The Dream Thief (7 page)

“Merci.”

He found a coin in his pocket—God
knew which country it was from—and flicked it to the clerk, who smiled and
bowed and retreated down the sconce-lit corridor.

When the door was bolted again,
he broke the wax seal.

Veuillez nous joindre pour notre
célébration le samedi, 31 octobre, à  neuf heures du soir.

Le dîner sera accompagne d’un
orchestre.

Le Comte du Abony

Zane looked up from the
invitation, frowning.
Samedi
was Saturday, today. Tonight.

Someone knew of him. Someone knew
he was here; he’d never heard of a Comte du Abony; he could not imagine how the
fellow had heard of him. Unless the
drákon
had somehow managed it, had
figured out where he was going to be and when…

But they would not know his room
number. And Rue would never make the mistake of revealing his name.

He glanced once more at the river
outside, then quickly drew the curtains. He stood motionless against the
silk-papered wall, fading into shadow with the falling night while his thoughts
bled into theories and conspiracies and extremely improbable coincidences.

Through the sheer organza he saw
a crow land atop the stone rail of the balcony; it peered at him sideways with
fiercely black eyes, then shoved into the air again.

The Comte du Abony lived in an
actual palace. Zane had walked to it, because it turned out not to be far from
the fashionable King’s View, and the clerk had made it politely clear that even
an Englishman could find it if he kept to the main boulevards. To guide him, he
had the address and the surprising brilliance of the street lanterns, which
dangled from fanciful iron posts twice as tall as a man.

He supposed only a very great
fool would openly respond to the cordially worded card in his pocket. And
anyone who knew his name would also know that Zane was no fool.

Yet he was going. He was walking.
He had his dirk and his rapier and his wits; he had his best court clothing;
whoever the hell this comte was, Zane meant at least to get a good look at him.
And then, should the man wander off alone—too much wine, a willing
woman—perhaps they might exchange a few words….

In any case, he wouldn’t risk
spending the night in the hotel, not now, and for that alone Zane felt a
particular urge to inflict a bit of pain upon someone. His walking stick tapped
the pavement very lightly. His gold-buttoned tricorne was tipped aslant over
his wig, rakish, but it was only so that he could keep his sights clear. He
nodded amicably to the passersby who nodded to him, studying their faces, following
his senses and the clerk’s directions, and the growing line of coaches crowding
the streets.

Sedan chairmen hauling high,
teetering boxes passed him at a trot. Horses gleamed fat and glossy beneath the
oil lanterns, snorting plumes of frost. The crests on the coaches—on the doors,
on the hubs of the wheels—were painted in gaudy reds and greens and yellows,
vivid blues. By the time he could hear the orchestra playing, Zane’s saunter
was getting him to the comte’s dinner ball more quickly than any of the fine
nobles trapped in their carriages.

He had meant to approach the
celebration the way he did all unknowns, in a circle, from behind, where he
could watch and judge from a prudent distance before stepping into commitment.
But half the city seemed to be headed there, and from three blocks away he
could see there would be no furtive arrival into this place; it was gated and
fenced in tall, serious spikes, and there were liveried guards at every corner.

Very well.

At the gatehouse he handed his
square of vellum to a footman, who accepted it stoically, bowing him up the
raked drive. The massive bronze-studded doors of the palace entrance were
already open. As he climbed their steps, a wave of heated air pushed past:
paprika and perspiration and the musky confusion of too many perfumes.

Zane entered the atrium—more
footmen, blazing candles, a mosaic of high, stained-glass windows glowing azure
and saffron above. The music grew brighter, the heat more intense.

He’d been in many of London’s
finest homes; he’d seen ballrooms by both candlelight and the useful darkness
of the new moon. One dead summer’s night as a boy, he’d even gotten as far as
the drawing room in the town residence of the Princess of Wales—only on a dare,
and only because deep down he hadn’t really believed that he could.

The princess had lived in a
splendor of pink alabaster and baroque furniture. She drank tea from tiny
silver-trimmed cups; her linens were powder blue embroidered with real gold;
her hallboy snored. Zane had been thirteen, barefoot, a dark intruder who had
not touched a thing. He’d never thought to see a more make-believe place than
that, and it had only been the royal antechamber.

But this comte, it seemed, had
outsplendored the princess. Here were columns of warm ocher marble inlaid with
turquoise and panels of citrine. Oil paintings of bearded men and doe-eyed
women draped in furs and velvet and crowns of jewels reached as high as the
second floor. Enormous vases of fresh flowers—orchids, in October—guided the
guests toward another set of doors; Zane slipped behind two lords and a trio of
ladies, close as a shadow as they crossed the threshold into the ballroom. When
the butler moved to announce them, he glided off, swallowed in an ocean of
satins and lace.

For all the grandeur of the
chandeliers, it was darker in here than it should have been. Slices of
moonlight washed visibly through the far windows, gleaming pale along the
shoulders and wigs of the revelers crowded there. The orchestra labored away in
a box set high above the crush. They had their own branches of candles to play
by, an uneasy glow that cast shades of fiddles and horns and flutes against the
dark red ceiling.

In the center of the ballroom, a
wide X of couples were performing the quadrille, slow and stately movements
that seemed at odds with the hectic prattle of the room. Someone laughed very
loudly in his ear; Zane angled away. He worked his way to a wall so there could
be no one behind him. He set himself to searching faces again, because he knew
what the
drákon
looked like, and he knew what his kind looked like, even
if he did not know the features of this comte.

Bobbing into view was a short,
plump woman in a wig teased high with feathers and swaying droplets of
diamonds. She started, staring straight at him, hard and focused—his fingers
grazed the handle of his dirk—and then, abruptly, her face cleared. She broke into
a delighted smile.

“My dear! There you are! There
you are indeed!”

She spoke not French but English,
heavily accented but perfectly intelligible. Zane remained taut where he was as
she swept toward him, champagne in one hand and the other reaching for him.

“Come along, come along! This is
the way!”

He made an instant decision: she
didn’t appear to have a weapon; her breath reeked of alcohol; her delight
seemed genuine. He allowed her fingers to close over his and she led him across
the floor, over to a corner particularly dense with people…no, he saw, coming
closer, not merely people. Men. Dandies and lords, beaux in lawn and ruffles
and long-skirted coats, surrounding a solitary woman.

This one was younger,
white-skinned, garbed in ruby silk cut very low across her chest. She was
laughing at something one of the beaux whispered in her ear, her chin down. Her
gloved hands clasped her fan across her lap.

“
Chérie,
only look!”
exclaimed Zane’s escort, presenting him with tipsy satisfaction. “Here he is!”

The lady in ruby glanced around,
pleasure still teasing her lips and lighting her face, her eyes sparkling dark,
her hair powdered into heavy curls. Her skin was pearled, her cheeks brushed
with pink; she wore no patches for beauty, no jewelry, and very little
paint—and he grasped at once how she had managed to draw so many moths to her
corner. He had never seen a woman so exotically luminous. His mouth actually
went dry.

But…surely he knew her. Aye, he
knew that he did—

“It
is
he, is it not?”
insisted the tipsy woman, now hanging on to his arm. “I recognized him right
away, just as you said—those eyes,
mais oui,
such a color! I have the
chills! I said to myself, who else could it be?”

The lady in the ruby gown lifted
her chin and fixed her gaze directly to his.

“Yes,” she said in a velvet tone.
“You’re quite right, Marie. It is he.”

And with a jolt of profoundly
unpleasant shock, Zane realized he was gaping at Lia Langford.

CHAPTER THREE

S
he had known precisely how it was
going to be. It was strange that she did, because she’d never actually seen any
of it, not the composition of the dancers and chairs, not the colors, not the
chamber; none of the dreams that came to her offered sight. But Lia had known.

The moment she’d glimpsed the red
silk in the bowfront window of the mercer’s that rainy evening in Edinburgh,
she’d thought,
This one.
And the hair powder, from the Parisian salon:
Yes,
this.

The music, a Viennese piece still
new enough to stir a scandal at the school when one of the girls picked it out
on the pianoforte:
That refrain.

The bottle of scent, a gift from
her sisters.

The lace fan.

The city.

The hotel.

His face, because that was
unchanging: carved and wary, glorious in the way a feral predator could be
glorious, too far beyond human touch to be tamed, severe and beautiful even in
its ferocity. His skin was marked with candlelight. His eyes burned animal
bright.

He wore ebony when everyone else
was done up in pastel flowers. His wig was a simple tye when all the other men
sported curls upon curls. He was the only male nearby who wasn’t even
attempting to ogle her chest.

That was Zane. That was his
expression as she glanced up at him, and it was so familiar to her that for a
moment she only sat there, admiring him, forgetting all that he was and all
that she had done to get them both to this strange and exquisite place. For
that instant he was only Zane, the very dark man of her dreams. And because he
was there with her, her heart expanded with bittersweet pleasure.

Stupid.

He was still Zane. She should
have known he’d be an ass.