Ways to Be Wicked (27 page)

She’s pretty. She doesn’t look quite like me. Dear God, she looks like Mama. Look at her beautiful dress. She is my family. My
family.
My sister.

The thoughts collided in Sylvie’s head, competing for expression and attention, ultimately making speech impossible. Mouth parted slightly, she gaped at Susannah Whitelaw, née Holt. Lady Grantham. Her hand went up to her mouth in sheer wonder. Tears stung her eyes.

Luckily, Susannah was doing all of the very same things at very nearly the same time, so she needn’t have feared she would be considered rude.

It was Sylvie who finally managed the curtsy. And her sister, Susannah, Lady Grantham, gave a short giddy laugh and curtsied, too.

They approached each other slowly, tentatively, as if they each feared the other would evaporate. They each reached out their hands; their fingers met and clung.
My flesh and blood,
Sylvie thought wonderingly, holding her sister’s cool palms.

“You look just like her,” Sylvie finally said breathlessly.

“
You
don’t,” Susannah said just as breathlessly, just as wonderingly.

“I must look like
him,
” Sylvie told her.

They laughed together, giddily, though nothing was funny. Joy. The sound of joy and disbelief.

Then silence, slightly awkward, slightly awed.

Tom broke it. “Why don’t you take your sister to your room upstairs, Miss Lamoreux?”

And Sylvie did start at the sound of her name, her real name, from Tom’s lips.

“Thank you,” she said softly, trying to give the words every meaning possible. She held his eyes for a moment.

And she took Susannah by the arm and led her upstairs.

Susannah and Sylvie sat together, a pair of shy strangers who were not strangers. In their hands they held their miniatures of their mother. It was a family reunion, of sorts.

“Your maid—” Susannah began.

“Madame Gabon?”

“Yes. She said you were a dancer, Sylvie. She said you were famous.”

“I am a ballerina,” Sylvie confirmed. “And I
am
famous,” she said with an utter lack of conceit. “In Paris, at least. And I am known in other countries.”

“Oh, my,” her sister, wife of a viscount, breathed. “It seems everyone in the family is a dancer, except me. Unless you include the waltz.”

“We must
always
include the waltz,” Sylvie said somberly.

Her sister laughed, and this was grand, as Sylvie suspected Susannah loved to laugh and would do it easily.

“Sabrina is our other sister?”

“Yes. We must find her, too.”

“I wonder if she’s a dancer, too.”

“Miss Daisy Jones said she thought she might have been raised by a curate.”

“Miss Daisy Jones?” Sylvie looked at her sister blankly. “Why would Miss Jones know about Sabrina?”

“Daisy knew our mother! Didn’t you know?” Susannah was astonished.

This was stunning news. “Miss Jones does not speak to the other dancers here at the White Lily.”

And here was something that Sylvie half understood, and wasn’t certain that Susannah would: why Daisy would keep her distance from the other dancers. Having no doubt come such a great distance in life, Daisy wanted to keep a safe distance between herself and her past. For a distance reminded her of how far she had come, and kept her safe from the gravity such a past might exert.

“I shall speak to Daisy, soon,” was all she said.

A lull, for they were still discovering the rhythm of being sisters.

“Your housekeeper said you were beautiful,” Susannah said gently. “When you danced.”

“I am,” Sylvie said firmly.

Susannah laughed delightedly. “Now I
know
we’re related.”

They exchanged proud, smug, amused glances, perhaps their first of sisterly solidarity.

And Sylvie squeezed Susannah’s hand, and hers was squeezed in return. Lovely to take for granted this ex

change of warmth.

But she had a pressing question.

“Do you...do you have a temper?” Sylvie wanted to know.

“I
slapped
a man once in a fit of temper,” Susannah confessed shamefacedly. “I threatened a man with a vase when he tried to take my dresses.”

Sylvie felt immensely relieved. “So it is not only me.
Mon dieu,
it plagues me, I fear.”

“Daisy says Mama had—has—a temper.”

When Susannah stumbled over the verb tense, they both fell quiet for a moment.

“Do you think she’s alive?” Susannah finally dared to ask.

“I think, even when I was very small and alone with Claude. . . somehow I didn’t believe she was dead when Claude told me so. Mr. Bale said there had been a. . . trial?” she ventured.

And so Susannah told Sylvie, who drank it in thirstily, the extraordinary tale of their mother and father: Anna Holt, who had been blamed for their father’s murder and forced to flee, leaving her daughters behind, and of Richard Lockwood, their handsome—naturally—and much-beloved politician father. Of Thaddeus Morley, another politician who now moldered in the Tower, waiting to learn whether he would swing for the crime of the murder of Richard Lockwood.

“Do you think we will find her?” Sylvie dared the question.

“We will try,” Susannah said firmly, and Sylvie nodded, approving of Susannah’s resolve. Not a pair of milque

toasts, not the Holt sisters.

“And what of your husband, Susannah?”

A lovely, soft pink slowly flooded Susannah’s cheeks, and she went quiet.

Sylvie laughed. “Ah, so you are in
love
with your husband!”

“He’s . . .” She stopped and shook her head, as if she could never complete that sentence to her own satisfaction. She cleared her throat.

“And you. . . you have a lo-lover.” Susannah stumbled over the word, trying to look nonchalant about it, which amused Sylvie. “Etienne. Your housekeeper said his name is Etienne.”

“Madame Gabon told you about
Etienne
?” Sylvie would need to have a word with the garrulous housekeeper. “She is too talkative.”

“Madame Gabon said he came to find you, and she told him you had gone to England. He wasn’t happy to find you gone.” There was a pause. “Are you in
love
with
him
?” Susannah asked shyly.

Sylvie laughed to deflect the question. “He is very handsome.”

Susannah was no fool. She tilted her head and studied Sylvie curiously, which was disconcerting. And Sylvie began to comprehend that sisters might very well come with some disconcerting features, too. It was lovely to be cared for, and lovely to be scrutinized, even as it wasn’t entirely comfortable.

“When did you know you were in love with Kit?” Sylvie braved the question. She’d never before had a woman to ask such a question of.

Susannah’s head went back a bit in thought. “I don’t think there was a
when
I knew, necessarily. It almost felt...as if it always was. He seemed all wrong, at first. He was not what I expected, I suppose. But...” She gave a little self-conscious laugh. “He was everything I needed. He was like . . . air.” She blushed again. “I cannot explain. I’m sorry.”

Sylvie was silent, and simply admired her sister for a moment. She was very pretty. She was absurdly pleased to have a pretty sister, who seemed clever, too.

“Mr. Shaughnessy is very handsome,” Susannah said idly.

“Do you think so?’ Sylvie turned away, traced a little square pattern with her finger on the counterpane.

“Oh, yes. I remember when I met him. He took away my breath. Even as Kit stood next to me.”

Sylvie looked up swiftly at her sister. Then looked away just as swiftly.

“And it’s not just how Mr. Shaughnessy looks. It’s . . .” She paused. “Something about him reminds me of Kit.”

And by the silence that followed, she knew her sister was studying her. Sylvie was both pleased and irritated, and imagined this was the way of sisters, too, the feeling pleased and irritated all at once.

“Will you come to stay with us, or will you want to stay here at the White Lily?” Susannah sounded shy about it.

Sylvie finally looked up and ceased worrying the counterpane.

How tempting it was to stay, when there was a little attic room at the top of the stairs with a man who might or might not be sleeping in it at night. She considered its dangerous lure, and how the very thought of its being empty at night ached as if a hole had been driven through her.

Most nights.

No; it would be absurd to stay. Pointless, dangerous, foolish.

“May I stay with you?” she asked Susannah, just as shyly. In fact, she was rather looking forward to greeting Mr. Bale the butler again. Perhaps sticking her tongue out at his back.

“Oh, yes, please!”

They reached for each other and enjoyed their first of no doubt many, many hugs as sisters.

And so with a hug sealing their bargain, Susannah tripped gaily down the stairs to tell Kit the news about their new guest, leaving Sylvie to pack for her departure from the White Lily.

She lifted the lid of her trunk and saw her mourning dress folded there, lurking like a stowaway.
Her disguise.
Tom Shaughnessy had seen through it straightaway, but then again, he
was
rather an expert at costumes.

She stood and reached for her cloak, hanging from the peg in the wall. For a moment, she lifted it, allowed the weight of it to drape from her hands, and indulged in the memory of how she’d wrapped it around herself when she’d made that journey from this little room to Tom’s.

She would never forget the look in his eyes when she had dropped the cloak. As though she, Sylvie, was a gift he’d never, ever dared hope to receive.

“You could have told me. Sylvie Lamoreux. Or is it Sylvie Holt?”

The voice made her jump. Sylvie whirled to find Tom in the doorway, his broad shoulders filling it completely. Her heart skipped, lightly, painfully, a stone cast across water.

It was odd, incongruous, to see him here in this prim little room, this vivid man she associated with every wicked pleasure.

His words hadn’t been an accusation, precisely. They had almost been conversational. Almost teasing. His smile was slight, and oddly, his posture almost diffident.

“I wanted to tell you,” she faltered. “I did go to—”

She stopped. She wouldn’t tell him that she had gone to his room that evening...only to find it empty.

And how it had felt to wonder whether he had gone from her arms to another’s.

Her chin went up instead; she sought refuge in her pride. “Would you have seen me differently?” she asked him instead. “If I had told you at first?”

“That you were a famous ballerina in Paris and related to a viscount?” Faint irony in his words.

“I feared you might believe I was yet another impostor, someone posing as Lady Grantham’s sister. I didn’t want you to believe that of me.”

“And you thought I might turn you in for a reward.” He said it wryly.

She flushed.

“You’d make a terrible impostor, Sylvie. Everything you are is always in your eyes. I would never have thought it of you.”

He said it quietly, almost vehemently.

And the words both thrilled her strangely and made her powerfully sad, too. Confused, she looked down and finished folding her cloak, to give her hands something to do.

“Your sister is delighted that you’ll be staying with her.”

Sylvie felt her cheeks grow warm with pleasure at that; she smiled softly. “I’m delighted to have a sister.”

Tom watched her for a moment, as if simply enjoying her pleasure. “I’m glad,” he said gently, finally.

She knelt quickly and placed the cloak in the trunk, to avoid looking into that gentleness, to avoid considering how it made her feel.

“Were you running from him when you came to England?” he asked suddenly.

Her head went up in surprise. “Etienne?”

He smiled a little at that. “Yes.”

He’d done it again: surprising her into somehow revealing more than she intended, this time the name of her lover. Tom
did
have a point: She’d probably make a terrible impostor.

“I suppose I...I did not want to hurt him, and I didn’t want him to persuade me not to come to England, so I did not tell him I was leaving.”

It was only part of the truth. She still wasn’t certain what the entire truth was; it still hovered somewhere, out of reach of her thoughts. Or perhaps she’d skillfully tucked it away in her mind because she was afraid to reach for it. She’d known only one truth for so long.

“Ah,” was all Tom said. His face went closed, and he looked away from her then, but the room offered very little for a wandering eye accustomed to gaudy things, and so his gaze inevitably returned to her.

“And you will go back to him?” he asked it almost lightly. “After you spend time with your sister?”

She looked at him. “Yes.”
If he will take me.
She supposed this was the truth, anyhow.

Tom inhaled and nodded. And then he straightened, reached into his pocket for his watch. A busy man as usual, Tom Shaughnessy.

“The show tonight. I came up to see if you would be leaving it, or if you would consent to stay for the remainder of the week.” Brisk now.

She smiled faintly. “For you, I will be a fairy, a pirate, and a damsel for the rest of the week.”

He didn’t smile. “That’s how I see you, you know. As all of those things.”

Startled, she gave a short laugh.

And surprising her even more, he reached out and with his finger slowly traced the line of her jaw, deliberate as a cartographer.

Her eyes closed of their own accord, as if to allow her skin to remember the feel of his touch upon it this one last time.

“Good-bye. I wish you the very best, Sylvie Lamoreux.”

And then he turned and was gone.

Chapter Eighteen

O
N FRIDAY EVENING
, the end of the week of Venus, just as the doors had been flung open and a few audience members had begun to filter into the White Lily to be greeted warmly by Tom and The General, the king’s man, Crumstead appeared at the entrance. He looked distinctly ill at ease.

Three men Tom had never before seen hovered behind him, looking just as ill at ease. And faintly resolved.

“Crummy!” Tom greeted him. “Back so soon? Didn’t we just pay you?”

“We’re shutting you down, Shaughnessy.” Crumstead said the words in a slurry rush, as though they were so distasteful he wanted them to leave his mouth as quickly as possible.

Tom froze. He shot a questioning frown at The General, who normally made sure Crumstead got his bribe. The General shrugged in confusion.

Tom returned his attention to Crumstead. “You’re jesting, are you not?”

“I’m dreadfully sorry, Shaughnessy, but it’s the order of the law. We need to shut down the White Lily.” He squared his shoulders, as if he needed all of his strength to deliver the news.

Tom gave a short humorless laugh. “Come now, Crummy. If you want more money, you’ve only to ask. We’re friends.”

Crumstead mumbled something.

“I didn’t hear you, Crumstead,” Tom snapped.

He cleared his throat. “Indecency. We’re shutting you down for indecency.”

Crumstead did have the decency to look ashamed about it. For the White Lily was not the worst of London’s theaters by far. Simply the most popular, the most successful, and certainly the most inventive.

Tom glared at Crumstead. And Crumstead said nothing more, as he knew anything else he might say would be absurd. He glanced nervously down at Tom’s hand, folding into a fist, then up into Tom’s face. Tom could feel the heat of anger begin to flush his skin.

“Tom, if you don’t close the doors and stop the shows, we’ll...” He cleared his throat. “Have to a-arrest you.”

“
Arrest
me?” Tom barked. Crumstead took a step back.

“You won’t shoot me, will you, Shaughnessy?” Crumstead was not the world’s most courageous fellow.

“Oh, for God’s sake ...Crumstead...what is this about? Tell me, and we shall take care of it as we always have. This is ridiculous, and you know it.”

Crumstead looked miserable. “I wish I could tell you, Tommy, I honestly do. I don’t know. I only know that those were my orders. Please. I need to close you down. God knows I don’t want to drag you in.”

The faces of the men standing behind Crumstead echoed this—nervous determination to do what they had been ordered to do.

And Tom suddenly realized this lot had been sent to take him in if he resisted.

The look Tom turned upon Crumstead made the man blanch, but Tom wasn’t actually seeing Crumstead. He was held motionless by a white fury and an extraordinary realization. He now understood that someone had encouraged—no doubt,
threatened,
rather—his investors to withdraw, and when that didn’t appear to ruin him...had deliberately arranged to have the White Lily closed. He could only imagine the little web of connections required for something like this to take place—only someone with great wealth and power, the kind of power with infinite reach would be able to discover precisely how to ruin Tom Shaughnessy in particular. It had been a breathtakingly personal campaign.

But who on earth would have taken the trouble? Tom couldn’t think of a soul he would call an enemy.

“Closed for how long?” Tom snapped.

“I imagine that will be up to the courts.”

Nothing
escaped the torpor of the courts of England before years had passed.

The dancers, aware of the tumult below, had moved from the wings and gathered on the lip of the stage, and now stood before the curtains in a row to watch.

Tom looked up, saw the row of white faces. Saw Sylvie hovering behind Molly. Saw her vivid eyes even from where he stood.

He imagined he would never be able to stand within a few feet of her without that pierce of awareness.

Crumstead sighed. “Tom, can I trust you to shut the doors, or will we have to take you with us?”

Tom’s mind worked rapidly, sorting through possibilities, abandoning them, taking them up again.

“Tom, I really don’t want to—”

“I’ll shut the doors,” he said tersely.

“I’m sorry, Shaughnessy. You don’t know
how
sorry. Give my regards to Molly?” he added sadly. Because he knew the English courts as well as anyone, and understood it could quite simply be an eternity before he ever saw Molly again.

Crumstead and the men he’d brought with him finally slunk away.

And when he did, behind them stood a man Tom had never before seen. Tall, as tall as Tom, nearly, his face obscured in shadows until he took two steps into the White Lily, and stopped, a few feet away from where Tom stood.

He regarded Tom, quiet triumph and a faint contempt passing over his features.

The man’s breeding surrounded him almost like a nimbus; the kind saints wore in medieval paintings. So pronounced it nearly hummed. He was darkly handsome and sleekly clothed, so sleekly that it almost seemed as though nothing, no dust, no harm, could ever possibly cling to him. He was the sort of man, Tom realized, who would never hope to be unobtrusive, and probably never wanted to be.

Rather like himself.

And suddenly Tom realized who this must be.

But he was older than Tom had imagined him. There was a weariness about his eyes, a hardness in his face that comes from living perhaps too much. Or perhaps from seeing or hearing of relatives go to the guillotine.

Because he
was
a French nobleman, after all.

The answer came definitively from Sylvie, as a shocked intake of breath:
“Etienne.”

But there was an echo of the name, too, another feminine voice. Stunned, Tom turned to its source:

Molly.

Molly’s eyes met his, widened; she gave her head a little shake, and her hands went up to her face. She turned her head away.

Etienne’s gaze landed only briefly on Molly. Tom understood that she was merely the implement he’d used to learn what he’d needed to learn, after all; he’d no doubt wooed her with trinkets and lovely walking dresses, intimidated and awed her with his manners, and then had skillfully extracted information from her, information about Tom and Sylvie and the White Lily. And she was no longer useful.

Etienne’s eyes swept impatiently over the girls until he found Sylvie: took in her costume, the wand and the dress and the wings.

And then Etienne’s expression. . .

With a shock, Tom realized:
This man loves her.

If he was a prince, no doubt he could have anything and anyone he wanted. But even being a prince couldn’t protect this man from the humbling vicissitudes of love. From all of those things on The General’s list.

And he imagined that Etienne resented being humbled at the hands of a dancer, even if she was a glorious dancer, the magnificent Sylvie Lamoreux. And no doubt Etienne couldn’t believe that
anyone,
let alone the mongrel part-Irish, part-Gypsy, part-God knows who else—though ultimately all English—owner of a bawdy theater might have presumed to
touch
what he considered rightfully his.

And so he had set out to ruin Tom. To teach the dancer a lesson? Or to teach the English mongrel a lesson?

Whatever had flickered over Etienne’s face when he saw Sylvie finally settled into a sort of petulant anger. It was this expression that lingered.

Sylvie stared back at him, as if she simply couldn’t look away. “How did you...”

“You could have told me you were leaving, Sylvie,” he said. Nearly flawless English. Scarcely even a hint of his nationality. “And it was a simple thing to follow you, my love.” He said it almost condescendingly. “Across Paris, and then to this. . . place.”

Tom knew an impulse to seize the man by the cravat and give him a good choking.

The crowd was thickening at the door, wondering why a single man seemed to be blocking the doorway of their beloved theater. Tom saw Bateson’s face. And behind Bateson. . . Belstow. The man who had dangled from Tom’s fist just a few short weeks ago. Another man who thought it was his right to do as he pleased to women. He suspected Belstow had done his part to assist Etienne in the destruction of Tom.

“You would have stopped me, Etienne, from coming to London,” Sylvie said. “And I wanted to know the truth of me and my family. That is all.”

Etienne regarded her for a moment, his features unreadable, not denying the truth of this.

“I forgive you,” he finally said. “We shall discuss it when we return.”

Tom saw Sylvie’s hand tighten around her wand and wondered if she intended to hurl it.

This was the man who had...taken Sylvie. As if it had simply been his right. As if she wasn’t something precious and rare and beautiful, worth winning, worth fighting for. Something to be worthy
of.

And now he was here to take her back, again, as if it was his right.

You fight. Dirty, if you have to.

Suddenly everything was elegantly simple.

“Name your seconds, Etienne.”

A gasp went up. The showman in Tom was distantly gratified, even as he could hardly believe he’d uttered the words he’d heard so many times before. In truth, it wasn’t even his right to utter them, as he wasn’t, in fact, a gentleman.

But he saw now the uses of honor. He had also, quickly, as he was Tom Shaughnessy after all, derived a plan to fight dirty in the
guise
of honor.

Etienne’s mouth curved faintly, condescendingly. His brows might have lifted a fraction, but other than that his expression was bland. As though nothing here could possibly touch him. “You are challenging me to a duel, Shaughnessy? I can’t imagine why you feel you’d have the right.”

“Since your English has thus far been splendid, I’m rather surprised you need clarification now. But yes, I am challenging you to a duel.”

“Tom, for God’s sake . . .” The General murmured. “You’ll kill him. I mean you really will kill him. He
will
kill you,” The General said, as if in concern, to Etienne.

Etienne’s head swung toward the sound of The General’s voice, then lowered his head to find the man who’d actually said the words. He frowned a little, puzzled by him, too, then returned his eyes to Tom.

A throat cleared. “He’s really a marvelous shot, Etienne,” Belstow allowed.

London, granted, would be much less interesting if Tom Shaughnessy were to be shot dead. Not even Belstow seemed eager to see it done.

“You’ve no true right to call me out, Mr. Shaughnessy,” Etienne said calmly. “Duels are for...” He delicately trailed off, as if it would be ungentlemanly to point out that Tom was patently not a gentleman. “And what on earth would my transgression be, if you please?”

Tom looked at him. The room, and everyone in it, had gone eerily silent.

“You’re afraid of me, aren’t you, your Highass?”

Not his best attempt at humor, but then again, he’d just called someone out for the first time, and he was wildly, coldly, furious. Tom forgave himself.

Etienne stiffened then. His elegant jaw set. “Oh, come, Shaughnessy. You’ll
hang
for killing me.”

“But you’ll be just as dead as I am, only sooner, as I assure you I’m a
flawless
shot.”

“Shoots the heart out of the target every time.” Bateson, who was hovering on the periphery of the small crowd, volunteered, voice quavering just a little.

Coldly now, Etienne said, “If men choose not to invest in your endeavors, if the authorities choose to take away your right to this travesty of a theater—”

“. . . bit more than a suggestion, from what I hear,” someone muttered.

“. . . said he’d tell Pinkerton-Knowles’s wife he liked to go to the theater to watch pretty girls,” another muttered.

“—then that’s their choice,” Etienne concluded.

“
You
did this, Etienne?” Sylvie’s voice was faint with bewilderment. “
You
closed the White Lily?”

Etienne turned his head toward her, opened his mouth slightly, as if to reply, then apparently decided a reply was unnecessary. He turned back to Tom.

Tom saw Sylvie’s eyes become green flints.

“Name your seconds,” Tom repeated calmly.

The two men locked eyes for a moment, and Tom saw a flicker of panic flash there in the depths of Etienne’s dark ones, even as his features remained immobile.

“Etienne—” Molly said.

Etienne flicked her a look of such contempt that her face went white. “I’m sorry,” she choked out, meeting Tom’s eyes. “Mr. Shaughnessy...I...”

“Stop,” Sylvie said, her voice low, thrumming with panic and fury. “Both of you.”

“I shall stop,” Tom said evenly, “If Etienne agrees to apologize for what he has done.”

Etienne’s lip curled condescendingly. “This is business, Shaugh—”

“No, Etienne.” Tom’s voice was as deadly and precise as his aim. “This is
not
business. I meant that you should apologize to Sylvie. This is about Sylvie. And I think you know why.”

Etienne was silent. Hatred, flat and dark, dulled his eyes as he regarded Tom. Measuring him, and not arriving at conclusions he liked.

“Please,” Sylvie’s voice came again. Thin, taut. “Please stop.”

Tom turned to her. “Very well, then. Tell me that you don’t love me, Sylvie, and there will be no duel.”

Sylvie stared at him, eyes glittering in her stark face. All the heads of the dancers were pointed at her, riveted, lovely mouths dropped open.

“Tell me you don’t love me, Sylvie,” Tom repeated calmly. “Look me in the eye and tell me, in front of these witnesses, that you don’t love me, and there will be no duel, and you can return to Paris with Etienne.”

And then he saw her square her shoulders, just a little shift of a motion, preparing herself just the way he’d seen her do right before she’d kissed Biggsy the highwayman.

She looked him evenly in the eye.

“I don’t love you.”

And her voice scarcely even trembled.