Scholar of Decay (26 page)

“Any particular reason?”

Skirts swirling, Louise spun around on the leather stool and faced Jacqueline. “It’s a wonderful world.”

“Isn’t it,” Jacqueline agreed dryly. “You were out all day in it; you couldn’t have gotten much sleep.”

“I’m fine.” Does she suspect? Pulse beating a little faster, Louise studied her sister’s face but saw only ennui and no sign of suspicion. “But thank you for your concern. I take it you’re not going to be attending the evening’s festivities?”

Jacqueline glanced down at the loose robe she wore and then at Louise’s gilded finery. One angled brow angled higher. “No,” she said, “I won’t. I’ll be having a private party of my own.”

Pursing glistening lips, Louise looked arch. “Anyone I know?”

“I haven’t decided yet.” The Lord of Richemulot turned out of the doorway, throwing a disinterested “Have a good time” back over a slender shoulder.

Louise slipped a golden bangle over her wrist and began to hum. She had a weapon to use against her sister—sooner or later she’d discover the best way to use it—and now she’d just been handed the one thing she needed to make her evening perfect. There would be no Jacqueline at the party to take the shine off the evening. No Jacqueline to outshine her.

“Stop eating the candles, Georges, you look ridiculous!”

“No one noticed,” Georges murmured around a mouthful of beeswax.

“I noticed!” Snatching the taper from his cousin’s hand, Yves savagely threw it into a corner. When a townsman turned to protest the violent appearance of a half-eaten candle in the midst of his conversation, Yves bared his teeth, and the man hastily changed his mind.

Georges hunched his shoulders and slid farther down the wall. “I’ve seen you gnaw on a candle or two,” he protested sullenly.

“Not in a drawing room, not in skin form, and so what?” The last three words carried a ring of challenge.

Resigned to the inevitable, Georges straightened.

“Stop it, both of you,” Chantel snapped, stepping between them. “If you want to fight, at least find something less childish to fight over.” If she’d intended to say anything else, it was forgotten as a sudden commotion drew everyone’s attention to the entrance.

“She’s got that razored look tonight,” Yves muttered, thinking that the blast of cold air accompanying Cousin Louise into the room had little to do with the falling temperatures outside. He could see the emerald glitter in her eyes from where he stood, and that meant someone was in a lot of trouble. Considering their last conversation, he only hoped it wasn’t him.

Chantel took a step forward, breasts heaving under the thin silk of her gown. “I’d like to notch her other ear,” she growled.

“Are you out of your mind?” Yves deftly placed himself in Chantel’s line of sight. “If you want to die young, you go right ahead and challenge her, but don’t do it when we’re around. She’ll never believe we had nothing to do with it, and I, at least, have no intention of dying with you.”

Chantel scowled up at him, her eyes within their fringe of pale lashes appearing even redder than usual. “Move.”

He ignored the command. “You can’t still be annoyed about the little Nuikin?”

“She took control of him weeks ago,” Georges added.

“So?” Her tone made it quite clear she was, indeed, still annoyed.

Yves jerked his head at his cousin, and they each clamped a hand around one of Chantel’s slender arms and began to lead her toward the ballroom at the back of the house, where they could reinforce their numbers with Annette and the twins and, if nothing else, the music would make it harder to be overheard.

“I wonder why females are so competitive,” Georges mused.

“Go chew on a candle,” Chantel snarled.

Tossing his coat and hat to a footman in faded, mismatched livery, Dmitri jerked at a tangle in one of his streaming ribbons and yanked the ribbon right off the shoulder of his vest. Snarling a curse, he threw the narrow satin streamer aside and stomped toward the sound of conversation. Yves and the others would probably be in the ballroom, but the last thing he felt like doing was dancing.

A number of faces turned his way when he entered the drawing room but, all at once, their welcoming expressions seemed false. He’d been attending their parties, fêtes, balls, for weeks now, but he didn’t really know any of them. They don’t really care that I’m here, he muttered to himself as he scowled his way past a number of cheerful greetings.

As it happened, he was right, but there wasn’t a person in the room who could afford to ignore Louise Renier’s current favorite.

He got himself a glass of punch, downed it, and got another, even though it tasted as if its principle ingredient was a close cousin to turpentine.

Too close to the fire and this stuff’ll ignite, he thought woozily. Contrary to popular opinion, it tasted no better by the bottom of his third glass. His tongue didn’t feel numb; it felt flayed.

The end of the room holding the grated fireplace was too hot. The far end, too cold. Between, there were too many people he didn’t like, most of whom smelled sweaty and unwashed under a masking splash of cheap scent. Just for a moment he saw the rags and tatters not as fashion but as decay; saw the crumbling plaster, the moldy corners, the filthy floor. He rubbed watering eyes, shook his head, and it became just another townhouse in Pont-a-Museau.

He was thinking about moving on into the cardroom, if only because Aurek despised gambling, when he heard the unmistakable trill of Louise’s laughter.

At least she’d be glad to see him.

“I have heard that both the
sestra
Renier know everything that occurs in the city.”

Savagely repressing the memory, he made his way toward the ballroom. He would not have Edik’s suspicions—a servant’s suspicions—taint what he had with Louise. Louise was all he had left.

Her smile when she saw him was everything he could have asked for. You are important to me, it said. Now that you are here, the night is complete.

In its light, Dmitri dropped to one knee, athletically graceful in spite of the punch he’d imbibed, and raised her fingers to the soft caress of his lips.

“You look unhappy,” Louise murmured, false sympathy masking pleased satisfaction. Unhappy young men were so much easier to manipulate. She drew him to his feet and tucked his hand into the heated crook of her elbow. “Let’s find someplace quiet,” her voice rose slightly, “and private, to talk.”

Her circle of sycophants, who had reluctantly dropped back when Dmitri approached, took their dismissal with ill-grace. One elderly swain went so far as to voice a faint protest. Human ears might have missed it; Louise’s did not. She turned just enough to sweep the edge of her glittering gaze over the offender; then she permitted Dmitri to lead her from the ballroom. Behind them, the man who’d spoken stood alone, as though the others were afraid his fate might be contagious.

“Now then …” In a small room on the second floor, Louise sank down on a red velvet sofa and pulled Dmitri down beside her. “Tell me what’s wrong. It hurts me to see you so unhappy.”

Dmitri shrugged, suddenly uncertain how much of what had occurred between himself and his brother he should tell her.
“Servants hear things, sir. And I have heard that both the
sestra
Renier know everything that occurs in the city.”
He couldn’t seem to get past the combination of Aurek’s wounds and Edik’s words. He opened his mouth to ask her if she knew what had torn up his brother’s back and closed it again, lost in the depths of her eyes.

This is ridiculous. Look at her. He drank in her delicate beauty, blinded, as he was meant to be, by the surface luster. She could no more know what attacked Aurek than she could’ve struck the blow herself.

“Dmitri …”

He jerked as she called his name.

“… let me help.”

“Yes.”

A short while later, Louise stroked Dmitri’s hair back off his face and smiled triumphantly—not bothering to mask her expression, for the besotted young fool she planned to make such lovely use of was sitting on the floor with his head resting on her knee.

So her wizard had a figurine of his dear, departed wife that he deeply loved. Loved to the point of stupidity from the sound of it—even accounting for her informant’s bias. What would he do if he lost that little statue? she wondered. Fall apart? How nice. And what would he be willing to do for the person who could put him back together? Almost anything, I expect. How pathetic.

Should Aurek Nuikin prove to be not quite so pathetic as she anticipated, she would still come out ahead. The loss of the statue would, at the very least, make Aurek unhappy, and unhappy young men—she gave Dmitri’s golden curls a vicious, triumphant
little tug—were so much easier to manipulate.

“I feel like dancing,” she said suddenly. “Dmitri, take me back to the ballroom.”

Confused by the abrupt change of subject, Dmitri scrambled to his feet and held out his hand. “But what about Aurek?”

Wrapping her fingers around his, Louise allowed him to pull her to her feet. “Aurek clearly doesn’t care about you,” she said, the words sticky with sincerity. “You’ve got to stop caring so much about him. You’ll only keep getting hurt, and that hurts me.” She caught his gaze and held it. “You don’t want to hurt me, do you?”

“No.” Lost in the emerald depths of her eyes, that was the one thing he was sure of. “I’d do anything to keep you from being hurt.”

“I know you would.” Louise pressed the warm length of her body against him for a moment and rested her head on the broad strength of his shoulder. Her voice quavered slightly. “I know I can depend on you.” She felt him tremble and hid a toothy smile against his vest. At that instant, he would have done anything for her—all she had to do was ask. Letting the instant go—there’d be plenty more where it came from—she pulled back.

“Take me down to the ballroom,” she declared, “and we’ll dance all over Aurek’s inflated opinion of his own importance.”

Dmitri blinked as the room spun a half turn to the right. The taste of the punch clung like an oily film to the inside of his mouth. “Aurek’s not here, Louise. He’s injured, remember.”