Wicked Becomes You (26 page)

Heavens, she must be the shallowest woman in the world. She should find no joy in this moment. As adventures went, tonight was an awful and violent entertainment. If the guard found Barrington before they managed to leave the grounds . . .

“All right,” he said quietly, and set her on her feet. “The Monte Carlo party is running late, it seems. Our good fortune.” Taking her hand, he led her around the corner.

A handful of guests in their evening finery stood under the portico, waiting to board Barrington’s carriage. Francesca Rizzardi spotted them immediately. “To the casino?” she called.

“Where else?” Alex sounded suddenly mischievous, playful, eager for a night of good fun.

“Then you’ve arrived just in time!” Signora Rizzardi laughed. “But we’ll have to crush in like sardines!”

“Oh, I’ve no objection to it.” Alex flashed the lady a suggestive smile. “Unless . . .” He turned to Gwen, his mouth quirked, his brow lifted.

She forced her own lips into a smile. “Darling,” she said, and laid a hand on his arm. “So long as I’m crushed into
you
, I can think of no better way to travel.”

It came out credibly, probably because it wasn’t a lie.

Alex kept his eyes on the house until the carriage turned onto the coast road, which sloped downward past an embankment that blocked his view. He was watching for signs of alarm—as if alarm would make itself so visible. Hell. What did he imagine? An explosion of lights? The sudden howling of dogs? Barrington was not so well equipped. He traveled well-guarded but clearly he had little experience of hostile negotiations. Only a fool invited into his house a man whom he knew to be deceiving him.

Barrington was not the only fool here.

Alex took a long breath. This urge to violence was new to him. It made his muscles jump at odd intervals. He knew how to inflict pain, but until now he’d not understood the possible pleasure in it.

So
casually
he’d decided to include Gwen in this idiocy. Accepting the invitation to Côte Bleue had seemed harmless. Such an
economical
way to put Gerard’s matter to rest. In his own mind, profit and cost had been the key considerations. And for Gwen? It would be a lark, a bit of fun, an escapade: such had been the terms in which he’d justified how she might profit by it.
Profit
. Always profit. Profit and entertainment; money and fun. Such bloodless words—bloodless, and boundless, too. Let the fun never end. May the profits never cease. Money knows no language. Let the world be your oyster.
Go, go, go. Run
. It had hurt to run as a boy but it never hurt now; he tested himself regularly.

He could have gotten her killed. Gwen’s blood on his hands.

Try to run from that.

Gwen stirred at his side. Her hand settled on his arm, the lightest touch, recalling him to his role. He turned a bland smile onto the company. As the signora had predicted, they had piled in as closely and carelessly as children into a tree house, and about as cheerfully, besides. On the opposite bench, Francesca Rizzardi perched on her husband’s lap, gasping and exclaiming in Italian as every bump in the road threatened to unseat her. Between bumps, she was reading aloud from a newspaper her husband held open for her, some chronicle of doings about Monte Carlo: Lord This had left on the green cloth a total of fifteen thousand dollars, but vowed to have it back within the week; Sir That had suffered similar losses, then made an excellent run at
trente et quarante
, and now sailed onward to Lazlo forty thousand in the black.

Beside the Rizzardis, Madame D’Argent, a dark-eyed and suspiciously youthful widow, cuddled the wall with a secret smile. Perhaps she knew these news items were nonsense—tales that the casino paid its mouthpieces to publish.

A half hour’s journey lay before them on smooth, new roads. They might well arrive at the casino before Barrington’s men discovered their master. Then the task would be to discover a clever place to hide until morning, when the trains would start running again.

He hadn’t a cent on him and he doubted Gwen did, either. Their letters of credit, made out in their true names, were hidden in their room. And one did not carry coins at a house party without raising eyebrows.

Fleeing in the night like hares from hounds. Her face would be bruising, soon.
The only place I’d have a use for you is in bed
. He was a fool.

Gwen gave a very convincing giggle—a reply to some joke that Alex had missed.
Don’t laugh
, he wanted to tell her. She had thrown her right leg atop his left knee upon boarding. She played her role beautifully, and he did not want her next to him. He wanted her as far away from him as possible. The opposite side of the earth.
Be safe
. Why the hell had she come with him? She had not one lick of sense in her head.

Into Alex’s right side pressed the soft gut of a Spanish gentleman—de Cruz was his name. Shifting on the bench, Alex felt a telltale bulge in the inside pocket of the man’s jacket. “Look there,” he said, putting his finger to the window by de Cruz’s face. “Glorious moon.”

De Cruz looked, surrendering a twenty-franc coin for the privilege.

“It is so amusing,” Signora Rizzardi was opining, “to see the truth of the casino, as compared to those dreadful little notices that the churchmen post at Nice.” She had an elegant bone structure that lent her hazel eyes a faint slant; she put this slant to work in the teasing look she cast Alex. He kissed his fingertips in reply. Mechanical gesture. She fluttered her lashes. “Have you ever read those notices, Mr. de Grey? No? Oh, they are awful; I cannot bear to describe them!”

“Please do,” Gwen said. Her tone was bright; nobody else would notice the rigidly erect posture of her spine, the tension in her shoulders. She had worn a backboard for six years. Whenever she felt uncertain, small or threatened or afraid, her posture was impossibly, painfully perfect. These things he knew about her—things which Gwen did not even suspect he knew—were innumerable. For a man that had understood her so little, Richard had loved her fiercely and talked of her often. And Alex had encouraged him—subtly, continuously. Over the years, what hadn’t he wanted to know?

“No, no, Miss Goodrick! And I recommend you do not look for them. Oh . . . very well. They are lists of recent suicides, men supposedly broken at Monte Carlo’s tables, but you mustn’t believe half of the names. These priests make up the tales to scare people.”

“They do?” Gwen pressed her fingertips to her lips with the appropriate show of shock.
She is learning not to gape
:
so Richard had said.
Such are the lessons a lady must learn in lieu of Latin. Her governess warns her she will swallow flies by accident.

Why had he collected these pieces of information? For years, he had collected them; he had tried again and again to force the fragments safely into a picture, the pastel debutante, the standard drawing-room watercolor. But he had never managed to fit them together. And so he had carried them as so many souvenirs—as warnings, as reminders, of how easy it would be, if he did not take care, to fall into the comfortable, easy catatonia inhabited by unimaginative men. And then at some point the souvenirs had shifted in his hands and come to show him the life he might have had, had he been the sort of man she required. But he’d not been able to be that man; he had not wanted to become that sort of man; and this was the certainty that had pulled him back aboard ship—the mantra to which he had listened, as he had watched Southampton retreat, again, for another six months, another season, another year.

“Perhaps they are lies,” the Spaniard said to Francesca Rizzardi. “But I think there must be some truth to these lists, as well.”

“Indeed? But no,” the signora said. “How would such indigents gain entrance to Monte Carlo without the card of admission?”

Gwen sat next to him right now, a warm, breathing presence, her bravery unflagging, as obvious and evident as the smile she wore. And it was a strange and almost unconquerable need in him, like the need to draw air into his lungs, to pull her closer. To hold her still. But he was always the one to leave, because there seemed to be no other choice. To stay would be to lose himself.

His mind turned again to the coast, the receding shoreline. Had she been harmed tonight, no distance ever would have taken him far enough away to find himself again.

“Perhaps they are not indigents to start,” said de Cruz. “Play-fever is real, you know. I have seen it. It can empty the deepest of pockets.”

“Poor souls,” Gwen murmured.

“A weak mind will break beneath any pressure,” the signora retorted. “I cannot spare sympathy for those who sabotage themselves.”

“True, true,” the Spaniard said. “But I truly believe they are not in their own control. Men in the grips of the fever will gladly risk what they can ill afford to lose.”

Of course
, Alex thought. They risked what they could not lose because they thought that they would profit by that risk.

When she had fallen tonight something in him had broken—the frame in which he’d kept the pieces of her, perhaps. She had long since shattered the picture he’d tried to build from them.

No profit was worth the risk of losing her again.

In the lobby, a grand marble affair supported by Grecian pillars and run round by a balcony full of merrymakers, they paused to check their hats and gloves. A number of people milled in the lobby, speaking in hushed tones; underneath their voices ran the murmur of distant music. Monte Carlo. She felt dazed. Why were they lingering here? Above, at either end of the balcony, were great murals of the sunrise over a white-walled town—Monaco, she would guess.

After Alex handed over his hat, he drew her a step apart from the others, reaching up to cup her face as though to caress her. When he leaned near, he murmured, “Have you any money?”

Alarm jolted through her. “No,” she whispered. He hadn’t any, either?

He nodded. “Stay near to me, then. I’ll play for ten minutes. The winnings should take us as far as Nice for the night.”

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.