Ways to Be Wicked (21 page)

Who had a
lover.

Claude took a deep breath, steadying herself. “If you find her...when you return. . . will you tell her I am sorry? I never meant to hurt her. She is very disciplined, my Sylvie. It is so unlike her just to run. But, oh, she has a temper, and I fear this time impulse sent her across the sea, and possibly she will not be safe on her own.”

Susannah saw Kit glance sideways at her.

So Sylvie was not the only one in the Holt family to possess a temper. Somehow, Susannah was pleased to hear it, and felt closer to her sister already.

Because Tom and The General loved drama, that afternoon they positioned the girls as well as Daisy in the audience, a view they seldom enjoyed. Almost like little girls being brought on an outing, they were quiet and wide-eyed, perhaps tense with anticipation, well behaved. No giggles or murmurs.

For they knew why Tom and The General had gathered them here.

Sylvie slid a sidelong glance at Molly, only to find it intercepted by Molly’s sidelong glance. After their conversation in the attic yesterday, Sylvie knew Molly was certain that Sylvie would be appointed Venus.

A portentous thumping noise, sliding, a few crashes and some swearing were heard from behind the red velvet curtains.

“The day you’ve been waiting for has arrived, ladies,” Tom announced grandly.

And then the curtains shimmied up.

“Cor!”
Rose breathed, perhaps predictably.

An enormous oyster sat on the stage, glowing softly. In the dim light of the theater, they could barely see a series of long, dark ropes attached to it, painted to disappear into the darkness when the lights were lowered. A crew of rough little boys stood at the ready to tug on them, to open the great creature’s maw.

“It will look lovelier at night,” The General assured them. “We shall surround it by waving seaweed and floating fish...” With his hands in the air, he sketched the picture of them, and the girls’ eyes followed his hands, envisioning it.

“Venus,” Tom told them, from where he stood onstage, “will have the honor of waiting inside the oyster and being revealed, slowly, to a breathlessly waiting audience. She will truly be the pearl in the oyster, and she’ll rise, gracefully, and sing a song recently composed by our beloved Josephine.”

Josephine nodded graciously.

Sylvie immediately thought:
Pearl, girl . . .

What had this place
done
to her?

“And since I know all of
you
are breathlessly waiting to be told who she will be...” Tom continued.

They
were
breathless.

Sylvie was breathless, in particular, hoping, praying, it would
not
be her. And in truth, she hadn’t the faintest idea what to expect from Tom Shaughnessy, whether he would consider such a thing a gift...or whether it would amuse him to put her in the shell when he would know she so clearly didn’t want to be there. She supposed she could protest, but he still provided the roof over her head for the time being.

No: He was a practical man, and she would make a dreadful Venus.

He allowed the silence to gain in momentum, drawing it out the way an orchestra conductor draws out the violins, perhaps.

“Molly,” Tom Shaughnessy said quietly. “Would you please step forward?”

The exhale of breath from the girls in the audience nearly lifted up the curtains.

“
Ohhhh
. . . Molly...” Congratulatory murmurs rose up. Mostly unsurprised murmurs, as Molly’s supremacy was all but unquestioned. Mostly, to their credit, pleased murmurs.

Molly, as though it were her very own coronation, rose, and all but floated toward the stage.

And when she turned around again, her smug smile could have lit the entire theater at night.

“Let’s applaud Molly, shall we, ladies?” Tom said with appropriate gravity.

Gracious applause fluttered from the seats, and Molly basked as The General and Tom flanked her.

And Daisy Jones lifted herself up from her seat and quietly, with dignity, made her way toward the back of the theater, toward her velvety pink room, like a storm retreating in the face of the advancing sun.

Sylvie watched her go. The woman had never spoken to her directly; Sylvie had never seen her speak to any of the girls directly. Daisy kept a precise boundary between herself and those she perhaps considered beneath her.

She looked up, saw Tom smiling down at the girls. But The General was watching the majesty of Daisy’s retreat, his expression difficult to fathom.

The next hour or so was devoted to Molly’s learning how to fold herself into the oyster shell and rise from inside it as it slowly, slowly opened. Every girl wanted a turn at it, which took a bit of time, and The General, flush with his success, indulged them just this once while Tom solemnly discussed with the boys the timing of the pulleys, the angle and speed at which to tug the ropes to most gracefully reveal Venus. He demonstrated this himself.

Sylvie peered closer at the huge oyster, ran her fingers over the satin of the inside, admiring the sheer whimsical brilliance of the craftsmanship, and the very idea that had spawned it. It was lined in rippling, pillowy pale pink satin, as befitted the throne of an undersea queen. It would gleam in the footlights softly, reflecting Molly’s fair skin. It was, indeed, the ideal setting for a pearl.

The seed for it, the mind that had seen the potential for the beauty and whimsy and sensuality of it, had been Tom Shaughnessy’s.

Sylvie thought of Tom as a boy in the rookeries, stealing to eat. Hiding from those who might drag him off to the authorities, as though he was merely something to be disposed of, like a feral cat. Learning to fight and to survive with the tools at his disposal.

Lucky in my friends,
he’d said.

And as she caressed the inside of that absurdly beautiful, magnificently silly oyster, she knew it might as well have been Tom himself she was touching.

She glanced up, knowing somehow his eyes would find her.

He was still discussing the mechanics of the pulleys with the boys, and he noticed, perhaps, the shift in her posture, and it was but a glance, a swift hold of her gaze. His eyes darkened even then. And then he returned to the business at hand.

Most nights.

Chapter Fourteen

T
HE NEXT DAY
, Molly arrived in the attic shortly after Sylvie did. But she wasn’t alone. She’d brought the rest of the girls with her.

And all of them stopped and stared, wide-eyed and silent, at Sylvie, who stood with her hair pulled tightly back, the lovely exotic dress she wore to practice her dancing floating about her calves.

Molly finally spoke. “I told them about the ballet, and the princes and kings.” Her chin was up.

“And you would all like to learn to dance this way?” Sylvie asked them.

She had never before taught a roomful of girls, though she had advised younger students about form, and every now and then wiped away Monsieur-Favre-instigated tears.

“Can ye show us?”

Sylvie looked at those lovely girls, with their round bodies accustomed to very little work at all apart from, perhaps, the sort that took place on a mattress or the sort that took place on the White Lily’s stage. And wondered how they would cope with the pain and discipline, the nuance and complexity—

But she needn’t tell them it was difficult, or painful, or that few really excelled at it. She would show them, and they could decide for themselves whether or not they found it so.

“Yes. I will teach you.”

They looked back at her, and shy smiles were exchanged.

But Molly’s expression shifted as something occurred to her. “The mirrors...ye’d no mirrors before.” She looked almost accusingly at Sylvie.

But before Sylvie would respond she heard more creaking on the stairs.

They all froze, and Sylvie saw for an instant a stricken expression flicker over Molly’s face.
She thinks it is Tom coming to meet me,
Sylvie thought.

But Sylvie recognized the step of The General, for she had invited him to meet them here.

“They would like to learn the ballet,” Sylvie told him very calmly.

The General stared at the six girls, six very beautiful and very different women reflected in the mirrors of this cramped little room, the context so different from the White Lily’s stage.

And at first, the faintest hint of incredulity shadowed his brow. Or perhaps it was bemusement.

And then...a glimmer of inspiration dawned in his shiny dark eyes. It was a familiar gleam. A nearly
fanatic
gleam.

She’d seen it in Monsieur Favre’s eyes before.

“Will you work hard and do what I say and not complain? I will only ask once, and if you complain even once, I shall refuse to work with you.”

This he directed to everyone except Sylvie.

Five heads ducked up and down. No harm in agreeing, no doubt they imagined. They had no true idea what was in store for them.

“Well, then. Shall we begin?”

It was to be a night of pirates, fairies, damsels and a mermaid on a swing, and the girls, after their first simple lessons in the ballet earlier in the day, settled down at their tables to the task of becoming fairies first of all. All was, as usual, noisy chatter, and the air was nearly clouded with powder, complaints, and exclamations over gifts that had been delivered by the ever-present crew of little boys.

Sylvie arrived in the dressing room to find her little table to prepare herself for the performance, and slowed when she saw what was atop it—a little box.

“Oh, look! Ye’ve an admirer, Sylvie!” Rose said encouragingly. The unspoken words were:
at last.

Compared to the gaudy things that arrived on their little dressing tables each night, the clusters of blooms and baubles, the gift on Sylvie’s table seemed exceedingly modest. She stared at it, wondering, half-bemused, how on earth she would respond to an admirer from the White Lily’s audience.

Just then, Molly lifted a silk shawl out of its wrappings, the latest of her gifts from her anonymous admirer, the one who watched the shows from the private box intended to court her “proper.” It was a thing of limp, luminous beauty, and a collective sigh went up when it was revealed. The girls flocked to it. They all wanted to touch it and wrap it about their own shoulders, and Sylvie and her tiny gift were instantly forgotten.

She approached the box almost cautiously, as though it might turn into a great moth and fly at her, and took it up gingerly in her hand. It was of wood, and it fit neatly into her palm, with a heft that belied its petite size.

And then she saw, painted, very delicately across the top: a ballerina, her dress floating like a cloud about her, her arms stretched overhead, her face rapt.

Sylvie felt the first rushes of heat in her cheeks, the sort of heat that always stole her breath, made her heart feel like a tiny sun in her chest.

Attached to the box by a thin gold cord was a petite gold key.

With trembling hands, Sylvie fumbled the lid of the box to reveal the shining drum at that would turn to spill the music out. For it was indeed a
boîte à musique.

A music box.

She fitted the key into the slot, not unaware that the very act of inserting a key into a slot to create music had a certain poetry and prurience to it. A certain symbolism, given who had left this box for her, and somehow she doubted it had been lost upon him.

What do you
want,
Sylvie?

And so she turned the key. And a little tune began softly, scarcely audible in the roomful of laughter and chatter. Playing just for her.

Later, after they’d been pirates and fairies and were waiting to be damsels behind the curtain, watching Daisy in the swing and taking wagers on whether it would hold, Sylvie felt Tom stand behind her briefly. Over the top of their heads he watched Daisy in the swing. He didn’t look at Sylvie at all, or speak to her or Molly or Rose, nor did Sylvie turn to meet his eyes. He was distracted and alert, overseeing his show from every angle, just as he did each night.

But when he turned to leave, his hand brushed against her back, a light, seemingly accidental drag of fingers. Scarcely even a touch.

And then he was gone, off to see to the Earl of Rawden, the famous poet earl, who had just arrived with the gust of authority he always brought with him and was swiveling his head about looking for Tom, and off to pay the king’s man, Crumstead, who had arrived for the show and for his bribe.

Scarcely even a touch. It might even have been construed as accidental. Certainly the other girls had noticed nothing, for they were still peering out at the audience from where they stood next to her, whispering comments she’d ceased listening to.

But this was Tom Shaughnessy after all, who did have a certain talent for timing and drama. The touch had been deliberate, she knew. A message, a fleeting moment enclosing the two of them in a silent understanding:

I want you.

In that instant, joy and fierce desire battled with anger, and with the fear of all that she felt. And there was resentment that she should feel it at all, when all her life she’d channeled her passions so effectively, when everything in her life had been as choreographed as the dance, and she knew the next step she should take, and the next.

But with mirrors and a music box and secret proprietary touches, Tom Shaughnessy was wooing her with an intuition and a subtlety at odds with everything he appeared to be, and in so doing had somehow managed to sink through the walls of her reason as water sank into hard earth, undaunted by the challenge.

Made for the challenge, in fact.

And then she wryly corrected a word in her mind. He wasn’t wooing her. He was seducing her. The ends were altogether different.

’E doesna touch the dancers.
She heard Rose’s words again. The theater was everything to Tom, and he wasn’t a foolish man. He used his own appeal skillfully with his employees while maintaining a sensible distance, aware of the delicacy required to keep everyone happy, everything running smoothly. And because Sylvie knew how important the theater and everyone in it were to him, she knew the sheer subtlety of his campaign meant he had not undertaken it lightly.

The implications of this made her breathless.

She had felt often that Etienne’s wooing had been more or less ceremonial, that the outcome had never been in question for him.

But here . . . here she had a choice.

And though she had at first resented Tom for leaving the choice in her hands. . . she now saw it as the most splendid of his gifts.

Later, Sylvie, once again in muslin, rouge rubbed from her cheeks, hair twisted once again into a sedate knot, watched the girls leave for the evening, and waved her good-byes. She lifted a hand to Poe at the door. He lifted a hook in return.

And when everyone was gone, she turned away, availed herself of a lit candle, and took the stairs up to her room. But before she did, she glanced for a light in the depths of the theater; the door to his office was closed, and no light shone from beneath the door.

The evening had been long and raucous. Invitations had been issued to Tom; she’d heard them as he’d greeted the guests near the door and as they’d said their farewells. The Velvet Glove had been suggested to him more than once.

Most nights.

She went up to her room. She unpinned her hair, and brushed it smooth. She stepped out of her dress, untied her stockings, rolled them down, and lifted her nightrail in her hands, preparing to drop it over her head.

But then she paused and saw her reflection in the mirror. And she thought about life as choreography, and about mirrors, and a music box. At the top of the White Lily there was a proud, beautiful man who wanted her. But with these small gifts, he’d shown her that he
knew
her, too. The gifts told her so much more about him than he realized.

She set the nightrail aside, laying it carefully on the bed. She dropped the dress over her head again, took her cloak from the hook on the wall, and wrapped herself in it. And then she took up the candle again.

It wasn’t until he heard the creak of a light step on the stairs to his room that he admitted to himself that he’d been waiting to hear it for days now. That he’d lain awake for nights desperate for it, every one of his senses honed to razor alertness, hoping for it. Denied invitations, conducted a campaign of quiet seduction so unlike him it unnerved and distantly even amused him. Never had he wanted anything more, it seemed. Never had he been so uncertain about getting it.

Tom sat up in his bed, struck the flint to light the lamp next to his bed, and the tiny room glowed in the warm light. His hands shook, for God’s sake, even as he did it. His heart had set up a drumming in his chest.

He saw the light of her candle quiver against the wall first, then the shadow of her, and finally the woman herself. Her cloak was wrapped around her; beneath the hem, he saw light muslin.

Her hair was down, a sheet of silky darkness burnished by the dueling lights of her candle and his lamp. He could scarcely breathe. When she saw his lit lamp, she lifted her own candle with hands that trembled, and puffed it out.

He couldn’t speak.

In silence, he watched her drop the cloak. Saw, in the shadows, the outline of her lithe body through her dress, her long legs, slim waist. And in silence he watched as matter-of-factly she reached for her dress, and pulled it—
Oh God
—right over her head.

The sight of her body completely bare to him all at once was an exquisite physical shock. He stopped breathing.

She began to fold the dress. He remembered to breathe again in order to speak.

“For the love of God, Sylvie, leave the dress.” His voice was low, hoarse.

She dropped it and laughed then, a soft, shaky little laugh. Lifted her hand to push back the long mass of hair, and he watched, mesmerized, the lift of her small, perfect breast when her arm rose, then the waterfall sheen of the hair spilling behind her.

A woman who had been nude in front of a man before—not coy, not ashamed, and yet not wanton, either. A woman who understood the purpose of bodies. A woman who knew, no doubt, how to use her body for work, and for art . . . and for pleasure.

And at this last thought, a peculiar current of jealousy arced through Tom’s excitement. Someone else, at this moment, somewhere, was perhaps missing her. Had touched her. Someone else no doubt felt he had the right to her, and Tom knew he should entertain guilt or regret.

But she was
here
now.

Lover or no lover waiting for her somewhere else, she had crossed the theater tonight, candle in hand, climbed each creaking stair to be with him.

She sat down on the edge of the bed near him, curled her

legs up beneath her.

“Sylvie.” A whisper. Nearly rueful.

Tom shifted slightly, and his light blanket slipped away from his chest, folding to his waist. He pushed it impatiently aside, and there before her, inches away from her touch, she saw the broad line of his smooth shoulders, the hard muscles cut into his chest, the slim waist. And curving up against his flat belly, the evidence of how badly he wanted her. Her senses flooded; she could scarcely believe she was here.

His hand extended, hovered an instant so close to her, deciding. Then, delicately, he rested the backs of his fingers against her ribs, as though testing the temperature of water, wondering if it perhaps would scald him.

And the entire surface of her skin began to glow like something gently set aflame.

She turned her head from the expression in his eyes. Somehow it was too much to take in all at once.

Tom’s hand moved then; she could hear his breath catch as he slid it up slowly, slowly, over her ribs, leaving a trail of sensation behind. He tipped his fingers up to cup her breast; the rough pad of his thumb dragged over her nipple. Shocking, the serrated pleasure suddenly everywhere in her. She closed her eyes. It stilled the breath in her lungs; she heard the ragged catch in her own breath.

“Small,” she whispered roughly, self-consciously.

“Soft,” he said at once, like a correction, his voice low and rough. As erotic as his touch.

His hand slowly dropped away; he seemed to sense her tension.

And together for a time they sat in silence so thick and heated it was like another entire body between them.