The Corrupt Comte (2 page)

Gaspard might not have been a clever man at the start of this charade, but he’d grown wise to so many twisted truths.

He wanted out.

“If you’re certain…” When Gaspard only raised an eyebrow, Sabien continued with a shrug. “Her father owns a perfumery on Bond Street in London, but the bulk of their wealth comes from the mother’s side—merchant profits, inherited and invested. The mademoiselle has a dowry of ten thousand pounds, and upon the birth of the first male child, her husband will receive a large share in the merchant business. A very large share.”

“Ten thousand…” His heart thudded as it missed a beat. Ten thousand British pounds could—would—save him from the financial ruin nipping at his heels, and then some. “You’re right. She should be married off by now.” It boggled the mind. “Do you truly find her so unappealing that not even
ten thousand pounds
can entice you?”

“My situation is…complicated.”

Gaspard snorted. “I’d never thought of you as picky until right this moment.”

Sabien bared his teeth in a mock snarl before subsiding with a sigh. “It’s not just me—ask any man who’s had the bad luck to dance with her. All the money on that blasted island wouldn’t make her company easier to bear. Not over the course of a lifetime.”

Gaspard’s nape prickled in annoyance. “The stutter can’t be that bad. Or have you simply grown bored with blatant female adoration?”

“Oh, she doesn’t adore me. I’m not even sure she likes me.” He blinked, suddenly appearing far more sober than he had moments earlier. “I hate what we do, Gaspard. We see too much, and that girl…she’s got demons in her eyes.”

She always looks at me like a wounded animal might. One that’s been kicked repeatedly by its owners.

It was a spy’s curse to be constantly watching, stealing secrets both spoken and left unsaid. Sabien had been in this business far longer than Gaspard, with over a decade of covert service to the once-exiled King Louis XVIII. Gaspard knew only his own demons, but he could too easily imagine what heinous acts might haunt his friend. “I hate what we do too,” he murmured.

“I saw the duke today.”

François, the Duke of Évoque, and their employer—or perhaps
puppeteer
was a better term. “And?”

“He needs the list from you. Soon.”

Gaspard shoved the brandy decanter back into Sabien’s hands. “So he’ll have it. Soon.” The rendezvous to retrieve the list was scheduled for the day after tomorrow. “Do you know why—?”

“I don’t want to know, and neither should you,” Sabien snapped under his breath, looking relieved to have the bottle once more, as if comforted by its weight in his hands. “But rumor is…” he took a long drink, “…rumor is this is the last of it.”

For the second time in as many minutes, Gaspard’s heart thumped hard. “You’re joking.”

Sabien shook his head. “I wouldn’t, not about this. From what I gather, you and I could be free as soon as next week—”

He was cut off by the parlor door banging open, Maxence and his giggling flower stumbling through. The front of her gown gaped obscenely, providing quite the view, but Gaspard didn’t spare her a second glance.

Free. In a matter of days.

Gaspard was no fool, and he knew freedom from this life of secrets and lies wouldn’t come simply. But if Sabien spoke the truth… The apathy shaping his day-to-day existence—usually an ugly lead ball weighing on his chest—suddenly dissolved in a burst of adrenaline-fueled determination.

If Sabien was correct and their spying days were numbered, Gaspard would go to that crumbling castle and finally find his place in the nobility. The whoring that had defined the entirety of his adult life would draw to a close.

He could marry—for money, of course. Only for money, to keep the castle he’d never slept in and the title he’d not been born with.

His gaze darted across the room to the Pascale girl.

“Next victim!” cried Max, one lean arm looped carelessly about Celeste’s flushed neck. Celeste looked well used, and not just from her tumble in the closet. The years had taken their toll, softening her jowls and thickening her waist, but as she was widely known to be Max’s favored mistress, it seemed Max preferred his women that way.

Blatant carnality such as Celeste’s couldn’t possibly compare to the inviting temptation of lush innocence. Of which Claudia Pascale was the living embodiment.

Max grew impatient. “Who’s in the blindfold?”

Celeste’s calculating gaze scanned the room, landing unerringly upon the quiet, wide-eyed maiden hugging the shadows. “Her.”

“Who?”

“Mademoiselle Pascale.”

The murmurs began, a quick-fire chant of her surname around the periphery of the room. Amaury Pascale’s infamy wasn’t merely confined to the memories of France’s political animals—every wealthy household in greater Paris had a story to tell of how the nimble-limbed perfumer conned their family’s deepest, darkest secrets from them.

The deepest and darkest of which had eventually driven Pascale from the country, as well as from the land of the living—or so it was assumed. Yet here stood his granddaughter, not bothering to conceal her famous name in a city that would seek either to make her a pariah…or embrace her in hopes of learning the true fate of Amaury Pascale.

The young woman in question blushed, two perfect splashes of cherry-red color flagging her cheekbones. Gaspard bit the inside of his lip.

“Mademoiselle Pascale,” Celeste said again, louder this time. “Come put on the blindfold, darling.”

The Pascale girl swallowed, and Gaspard watched, attention rapt, as her throat bobbed visibly. She was scared, he could tell, but that determined glint never left her eyes, nor did her straight shoulders ever slump. Then, with a lift of her pointy little chin, her lips parted as if to speak.

The smile curving Celeste’s lips hinted at cruelty. “What was that, dear? Speak up.”

Ah. So the old bitch knew. Beside him, Sabien sighed tiredly. “Here it comes.”

“
Je ne p-préfere p-p-pas.
” Though slowly formed, the words were pronounced with perfect inflection, her French flawless.

“I told you,” Sabien mumbled. “I told you.”

Gaspard’s back teeth ground together. “It’s just a stutter.”

“You must really need that dowry.” When Gaspard didn’t answer, Sabien shot him an incredulous look. “Good God, you’re serious about this.”

“And if I am?” Gaspard knew he sounded petulant and clenched his jaw against any more telling outbursts.

Sabien pushed out of the chair, the neck of the decanter gripped loosely in two fingers. “I’m not drunk enough to witness your unavoidable folly, my friend. Come find me when it’s over so I know you’ve recovered from what I hope is only momentary madness.” He sauntered off to another corner of the room.

Gaspard shook his head and returned his attention to the goings-on in the middle of the parlor. The Pascale girl’s wrist had been snared by a determined Celeste. “Come, mam’selle,” she slurred as she dragged the girl toward Max, the rose left over from her tumble in the closet having lost its bloom. “Play the game. It’s why you’re here, no?”

The girl snatched back her arm, rubbing her fingers over the spot where Celeste had gripped her. She didn’t say a word.

Max’s judgment must have been too clouded with drink and lust to realize how improper his next words were. “Little
Miss
Pascale,” he taunted, mockingly inserting the English address into his French. “This is the wrong room for husband hunting. Here, you’re the prey.”

She paled. “
La p-proie?
”

The baron laughed unpleasantly. “Hunters in the room, raise your hands!”

Several drunken arms shot into the air.

Gaspard took stock of the men leering at her, putting names to faces and racking his brain to remember what he knew of their various and sundry misdeeds. He was no saint, but compared to some of these cretins…

Adrenaline spiked again. She couldn’t be in that closet with one of them. She just couldn’t.

“You wandered into our den, mademoiselle.” There was a sinister edge to Max’s cultured voice that Gaspard hadn’t heard in years, not since— No, it didn’t bear pondering, but it bothered him, and
that
was new. “Come play with us.”

The Pascale girl—Claudia, her name was Claudia—lifted her chin in response to Max’s implied threat, and she nodded, brave through her obvious uncertainty. That short, decisive bob of her head had Celeste squealing with glee, clapping her hands like the child she hadn’t been in at least four decades while Max whipped out the blindfold from his pocket and slipped it over Claudia’s wary, shadowed eyes.

Something low in Gaspard’s gut tightened at the sight. Bindings. He knew about bindings, and so long as they weren’t knotted around
his
extremities, then maybe…maybe such restraints excited him. Setting aside his now-empty glass, he smoothed the lace draped over his wrists and prepared to enter the fray.

Celeste spun the blindfolded Claudia in a dizzying circle. Then she was released, swaying and disoriented, and the countdown began.

“Five,” chanted the eager participants. “Four. Three. Two. One.”

The chase was on.

Gaspard stood, the creak of abused, ancient-feeling bones giving way to the exhilarating thrum of hunter’s blood as it pounded through his veins, hot and vital. He watched as she extended her arms in front of her, silent as ever and refusing to utter so much as a gasp as the men in the room rushed her, and the women rushed past her. Her slender fingers, free of adornment, grabbed at the phantom bodies, latching on to nothing but empty air.

They charged, then evaded. Darted, then dashed. She turned toward each one, her senses coming to her aid seconds too late. Part of the game, yes—but for someone who hadn’t wanted to play in the first place, it would quickly grow frustrating. In her mind, the reward would be the removal of the blindfold and the cessation of this nonsense. For a more willing woman, the inevitable closet antics were prize enough.

Feeling overtly predatory as he stalked the perimeter of the room, he steered clear of the giggling men and women, preferring to wait for the ideal moment—his ideal moment—to strike.

Ten thousand pounds, that was his lure. Not the supple-looking curves of her young body. Not the determined chin that hinted at some hidden fire.

What would it be like to burn in her?

He frowned, the idea unacceptable. He was hunting now, the best of the lot—the hunter none saw coming. The danger lurking inside him was a subtle thing, expertly camouflaged unless one already knew it was there.

The blindfolded mademoiselle didn’t stand a chance.

His heeled shoes clacked an even staccato over the paneled floor. The old-fashioned lace brushed soothingly over his scarred knuckles, and as he lowered his chin, he was made aware of the deep purple cravat knotted high across his Adam’s apple. Every last inch of resplendently foppish fabric made itself known against his tense body.

His skin tightened with the sudden, visceral need to shed his costume. Yet another desire to ignore, though this one was familiar, constant. The older fashions were cheap and easily mendable by his own hand, their design a perfect distraction for the masses that saw only what they were told to see. His tailoring turned heads even as it kept his secrets.

He wanted to hunt Claudia Pascale as himself, but that man didn’t exist. That man had never existed.

A minute later, he’d closed the gap and halted directly behind her, his mouth near her ear. The warm scent of honeyed tea hit his nostrils like a slap. His lashes fluttered as his lids grew unexpectedly heavy, and, curiously, he wanted to smile as his mind blanked but for awareness of her. An awareness he now welcomed as part and parcel of his hunter’s instinct, and he acted upon it without hesitation.

“Claudia,” he whispered, knowing what she would think. Knowing
who
she would think stood at her back.

She whirled around, but he didn’t retreat. He allowed her elegant, ungloved hands to clutch at his arms, enjoyed the dig of fingernails into the taut muscles of his shoulders…all while blisteringly aware of the hushed silence that had befallen the room as his peers noted what was happening in the center of the parlor. Her fingers curled into the lapels of his jacket, and she pulled him closer.

Fire. Burn.

“S-Sa—”

“Shh,” he soothed, hooking a possessive finger into the blue sash beneath her bust. Their audience need not hear the name she was trying to say—confusion over his actions tonight would do more than enough to fan the gossip flames. “Caught?”

She nodded.

“Fifteen minutes,” he said to the shocked room as he led her toward the door by the front of her dress. “Starting now.”

Chapter Two

Claudia Pascale was a woman with very normal aspirations: a husband, a house, a family. She possessed no extraordinary dreams or hidden desires, nor did she delude herself into thinking she was anything special. Her few talents were limited to the most solitary of pursuits—gardening, the occasional dabble in watercolors and using her meager weekly allowance to indulge her shoe-shopping habit.

Her appreciation of dancing slippers defied all sense and logic, because Claudia didn’t dance. She clung to ballroom walls and drawing-room corners, and conversed only in the direst of social circumstances.