house.” They were standing in the marble-floored lobby of the Grand, beneath the chandelier at the base of the grand staircase, waiting for Gwen to make her descent to dinner. “I can find out, of course,” she added.

“I would appreciate it if you did,” Alex said. “A discreet inquiry, of course. Elsewhere, I would have contacts, but I do very little business in Paris . . .”

He trailed off as he realized that for once, Elma was not curious for explanations, nor intent on keeping his attention. Indeed, her blue eyes continually broke from his to dart toward the staircase. She reached up to run a nervous hand over her smooth blond coiffure, and then set her fan to rapping an arrhythmic tattoo against the inside of her gloved wrist. “Where is she?” she muttered.

“And how is Gwen faring?” he asked slowly.

“Oh, she—here she comes,” she exclaimed.

He followed her look toward the stairs, and found Gwen drifting down toward them.

I’m an idiot
, he thought. He had forgotten the most basic tenet of business: to issue no challenges one was unprepared to see met.

Yesterday afternoon, Gwen’s enthusiasm had seemed relatively harmless. The glee with which she’d ordered beer had put him in mind of his nieces playing dress up in Caroline’s jewelry. Where two bracelets would suffice, Madeleine and Elizabeth always insisted on twenty, stacking bangles right up to their armpits.

But in the past twenty-four hours, Gwen appeared to have moved past bracelets and beer and fallen headlong into a pot of rouge. To be sure, she still looked like a child who had gotten into her mother’s wardrobe—but only if her mother was a high-class prostitute whose taste ran to pink satin and necklines far lower than the hour permitted.

“Did you take her shopping?” he asked.
In a bordello?

Elma shot him a nervous smile. “Oh, a short stroll through the arcades on the ground floor. We picked up a great many joking gifts. I must have missed the moment when she chose this particular . . . Well, she’d never wear such a thing in London, of course! But she took a liking to it, and I—you know how Parisians are. Nobody will notice.”

“Right,” he said slowly.

Gwen swept up. “Mr. Ramsey,” she said. She was wearing a tiny pink rose tucked behind her ear, and another—he did a double take—in her décolletage.

Probably no one else would remark it, though. In her ears swung a pair of diamond eardrops so large that it was a wonder her lobes were not sagging to her shoulders. Their sale might have fed the populace of a small nation for a year.

“So,” he said. “Where shall we go, ladies? I placed a call to the Maison Dorée, and it seems we’re in luck: a cabinet particulier is available this evening.”

Gwen’s mouth pulled in disapproval. “How old-fashioned,” she said. “Can we not dine in public? I’ve no wish to be shut up alone in some stuffy little room.”

Elma flashed him a significant look, which he had no idea how to interpret. “But Gwen, dear!” she said. “The Maison Dorée is the finest restaurant on the Continent. It’s practically impossible to get reservations there. If Mr. Ramsey has been so kind—”

“It’s no trouble,” he said with a shrug. “I’ve connections at Le Lyon d’Or as well, if you’d prefer that. I know the man who fills some of their more arcane orders for spices.”

Gwen glanced past them, her eyes following a group of gentlemen in top hats and capes. “No,” she said decisively. “I’ve seen so many interesting-looking foreigners in the lobby. Let’s dine at the
table d’hôte.
”

And on this note, she casually brushed past Alex toward the dining room.

He turned, watching the roll of her hips with disbelief. Was she
sashaying
?

“Well, all right,” Elma said, and took Alex’s arm, towing him forward to catch up with her charge. “But do look for the Italians, Gwen. They are the best gentlemen to flirt with! I flirted with several when I did the grand tour as a girl. They’re
ever
so educational.”

And so it was that twenty minutes later, he sat at one of the long, communal tables in the hotel dining room, enduring the first course of excruciatingly average fare as he slowly suffocated in a cloud of toxic perfume. To the left, he had an excellent view of Gwen’s complicated chignon: she had turned away from him entirely, wholly engaged with the blond—Italian—lad at her left. Opposite sat two graying Germans who had introduced themselves as Austrians, probably to avoid spittle in their food; they were either deaf or melancholy, and kept their attention fixed on their plates. To the right, somewhere inside the noxious cloud of odor, sat Elma. Overhead, the clash of a dozen languages echoing off the gilded ceiling made the line of chandeliers tremble.

Alex rather envied those chandeliers. At least the air up there was free of the reek of Bouquet Impérial Russe.

“She’s looking well, isn’t she?” Elma still sounded nervous. “Mr. Beecham was staunchly opposed to this trip, but see how cheerful she seems!”

“Certainly,” he said dryly. Gwen seemed about as cheerful as one of those maniacal mechanized puppets that terrorized children at Madam Montesque’s House of Wonders. Meanwhile, the poor Italian looked as if he was being slowly beaten down by a hailstorm. What on earth was she saying to him? Probably a dizzying mix of compliments to his person and declarations regarding her own liberation.
Yesterday I threw a napkin and broke a glass. Today I painted my face. Tomorrow, one never knows, I might spit on the pavement . . .

If she did, she would wipe it up afterward. Alex would place money on it.

“Mr. Beecham felt certain we shouldn’t humor her,” Elma said a little desperately. Dear God, she was coming closer. He averted his face for a long breath. “But I tell you, he has so little understanding for the heart of a woman. Last winter I thought I would
die
of melancholy, the weather was so dull. Not a spot of sun for weeks. But he wouldn’t even consider a holiday. ‘You can have card games in the conservatory,’ he told me. Well, for Gwen’s sake, I put my foot down this time. I told him, what harm can Paris do? Even if she runs across the viscount,
he
knows better than to approach her. And now
you’re
here. Why, we haven’t a thing to worry about! Do we?”

He refrained from comment. He saw a number of things to worry about. He had yet to receive a reply from the Peruvian minister. The woman he’d just asked to perform a
discreet
inquiry with regard to the house on Rue de Varenne was now telling him tales about her husband. And the
vin ordinaire
at this table tasted thicker than ox-blood.

This last might not have bothered him so much, had both women not been drinking with the enthusiasm of hardened sailors.

He reached for his glass of soda water. “Here’s a fine Parisian custom,” he said, and splashed half the glass into Elma’s wine. He reached over Gwen’s elbow to empty the other half into hers. The Italian sent him a beseeching look. He smiled maliciously.

“. . . buy
all
the flowers in Paris,” Gwen was saying, “and fill an entire hotel with them! Wouldn’t that be the most horrid good fun? I expect everybody would be forced to evacuate for sneezing!
You
would not sneeze, though, would you? You seem
far
too masculine to sneeze.”

God above. Someone really needed to teach her how to flirt.

Elma’s breath gusted across his ear. “Yes, soda water, a very good idea. That’s her third glass this evening, you know; she ordered one to the room beforehand. I
would
stop her, that is, I did
try
to stop her, but she told me that there was no harm in a glass, which I suppose is true. They do say that wine thickens the blood, don’t they? And jiltings
do
wear on the constitution.” A hint of anxiety flashed across her face. “I only want her to enjoy herself,” she added softly. “Lord knows that once she’s married, Parisian holidays may come few and far between.”

And on that note, she drank her wine straight down.

Alex sighed, suddenly divining the larger picture. Gwen was not the only one who had come to Paris to cut loose. Mr. Beecham apparently wore on the constitution as well.

Bloody good luck that none of this was his concern. Gwen was right: he had not promised Richard to make her behave,
nor to play her caretaker while her actual chaperone wallowed in nostalgia for her own lost youth. If his sisters had sent that telegram hoping
he
would oversee this mess, they’d been badly mistaken. He didn’t have the energy. He barely had the attention span. Dear God, he needed some sleep.

In fact, he had no idea why he’d agreed to stay for dinner. He should excuse himself and go find a meal that actually proved edible, and perhaps a dose of laudanum for dessert. He’d resisted drugs until now; God knew he’d gotten his fill of medicine in his youth. But at some point, one had to concede the inevitable—

A radish flew past, launched from somewhere down the table by a fork made unsteady by too much wine
. It landed in Elma’s glass, drawing a multinational cry from up and down the table:
Oh lá lá, Youpi, Gut gemacht!

Flushing, Elma lifted the glass in a triumphant toast. The balding gallant at her right promptly offered his own in exchange.
S
he turned toward her admirer, leaving all Alex’s attention for Gwen, who was still laughing.

It was a lovely, uninhibited sound, and it turned the heads of the glowering Austrians, who unbent and gave her a smile. Alex smiled a little himself. Her laughter held an elated note, expressive of more than simple amusement. Listening to her, one had the impression that she was thrilled to be in the world, and saw no shortage of wonders to delight her.

She glanced to him as she fell silent, but her dark eyes still sparkled with mirth. “I like these flying radishes,” she said. Her cheeks glowed from the wine, and in the dim lighting, her hair looked the russet shade of autumn leaves. She looked invitingly, irresistibly warm, a bonfire on a frozen winter night. “I don’t think I’d approve of flying cabbage,” she added, “but radishes, I’ll gladly encourage.”

He cleared his throat. “Live wildly,” he said. “Throw one yourself.”

“Perhaps I will.” Her expression was arch. “Certainly I proved that I was capable of it yesterday.”

There were a dozen obvious places to touch her. The hollow of her throat. The curve of her brow. Beneath her lower lip—that faint shadow in the shape of a downturned half-moon, marking the spot where her pointed chin began to jut outward.

He’d counted them all before. They made an excellent list of reasons to keep the hell away from her.

“Yesterday proved that you know how to buy your way out of trouble,” he said. “Not much else.”

“Oh?” Lifting her brow, she reached out and put one slim finger beneath his chin.

He’d not been expecting it. His breath caught from sheer surprise.

For other reasons, every muscle in his body tightened as well.

“I know how to flirt,” she murmured. “The Italian has been teaching me.”

He reached up and caught hold of her hand. If he stood up now, he’d become the sort of spectacle more often provided by fourteen-year-old boys. “You’re drunk,” he said. “Enjoying it?”