dresses.”
“You can’t stand outside with the rest of the crowd and watch them go in?”
Her chin went up and her eyes narrowed. Emotion flashed in those dark depths, but when she spoke, her voice was as cool and as haughty as the comtesse’s. “Like the child with her nose pressed to the bakery shop window? I think not. I mean to examine those gowns closely as well as study the jewelry and coiffures. Such opportunities do not come along every day. I’ve been planning for it for weeks.”
She’d said she was a determined woman. He’d under-stood—to a point—her wishing to dress Clara. Dressing a duchess would be highly profitable. But to run this risk—she, an English nobody—with the Comtesse de Chirac, stupendously high in the instep and one of the most formidable women in Paris? And to do so at a time like this, when the city was in a state of ferment on account of an impending trial of some alleged traitors, and nobles like the comtesse saw assassins lurking in every shadowy corner?
It was a mad chance to take, merely for a little shop.
Yet Madame Noirot had announced her lunatic intention as cool as you please, with a gleam in her eye. And why should this surprise him? She was a gambler. This gamble, clearly, was of vast importance to her.
“You may have slipped into other parties unnoticed but you won’t get into this one,” he said.
“You think they’ll know I’m a nobody shopkeeper?” she said. “You think I can’t fool them? You think I can’t make them see what I want them to see?”
“Others, perhaps. Not Madame de Chirac. You haven’t a prayer.”
He thought perhaps she did have a prayer, but he was goading her, wanting to know what else she’d reveal of herself.
“Then I reckon you’ll simply have to see for yourself,” she said. “That is, I presume you’ve been invited?”
He glanced down at his diamond stickpin, winking up at him from the deep neckline of her red dress. Her bosom was rising and falling more rapidly than before.
“Oddly enough, I have,” he said. “In her view, we English are an inferior species, but for some reason, she makes an exception of me. It must be all my deceitful French names.”
“Then I’ll see you there.” She started to turn away.
“I hope not,” he said. “It would pain me to see you manhandled by the gendarmes, even if that would enliven an exceedingly dull evening.”
“You have a dramatic imagination,” she said. “In the unlikely event they don’t let me inside, they’ll merely send me away. They won’t want to make a scene with a mob outside. The mob, after all, might take my side.”
“It’s a silly risk to take,” he said. “All for your little shop.”
“Silly,” she repeated quietly. “My little shop.” She looked up at the leering demigods and satyrs cavorting on the ceiling. When her gaze returned to him it was cool and steady, belying the swift in-and-out of her breathing. She was angry but she controlled it wonderfully.
He wondered what that anger would be like, let loose.
“That little shop is my livelihood,” she said. “And not only mine. You haven’t the remotest idea what it took to gain a foothold in London. You haven’t the least notion what it’s taken to make headway against the established shops. You’ve no inkling of what we contend with: not merely other dressmakers—and they’re a treacherous lot—but the conservatism of your class. French grandmothers dress with more taste than do your countrywomen. It’s like a war, sometimes—and so, yes, that’s all I think about, and yes, I’ll do whatever is necessary to raise the reputation of my shop. And if I’m thrown into the street or into jail, all I’ll think about is how to take advantage of the publicity.”
“For clothes,” he said. “Does it not strike you as absurd, to go to such lengths, when English women, as you say, are oblivious to style? Why not give them what they want?”
“Because I can make them more than what they want,” she said. “I can make them unforgettable. Have you drifted so far beyond the everyday concerns of life that you can’t understand? Is nothing in this world truly important to you, important enough to make you stick to it, in spite of obstacles? But what a silly question. If you had a purpose in life, you would give yourself to it, instead of frittering away your days in Paris.”
He should have realized she’d strike back, but he’d been so caught up in her passion for her dreary work that she took him unawares. An image flashed in his mind of the world he’d fled—the little, dull world and his empty days and nights and the pointless amusements he’d tried to fill them with. He recalled Lord Warford telling him, You seem determined to fritter away your life.
He felt an instant’s shame, then anger, because she’d stung him.
Reacting unthinkingly to the sting, he said, “Indeed, it’s all sport to me. So much so that I’ll make you a wager. Another round of cards, madame. Vingt et Un—with or without variations, as you choose. This time, if you win, I shall take you myself to the Comtesse de Chirac’s ball.”
Her eyes sparked—with anger or pride or perhaps simple dislike. He couldn’t tell and, at the moment, didn’t care.
“Sport, indeed,” she said. “One rash wager after another. I wonder what you think you’ll prove. But you don’t think, do you? Certainly you haven’t stopped to ask yourself what your friends will think.”
He hardly heard what she was saying. He was drinking in the signs of emotion—the color coming and going in her face, and the sparks in her eyes, and the rise and fall of her bosom. And all the while he was keenly aware of the place where her sharp little needle had stabbed him.
“Nothing to prove,” he said. “I only want you to lose. And when you lose, you’ll admit defeat with a kiss.”
“A kiss!” She laughed. “A mere kiss from a shopkeeper. That’s paltry stakes, indeed, compared to your dignity.”
“A proper kiss would not be mere, madame, or paltry,” he said. “You may not pay with a peck on the cheek. You’ll pay with the sort of kiss you’d give a man to whom you’ve surrendered.” And if he couldn’t make her surrender with a kiss, he might as well go back to London this night. “Considering your precious respectability, that’s high stakes for you, I know.”
One flash from her dark eyes before her face turned into a beautiful mask, cool, impervious. But he’d had a glimpse of the turbulence within, and now he couldn’t walk away if his life depended on it.
“It’s nothing to me,” she said. “Haven’t you been paying attention, your grace? You haven’t a prayer of winning against me.”
“Then you’ve everything to gain,” he said. “Easy entrée into the most exclusive, most boring ball in Paris.”
She shook her head pityingly. “Very well. Never say I didn’t warn you.”
She returned to her chair and sat.
He sat opposite.
“Any game you like,” she said. “In any way you like. It won’t matter. I’ll win—and it will be most amusing.”
She pushed the cards toward him.
“Deal,” she said.
At the time of the French Revolution, Marcelline’s aristocratic grandfather had kept his head by keeping his head. Generations of Noirots—the name he’d taken after fleeing France—had inherited the same cool self-containment and ruthless practicality.
True, her passions ran dark and deep, as was typical of her family, on both sides. Like them, though, she was quite good at hiding what she felt. She’d had to teach her sisters the skill. She, apparently, had been born with it.
But