Wicked Becomes You

by Meredith Duran

  “Yes,” she said immediately. “Why not? Give me your fiercest frown. Chastise me as harshly as you please.”

  “Oh, but I’m the last person to disapprove of you. I’m a blackguard, aren’t I? No, what we need”—here he glanced around the café—“is a group of fine, upstanding citizens for you to offend. There,” he said, and lifted his brow and chin to indicate someone over her shoulder.

  She twisted in her seat. A family of American tourists had taken the table behind them. The balding man was puffing comfortably on his cigar as he flipped through The World, utterly ignoring the glare from his portly wife, whose jowls and thick pearl choker gave her the look of a collared dog. Their daughter, a snub-nosed beauty in a walking gown made of ribbed bengaline silk, heaved a long-suffering sigh and looked off toward the pavement. Her dress was very fashionable in cut and cloth, but its quality was disguised by its color—an unfortunate, vulgar purple.

  Gwen turned back. “What do you propose? Shall I . . . approach them and apologize? My father invented that dye, you know. It never did favors to anyone’s complexion.”

  “Dear God, Gwen. The point is to be shocking. Not to invent new ways to ingratiate yourself.”

  “But it would be shocking! A conversation without first being properly introduced . . .” She trailed off as his smile took on an unkind edge. “All right,” she said on a deep breath. He wanted shocking?

  She plucked up her soiled serviette and tossed it over her shoulder.

  Heart thundering, she waited for an outcry. She’d tossed a dirty napkin onto them—fifty years ago, such offenses had started duels.

  A long moment passed. No exclamation rose from the offended party. Alex yawned into his palm. Frowning, she peeked over her shoulder.

  Her napkin sat directly behind the young girl’s chair. The girl, oblivious, inspected the hem of her glove.

  “Works better when you aim,” said Alex. “Shall I demonstrate?” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dipped it into her wine, then began to ball it up.

  “No! You can’t do that. Wine stains fabric!” When he grinned and opened his hand, letting the handkerchief drop onto the table, she felt her patience snap. “This is very childish,” she said, “and pointless to boot. I said I wished to live freely, not to throw things at people. ”

  “No,” he said evenly, “you said you no longer cared for others’ censure.”

  “One entails the other.”

  He inclined his head. “Precisely my point. So, can you follow through with it? Try the wineglass.”

  “The wineglass? But it would break!”

  “True,” he said thoughtfully. “And quite loudly, to boot.” He picked up her glass and extended his hand into the aisle.

  His fingers opened.

  The glass shattered.

  “Oh, dear,” she heard the American girl murmur. The other patrons glanced over, some of them blushing with vicarious embarrassment.

  It wasn’t so bad, really. Gwen looked at him and shrugged.

  He smiled back at her and lifted his glass as though in a toast. “To waking the dead,” he said, and then dropped it onto the ground as well.

  Shouts went up. The matron at the table behind her said in a very loud voice that he had done it deliberately. The man with the curaçao shot to his feet, cursing in language Gwen could not follow, although she did gather he was offended by the splatter on his pant leg.

  “You’re quite red,” Alex said mildly. “Feeling a bit . . . uncomfortable?” With a casual rap of his knuckles, he knocked her water glass off the table.

  At this point, people on the pavement began to stop and gawk.

  Gwen sat frozen. Alex propped his forearms on the table, leaning in confidentially. “We seem to have run out of minor glassware. There’s always the pitcher, of course. Or if it’s real drama you want, I can tip over the table.”

  “No,” she snapped.

  “Oh, I do beg your pardon—would you like to give it a go yourself?”

  “This is not rude. This is wanton destruction!”

  He shrugged. “A table, a glass, a lady’s character . . . all of them break so easily. Pity, that.”

  A clawlike grip caught her arm. The waiter ranted incoherently down at her, spittle flying from his lips.

  Alex reached over and took hold of the waiter’s wrist, saying something sharp and short.

  The waiter spat back a guttural curse.

  Alex’s knuckles whitened, and the waiter gasped, his fingers loosening. Gwen inched out of his grip and Alex’s hand dropped. He sat back in his chair.

  The waiter clutched his wrist to his chest now, launching into a flurry of agitated French that she could not follow—save the mention of les gardes municipaux.

  Police.

  That meant police.

  She came to her feet, clawing at the chatelaine bag clipped to her waist, wherein sat all her money. Her stammered apology did not assemble grammatically. “Get up!” she cried at Alex. Why was he smiling? “He’s going to summon the police!”

  He tipped his head to listen. “Why, yes, so he is. Apparently we’re a public nuisance.” He nodded once. “I always did suspect you’d be a nuisance, Gwen.”

  Pounds. Pence. Francs, yes, finally! She shoved a banknote into the waiter’s hand. He took a look at it, fell abruptly quiet, and began to bow to her profusely as he backed away.

  Murmurs went up from the crowd on the pavement. Suddenly everybody was looking at her very queerly.

  Alex began to laugh.

  “What?” She felt near to stamping her foot. To strangling him. “What is so funny? I should say he was owed fifty francs for this mess!”

  “Then you overpaid him tenfold,” he said as he rose. “That was a five-hundred-franc note. Seems we’ll have to work on your bribery skills.”

  By God, she was sick of being laughed at! “Oh yes?” She turned and snatched up the pitcher of mazagran from the Americans’ table, ignoring the sharp “Hey!” from the man with the newspaper.

  Alex lifted his brows.

  Holding his eye, she threw it at his head.

  He ducked, and the crowd behind the railing followed suit. The pitcher exploded against the pavement.

  Utter silence.

  “That was a bit much,” Alex said helpfully. “But at least you did take aim this time.”

  A tap came at her shoulder. The young waiter, brow lifted, held out his hand imperiously.

  “Another five hundred, do you think?” The amusement in Alex’s voice did nothing to cool her temper. In a minute she would not believe she’d just done this.

  “One hundred,” she said to the boy, and dared him with her eyes to refuse the note.

  He was not a fool. Sketching her another deep bow, he retreated once more, the note clutched in his hand.

  She turned back to Alex. “I don’t require your help,” she said.

  The dimple in his cheek betrayed his sober expression: he was biting back a smile. “Mais non,” he said. “If you’re going to do this, you’ll do it right. Next time, fifty francs should do nicely.”

  Chapter Six

  Le Highlife du Westend. Among fashionable French society, this was the sardonic term used to describe the annual influx of Englishmen to Paris. It also applied to their clumsy forms of amusement: their insatiable appetite for champagne (which no true Parisian would touch, save during Carnival); their ardent pursuit of the plump-cheeked cocottes who worked the music halls and cafés of the Latin Quarter; and their long lunches over haunches of beef at Richard-Lucas. In short, the phrase was a mocking acknowledgment that the well-heeled English came to Paris to do the very same things they liked to do in London, only with the added entertainment of being able to gawk at foreign ways that convinced them ever more deeply of their own country’s superiority.

  It surprised Alex, then, to discover that Barrington had managed to set up camp in the Rue de Varenne. Generally speaking, the neighborhood jealously guarded its aristocratic provenance,
making exceptions only for select Americans. To have found a house here, Barrington must have well-connected friends in very high places.

  But connections were not the only resource Barrington could claim. He also had a surprisingly large number of guards posted about his property. As Alex loitered on the corner, pretending to smoke a bulldog pipe—no better way to look like an English tourist, and thereby provide passersby with a reason to dismiss the importance of any other detail of his person—he noticed that a deliveryman and a mail carrier were both stopped and questioned before being allowed up to the front door. The mail carrier did not disappoint, voicing considerable outrage at this violation of his dignity. Said outrage prompted another man in a bowler hat to emerge from the shadows of the ground story, and a third to lean out the window.

  Three men set to guard the entry. It seemed curious. English real estate barons generally did not require such security.

  After a half hour or so, Alex decided against attempting to approach. Better to find out as much as possible about the man. The first and most obvious idea was to discover who had secured him that house.

  And who better to ask than the doyenne of gossip herself? Today, Alex recalled, had been Elma Beecham’s social tour of the Rue de Varenne.

  “No,” Elma said absently, “I don’t know who owns that house.” They were standing in the marble-floored lobby of the Grand, beneath the chandelier at the base of the grand staircase, waiting for Gwen to make her descent to dinner. “I can find out, of course,” she added.

  “I would appreciate it if you did,” Alex said. “A discreet inquiry, of course. Elsewhere, I would have contacts, but I do very little business in Paris . . .”

  He trailed off as he realized that for once, Elma was not curious for explanations, nor intent on keeping his attention. Indeed, her blue eyes continually broke from his to dart toward the staircase. She reached up to run a nervous hand over her smooth blond coiffure, and then set her fan to rapping an arrhythmic tattoo against the inside of her gloved wrist. “Where is she?” she muttered.

  “And how is Gwen faring?” he asked slowly.

  “Oh, she—here she comes,” she exclaimed.

  He followed her look toward the stairs, and found Gwen drifting down toward them.

  I’m an idiot, he thought. He had forgotten the most basic tenet of business: to issue no challenges one was unprepared to see met.

  Yesterday afternoon, Gwen’s enthusiasm had seemed relatively harmless. The glee with which she’d ordered beer had put him in mind of his nieces playing dress up in Caroline’s jewelry. Where two bracelets would suffice, Madeleine and Elizabeth always insisted on twenty, stacking bangles right up to their armpits.

  But in the past twenty-four hours, Gwen appeared to have moved past bracelets and beer and fallen headlong into a pot of rouge. To be sure, she still looked like a child who had gotten into her mother’s wardrobe—but only if her mother was a high-class prostitute whose taste ran to pink satin and necklines far lower than the hour permitted.

  “Did you take her shopping?” he asked. In a bordello?

  Elma shot him a nervous smile. “Oh, a short stroll through the arcades on the ground floor. We picked up a great many joking gifts. I must have missed the moment when she chose this particular . . . Well, she’d never wear such a thing in London, of course! But she took a liking to it, and I—you know how Parisians are. Nobody will notice.”

  “Right,” he said slowly.

  Gwen swept up. “Mr. Ramsey,” she said. She was wearing a tiny pink rose tucked behind her ear, and another—he did a double take—in her décolletage.

  Probably no one else would remark it, though. In her ears swung a pair of diamond eardrops so large that it was a wonder her lobes were not sagging to her shoulders. Their sale might have fed the populace of a small nation for a year.

  “So,” he said. “Where shall we go, ladies? I placed a call to the Maison Dorée, and it seems we’re in luck: a cabinet particulier is available this evening.”

  Gwen’s mouth pulled in disapproval. “How old-fashioned,” she said. “Can we not dine in public? I’ve no wish to be shut up alone in some stuffy little room.”

  Elma flashed him a significant look, which he had no idea how to interpret. “But Gwen, dear!” she said. “The Maison Dorée is the finest restaurant on the Continent. It’s practically impossible to get reservations there. If Mr. Ramsey has been so kind—”

  “It’s no trouble,” he said with a shrug. “I’ve connections at Le Lyon d’Or as well, if you’d prefer that. I know the man who fills some of their more arcane orders for spices.”

  Gwen glanced past them, her eyes following a group of gentlemen in top hats and capes. “No,” she said decisively. “I’ve seen so many interesting-looking foreigners in the lobby. Let’s dine at the table d’hôte.”

  And on this note, she casually brushed past Alex toward the dining room.

  He turned, watching the roll of her hips with disbelief. Was she sashaying?

  “Well, all right,” Elma said, and took Alex’s arm, towing him forward to catch up with her charge. “But do look for the Italians, Gwen. They are the best gentlemen to flirt with! I flirted with several when I did the grand tour as a girl. They’re ever so educational.”

  And so it was that twenty minutes later, he sat at one of the long, communal tables in the hotel dining room, enduring the first course of excruciatingly average fare as he slowly suffocated in a cloud of toxic perfume. To the left, he had an excellent view of Gwen’s complicated chignon: she had turned away from him entirely, wholly engaged with the blond—Italian—lad at her left. Opposite sat two graying Germans who had introduced themselves as Austrians, probably to avoid spittle in their food; they were either deaf or melancholy, and kept their attention fixed on their plates. To the right, somewhere inside the noxious cloud of odor, sat Elma. Overhead, the clash of a dozen languages echoing off the gilded ceiling made the line of chandeliers tremble.

  Alex rather envied those chandeliers. At least the air up there was free of the reek of Bouquet Impérial Russe.

  “She’s looking well, isn’t she?” Elma still sounded nervous. “Mr. Beecham was staunchly opposed to this trip, but see how cheerful she seems!”

  “Certainly,” he said dryly. Gwen seemed about as cheerful as one of those maniacal mechanized puppets that terrorized children at Madam Montesque’s House of Wonders. Meanwhile, the poor Italian looked as if he was being slowly beaten down by a hailstorm. What on earth was she saying to him? Probably a dizzying mix of compliments to his person and declarations regarding her own liberation. Yesterday I threw a napkin and broke a glass. Today I painted my face. Tomorrow, one never knows, I might spit on the pavement . . .

  If she did, she would wipe it up afterward. Alex would place money on it.

  “Mr. Beecham felt certain we shouldn’t humor her,” Elma said a little desperately. Dear God, she was coming closer. He averted his face for a long breath. “But I tell you, he has so little understanding for the heart of a woman. Last winter I thought I would die of melancholy, the weather was so dull. Not a spot of sun for weeks. But he wouldn’t even consider a holiday. ‘You can have card games in the conservatory,’ he told me. Well, for Gwen’s sake, I put my foot down this time. I told him, what harm can Paris do? Even if she runs across the viscount, he knows better than to approach her. And now you’re here. Why, we haven’t a thing to worry about! Do we?”

  He refrained from comment. He saw a number of things to worry about. He had yet to receive a reply from the Peruvian minister. The woman he’d just asked to perform a discreet inquiry with regard to the house on Rue de Varenne was now telling him tales about her husband. And the vin ordinaire at this table tasted thicker than ox-blood.

  This last might not have bothered him so much, had both women not been drinking with the enthusiasm of hardened sailors.

  He reached for his glass of soda water. “Here’s a fine Parisian custom,” he said, and splashed half the g
lass into Elma’s wine. He reached over Gwen’s elbow to empty the other half into hers. The Italian sent him a beseeching look. He smiled maliciously.

  “. . . buy all the flowers in Paris,” Gwen was saying, “and fill an entire hotel with them! Wouldn’t that be the most horrid good fun? I expect everybody would be forced to evacuate for sneezing! You would not sneeze, though, would you? You seem far too masculine to sneeze.”

  God above. Someone really needed to teach her how to flirt.

  Elma’s breath gusted across his ear. “Yes, soda water, a very good idea. That’s her third glass this evening, you know; she ordered one to the room beforehand. I would stop her, that is, I did try to stop her, but she told me that there was no harm in a glass, which I suppose is true. They do say that wine thickens the blood, don’t they? And jiltings do wear on the constitution.” A hint of anxiety flashed across her face. “I only want her to enjoy herself,” she added softly. “Lord knows that once she’s married, Parisian holidays may come few and far between.”

  And on that note, she drank her wine straight down.

  Alex sighed, suddenly divining the larger picture. Gwen was not the only one who had come to Paris to cut loose. Mr. Beecham apparently wore on the constitution as well.

  Bloody good luck that none of this was his concern. Gwen was right: he had not promised Richard to make her behave, nor to play her caretaker while her actual chaperone wallowed in nostalgia for her own lost youth. If his sisters had sent that telegram hoping he would oversee this mess, they’d been badly mistaken. He didn’t have the energy. He barely had the attention span. Dear God, he needed some sleep.

  In fact, he had no idea why he’d agreed to stay for dinner. He should excuse himself and go find a meal that actually proved edible, and perhaps a dose of laudanum for dessert. He’d resisted drugs until now; God knew he’d gotten his fill of medicine in his youth. But at some point, one had to concede the inevitable—