Three Lessons in Seduction

by Sofie Darling

  A wave of hot, wet embarrassment swept over her, and she swiveled around, her back decisively to him, her cheeks burning. “Lord Nicholas, I must ask that you clothe yourself.”

  Her ears picked up the rustle of movement behind her, and she felt both relieved and strangely let down.

  “It’s safe to turn around now,” she heard after a minute or so.

  She risked a glance over her shoulder before turning fully to face him. He’d donned his trousers and shirt, but the shirt was open to his waist, revealing the fine trail of hair that led directly to his—

  “You are,” she began, her voice cooperating only with great difficulty, “returned.”

  “Just yesterday.” He stretched his legs out in front of him. “Would you care to join me down here?”

  For all his casual and confident display, she detected a note of apprehension in his tone. It was appealing, that apprehension. It made him more human, less god-like, accessible. It drew her in, and before she knew it, she was sitting beside him, her shoulder just brushing his. Her entire universe collapsed to that single point of contact.

  “I have something for you that I happened upon during my travels,” he said as his hand reached inside the pocket of his greatcoat and emerged holding a shiny object in his open palm.

  She leaned in closer. It was a necklace, given the length of gold chain coiled within his palm. But that wasn’t what drew her interest. Within the nest of gold lay an oval-shaped pendant that appeared to be a cameo of . . . her.

  On a gasp, she straightened and met his gaze. “You didn’t just happen upon this during your travels.”

  Opaque, stormy gray held her in its thrall. “I commissioned Pistrucci to engrave it when I was in Rome.”

  “Rome,” she whispered, her breath caught in her throat. “But how did he render my likeness so accurately?”

  “I provided him a sketch.”

  “Done by?”

  “Me.”

  “From the memory of one night?”

  He nodded once.

  He was so different from every suitor she’d had to endure over the last year. Lord Nicholas Asquith wasn’t consumed with promoting himself. He was thoughtful, considerate, and beyond handsome. That was the moment she knew: they were destined for each other.

  “Yes,” she stated simply, boldly.

  “Yes?” An amused light entered his eyes. “But I haven’t asked you a question.”

  “You asked a year ago.” She wouldn’t let him go. Not ever. “And now you have my answer.”

  With that, she snatched the cameo out of his open palm and sprang to her feet. She trotted down the embankment, her pace increasing with each step. When she reached the edge of the clearing, she couldn’t resist one last look back to confirm he was real.

  There sat her future husband, the very model for Adonis. Powerful. Confident. Thoughtful. Considerate. Those were words for him. Beautiful was another. Older was yet another. But not too much older. He was experienced older, not aged older. Just perfect older.

  In that instant, her fall was complete: she was headlong in love.

  “And Nick”—She decided that very moment he would be Nick to her—“you must make haste to London and ask my father for my hand. I won’t endure another Season on the marriage mart.”

  Then she’d whistled for Horace and hastened down the trail before Lord Nicholas, Nick, could contradict her and say his proposal a year ago had meant nothing. With every step she took, she felt not the earth beneath her feet, but clouds. Her feet might never touch terra firma again.

  Even now in Paris, with so many years between that day and this one, what she’d felt then—the desire in her belly, the confirmation in her heart—echoed within her when its memory beckoned. She could hate herself for it.

  Nick broke her heart once; she wouldn’t allow it to happen again.

  His first love was espionage. She didn’t figure into the equation, never had really, and she’d never known why. Now that she did, she wasn’t certain knowing was any better. Along with knowing came understanding. And she didn’t want to understand Nick because close on the heels of understanding could follow sympathy.

  She must protect herself from that insidious feeling, a feeling that could lead her nowhere good or safe. It might lead her to believe in the possibility of perfect moments again. And possibility was a delusive feeling to pair with Nick.

  Tonight’s second spy lesson needed to remain a business partnership. She was his spy. Any other partnership was unthinkable.

  Last night, she’d mastered duplicity and guile. In the coming days and lessons, she would use them to her advantage, not only for the mission, but for her heart.

  Her fingers slid along her clavicle and traced a path down to the place where the locket usually lay. She no longer believed in the hollow lure of possibility, but a small part of her, a part secured inside a lost locket, was grateful for proof that it once existed.

  Chapter 12

  Tackle: A mistress; also good clothes. The cull has tipt his tackle rum rigging; the fellow has given his mistress good clothes. A man’s tackle; the genitals.

  A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue

  Francis Grose

  “His inner circle is certain King Louis will not rise again from his bed,” the agent spoke from the shadow of a shuttered patisserie. “We must discuss the plan.”

  “Later,” Nick murmured. Through late-evening mist he watched a figure step down from a hackney two blocks in the distance. He stole a glance at his pocket watch, the only remnant of his recently abandoned genteel life that he kept on his person. A few minutes past the hour. A dash late. She was, as ever, a dash late.

  “Are you certain about involving her?” The agent jutted his chin in her direction.

  “She stays for now.” Nick valued the agent’s judgment, but he had the final say in this matter.

  The agent nodded, conceding the issue. “I’m meeting with Villefranche two hours hence. You and I can discuss the outcome later in my rooms.”

  The agent melted away into the sodden night while Nick’s gaze remained trained on Mariana’s brisk figure.

  Even wearing the dress of a low-born, Parisian trollop, Mariana, with her efficient, determined stride, retained an ability to be purely Mariana. It never failed to inspire a measure of envy within him. To be purely oneself was pure luxury—a luxury he couldn’t afford. He wasn’t certain he even knew how anymore. Except . . .

  He could still taste the salt of her skin on his tongue. He hadn’t entirely lost the ability to be himself.

  Last night, he’d lost control and forgotten the first rule of this game: he must view her with professional dispassion, like any of his other agents. Which meant he mustn’t lick her spine all the way up her elegant neck. Never before had he come close to licking one of his agents. Of course, none of his other agents were Mariana.

  It was a truth he continued to repress, because he needed her. Whoever had sent her the note from a Whitehall address was the key to the assassination plot. She was his opportunity to draw this person out, and he wouldn’t give it up lightly. He mustn’t forget that his primary role was agent of King and Country. Not as lover to his wife.

  Now a city block’s distance away, her gaze locked onto him. A niggle of uncertainty persisted. Mariana . . . a spy? What was he thinking?

  He pushed off the wall and set his feet into swift motion, closing the distance between them in five strides. He slid his arm into the crook of hers before curving a left and redirecting them toward tonight’s venue. From the outside, they must look like the devoted couple they weren’t.

  “I see you’ve returned to the newly released prisoner look tonight,” she observed once their feet settled into a steady rhythm.

  Nick brushed self-consciou
s knuckles across day-old stubble. “I was aiming for bohemian revolutionary.”

  “A different costume every night?” He detected a caustic note in the question. “What are we to do tonight? And why am I attired like a Bartholomew baby?”

  Nick couldn’t resist the tug of a smile. “I take it I have Francis Grose to thank for that bit of color?”

  Mariana cleared her throat. He suspected he might have seen a blush pinking her cheeks in the light of day. “It’s another way of saying I look tawdry. I mean this dress, Nick.”

  He didn’t need to look to know what she meant by this dress. “It’s necessary that you dress in this manner for your spy lesson.” He felt silly speaking those words aloud. “Unlike London, much of the intellectual life in Paris takes place in cafés. Tonight, you are my lorette.”

  “Lorette?” she asked, her gaze hot on the side of his face. “Do I want to know?”

  “Neither wife nor whore.” He hesitated. “Mistress.”

  “So this is what we’ve come to? I am now your mistress? I’ve often wondered what skills mistresses possess that wives don’t.” A short laugh escaped her. “No one would mistake us for conventional. And, pray tell, what new skill am I to learn tonight? If last night’s lesson was duplicity and guile, tonight’s is”—She indicated the twin rounded mounds of her breasts with her free hand—“what?”

  “Invisibility.”

  Another laugh sounded, but this one possessed a fine, sharp edge. “In this dress? With my waist cinched tight and my breasts up to my ears?”

  His gaze raked over her. “The latest Parisian style suits you.”

  Blessedly ignoring that last bit, Mariana continued her complaint, “Pray tell, how am I supposed to be invisible when so much of me is visible? Besides, I thought the purpose of my spying activities was to make myself noticed by Villefranche.”

  “Mariana, you’ve done admirably well in making yourself obvious to the man.” Her body stiffened at his side. “Sometimes you need to be inconspicuous in this game we’re playing. It’s important that you’re able to transition between being seen and unseen at will.” He paused. “You’ve never been a wallflower.”

  “Let me make certain I have the facts straight. You think I will be unseen with my bosom exposed in this lewd manner?”

  “What else will any male within a mile be able to see?” He came to a stop on the empty sidewalk and faced her. “But they won’t see you.”

  Her eyes narrowed before she exhaled a soft, “Ah,” and kept the rest of her thoughts to herself.

  Nick cleared his throat and held out his arm, indicating his readiness to resume their progress. “The intent of these spy lessons is to introduce some artifice into your dealings with the world.” He paused. “Your gaze is too curious, too assured, too aristocratic, and too direct.”

  “You make it sound as if I’m entirely too much.”

  It was true: she was entirely too much. But he wouldn’t confirm it for her. “An agent must make herself invisible at will. It could mean the difference between life and death in this game. You must commit to it.”

  “So,” she began, “that was what you were doing when I spotted you just now? Making yourself invisible to the world?”

  “Pardon?”

  “And the man with you? Was he being invisible, too?”

  Nick remained silent. Better to let her make her point.

  “His bearded profile bore a striking resemblance to that of the croupier from last night.” Amber eyes, wide and unflinching, watched him for a reaction, and a smug, little smile tipped up the corners of her mouth.

  She had him.

  Nick weighed his next words and decided to speak the truth. “I trust him.”

  “I thought no one could be trusted.”

  “I trust him with my life.” He hesitated before adding, “And with yours.”

  The words came out with a finality that brooked no argument. But Mariana wasn’t finished. “Uncle Bertie and Aunt Dot paid me a visit this morning.”

  “Oh?” Nick replied, caution in the monosyllable.

  “What does Uncle Bertie know about your activities on the Continent?”

  A gusty laugh erupted from Nick. It was intended to make light of her question. Instead, it landed with a flat thud between them.

  “Nick?”

  “Why would your beloved Uncle Bertie know anything about your estranged husband?”

  “There is something I need to tell you.” Mariana planted her feet and stopped them both in their tracks. “Uncle Bertie knows you’re alive.”

  “Why would he have thought otherwise?”

  “That was my first thought, too. But, Nick, he knew.”

  “What did he know?”

  “That you’re missing.”

  “Anything else?”

  “And now that you’re alive.”

  “We’re talking in circles.”

  “I seem to have confirmed to him that you’re alive.” Uncertainty and guilt hung about her. “I think I handled it wrongly.”

  Her naked vulnerability reached out and grabbed Nick in the chest. “Mariana,” he said, low and insistent, “you did nothing wrong.”

  “Then why does it feel so?”

  “Too much information will endanger you. You’re going to have to trust me.”

  She flinched. “That’s asking too much.”

  “There is trust, and there is trust.” His eyes searched hers. “You know you can trust me.”

  “Do I?”

  “Yes.”

  She focused on the wall beside them where miniscule beads of mist collected and fattened into round drops. Too heavy for the pull of gravity, at last, they fell in random vertical streaks to the ground. “You sound so genuine that I could believe you. I could even believe that you believe your words.” Her eyes, cloudy with emotion, met his. “It’s better if we don’t speak of trust.”

  Her words, soft and clear, struck him square in the solar plexus. She’d spoken the truth; he didn’t deserve her trust. That was the trade-off he’d made a decade ago. By avoiding meaningful interaction with her all these years, he’d been able to avoid his culpability. Until now. He deserved her words. And more.

  Yet, she remained silent and began moving, the click of their heels the only sound between them, as block by block the sidewalk became ever more crowded with an increasingly spirited Parisian nightlife.

  Just shy of the entrance of a lively café, its patrons spilling out onto the street in small groupings, Nick pulled Mariana into a quiet alcove. The space was snug enough that he felt the heat radiating off her body. “There is something you need to know about this place,” he said, willing her to follow his lead and put their past aside for now. “It doesn’t serve traditional drinks.”

  “That’s a relief after last night’s whiskey binge,” she said on a light note.

  Even if it did ring a bit hollow, she was playing along. Good.

  “This place serves absinthe. Have you heard of it?”

  “The Green Fairy? Of course,” she said, blithe and dismissive.

  “The Green Fairy comes in small doses,” he explained as if she’d never heard of absinthe, which, of course, she hadn’t. He did admire her bravado, though. “Under no circumstances drink it down in one go. It must be sipped very slowly. In fact, it would be best if you only pretend to drink.”

  “I left my leading strings behind in London,” she snapped.

  “Then you must know”—He paused, considering the best way to phrase his next words—“it produces a state of euphoria.”

  “A state of euphoria?” Her head tilted to the side. She was intrigued. Blast. “Have you tried it?”

  He nodded once, his eyes darting away from her too intrigued gaze. “And the
feeling it produces the next day—”

  “One of crapulence?” she interrupted. “After last night, I know something about that feeling.”

  “It’s the very opposite of euphoric. Best to stay away. Agreed?”

  ~ ~ ~

  Oh, how he willed her to agree.

  “Perhaps,” she replied. That was all the satisfaction she would give him. She inhaled a steadying breath and backed out of the alcove, unable to tamp down an unruly smile.

  The front door swung wide, and long, protective fingers curled around her hand. Giddy pinpricks of excitement wended their way across her skin from that small point of contact as he swept her inside the café and guided them past a cluster of haphazardly strewn tables. They ventured to the back of the café side by side, a genuine couple to the crowd around them.

  “This café,” he said in a muted voice meant for her ears only, “is populated by indulged and moneyed sons looking to show off their educations and their lorettes.”

  Without another word, they found two open seats at a long table that ran the length of the back wall. Mariana took the corner seat Nick offered and attempted to follow any one of several heated conversations swirling through air dense with cigar smoke and a certain humidity specific to enclosed spaces brimming with animated people.

  “This is quite a public place,” she observed.

  “Cafés are where individuals of like-minded, usually extreme, political persuasions congregate.”

  Mariana’s voice emerged in a secretive hush, “These people are revolutionaries?”

  “At one extreme.”

  “Villefranche said the French like to live at extremes.”

  “He’s not entirely wrong.”

  Of a sudden, everyone in the café became suspect. “Won’t the wrong people know you’re alive?”

  “They don’t really think I’m dead. The note you received in London was a ruse, I’m convinced.” Although, he hadn’t worked out why. “I’m simply unreachable for the time being.”