Three Lessons in Seduction

by Sofie Darling

  Mariana nodded and allowed her gaze to roam the room. She gave up on understanding what was being shouted around her. The French spoken was too informal and too fast. She leaned in close to Nick. “Translate his conversation for me.” She jutted her chin toward a young man with the wildest, reddest head of hair she’d ever seen, surpassed only by his complementing wild, red moustache.

  “He is speculating whether the king’s new throne is solid gold or gold plated.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “To the French? Absolutely.”

  Next, she indicated a fervent young man to Nick’s right.

  “He is declaiming the merits of oil paints over watercolors. Watercolors speak of an artist’s lack of fortitude, substance, and gravity. They are an insubstantial and moral void.”

  A half-smile lurked about Nick’s lips and responsively, nay, instinctively, she matched it. “Good to know,” she responded, but his attention had strayed away from her.

  She tamped down a flicker of pique. Her rational mind understood that it was part of their act tonight. Still, it irritated her that Nick played his role so convincingly well.

  Left alone to her thoughts, she settled back and soaked in the atmosphere. She couldn’t help feeling a little let down. She’d thought pressing matters of importance were discussed in the cafés of Paris. And, perhaps, they were. But not with her, a mere woman. Judging by the arrangement of the table, it was glaringly obvious that a woman was to be seen and not heard. The men sat flush up to the table—the better to hear one another and insert an opinion when necessary—while the women sat positioned slightly behind their men.

  She formed a sympathetic bond with the other women, the lorettes, that transcended their cultural and lingual barriers. In London, women of her station would find a quiet nook and conduct their own conversations. These Parisiennes, however, remained glued to the sides of their men. Content to be displayed in an ornamental capacity, they maintained a specific disinterested mien that only French women could properly deploy. In fact, it was this French insouciance that managed to salvage their dignity.

  The women’s attire snagged her attention. Indeed, Nick had been correct to send this crimson monstrosity with tonight’s instructions. It integrated her seamlessly into her surroundings with its cinched waist, revealing neckline, and garish color. She scanned the row of women clad like jewels in hues of sapphire, ruby, emerald, and amethyst, arrayed like a rainbow of sin.

  Oh, how very moralistic, Mariana chided herself. Perhaps she should step down from her high horse. After all, she didn’t fully understand these women’s lives or livelihoods. It was a tough world for women with no means. She would do well to remember that.

  Nick had been correct . . . again.

  Even with their revealing clothing, or because of it, these women were invisible in every meaningful way. She shifted her body toward Nick, attempting to emulate their specific pose of sophisticated insouciance. But she had difficulty deciding where to place her hands. Her neck felt oddly angled, and she desperately longed to cross her legs. What looked entirely natural on the lorettes, felt entirely unnatural on her. It struck her that their entire demeanor and comportment was a subtle art form. It would take more than a single evening for her to become one of them.

  A sudden touch pulled her attention toward her ungloved hand. The tip of Nick’s finger had begun tracing soft figure eights on the tender skin of her palm, tickling nerve endings that in turn sent signals across her body. The competing cacophonies of jangly music, shouted conversation, and riotous giggles were reduced to muted background noise when his finger began a feathery ascent up her arm to her shoulder before languorously descending to the tip of her middle finger. Her body longed to sway toward him like a cat, encouraging, even begging him to do it again.

  Her eyes popped open. When had they drifted shut?

  She glanced at Nick to find him still engaged in conversation with the other men. He hadn’t even broken conversation to stroke her. This was the sort of treatment these men doled out to their lorettes. It was like a statement of ownership toward a beloved object . . . or a favorite pet. By claiming her in this way, he was rendering her ever more invisible. Even if it was a role for one night, she couldn’t help bristling at the treatment. She most definitely wasn’t anyone’s pussy cat.

  Nick repeated the motion, and her nipples tightened into hard buds. Her body didn’t seem to understand what her mind did. Of course, it was possible that her body simply didn’t care. The memory of another sensation came to her. One of his velvety tongue gliding across her skin. Oh, last night . . .

  Mariana sat up straight and clasped her hands together. There would be no more of that.

  A carafe of green liquid and a small accompanying glass appeared before her. The glass was topped by a sugar cube nestled within what appeared to be a tiny sieve.

  Nick leaned back and cocked his head, so his lips almost brushed her ear. “Meet the Green Fairy.”

  “Absinthe?” She abandoned her earlier pretense that she was well-acquainted with the substance. “How does it achieve that particular green glow?”

  He inclined his head a fraction, and his serious gaze found hers. “Follow my lead.”

  As she watched, he took the carafe in hand and poured the unearthly—there was no other word for it—substance over the sugar cube. As the liquid filtered through the sugar, the two substances melded together in the glass.

  “We’re to drink that?”

  She thought she saw a quicksilver smile flash across his well-defined lips, but she could have imagined it so seriously whispered were his next words. “Remember what I said. You must pretend to drink it.”

  It wasn’t only the content of his words that riled her, but the way he spoke them as if he was telling her gently, but firmly, no.

  Well, that wouldn’t do. It was time for her to remind him who she was.

  Without a second thought, she reached for the glass. Nick’s hand shot out and closed around hers. She brushed him off and lifted the glass to her lips. Strong notes of anise met her nose. It wasn’t her favorite scent, but there was no turning back from here.

  Her gaze met his above the rim of the glass—she had his full attention now—and her lips curved into a smile. “Vive la France!” she sang out and tipped her head back, downing the absinthe in one swift gulp before slamming the glass onto the table.

  Chapter 13

  Fox’s paw: The vulgar pronunciation of the French words faux pâs. He made a confounded fox’s paw.

  A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue

  Francis Grose

  Within the space between one heartbeat and the next, Mariana’s world transformed into a wonderland composed entirely of helium and ether. She wasn’t certain it was exclusively the effect of the absinthe, either, instead suspecting it might be her act of disobedience fueling the feeling.

  No, that wasn’t the best characterization of the feeling or herself. Disobedience was the act of a child attempting to assert power and control.

  She was no child; she was an adult woman. Perhaps downing a glassful of an unfamiliar liquid emitting an unearthly green glow wasn’t the most adult way to assert her independence, but Nick’s steady, gray gaze told her she’d gotten her point across loud and clear. Except, how utterly unsurprised he looked.

  She took a self-conscious glance around the table. A dozen pairs of eyes regarded her with equal parts bemusement and astonishment, awaiting her next move. Then the moment evaporated as they seemed to realize in unison that she had no more moves.

  The men continued their conversations while the mistresses’ eyes lingered half a beat longer, assessing, indulgent, but not warm. The peculiar Englishwoman was dismissed, her novelty gone as quickly as it had come. Raucous music and the general cacophony of café esprit roared back to life,
and the outside world tumbled in.

  It mattered not. Particularly not when the air around her became as light and weightless as if gravity no longer had a claim on her. Her fingers wrapped around the seat of her chair as a cascade of floaty warmth washed over her. She had imbibed a bit too much wine—or whiskey, as the occasion allowed—more times than a lady would dare admit, but this feeling was that and more.

  “Where does it come from?” she heard her voice asking.

  “Grande wormwood,” Nick tossed over his shoulder.

  “No. Not where, but where? What world? Surely not ours. I feel as if . . . as if I’ve lassoed a shooting star.”

  She might have detected a roll of Nick’s eyes before he turned away, but it mattered not. She had no use for the here and now, but for epiphany, bright and true: only Nick had done the touching. These last three nights, he’d touched some part of her body, but she hadn’t touched his. It had been years since she last felt him.

  Her eyes traveled the broad width of his back. Was he different now? He’d been lean and angular, but the angles these days cut a little sharper. This was a harder man from a decade ago. How had it escaped her notice all those Christmases, Easters, and birthdays? She wanted to feel him. Not through layers of jacket, vest, and shirt, but skin to skin.

  Her gaze wandered over the other women, the other lorettes, her odd sense of kinship with them increasing. Then, she noticed it: they weren’t simply on the receiving end of being stroked. These women gave back in subtle ways: fingertips feathering against a thin sliver of bare skin at the back of a neck; rouged lips pressed against an ear, whispering a promise for later that only the two of them would ever know; hands finding their ways inside jacket pockets, inside trouser pockets . . .

  A tingling sensation fluttered out from her belly. She didn’t have to sit here like a demure little nothing all night. Before her was an opportunity to take what she wanted. And right now what she wanted was a touch of Nick.

  She moved her chair closer to his and half draped herself against him. The muscles in his back went rigid. Good. Still, this level of touch wasn’t enough to satisfy.

  With that thought in mind, her hand found its way to his thigh, and, like the muscles in his back, those, too, contracted beneath her touch. She resisted the urge to test their rigidity with a squeeze. Instead, her hand began snaking its way up the solid length of muscle, her fingers soon locating his trouser pocket. It slipped inside.

  Shocked by her own boldness, she hesitated, her breath hitching in her chest. She watched his profile for a reaction, any tic or tell that revealed an effect on him, her effect on him. Nothing. His face remained frustratingly impassive. But his heart—which she felt, pressed as she was against his back—revealed the opposite of impassivity. His heart beat hard and fast, mirroring the thunder of her own. Oh, he felt it, too.

  Her fingers resumed their progress, feeling their way deeper inside his pocket. Did he feel a light increasing in luminescence inside of him until he was glowing with a warm river of sensation, wet and wondrous?

  Hmm, that last bit might have been the absinthe.

  Oh, delicious anticipation. An image of his manhood flashed across her mind. She remembered it as hard and true and ever at the ready. Was that still the case?

  “Am I invisible enough now?” she whispered into his ear.

  A vise grip, sudden and steely, clamped around her wrist and removed her hand from his pocket, firmly returning it to her lap.

  He half-turned in his chair and faced her. His eyes gave nothing away, and it occurred to her that they should. They should show anger, dismay, desire, disgust . . . something. Yet they revealed nothing, which could be a tell in itself. He wasn’t allowing himself to reveal himself. How was it that she’d never perceived this particular skill in her husband? She’d thought he felt nothing, but she was beginning to suspect it was rather the opposite.

  “I don’t feel an ounce of shame for what I just attempted,” she whispered. She’d never been the sort of girl who minded very much getting into trouble. “Wasn’t I behaving like another one of the mistresses? Like another one of your mistresses?” He remained stoic and silent. “Indignation and shame are such muddy emotions. In fact, I feel the opposite of muddy. In fact, I’ve never felt so pure in my life.”

  “That is the absinthe speaking.”

  “Is it? And is your absinthe speaking to me right now?”

  “Mariana—”

  “Oh, stuff the scold. I wasn’t being serious. Well, not entirely.”

  No longer did she feel like remaining hostage to Nick’s too-steady gaze. She wanted to enjoy the night. Never in her life had she felt so at one with the people around her. It was as if they stood together on a plane of existence known only to them. It felt miraculous.

  Her musing was cut short when her gaze fell upon a familiar figure. At first, she didn’t believe her eyes. She was viewing the world through the lens of the Green Fairy, after all. “Nick,” she whispered, enough urgency in her voice to regain his attention.

  “Yes, Mariana,” he returned. She didn’t care for his long-suffering tone.

  “Aren’t you concerned this is the sort of place someone you know would frequent? Perhaps someone like the Comte de Villefranche?”

  “Villefranche wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like this,” Nick returned. “His elevated ideals don’t venture far from on high and down into the realm of reality.”

  Mariana felt an unruly smile bloom across her face. She knew something Nick didn’t. “Then how is it that I just watched him walk through the front entrance?”

  Nick froze. “Is he alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has he spotted you?”

  “Not yet.” Her eyes locked onto Villefranche’s tall, wooden form as he navigated the room between various groupings of people with whom he was clearly acquainted. “I do believe you’ve underestimated your opponent.”

  “Is he behind me?”

  “Directly.”

  “Look at me,” Nick commanded.

  Mariana tore her gaze away from the Comte de Villefranche and found Nick’s steely gray eyes. He reached out and cupped the back of her head, his long fingers threading through her loose hair, fingers warm and capable and distractingly male.

  “Follow my lead,” he said for the second time tonight.

  Without another word, he pulled her into him, and his mouth was upon hers in what only outwardly could be characterized as a kiss, so cold and unyielding were his lips.

  It lasted no more than a thrice of seconds before she broke away, panting. “I thought we were better at kissing than that,” burst from her.

  “Has he passed?” Nick asked, refusing to be distracted by their utterly, utterly terrible kiss.

  Mariana had never felt so disappointed in her life.

  But she remembered her role and located Villefranche’s receding back. “He’s just stepping outside through the front entrance”—Bemusement crinkled her eyebrows together—“with a woman. I guess his high ideals take a roll down in the hay every once in a while.”

  Nick pushed away from the table and stood, dragging her up with him. Without a single adieu, they were off, navigating the haphazard café at a pace surely never seen in its loose environ. Her flimsy scrap of a shawl slipped off her shoulders, forgotten forever to the night as there was no stopping Nick’s forward momentum. And all of this done without a single disturbance to the firm set of his features.

  In a thrice, they were speeding down a short, back corridor. Nick’s hand still clamped around hers, he used the other to push open the door at the corridor’s end.

  Two strides later, Mariana found herself in a narrow, dark alley devoid of light and dense with soft, feathery mist. Even as the uneven rhythms of her breath raced in her ears, the world slowe
d, and stillness enveloped them. The raucous café faded into a past that was becoming increasingly distant, even as the absinthe pulsed lightning flashes through her veins. Only the present where his hand held hers mattered.

  “Are we following Villefranche?”

  Nick shook his head, a wild light flickering in the gray depths of his eyes. Through the fog of their shared past came the memory that his wildness had always driven her equally wild for him.

  “You thought we were better than that?” he asked on a step forward. Inches separated them. His hand held onto hers as the other reached up and stroked the side of her face. His fingers felt wonderfully cool against her cheeks, hot with inebriation and . . . desire.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but words refused to form. There was nothing left to say. Only something left to do. Her hand reached up, found the back of his neck, and pulled his mouth toward hers.

  A soft growl sounded as his lips claimed hers with a pent-up ferocity that had been vibrating between them for three straight nights. A kiss never felt so good, so ravishing, so hedonistic, so right. No, it wasn’t right. Yet somehow its very wrongness made it all the better.

  The full, unforgiving length of his body pressed forward and pinned her against the damp, stone wall. Her eyes fluttered shut, and all she could do was feel the contrasting sensations of pleasure and pain swirling together. Her entire being transformed into a bundle of exposed nerve endings whose only function was to give and receive pleasure. What else was there?

  His fingertips trailed down her neck, across her clavicle, and hesitated at the swell of her breasts. A plaintive cry erupted in her throat, and her back arched, pressing her further into his body. She wanted more than a kiss.