Wicked Temptation (Nemesis Unlimited) (16 page)

“Two absinthes,” Marco said.

Bronwyn raised her brows as the waiter hastened off to get their drinks. “Trying to drive me mad?”

“It’s not half as dangerous as people believe.” He stretched out his arm along the back of the banquette. “Besides, you’ve never had absinthe before. Today’s a good day to try. Your first brothel. Your first absinthe.”

She wasn’t surprised that he knew she’d never tried the drink, rumored to make people have strange and ornate visions.

He continued, “The widow I met in London isn’t the same woman who sits in front of me now.”

“Because I’m out of my weeds,” she noted.

“Partly. But some of the fear’s left your eyes, too. The set of your shoulders is straighter. So it seemed the right time to try something different from what you’ve known.”

He wanted her to explore. Encouraged it. How … unexpected … that he should care, given how confined she’d been for … her whole life.

“Aside from sampling the fabled drink,” she said, “what are we doing here?”

“Devere doesn’t visit brothels because he probably can’t afford all but the cheapest ones, which a man of his station would probably avoid. Even a dunce like him knows those prostitutes are likely to pick his pocket when he’s sleeping afterward.”

Would there ever be a point when she could talk about things of a carnal nature as candidly as Marco? They came from such separate worlds.

“Those women are likely rather … unhealthy,” she added.

“They get blamed for spreading disease,” he said, “but it’s their customers who bring the sickness to the women, then take it home and give syphilis to their wives. And their unborn children.”

Had Hugh been one of those men? Was she even now carrying the disease within her and didn’t know it?

“You’d realize by now if you were sick,” Marco said, as if reading her thoughts. Uncanny, this man. But it was a relief to know that, even if Hugh had visited a prostitute—the idea making her feel truly unwell—she was safe from illness.

“But Devere won’t go to that class of brothel,” Marco continued. “So he’d come to a place like this.” He gestured toward the lively café around them. “There’s female company available, and it’s not of the commercial variety.”

Turning in her seat, she surveyed the café. True to Marco’s words, women sitting alone or with groups of friends smiled and flirted with men. They touched the men’s arms, or stroked coquettish fingers along men’s faces and down their chests. For their part, the gentlemen leaned close and whispered things in the women’s ears that made them giggle. And if Bronwyn’s eyes didn’t deceive her, there was a gingery man in the corner sliding his hand along a blond woman’s thigh.

Sensual possibility hung ripe in the air, making the café warm and sultry, despite the cool evening.

She glanced back at Marco. He wasn’t watching the room as much as he watched her, focused intently on her face, her mouth. The moment on the stairs flashed through her mind. Was he thinking the same thing? Had he wanted to kiss her as much as she’d wanted him to?

The waiter appeared, breaking the spell. He set two glasses holding measures of green liquid in front of them, along with two slotted spoons, a bowl of sugar cubes, and a carafe of what appeared to be plain ice water. The waiter hurried off again.

“It seems rather complicated,” she murmured, examining all the paraphernalia on their table.

“If a painter can do it, anyone can. First, take the spoon and lay it across the top of your glass. Make sure the slotted part is over the absinthe,” he cautioned, as she followed his instructions. “Put a sugar cube on the spoon. Good. Now pour the water over the sugar cube. You’re looking for three to five parts water to one part absinthe. Excellent,” he commended as she continued the process.

“Oh, my,” she exclaimed. The green liquid turned white and cloudy.

“That’s called
louche.
”

“Shady,” she translated. “Like the people who drink it.”

“Including us.” He followed the same procedure with the sugar cube and the water, and soon they both had glasses of milky, anise-scented liquid in front of them. Lifting his glass, he said,
“Salute.”

“To your very good health.” She clinked her glass against his, their gazes holding, then took a sip. She expected the drink to taste strong and bitter, but the surprisingly pleasant herbaceous flavor coated her tongue and warmed her throat.

She started to take another drink—a bigger one this time.

“Slowly, my good widow,” he said. “It might not be the madness-inducing danger everyone claims it to be, but it’s still alcohol, and I need your wits sharp.”

She set her glass down. “Perhaps I should just have a lemonade.”

“I think you can handle your absinthe. Only pace yourself.”

At least he had some faith in her ability to know her limitations. So she slowly measured out the time between sips. In the meanwhile, she continued to watch the activity in the café and on its open terrace. Life in the café wasn’t all about the possibility of a tryst—there were people playing chess, others arguing about art or politics or both, and one young man even had a sketch pad out and drew the scene. Perhaps Bronwyn herself might make it into one of his paintings.

Yet all she saw were the pairings of men and women. The feminine invitation through veiled glances, the masculine swagger as the invitation was answered. Some of the would-be swains had their advances rebuffed and had to slink back to their seats, where their companions laughed and knocked them on the back in a strange male gesture of consolation. Other men were more successful, and sidled up close to women, where soon fingers began to brush against each other, or more bold caresses were attempted.

Taking a sip of her drink, Bronwyn tried to picture herself as one of these women of Montmartre. She’d stroll into a café, feeling the gazes of men upon her and drawing power from it. A table would be waiting for her, and a glass of absinthe. Perhaps she’d chat with some female friends, or maybe she’d enjoy the pleasure of being alone, answerable only to herself. As she’d sit, men would try to catch her eye, but she decided she’d be selective. Much as her body craved release, she wouldn’t take just anyone to her bed. She’d want a man of refinement, intelligent and perceptive, but who also possessed a raw masculinity that fine tailoring couldn’t quite hide.

She drank from her glass again, tasting the different herbs of the absinthe. A man would come into the café—she decided she’d want him dark, not too tall, with a compact muscularity. The moment he entered, he’d see no one but her. She would give him her boldest glance, the one that said she wanted him, and he was lucky to have won her favor. He’d stalk toward her, gleaming like an unsheathed blade. He’d call her
chérie.
He’d chat with her for a while, their touches turning bold, until neither could take the wait any further. They’d go back to her rooms. And then they’d do the things she’d seen in those photographs she’d found beneath Devere’s bed. She hadn’t known that someone could put their mouth anywhere but on another person’s mouth. Now she understood differently, and wanted that with her dark stranger.

“Time to switch to lemonade,” a husky voice said, interrupting her reverie. Oddly, it was the same voice as the man in her daydream.

Or not so odd. The man she’d pictured in her fantasy had been Marco.

Blushing, she looked at her glass of absinthe. It was empty. The room itself swam a little. Fine sophisticate she made, getting tipsy—all right, drunk—from a single serving of absinthe. And then entertaining lustful thoughts about the man who was there to help her recover her fortune. There was nothing in Nemesis’s pledge to her about providing her with a lover.

“I wish you weren’t so handsome,” she blurted, then wanted to crawl under the table and never emerge.

“I don’t,” he answered.

“Conceit!” She pointed a finger at him.

He lifted his dark brows. “Not conceit. Truth. There’s a certain way people—women especially—react to me when they look at me. All I can deduce is that either I’m handsome or ugly, and most women don’t favor ugly men in their beds.”

She thought she might go up in absinthe-doused flames. “Perhaps they do like ugly men,” she countered. “Maybe ugly men make better lovers because they have to work harder.” There! She could be as bold as him.

“I don’t have any experience with ugly men as lovers,” he answered. “Or handsome ones.”

Well, he’d managed to shock her despite her resolve to be more bold.

“I don’t see Devere,” she said abruptly.

He sipped at his absinthe and flicked his gaze around the café. “It’s early yet. We’ll give him a few hours.”

“Why this café in particular? It seems like there are dozens of them in Montmartre.”

“Englishmen are known to frequent this one.”

Now that he mentioned it, she did hear the harder tones of her native language knocking against the soft lyricism of French. Those who did speak French rather than English had a more flat, nasal quality than the natives. Some of the men had a certain
Englishness
about their appearance and dress, despite their attempts to imitate the locals’ raffish elegance. She’d missed all this when they’d first come in, and in the distraction of her erotic daydream.

“He wouldn’t go by his real name,” she speculated. “We can’t ask anyone about him.”

“And we wouldn’t even if we knew his alias,” Marco said. “Getting the word out that we’re looking for him is a surefire way to force him back into hiding. No,” he said, stretching out his long legs, “we’ll try to wait him out. I can think of worse ways to spend the evening than sitting in a Parisian café with a beautiful woman.”

Her pulse raced and the heat suffusing her didn’t come from the absinthe. “We’ll need to do something with our time here.”

“Your Englishness is showing.” He gave another lazy smile. “Time has different significance in France and Italy. Each minute doesn’t have to be packed with meaningful activity. There’s simply the pleasure of
being.
”

“This is something you have experience with? The man who’s both a Nemesis agent and a”—she lowered her voice to a whisper—“spy.”

He laughed. A genuine, deep laugh that found the hidden places in her body. “Touché.”

“Perhaps this pleasure of being is something we can learn to do together.”

“Perhaps,” he agreed. “What’s your favorite piece to play on your violin?”

“Difficult to pick a favorite,” she said, “but I’ve always been partial to Bach’s Partita No. 1 in B minor.”

“I’m not familiar with it.”

“The first movement has this wonderful chaotic darkness to it.” She closed her eyes, hearing the piece play silently in her mind. Her fingers twitched, moving across invisible strings. “As if walking through a strange, shadowy city, and you don’t know what’s around the next corner. A girl with a basket of flowers, or a caped thief. And you can’t decide which you’d rather meet.”

A silence followed, and when she opened her eyes, she found him staring at her with an intensity that warmed her skin and caught her breath.

“More.” His voice was low and rasping.

“More what?”

“More talk of music,” he said.

“I … I don’t know what to say.”

“Anything. The first piece you learned to play, the one you hate the most. It doesn’t matter. Just talk to me of music.”

So she did. It was awkward at first, and she stumbled, searching for words. How could she speak about something so personal, something that defied language, and to
him,
this man who unbalanced her at every step? But gradually, she became more comfortable, and he prompted her with questions. Questions that showed he truly listened when she spoke, and cared about what she said. No one had ever taken such an interest in her violin playing before. It intoxicated her far more than any absinthe or wine ever could.

It was only when her throat began to grow sore that she realized how much she’d talked.

“My goodness,” she said, after a soothing drink of lemonade, “I’ve been prattling on for hours. You should have stopped me.”

“But I didn’t want to. And it wasn’t prattle. It was…” He seemed, for the first time, lost for words. “Inspiring.”

“It is to me,” she answered. “Ever since I was given my first violin when I was twelve I—” She laughed ruefully. “There I go again. Talking about myself and my hobbies.”

“It’s art, not a hobby,” he said with more heat than she would’ve anticipated.

“You haven’t heard me play. I could be terrible.”

“Not the way you talk about music. I can hear it in your voice. What you make with your violin goes beyond mere dilettantism into the realm of art.”

She oughtn’t revel in his praise, but gratification rose up in her like a tide. He was the first to ever recognize what her playing meant, and her pride in it.

“Perhaps I’ll play for you someday,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Can I tell you a secret?” she whispered.

“I can’t think of anyone more qualified to hear your secrets.”

She glanced around the café, as though someone might be listening in. But no one was. “I’ve always dreamed of being a professional violinist.”

She waited for his expression of scorn, or, worse, disgust. Yet he only nodded at her.

“A worthwhile dream,” he said.

Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t think it appalling that a woman should desire to earn money? And as a
performer
?”

“Nothing appalling about it,” he answered. “What’s bloody appalling is that people put it into women’s heads—into
your
head—that being financially compensated for your art is something that should be beneath you.”

She frowned. “And you don’t think it degrading that I’d seek to parade myself in front of strangers?”

“If they’re paying for the privilege, there’s nothing degrading about it. The audience are the ones who should feel honored to have you play for them.”

For a long while, she could only stare at him. “I … Thank you.”

Now he frowned. “For what?”

“For listening. For understanding. I don’t think anyone else would have.”