Wanton:. Noelle Mack

way. No telling where Georgina has got to. I expect the friend who came for her has dragged her off to a show. That will have to stop until we marry her off, eh? Not respectable.”

      “You ought to know,” Severin said dryly.

      Mary gave a snort at that remark and patted Severin on the cheek. “You are a sly one, Severin. Ta, then.”

      When her friend had collected her extravagant hat and departed, Severin went upstairs.

      Within the house, once past the prim and proper, very English rooms on the first floor, the décor changed utterly, as if one was moving through all the exotic worlds her family had left behind. A visitor, although none ever got very far, might pass through room after room tiled with intricate designs, filled with divans and cushions and gorgeous carpets, until the inner sanctum had been reached.

      Severin had not altered one thing inside that room, and rarely went in there. On its walls was a most affecting portrait of all three of them: Giselle, Severin, and Jehane, as they had been ten years ago. Blessed with a loving heart, Giselle had never called the orphaned newborn anything but her daughter and found a wet nurse for the infant girl on the day of her birth. She, without family besides them, had often told her girls they were lucky to have each other.

      Severin paused on the threshold. It was a room that her mother had seldom left. Thoroughly French and devoutly Catholic though Giselle was, she had possessed an odd gift. Her mother could see into souls, or so Severin thought. It had been impossible for her to keep secrets from the woman whose sad amber eyes followed her everywhere when she stayed indoors. Jehane had been rather better at it, a slyboots even then.

      Before her death, on the day on which she’d explained everything as best she could, Giselle had given her oldest daughter the amber pendant that Severin still treasured. She’d shown Marko the flaw deep within its golden depths that looked very like an eye in the right light—an animal’s eye.

      “Ruksana gave me this. The eye can see,” her mother had whispered in French. “It will watch over you and your sister when we cannot.”

      That day had come too soon. The memory of it was still painful.

      Yet, despite her husband’s betrayal, Giselle had believed in love, giving all of hers to her daughters. She’d loved fairy tales and romances and anything magical—they’d been spoiled that way.

      London was a merchant’s city, bustling, chaotic, with very little romance about it. The ever-creeping fog softened its hard edges now and then but they were still there underneath. Passionate and impetuous as he was, Marko scarcely seemed to belong here. Then again, neither did she, Severin thought with an inward smile.