Wicked Becomes You (22 page)

She felt his fingers move at that pronouncement, a small, indecipherable ripple. But his regard remained as neutral, as coolly speculative as his voice. “Perhaps you do see me clearly,” he said. “And from what you’ve said about my effect, wanting to touch me seems very unwise. Better, I think, to stay away.”

“Yes,” she said. “For most. But not for me. And by your own admission, if you believed me incapable, you would not have invited me to come with you on this journey.”

He gave her a lingering look, from eyes to lips to shoulders and breasts. “I begin to regret it,” he said, almost beneath his breath.

Her hand moved of its own accord to her stomach. Such pain those words lashed into her. Only a quarter hour ago, he’d made her feel so replete. But now, all at once, she felt battered by him. Drained.

On a sigh, he turned back to the bottle. “Go to bed, Gwen,” he said over his shoulder. “I’m done with company for the night.”

Even this small amount of thinking felt difficult.
Exercise
, he thought groggily. He would feel more alert once he’d done his calisthenics. The burn in his muscles would force him awake. He could pay his penance to Richard in sweat.

He sat up slowly, a groan escaping him. Every bone in his body creaked, unhappy to rediscover the way of it. His head did not hurt, though.

He swung his legs off the bed, then paused. Why
should
his head hurt? This misery could not be the effect of the liquor. He’d had only a few glasses of cognac, over the course of seven hours.

It struck that something else was amiss: the train was not moving.

He leaned over and pulled back the curtain. The station placard outside bore a single word:
Nice.

His hand dropped like a stone.

Jesus Christ. No wonder he felt as though someone had bashed his skull with a mallet. He’d slept for—he quickly calculated it—nine hours straight.

He stared in disbelief at the platform. It
was
Nice, wasn’t it? The sign wasn’t a sham?

Yes. He recognized the station, the distinctive scrolling archways that led toward the concourse proper.

He sat slowly on the foot of the bed, staring out. On the platform, a handful of men were shifting luggage. A woman stalked past, elbows pumping angrily, a parasol swinging from the ribbon at her wrist. The man at her heels made a quick sidestep to save his thigh, then uttered some protest that made the woman look back, her mouth a perfect O.

She came to a stop. So did he. He clasped his hands to his heart. Quite suddenly she laughed. The anger melted from her spine. He held out his elbow, and she took it, proceeding onward at his side.

It looked warm out there. The woman’s blue silk skirts gleamed. Lemony light bounced down on the green iron benches, called into blazing richness the crimson petals of the rosebushes beside the track. A bright day, sunny and alive.

His own lifting mood gave him pause. He had no right to feel cheerful. Had Richard been alive, the man would have been demanding Alex’s blood for last night’s betrayal. A pretty thing to do—indulging one’s own appetites with the sister of the man one had directed to his death. He had fallen asleep furious with himself.

That anger now seemed very distant.

His hand paused, shoved halfway through his hair. In fact, the very reflex to castigate himself—to revile his own weakness with regard to Gwen—felt limp and tired, like an overused muscle that no longer held any power.

He did not feel guilty at all.

A banging came at the door. Bit aggressive for a porter hoping for a tip. He rose on a curiously light sensation, opened the door and discovered his Achilles’ heel. Gwen stood with her arms crossed under her breasts, freshly dressed in a tweed walking outfit. On her head perched the most ridiculous hat he’d ever seen—some long-brimmed affair that featured an assortment of garden creatures, miniature birds and bees and butterflies, held aloft by rose stems made of gutta-percha.

He reached out to give the bird a chuck to the chin. Gwen stepped backward, and the bumblebee bobbed a cheerful nod.

He smiled as another buoying sensation washed through him. It felt as though the sleep was knitting into his muscles now. He began to feel quite . . . alert. “Come in,” he said.

Her manner was stiff as she ran a pointed eye down his bare chest. “The porter said he could not rouse you. But I’d assumed that you would be dressed by now. No matter. I’ll be outside.”

“Wait,” he said as she turned away.

She paused. “What?”

He opened his mouth. But what was there to say? Strange thing: until last night, he’d had no idea that Richard’s death still weighed so heavily on his conscience.

It was not within her power to absolve him, of course.

Yet he felt absolved. Jesus Christ. He felt weightless.

He stepped back. “Nothing,” he said. “Only—modesty seems a bit disingenuous, now that I’ve had my hand on your—”

“I have no desire to watch you dress,” she said sharply.

“Does the word offend you?”

She glared at him silently. Her color was rising.

“Or do you not know the words?” That was far more likely. “There are several to choose from,” he said helpfully. “For all that you’re determined to be wicked, I expect you’d favor the ladylike ‘quim.’ For the male apparatus, ‘cock’ is the term generally favored, although you may use ‘manhood,’ if you’re feeling vaporish.”

“Do we require soap?” she asked icily. “Apparently you haven’t washed your mouth yet this morning.”

He laughed. “What a prudish mood you’re in. Is this my punishment for failing to shag you?” Properly, he deserved a bloody award for restraint. A hotter sight than her writhing on his bed beneath his touch, he’d never see in his life.

Unless he reconsidered his policy on shagging her. Then he might see other things, too.

Her face was now a very interesting shade of pink. Bordered on purple, really. “I don’t know that word either,” she said. “So I can’t answer you.”

“Oh, if your blush is anything to go by, I expect you’ve drawn the right conclusion. Come now, step inside. Unless you’ve changed your mind in the night, and fear for your virtue?”

She made an irritated noise, then shoved past him into the room, stalking—or attempting to, for the size of the room would not allow for drama—to the window. There she turned, giving him her very best glare. “You’re entirely obnoxious,” she said.

He offered a smile in reply. Had he any artistic talent, he would have sketched her like this, silhouetted against the window behind her, framed by the green velvet curtains caught up at either side by gold tasseled sashes.
Angry Young Miss En Determined Route to Ruin
would be the public title, and the private,
A Damned Nuisance I Could Have Avoided by Turning Back at Gibraltar.

Except that the first title seemed flavorless, and the second . . . dishonest. He certainly could have avoided her by turning back for South America. But to what profit? She was amusing. She evinced surprising bravery, tossing over her little world and throwing off every restriction she’d ever known. And she was right: this Richard business was a poor excuse to trammel her. The Maudsleys had done their best by Gwen; had designed a path for her that many women would have been happy to walk. But Gwen herself had not proved content with it. The intentions of the dead should not have a hold on the living.

A new title, then:
The Unexpectedly Interesting Former Debutante.

Ah, well. It seemed that he lacked a talent for titling, too. Happily, the scene would make a lovely painting no matter what one called it. The sunlight dancing through the window played over her hair, picking out, from amidst the predominant auburn, strands of gold and cinnamon and a shade (he would wager a year’s profits on it) that could only be true crimson. Her hair seemed like a minor miracle, in fact—a national treasure far more inspiring than the Elgin Marbles or groaning, crumbling palaces. He had touched it last night simply for the tactile pleasure.

“Ginger is such an unjust name for the shade,” he said.

She blinked. “I
beg
your pardon?”

“Although you do have bite,” he said. “And you bite quite nicely, too. You take direction well. Did you enjoy that?”

Surprise parted her lips. That rouge the other day had been overkill; her mouth required no aid. It was her second chief beauty, long and full, tinted a natural pink. He enjoyed watching her eat radishes with it. Did she realize that in the bluish tint of gaslight, the color of that vegetable exactly matched her hair? And complemented her lips besides.

“You are flirting with me,” she said slowly.

He considered it. Was he? “Yes,” he said. “I am.” The realization was strangely satisfying. He was flirting with Gwen Maudsley as he might have with any woman who had caught his fancy, whose brother had not been his closest friend, who did not retreat from the world behind a screen of hypocritical and simpering formalities. He’d never had a taste for girlishness.

A strange expression crossed her face. He did not know how to interpret it. That was intriguing, too. Until so recently, he’d fancied her more transparent than glass. “Does it bother you?” he asked. If it did, he supposed these half-formed ambitions would need crushing.

She rolled her eyes. He’d never seen her do that before. “No, it does not
bother
me,” she said. “But you really must make up your mind, Alex. You are becoming more fickle than a debutante.”

He felt his jaw drop. And then, out of nowhere, he began to laugh. Good God. She was right.

She inspected him narrowly. He wanted to say . . . hell, he didn’t know what, but something in her expression made him laugh harder; he had the fleeting insight that he had probably looked at her in just this way when he’d encountered her on the stairs, the day of her would-be wedding. The idea somehow heightened the hilarity, and now he was breathless for air; this was the work of sleep deprivation, of course, except he’d just slept longer than he had in four years’ time, so that didn’t explain it. He struggled for a breath, trying to reclaim his composure, to say something that would address the sneer creeping over her lovely mouth.

She did not give him a chance. With a disgusted snort, she pulled her skirts tight and swept past him. At the door, she turned back, magnificently straight-spined. “Get dressed, you loon.”

The door slammed behind her.

The drive toward Côte Bleue wound along the edge of the coast. On one side lay the aquamarine sea, glittering fiercely beneath a sky of brilliant blue; on the right, up the rolling hills, stretched groves of olive trees and palms. The climate and vegetation invited a very particular sort of landscape, Gwen thought, and she was not disappointed when the carriage turned down the graveled drive into Mr. Barrington’s property and deposited them at the front steps of Côte Bleue.

The house was two modest stories of mellow pink stone, and vines of purple bougainvillea twined down its face, like strands of a woman’s hair. Its green shutters were thrown open to the warm air and to the view of the terraced garden, tiers of lush vegetation that flowed down toward the cliffs overlooking the sea. Behind the house, on the wild hill above, blossom-spangled orange trees seemed to sag beneath the weight of their ripe, hanging fruit.

Alex exited the carriage first. He’d provided surprisingly agreeable company during the drive, making charming observations about the various towns they had passed, cracking jokes that she’d had to work not to laugh at. Indeed, the temptation to laugh had become its own form of hurt, cutting her just as deeply as his courteous façade. For all she knew, this was some sort of twisted game he’d devised to amuse himself: how many times could he tempt her into throwing herself at him? If that was the case, she would not cooperate. Men had humiliated her before, to be certain, but she had never and
would
never aid their efforts. She would
not
laugh at his jokes.

All during the long drive down the coast, then, she raged at herself. The loss was not great; there was no call for her to ache, so. But it took effort, sustained and pointed effort, to think of him just as she’d thought of those other men. To each of his comments, she made herself smile and reply with perfect courtesy. (The art of discouragement through flirtation was rather like badminton, she thought. So long as the birdie was kept afloat—a compliment offered in return for each one that was served—no points would be scored on either side.) If this
was
a game, she meant to win. Her earlier delusions about him, her stupid fancies, would not cripple her. She would be spitted and fried before she begged for his attentions again.

Alex lifted her out of the coach now into the warm, sunlit air. A melody of scents played over her—roses baking in the sun, the salted sea air, the sweetness of honeysuckle, the fresh bite of citrus. Beneath these lay the faintest note of spice. She took a deep breath and tasted its sharpness, then glanced up the hill again, knowing now what to look for. Pepper trees hid amongst the oranges. At dusk, their smell would strengthen, overwhelming the flowers’ sweetness.

The inevitable effect caught her fancy. The gardens must create a shifting symphony of scents, dependent on the hour of the day. She did not spot any night-blooming jasmine, the presence of which would have made the advent of evening all the more noticeable. It was not a pretty plant, she supposed. Could one design a landscape organized by smell instead of sight but make it visually pleasing all the same?

The challenge was turning in her mind when Mr. Barrington bounded down the drive to greet them. In Paris he had looked a hair shy of bohemian; now, in a white linen suit with a straw boater crushed beneath his arm, his cheeks ruddy and his hair tossed by the wind, he looked more in the way of a yachtsman returned from a day at the races.