Out of the Dark (2 page)

“I believe polite conversation is usual in this situation,” he suggested. “Have you no bright conversational gambit with which to entice me? Is there nothing you have been practicing to say to your partners this evening?”

“Nothing,” she replied through tight lips.

He tipped his head. “You are not precisely delighted to be dancing with me, I think.”

His perspicuity was startling. “How can you say so?”

“Easily. You give no indication of being intrigued, seem in no danger of rushing like a moth to my flame.”

“I should hope not.” He was held in no great regard as a prospective husband, she knew. There were whispers of bad blood in his family; his father had killed his mother in a drunken rage, or so the story went. Moreover, his many affairs of honor did not bode well for a comfortable future as his wife. Though most fathers stopped short of ordering their daughters to decline his invitations, their mothers regaled them with frightening warnings. Not surprisingly, this made him wildly attractive to the more heedless belles.

“Then you are repelled,” he said evenly.

A short time ago, she would have answered without hesitation. Now she was not quite so sure. “Perhaps I am indifferent.”

A silent laugh shook him, for she felt it, though he was too polite to let the sound in his voice. “You make me feel like a coxcomb for expecting anything else. Is that what you intended?”

“No,” she said after the barest glance at the wry smile curving his mouth.

“That’s something, at least. Then if we are neither of us out to captivate or impress the other, I suppose we may enjoy our waltz in comfort.”

Amazingly enough, Anne-Marie was aware of a brief longing to captivate him. It was a simple matter of pride, she was sure; she had spent too many hours in the past thinking of this man not to wish that she might arouse his interest. Still, she could not imagine what that might take. Vague visions of herself as one of the nude odalisques such as those painted by Delacroix flitted through her mind. How very intriguing that should be, here among the other dancers in their silks and satins and jewels, their cutaway coats and starched linen. She wondered how it would feel to be held naked in this man’s arms as they moved together in the fine, soft glow of candlelight.

“Now what,” he said softly, “has caused that sudden and very becoming flush? I should like to think it was something I had said or done but cannot so flatter myself.”

She drew a sharp breath as she flicked a glance upward then away again. Her mind had a disconcerting tendency to wander off into odd fancies at inopportune moments, but few people were observant enough to notice. “Nothing,” she said in compressed tones. “I was just—thinking.”

“And I am unlikely to be told the subject.”

“Very unlikely,” she said, and controlled a shudder. Or thought she did. It was possible he felt it, however, for his hold at her waist tightened so she was brought closer to him. A moment later, he spun into a turn, whirling her with the stiff embroidery of his waistcoat pressed in shocking firmness against the soft curves of her breasts.

Had he been flirting with her? The thought was nearly as distracting as his embrace. She suspected he might have been, but could not be sure since she had no experience with men and precious little with balls and dancing.

The fault lay with the circumstances of her youth. At fourteen, she had been plunged into near-perpetual mourning. The middle child of five offspring, she had put on black when her two younger sisters succumbed to a virulent summer complaint, then continued it two more years as the brother next to her in age died of cholera. The mourning clothes had been packed away in cedar shavings barely two weeks before they had to be brought out and refurbished for the sake of her eldest brother, just eighteen, who was killed in a duel. Then some ten months later her mother, worn out with tragedy, had passed away, extending the period of grief up to the past winter.

By the time Anne-Marie had finally put aside the last purple gown of half mourning, there had been long years of crepe-hung mirrors and stopped clocks, of seclusion without merriment or the kind of quick, effortless exchange of thought and opinion that made for ease in the social milieu. Left to her own devices by a grieving father, she had turned bookish. Her character, formed in virtual isolation, had turned headstrong and eccentric in a quiet fashion. She was amenable only up to a point; past that, she went her own way. Her sense of justice was fierce and she had no use for falsehoods. She especially disdained false gallantry.

As the movements of the waltz slowed again, she said, “I fail to see what interest Madame Picard’s gathering can hold for someone like the Dark Angel.”

“It’s a distraction.”

The words were clipped short. It seemed he did not care to have the name he had acquired thrown at him in public. That was understandable; upward of fifteen duels resulting in at least three deaths and any number of disabling injuries were hardly a source of pride.

She said in spurious sympathy, “Then you must have been bored beyond belief with the company at your cousin’s house.”

“In point of fact,” he answered, his eyes cool as he gazed down at her, “I am perfectly content there. However, a summer fever has invaded the household nursery, preventing the family from attending this evening. I am here as their envoy.”

“How providential you did not succumb to this sickness.”

“I am never ill.”

There was no vanity in the words, only a statement of fact, yet they irritated her. She felt it as an affront, his hardihood and the fact that he had survived so many duels while her brother had died. “No doubt your exemption comes from regular exercise,” she said in caustic tones. “Braving the early morning damp under the dueling oaks must have tempered your constitution.”

His eyes narrowed. “No doubt.”

“I wonder that you felt the need to leave New Orleans since disease holds no terror for you. Think what trouble you might have saved by staying home.”

“But then,” he said deliberately, “I might have missed meeting you. And I’m beginning to think that would have been a pity.”

Her stare was defiant. “I can’t imagine why.”

“It isn’t often I am privileged to hear precisely what a person thinks.” The quiet words carried a disturbing sound of weariness.

“And whose fault is that, pray? Fear is such a spur to discretion.”

His gaze raked her face. “But you don’t fear me.”

“It is my good fortune that women are ineligible for contests of honor,” she answered in brittle tones. She was going too far, she knew, but seemed driven to it by some half-acknowledged instinct for self-protection as well as her annoyance.

“You have not considered,” he said with lethal softness. “I could always force a challenge on your father or your brothers.”

“You are not known for meeting men who are your elders. As for my brothers, one died in childhood, the other on a dueling ground.”

A soft sound left him, and he stared down at her with an intent frown drawing his arched brows together over his nose. When he went on, it was with an abrupt change of tone. “I am sorry for your loss. And you are quite right; I spoke from anger only. I have never issued a challenge from revenge.”

She did not want his pity. “I expect the threat has always been sufficient without the deed.”

“Don’t spare my feelings, if you please,” he said instantly on the defensive again. “It should be interesting to see how low an opinion of me you are able to express.”

“Oh, I doubt you will be inclined to stay long enough to find out.”

“You are wrong.” The words were smooth. “But only tell me how I must pass the time on my hands instead of remaining here, and I will go and do it.”

“Whatever you like that doesn’t decimate the countryside,” she answered, then added in some haste, “but you will forget I mentioned leaving, if you please. You cannot go just yet.”

“Can I not? What is to stop me?”

“Courtesy,” she said stringently. “If you dance a single dance then depart, it will appear there was nothing here to hold your attention.”

“I am many things,” he said with quiet precision, “but discourteous is not one of them. Suppose I said I might be persuaded to stay for your sake. Would you walk out into the garden with me to ensure it?”

Anne-Marie stared at him. Did he mean it, or was it only a suggestion meant to confuse and embarrass her, thus putting an end to their exchange? The words not quite steady, she said, “You surely speak in jest.”

“Do I?” he queried, his gaze steady upon her face. “You should know better, being no convent school mademoiselle.”

Indeed she wasn’t. According to her stepmother, she was perilously close at twenty to the age when an unmarried woman was advised to throw her corset on top of the armoire and accept the role of a spinster.

The marriage of her father to the voluptuous, hard-eyed widow had been unexpected; they had met during Lent and were wed just after Easter. By the time they all removed to Pecan Hill, the plantation near Baton Rouge, it was plain the new wife considered Anne-Marie a thorn in her side. When her stepmother began to hint that a marriage might be arranged for her, Anne-Marie had not objected. Her father’s house was no longer her home; to leave it for that of a strange man could hardly be more uncomfortable, no matter what he was like.

Or so she had thought at the time. It was possible she had been mistaken.

The words distinct, she said, “I believe it would be best if you returned me to my seat.”

“Oh, I think not. There would be no satisfaction in that.” He lowered his voice, drawing her nearer so he spoke at her ear. “Madame Picard was right; you are something out of the ordinary. You perplex me, and not simply because you hold me in contempt and are unafraid to say so. There is something about you that—look at me, if you please?”

She could not resist, though not because of his request. There was an intent note in his voice she needed to decipher. Slowly, carefully, she lifted her lashes.

His gaze was dark, so dark. It spoke of deep nights and banked fires, of old pain and carefully constructed defenses. It constrained her in some mysterious way, threatening to consume her. She could sustain it no more than an instant before looking away again.

“Fascinating,” he said in bemused softness. “How did you come by such wanton Gypsy eyes?”

“I was born with them,” she said in compressed tones. The subject was a sore one; her stepmother often made such remarks. Besides, his interest made her uneasy.

“Of course you were, and I am well-served for asking,” he said at once. “You must forgive the personal remark, but I was so surprised.”

“In any case,” she went on quickly to fill the silence, “I am not a Gypsy. My great-grandmother was Indian, of the Natchez tribe.”

“That explains it, then. A wild child of nature rather than a wanton.”

“Hardly!” Her stare was suspicious. Most people considered Indian blood to be cause for concern if not scorn. She herself knew the Natchez to be a fine, proud race whose members were equal if not superior to the French with whom they had mingled their heritage. Still, she had learned to be careful of the reactions of others.

“I wonder.”

His comment was musing, yet freighted with rich layers of speculation. It required no answer, however, which was just as well since Anne-Marie had absolutely none to offer. They whirled gently for a few moments before he spoke again.

“You dance well. Actually, you are one of the most responsive women I’ve ever held in my arms. You follow my slightest turn without hesitation, and venture any complicated step I begin. I am tempted to wonder if such perfect grace of movement would translate to—places other than a ballroom floor.”

Lucien
Roquelaire
had substituted another phrase for the one he had intended, she thought. There had also been an undercurrent in his voice that made her suddenly aware of herself as a female, one in the arms of a male not her father or her late brother.

His hold was firm, with limitless support in its tensile strength. Their steps were perfectly matched, their bodies fitted together with exactitude. There was a sense of leashed power inside him that she responded to without conscious thought, making it easy to move with him to the music. Even through layers of petticoats and with the distancing of spring-steel hoops, she could sense the taut hardness of his muscular thighs shifting against her skirts.

She liked none of it.