“I’m merely a thickheaded Englishman, I know,” he said. “But even I can tell French and English women apart. One might dress an Englishwoman in French fashion from head to toe and she’ll still look English. You…”
He trailed off, letting his gaze skim over her. Only consider her hair. It was as stylish as the precise coifs of other Frenchwomen…yet, no, not the same. Hers was more…something. It was as though she’d flung out of bed and thrown herself together in a hurry. Yet she wasn’t disheveled. She was…different.
“You’re French, through and through,” he said. “If I’m wrong, the stickpin is yours.”
“And if you’re right?” she said.
He thought quickly. “If I’m right, you’ll do me the honor of riding with me in the Bois de Boulogne tomorrow,” he said.
“That’s all?” she said, in French this time.
“It’s a great deal to me.”
She rose abruptly in a rustle of silk. Surprised—again—he was slow coming to his feet.
“I need air,” she said. “It grows warm in here.”
He opened the door to the corridor and she swept past him. He followed her out, his pulse racing.
Marcelline had seen him countless times, from as little as a few yards away. She’d observed a handsome, expensively elegant English aristocrat.
At close quarters…
She was still reeling.
The body first. She’d surreptitiously studied that while he made polite chitchat with Sylvie. The splendid physique was not, as she’d assumed, created or even assisted by fine tailoring, though the tailoring was exquisite. His broad shoulders were not padded, and his tapering torso wasn’t cinched in by anything but muscle.
Muscle everywhere—the arms, the long legs. And no tailor could create the lithe power emanating from that tall frame.
It’s hot in here, was her first coherent thought.
Then he was standing in front of her, bending over her hand, and the place grew hotter still.
She was aware of his hair, black curls gleaming like silk and artfully tousled.
He lifted his head.
She saw a mouth that should have been a woman’s, so full and sensuous it was. But it was pure male, purely carnal.
An instant later she was looking up into eyes of a rare color—a green like jade—while a low masculine voice caressed her ear and seemed to be caressing parts of her not publicly visible.
Good grief.
She walked quickly as they left the box, thinking quickly, too, as she went. She was aware of the clusters of opera-goers in the corridor making way for her. That amused her, even while she pondered the unexpected problem walking alongside.
She’d known the Duke of Clevedon was a handful.
She’d vastly underestimated.
Still, she was a Noirot, and the risks only excited her.
She came to rest at last in a quieter part of the corridor, near a window. For a time, she gazed out of the window. It showed her only her own reflection: a magnificently dressed, alluring woman, a walking advertisement for what would one day—soon, with a little help from him—be London’s foremost dressmaking establishment. Once they had the Duchess of Clevedon, royal patronage was sure to follow: the moon and the stars, almost within her grasp.
“I hope you’re not unwell, madame,” he said in his English-accented French.
“No, but it occurs to me that I’ve been absurd,” she said. “What a ridiculous wager it is!”
He smiled. “You’re not backing down? Is riding with me in the Bois de Boulogne so dreadful a fate?”
It was a boyish smile, and he spoke with a self-deprecating charm that must have slain the morals of hundreds of women.
She said, “As I see it, either way I win. No matter how I look at it, this wager is silly. Only think, when I tell you whether you’re right or wrong, how will you know I’m telling the truth?”
“Did you think I’d demand your passport?” he said.
“Were you planning to take my word for it?” she said.
“Of course.”
“That may be gallant or it may be naïve,” she said. “I can’t decide which.”
“You won’t lie to me,” he said.
Had her sisters been present, they would have fallen down laughing.
“That’s an exceptionally fine diamond,” she said. “If you think a woman wouldn’t lie to have it, you’re catastrophically innocent.”
The arresting green gaze searched her face. In English he said, “I was wrong, completely wrong. I see it now. You’re English.”
She smiled. “What gave me away? The plain speaking?”
“More or less,” he said. “If you were French, we should be debating what truth is. They can’t let anything alone. They must always put it under the microscope of philosophy. It’s rather endearing, but they’re so predictable in that regard. Everything must be anatomized and sorted. Rules. They need rules. They make so many.”
“That wouldn’t be a wise speech, were I a French-woman,” she said.
“But you’re not. We’ve settled it.”
“Have we?”
He nodded.
“You wagered in haste,” she said. “Are you always so rash?”
“Sometimes, yes,” he said. “But you had me at a disadvantage. You’re like no one I’ve ever met before.”
“Yet in some ways I am,” she said. “My parents were English.”
“And a little French?” he said. Humor danced in his green eyes, and her cold, calculating heart gave a little skip in response.
Damn, but he was good.
“A very little,” she said. “One purely French great-grandfather. But he and his sons fancied Englishwomen.”
“One great-grandfather is too little to count,” he said. “I’m stuck all over with French names, but I’m hopelessly English—and typically slow, except to jump to wrong conclusions. Ah, well. Farewell, my little pin.” He brought his hands up to remove it.
He wore gloves, but she knew they didn’t hide calluses or broken nails. His hands would be typical of his class: smooth and neatly manicured. They were larger than was fashionable, though, the fingers long and graceful.
Well, not so graceful at the moment. His valet had placed the pin firmly and precisely among the folds of his neckcloth, and he was struggling with it.
Or seeming to.
“You’d better let me,” she said. “You can’t see what you’re doing.”
She moved his hands away, hers lightly brushing his. Glove against glove, that was all. Yet she felt the shock of contact as though skin had touched skin, and the sensation traveled the length of her body.
She was acutely aware of the broad chest under the expensive layers of neckcloth and waistcoat and shirt. All the same, her hands neither faltered nor trembled. She’d had years of practice. Years of holding cards steady while her heart pounded. Years of bluffing, never letting so much as a flicker of an eye, a twitch of a facial muscle, betray her.
The pin came free, winking in the light. She regarded the snowy linen she’d wrinkled.