Ways to Be Wicked (13 page)

Once Mr. Shaughnessy had made his announcement and left them again, The General sent all of them to finish dressing like damsels, which involved the addition of pointed hats and flowing sheer capes trimmed with jewels, which would gleam and twinkle when softly lit, and which apparently were to be flourished provocatively.

Everything
was to be done provocatively at the White Lily, Sylvie now knew.

A great wooden castle, complete with turrets and a drawbridge that appeared capable of opening and closing, was pushed onto the stage by the seemingly ever-present crew of young boys. It occurred to Sylvie then that Tom Shaughnessy employed rather a lot of people and kept all of them hopping.

The castle seemed outrageously heavy; the boys were cherry-colored in the face and throwing all of their weight behind it, and the rest of the damsel-clad girls filed onto the stage, Sylvie among them, her body engulfed by the dress and cape. She glanced down glumly. She would need to alter these, too.

“Daisy!” The General bellowed toward the back of the theater. “Get your galleon-sized arse out here or I’ll—”

There was an ominous creaking sound; everyone spun.

The boys were slowly lowering the drawbridge of the castle, and it thunked to the floor of the stage, sending up a tiny cloud of dust. The girls coughed and waved at the air.

And there stood Daisy at the entrance of the castle. She struck a pose, arms up and braced in the castle doorway, bosom outthrust, long red tresses tumbling across her shoulders, and waited until she was certain every eye in the place was upon her. The General watched her in smoldering silence as she sashayed across the drawbridge, then Sylvie watched his chin slowly lower until his gaze landed in the vicinity of Daisy’s hips and stayed there, as surely as though her hips were the tool of a mesmerist.

There was no denying that Daisy Jones knew how to make an unforgettable entrance. Sylvie suspected that this, for some reason, had been Daisy’s point.

She reached the end of the gangplank and paused.

“She gave me a penny to do it!” One of the boys squeaked by way of explanation before dashing offstage, apparently unable to decide who was more fearsome, Daisy or The General.

The General gazed at Daisy at length, inscrutable, no longer glowering. She gazed back at him, faintly defiant, but clearly pleased with herself. The rest of the girls looked on in resentful silence, perhaps knowing they could only dream of making an entrance as majestic.

At last the General cleared his throat. “Josephine—if you would? Sylvie, please, as you did yesterday, just follow along. You’re a clever girl. I’m sure you’ll catch on.”

Again, that frisson of irony. As though something about her privately amused The General.

Josephine clasped her fingers together and stretched them out, then landed them on the pianoforte keyboard. A tune with a faint medieval lilt spilled out.

Daisy plaintively sang, in that voice that reached the rafters, but would never soothe the angels in heaven:

“Kind sir, kind sir, we damsels fair

are begging for release

Please wield your lance

Or we’ve no chance

Of ever finding peace. . .

The girls swayed, raised the flat of swooning hands to foreheads, linked arms and. . . God help her. . .

Bent double and waved their derrieres in the air.

Again.
And Sylvie, sighing inwardly, followed along.

“Get it up there, Sylvie! And if you would
please
not roll your eyes!”

And this, naturally, made Sylvie roll her eyes.

When they’d run through the song a good half dozen times, it seemed, and were upright and turned around to face the audience again, Sylvie saw Tom Shaughnessy at the head of the aisle, his bright eyes fixed rather emphatically on her, walking stick in hand, marking off time almost absently. The expression he wore was strangely. . . confused. A faint frown hovered between his eyes, as though she was a puzzle he was very close to deciphering.

So he’d returned, then, from whatever business had drawn him briefly away.

Sylvie felt unaccountably, absurdly glad, both at his return, and at the fact that he was clearly watching only her.

When her eyes met his, his faint frown tilted up at the corner and became that smile of acknowledgment, and wicked amusement lit his eyes as surely as if a light had caught them. Reflexively, her own lips turned up slightly, and something else inside her lifted, too.

“Oh!” Pain sliced through her as someone came down hard on the inside of her foot, nearly taking her slipper entirely off. Sylvie teetered briefly, one knee buckling. She righted herself quickly enough, as did the other girls, and danced and smiled through the pain, as she was accustomed to dancing and smiling through pain.

Both The General and Tom Shaughnessy were wearing genuine frowns now, and they were both directed at her. Tom’s was puzzled. The General’s was censorious.

“Goodness.
So
sorry,” Molly murmured to her. Her smile remained in place, her face fixed forward. But her eyes, when Sylvie glanced sideways, her eyes glinted, glass-hard and satisfied.

He’d told her to find him in his library after rehearsal for her reward, and she knew precisely where this was as

she’d seen the light pouring from it last night. As she had essentially spied on him very briefly last night.

She paused in the doorway. Tom Shaughnessy wasn’t looking at her, he was sifting a hand through things on his desk, pushing them this way and that, as though he was looking for something in particular. A smile was curving his lips, as though he found the mess immensely satisfying.

Suddenly he froze and his face went dark and taut. With a swift motion he lifted one hand and pressed the thumb of his other hand hard against his palm, sucking in a short, harsh breath.

Sylvie’s stomach contracted involuntarily in sympathy. She knew pain when she saw it.

He glanced up, noticing her at last, and his expression shifted instantly, light flooding into it. “Old wound,” he explained glibly, lifting up his hand, fanning it out. She saw the scars, white, pulling tightly between thumb and forefinger. “Now and again it sends a humbling reminder through my nerves. Have you come for your. . .
reward
then, Miss Chapeau?”

She went very still. It was the way he’d said the word. It seemed to have . . .
dimensions,
the way he’d said it. He’d given it rich levels of innuendo, all of which implied he’d decades of experience rewarding women. He wasn’t smiling, but the corners of his mouth were quivering, ready to laugh if she gave him a reason.

Tom Shaughnessy could very likely effortlessly outstrip her in the game of flirtation, she conceded.
She
felt obliged to a certain amount of decorum. Whereas he seemed fearless. And very nearly shameless. Though thankfully, so far, he seemed to be using his fearlessness and shamelessness somewhat judiciously.

“I am here as you requested, Mr. Shaughnessy. Did I earn more for contributing a bit of verse to your...production?” She couldn’t resist a bit of irony.

The humor faded from his eyes. “Ah,” he said, matching her irony. “I gather you feel our little
productions
lack a certain artistry. But I will tell you this, Miss Chapeau: There’s great freedom in not feeling obliged toward respectability.”

“I imagine you would know, Mr. Shaughnessy.”

It was meant as a jest, albeit a tart one.

He went briefly very still again. His expression was difficult to read, and she considered whether she might have offended him, though it was difficult to see why this would be.

And then he opened up a small wooden box, reached in, and produced a stack of coins, which he settled on the corner of the desk: her wages. An eloquent but silent point made about the rewards of not feeling obliged to respectability.

Sylvie scooped them into her palm. Handed one back to him. “For my room and board.”

He handed it back to her. “For the line of verse.” They exchanged swift smiles. Tension eased a bit.

“Tell me: Do
you
aspire to respectability, Miss Chapeau?” He asked it idly.

She recognized it for what it was: a gauntlet thrown down, and still she could not resist snapping. “I do not
aspire
to respectability, Mr. Shaughnessy.”

“Ah. I see. It is yours already.” He was laughing silently at her. “And it was merely the cruel whims of fate that somehow led you to our little den of iniquity. I’m curious then: How does a respectable woman know about. . . rewards?”

“One can be respectable and know about...rewards, Mr. Shaughnessy.” She heard how absurd the words sounded even as she said them.

“Can one?” he asked mildly. “I suppose that could be true if one is French. I suspect one wouldn’t
blurt
the word out with such relish, however.”

“I didn’t—it wasn’t—”

“And as ‘respectable’ so often means the same thing as ‘married,’ ” he continued, as if she hadn’t stammered at all, “and I do not think you are, or have been married, I must conclude that someone’s
sword
has been sending you, or has in the past sent you, to your
reward.
So who sends you to your reward, Miss Chapeau? Did you leave a lover behind in France?”

The cutthroat boldness of the question wiped her mind of thought, and for an instant, she froze, unable to react at all. So much for judicious use of fearlessness and shamelessness.

She managed, finally, to produce a disapproving frown. And said nothing.

But this only made him smile, slowly, to demonstrate to her:
I have won this round, Miss Chapeau.

Sylvie glanced around the room, an attempt to recover her composure. She supposed at one time it might have been used as a small library or sitting room, when the theater, as Josephine had told her, had been a great house; shelves were built into one wall. There were books on them now, which surprised her a little, as Tom Shaughnessy did not strike her as the academic sort—or even, necessarily, the reading sort, though he was certainly well-spoken enough—and all the books looked well thumbed through, too.

On closer inspection, she saw they weren’t the sort usually proudly displayed in libraries, philosophical tomes and the like, the kind that are spotless and meant to impress guests. These were novels, for the most part.
Robinson Crusoe
was one of them, the ultimate male adventure. A few horrid novels, it seemed; she recognized them, as she secretly enjoyed them, too, and had read more than one in English. A collection of Greek myths, a large book that she was virtually certain was extravagantly illustrated given the theme of the theater’s murals. She imagined they would appeal to his sense of drama and fantasy and whimsy.

But something tucked behind the books surprised her the most: a small wooden horse, a toy. It had a bristly mane and tail, wheels on its feet. She wondered if it had belonged to Tom as a boy, and why on earth such a thing would be tucked into a niche at the White Lily Theater.

And then she remembered the accusation of the man who had called him out: “
At that shop that sells toys.
”

Tom had denied being in any such place.

This was intriguing.

She glanced up to meet his eyes on her. He’d been silently watching her peruse his office. Momentarily disconcerted, she glanced down, and saw, unfurled on his desk, a beautiful drawing of a grand building.

“Plans,” he said shortly. “For another theater.”

“It looks very grand.” It did. The building was downright stately, vast; rows of large windows marched across it, a columned entrance greeted guests.

“It will be bloody fantastic,” he stated as firmly as if it were already an established fact. “A floor for entertainments, a floor for dining, a floor for...” He trailed off, perhaps imagining it as he recited. And then he looked up at her. “We need a good deal of capital to make it a reality, but we should have the Gentleman’s Emporium by next spring. I commissioned this drawing, and I’m working on the plans now.” She heard the pride and conviction in his voice as he motioned to the papers spread over his desk. “It will be much like the White Lily...only much more so.”

“But why. . . this sort of thing at all, Mr. Shaughnessy?” She gestured to the theater surrounding them with a wave of her hand. “Why the White Lily?”

He looked surprised at the question, then pretended to mull it quite seriously, head tilted back to look at the ceiling. And then he said suddenly, as though the answer had just then occurred to him: “Sex.”

The word hung and pulsed in the air, all soft and crisp consonants, as lurid as the sign that swung over the White Lily’s entrance. Long enough for both of them to picture once again what the word meant to each of them.

Long enough for Sylvie to feel distinctly light-headed.

“Very dramatic, Mr. Shaughnessy, but that word won’t get any more or less alarming the longer you leave it there. You might as well continue to explain.” She was aware that her voice was just a little bit frayed, and hoped that he wouldn’t notice.

He threw back his head and laughed, delightedly. “Oh, very well then. It’s simple, Miss Chapeau. I began my life with nothing. I wanted much much more than that. I knew a little bit about theater. I know a good deal about men and women, having encountered many kinds of both throughout my life. I followed the momentum of my talents and experience, and here we are. And where’s the harm in it?”

“It’s . . .” She waved a hand.
Appalling,
she thought.
Embarrassing. Overt.

“Fun,” he completed with a grin. “Lucrative. Everyone has a wonderful time.”

“Including Molly?” she said, perhaps too quickly and sharply.

The grin faded when she said this; he studied her in silence for a moment. And then he inhaled deeply and sat down in his chair, leaned back and continued to study her, as if deciding whether to explain something to a child.

“Do you know what Molly would be doing if I didn’t employ her?” he finally asked.

Sylvie was silent as she contemplated this. She could very well guess.