Читать книгу Lyon - Elizabeth Amber - Страница 9

Reaching her solitary bedchamber in the rafters at the front of the house she so despised, Juliette soundlessly shut her door behind her. Without lighting a candle, she hurried to the single window along the wall and, taking care to keep herself hidden, pulled back the curtain’s edge to peer down toward the quai.

She gasped. There he was! That man she’d seen from the bridge was loitering on the front sidewalk, studying the house. Now that he stood upright, she could see he truly was a giant. A disheveled one.

His tattered shirt was misbuttoned and damp with dew and sweat. It faithfully molded shoulders nearly twice as broad as her own and a muscled torso that rivaled the mythical statues carved on the Palais de Justice. Thoughts of that place sent a shiver over her.

Her breath hitched as she watched him disappear up the front steps and heard the door open for him. His coming here was no accident. He’d seen her on the bridge and followed her. Why? What did he want? Was it simple curiosity? Or, even worse, was it possible he was one of her persecutors and she’d inadvertently led him here?

In semi-darkness, she groped along the wall until she reached the washstand. Her hand found the vial there and by ease of practice, she splashed wine into a glass and squeezed a small dose of the vial’s tincture into it. Though she craved more, she limited herself, for she’d need her wits later tonight. She swallowed it in one gulp and returned to the window.

Long moments later, the man reappeared below her again on the sidewalk. The servants had rebuffed him!

Her gaze followed him as he crossed the quai and continued on. Her emotions were in such a tangle that she wasn’t sure whether to be glad of his departure or not. Then he paused unexpectedly at the park’s edge and turned to look up at her window.

Swiveling on the ball of one foot, she fell back against the wall and put a hand over her thumping heart. How long would he remain out there?

It didn’t matter, she told herself. She rarely left the house and Monsieur Valmont’s watchdogs were fierce. That stranger could watch this window for the next year for all she cared.

Ridiculous. As if he would. He’d affected her far more than she’d likely affected him. She was glad he’d gone, she decided.

Sliding down the wall, she crouched on her heels hugging her drawn-up knees. The drops were already beginning to warm her, dulling the sharp corners of reality. As usual, they had another effect—making her long for what she would not seek. A man’s touch.

Remembered sensation still hummed deep inside her most private feminine crevice. The wanting was worst than usual.

Because of him.

What had happened out there? How had it come to pass that she—the only female in the house who’d never had a man between her legs—had been violated by one tonight?

A horrible thought struck her.

Oh, God! Had he taken her first blood?! She hadn’t even considered that possibility. Stupid. Stupid!

Her knees hit the floor. She hunched her back as one hand dove under her skirts. Gingerly, she slipped a finger high between her legs, searching. The private folds gating her channel were slick. Juices, sticky and heady, coated her inner thighs.

He’d done this to her, made her body sob for him. Her forefinger dipped inside, a little deeper. Oh, please, please, where was it? Then her fingertip gently butted against what she sought. The delicate membrane. Her hymen. It still held.

She slumped in relief, more confused than ever. Withdrawing her hand, she wiped it on the linen that hung from her washstand. Had his shaft—or something of him—truly come inside her or not?

Pushing from the floor, she stood to peek out of the window again. The man was nowhere to be seen. She pressed her forehead to the cool windowpane, searching the quai more thoroughly. He was gone.

If only it had been possible to find out what he knew without a face-to-face conversation with him. But such a meeting would be impossible to arrange, even if he returned again.

She could just imagine asking Valmont’s servants to question him: Pardonnez-moi, monsieur, but could you tell me the identity of the woman you lay with tonight under the bridge? And also if you would be so kind, can you tell me if you are able to supply orgasms to women without touching them? Mademoiselle Juliette wishes to know.

Absurd!

Looking east, her eyes located a familiar building—the Hospice des Enfants Trouvés—The Hospital of Found Children. Its spires pricked heavenward like great thorns, prodding her with painful memories. She let the thin curtain fall closed to obscure them and stood very still, almost afraid to breathe.

“Je ne suis pas folle,” she whispered unsteadily. “I am not insane. I am not.”

It had been three years since most of the magic had left her.

Three years since she’d last transformed in the way her body had attempted to just moments ago.

Three years since she’d been accused of murder and lost the person most dear to her in this world.

Her gaze went to the second floorboard from the wall beside her bed. On legs that were still unsure, she went to kneel there. Darting a look at the door, she reassured herself it was shut. There was no privacy lock, so she turned her back toward it and listened for footsteps.

Pushing on one end of the wooden slat raised its other end revealing a leather pouch secreted below. She pulled it out, opened it, and lifted a strand of olive-shaped beads from among the coins within.

Raising one bent knee, she draped the necklace over it so its ends dangled on either side, then ran her fingers over each bone bead. There were precisely seventeen of them, strung on a long silken cord, which had looped her neck until she was sixteen years of age. When Valmont had bade her to put aside such things.

Her fingers found the thick pewter and iron medal tied at one end of the cord. A picture of Saint Vincent de Paul was engraved on one side and the flip side bore identifying information in the form of two numbers: 1804 and 8900.

In the year 1804, she’d been the 8,900th child abandoned at the Hospice des Enfants Trouvés. Though it was less than an hour’s walking distance from here, she’d visited only once, during the first week she’d returned to Paris a year ago. It had been more painful than expected and she’d avoided it since. But every day it haunted her from where it stood in the distant shadow of the Cathédral Notre Dame.

That she was illegitimate was a virtual certainty. That her mother had never planned to come back to the hospital for her was as well. She’d left no notes or identifying tokens as had been tucked in the blankets of some of the other abandoned children. She had no way of knowing if her mother had done the deed alone, but she’d always assumed her father had not accompanied her, since that was the usual story with orphans.

Upon her arrival at the foundling hospital, the only known facts of her origins had been faithfully entered into the large recording book, the Registre d’Admission. Sex: female. Age: one day. Name: Juliette. There were also notations that included a brief description of her clothing and blanket. And she’d learned the actual day of her birth, something she hadn’t known. She would be nineteen next month.

It seemed that sometime in the wee hours of December 20, 1804, she’d been birthed, bathed, and wrapped in blankets of fine wool before being deposited upon the hospital’s infamous “tour.” This stone wheel lay flat on its side, serving as a rotating turntable set in an aperture in the building’s exterior wall. A wooden box, which acted as a makeshift cradle, rested upon the half of the wheel that was exposed outside the wall. It would have been a simple matter for her mother to stealthily and anonymously place her there, inside the box.

Had her mother wept as she turned the wheel? Had she watched until the cradle—and her baby within it—had been entirely re-situated on the inside of the hospital? Before leaving, she would have rung a bell alerting the Sisters of Charity that yet another deposit of an unwanted, pink-faced infant had been made.

Juliette gathered the beads in her fist and held them tight. Her heart cried out for the loss of the page that had been stolen from her today. Not wanting anyone to question her about it, she had only quickly scanned it. Then she’d tucked it in her basket, planning to later scrutinize it at leisure, here in her private room.

It had been a silly, costly whim to have it stolen in the first place. But from the moment she’d learned of the book’s existence, she’d longed to know whatever details of her beginnings it contained. Another orphan might’ve been allowed to view his or her personal information, but she dared not reveal her identity at the hospital and risk being turned over to authorities.

She had not expected to be surprised by anything she read on that page, but she had been.

For directly below her name, there had been another, familiar one.

Elise.

A sharp rapping came at her door, causing her to jump.

“Mademoiselle?”

“Un moment!” Juliette hastily replaced the necklace in its box and then the box in its hiding place. Her domestique had arrived to fuss over her. In less than one hour, she was expected downstairs. And then tonight’s performance would begin.

“Sweet victory,” Monsieur Valmont murmured from beside Juliette.

Her breath caught as she peered at the new arrival through the decorative punched-metal screen. It was he. The man from the bridge. The one who’d given her her first orgasm.

Wasn’t it? She leaned closer to the grillwork trying to get a better look through the perforations.

From the privacy of this upstairs nook, she and Valmont observed the golden giant who’d entered the salon below them on the main floor of the townhouse. Only snatches of conversation, music from the harpist, and tinkling laughter reached them here so they didn’t hear his introduction. Two dozen other gentlemen had already gathered in the salon before him, and a dozen more would likely come before the evening was done.

Agnes, Gina, Fleur, and the other girls circulated among them, all brightly gowned coquettes who knew how to flirt, flatter, and fornicate. M. Valmont always sent them down first to work the group and build anticipation in preparation for her entrance. They were the appetizers, he liked to say. And she, the main course.

In moments Juliette and Valmont would join the assemblage and she would hold court under his keen supervision. But for now, they lingered here to discuss the patrons with a frankness that would have been impossible in a more public venue.

“I’d hoped he might come. But I dared not expect him,” Valmont continued as the new arrival made his way into the room.

“Who is he?” Juliette enquired, carefully concealing any sign of recognition. When her companion didn’t reply, she glanced his way and saw he was so fixated on his surveillance of the man that he hadn’t even heard her.

In the center of the room below, the giant paused to contemplate the bubbling of the marble absinthe fountain. Valmont had installed it when they’d arrived in Paris a year ago and it had become a popular feature of these gatherings. Since the blight had devastated vineyards throughout Europe over the last decade, wine was in short supply. As a result, its cost had risen and this had ignited great interest in the less expensive absinthe as a substitute.

When Fleur approached the new guest with an offer of refreshment, he allowed her to divert him toward the wine cart. Though she was but sixteen and was fairly new to the household, Valmont had recently decided to involve her in the business rather than keep her to the kitchen, much to Juliette’s dismay. However, delighted with her new finery and increased income, Fleur had taken to the work of pleasuring men with surprising ease.

The man smiled indulgently down at Fleur as she filled his glass and chattered away. Grinning, she linked a hand through his arm and proceeded to flirt in her usual engaging manner, doing her best to attract him before one of the others did.

In profile, his features were strong—a granite jaw, straight brow, and prominent, well-shaped nose. These were only slightly tempered by sensual lips, cheekbones flushed with good health, and glorious disorderly hair of many shimmering golden shades that hung almost to the line of his jaw.

Juliette willed him to glance her way, so she might furtively study his face full on, but he didn’t.

“Who is he?” she asked again.

Valmont twitched at the question and she realized he’d completely forgotten her presence until she’d spoken.

“Lord Lyon Satyr.” He tapped the fingertips of both hands together under his chin in tiny soundless claps. He sounded almost giddy.

“Lyon.” Turning back to the screen, Juliette tasted the name, exploring its shape and texture in her mouth and testing its flavor on her tongue. It suited him.

Valmont returned to his study as well. “Is the name familiar to you?”

He was testing her. The purpose for which they met here prior to these Thursday night soirées was to allow him to school her on the backgrounds of his guests. He made it his business to know every detail of their circumstances and fortunes. Operating on motives unknown to her, he was always ready with instruction regarding whom to flirt with and what information to elicit. It was usually left to her to determine the manner best calculated to achieve his goals.

Juliette’s brow knit. “An Italian with his surname came to Paris several months ago, did he not? A vintner from Tuscany?”

Beside her, Valmont nodded, pleased she’d remembered. “A cold fish, that one—Raine Satyr, the middle son of three. Unfortunately he departed Paris before he could be reeled in.” He gestured toward the room below. “This one tonight is the youngest of the brothers at twenty-six years. There is another in Tuscany—the eldest of them, who has recently wed. After years of fucking anything that moves, all three have recently confounded the gossips by commencing bride searches.”

She soaked up this news of him and wanted more. “Are they attractive prospects?”

“Exceedingly. Among them, they own vast holdings—estates, an immense flourishing vineyard, and coffers overflowing with inherited riches.”

“Their vineyards still flourish?” Juliette asked, glancing at him in surprise. “Untouched by the phylloxera?”

Valmont’s expression twisted with bitterness. “Oui. Though it’s beyond anyone’s understanding why that should be so. And it’s certainly beyond all fairness.”

In the salon, Fleur had been supplanted on the newcomer’s arm by the more aggressive Gina, who was giving him a tour of Valmont’s art collection. The hoard of busts, statues, oils, and watercolors was but a small fraction of what his family had once owned. However, it and the rest of the items in the other rooms here were all he’d been able to abscond with before his Burgundy château had been recently claimed by taxmen.

Juliette had been there to watch his once-affluent father’s vast winemaking enterprises in Burgundy felled by the phylloxera over the years. It had been among the first of the many to succumb to the ravages of the aphid-like pest, which had gone on to decimate many of Europe’s vineyards.

His father had killed himself over the debacle. This townhouse, the smallest property of the many his family had once owned, was now all Valmont possessed of his father’s legacy. And he’d filled it with prostitutes to provide his income.

She could almost pity him because of the reversal of fortune the pest had wrought in his family and in his life. Almost. But not quite.

As he escorted Gina, Satyr’s panther gait was masculine, easy, and loose-limbed. It reminded her of how she’d seen him in the park, moving on that other woman. Of how she’d felt him moving inside her. Goosebumps rose on her arms.

If he was indeed the same man as the one she’d seen earlier tonight at Pont Neuf, he’d changed his clothing in the last hour. Wool trousers dyed the color of mustard seed faithfully molded his derriere with each shift of his hips or step of his booted feet. These were paired with a natural linen cambric shirt and a casual jacket of drab olive. It was an attractive look on him, but so profoundly démodé that it could never have been considered modish in the first place by anyone of society.

Nevertheless, she saw how Agnes and the others eyed him. Against a backdrop of dandified peacocks, he stood out as a brawny, earthy animal in his prime. One who chose his own path and was confident enough not to bow too deeply to the whims of style.

For a man so large, he moved with sleek grace. But even as she made this observation, he contradicted it. She gasped as his elbow caught on the outstretched bow of a statue, sending it rocking. It was a sculpture of Diana, Roman goddess of the hunt, a favorite subject of Valmont’s.

Large pawlike hands caught at the wobbling goddess. An awkward juggling act ensued in which he fondled various portions of her anatomy before ultimately rescuing her from peril and returning her safely to her pedestal.

The attention of everyone in the room now on him, the giant rolled his shoulders and heaved a great sigh as though accustomed to causing such calamities in salons. His words didn’t reach their hiding place, but whatever he said sent laughter rippling over the room.

“A man who can laugh at himself—a rare animal,” murmured Juliette.

“Buffoon,” Valmont muttered. “He’ll pay for that if it’s damaged. Among other things.”

Juliette turned her head in time to surprise a vengeful expression on his face. “What do you mean?”

Avoiding a direct reply, he eyed her thoughtfully. “You will favor him tonight. All those years you lived on the fringes of my family’s vineyard should be to your advantage in snaring his interest. Flatter him and draw him out regarding his work.”

“What precisely do you wish me to glean from my conversation with him?” she asked guardedly.

“Any details about the inner workings of his estate. Any weaknesses in him or in his family. Ask the source of his vines’ immunity to the phylloxera epidemic. If they’ve been infected and cured by some secret remedy, I want to know of it.”

“And you think he’ll simply tell me all this for the asking?”

“Dazzle him in your usual way,” Valmont went on, flicking his fingers in the air as if to whisk away her incredulity. He turned to quit their hiding place, indicating it was time to descend to the salon. “Show him the rooms. Whatever it takes to keep him with you long enough to pump him for information.”

“The rooms? But you never ask that of me! Usually only Agnes or Gina or one of the others…” Stunned by his request, she turned blindly back to her study of the salon below.

Abruptly a pair of jeweled amber eyes cut to the nook where she was hidden. A wave of erotic awareness prickled over her.

God! It was him! She stepped back, knocking against Valmont. Recoiling from the contact, she whipped around accidentally brushing against the screen. For an instant, the grillwork singed her shoulder blade in that confusing metallic way that made it impossible to determine if it was chilling or heating her skin.

Catching her arm, Valmont jerked her away from it to study her face. Obviously disliking what he read there, he pulled her close and lifted her chin, brushing a dangerously gentle thumb along the underside of her jaw. She hunched her shoulders to keep her breasts from grazing the front of his jacket.

“You find him attractive?”

She shrugged, erasing all expression from her face. “You know I never take particular interest in any gentleman.”

“Your cheeks are flushed,” he accused.

“Only because it’s warm.”

His face loomed closer. Absinthe-soaked breath soughed in and out of him. The heady licorice scent of anise reached her, unmistakable at close range.

She cringed inwardly, but was careful not to reveal her distaste as cold, moist lips touched hers. Once, as a girl, she’d thought him handsome and good and she’d wanted his kiss. How foolish she’d been.

Heedless of the roomful of guests that waited for them below, he brushed his mouth over hers, back and forth. “Such an attraction would be understandable,” he murmured. “He is handsome. And rich, with an impeccable title. The names of Satyr scions have been inscribed in the registers at the Libro d’Oro della Nobiltà Italiana for centuries.”

“If you don’t trust my word on my feelings, how can you trust me to be alone with him?”

“You won’t be alone. I hire many eyes to watch for me in this house and elsewhere. I’m well aware that women are wicked and untrustworthy by nature. You more than most.”

“That’s untrue. You know it is.”

Fingers slid under her hair and gripped her nape to hold her and underscore her entrapment. A pale hand found her breast in a hard massage meant to hurt. She clutched at his hand, but his grip only tightened. His eyes smiled into hers, daring her to rebel.

“Your mother abandoned you—something only the lowest slut would do to her child. What’s bred in the bone…”

“You’re hurting,” she gritted.

He ignored her. “You will take Satyr to the back rooms if he requests it. In fact, you will suggest such a move. You will elicit the information I desire. And no matter what pressure he applies, you will resist the temptation to whore for him.”

His kissed her then, eagerly sampling her powerlessness. His tongue struck, filling her mouth and nearly choking her on her own revulsion. Her hands dropped, fisting at her sides.

Finally he seemed to remember their guests. He drew away.

“Gina, Fleur, and the others are not what our patrons come for, you know,” he said, cupping her face. “It’s you they want. Though beautiful women proliferate here in Paris, something about you draws men like bees to your honey pot. Little do they know it’s dry and unused, eh? More fools they.”

His reptilian tongue stroked over the seam of his lips, as though savoring a last taste of her. Pulling a square of linen from his pocket, he delicately dabbed his mouth and turned away to stare through the screen again.

“Go to your chamber and make yourself presentable.”

She stared at his back, imagining herself striking a dagger into it. But instead she only scurried off, despising herself for a coward. She hadn’t always been so.

“Don’t take too long,” he warned as she slipped through the door.

By the time she reached her room, she was breathing hard from her rush and from frustrated anger.

With trembling fingers, she splashed wine into a glass, then opened the vial on her washstand and extracted a measure of laudanum. It fell from the dropper’s tip into the wine, like tears on blood. She stirred the tincture with the dropper and drank.

She didn’t meet her eyes in the mirror as she scrubbed the rouge from her lips and refreshed it. She didn’t like herself at the moment. Wouldn’t like herself again until she left Valmont and this place far behind. With any luck, that day would come soon.

The pleasant floating feeling, which the tincture could be relied upon to supply, slowly began to enfold her in its calming caress. She rolled her neck in a languid circle.

Umm. It was pleasurable sensation not unlike a much gentler version of the orgasm the golden giant had supplied earlier today.

Sighing, she powdered her cheeks and straightened her hair and gown, primping like an actress about to go on stage.

“First time here?” a heavily accented male voice enquired at Lyon’s elbow.

Lyon swirled the wine in his glass, studying its sparkle as candlelight danced through its amber depths. Not a Satyr Vineyard label, he noted absently. Still, the Clairette his host had served was adequate and no doubt meant to dull his wits and lure him into bidding generously on tonight’s prize.

And bid he would. For whatever the cost, he intended to win the jewel on offer here—one Mademoiselle Juliette Rabelais, who it seemed was a courtesan.

Eyes that were the precise color of the wine he drank rose to observe her where she perched on a tufted chaise across the room. From beneath her dark lashes, a flash of sea green flickered, then darted away. She’d been watching him.

Her remarkable eye color was identical to Sibela’s. The shape of their faces and their features were strikingly similar as well. So much so that it couldn’t be coincidence. This one and the Nereid had to be related.

Incredibly, it appeared that King Feydon had spawned four daughters instead of the three his letter had indicated. Did this woman know she had a sister? As he lay dying, had Feydon known? It would have been typical of his tricks to take the secret to his grave.

Lyon nodded an assent in the general direction of the Cossack who’d spoken to him, responding to his question belatedly and without words. These flamboyant Russians in their fleece hats and wide trousers were rife in Paris these days, lingering long after they’d come to help the allies repel Napoleon.

After the one called Agnes had given up on him, Lyon had sensed the Russian’s approach and had deduced a great deal about him without so much as a glance in his direction. His boots had been recently polished with bear grease, he wore a tonic on his mustache, and his body reeked of desire. This last made him no different than any other gentleman in this salon.

Though less acute than that of his brothers, Lyon’s olfactory sense was far more finely honed than that of any Human. Which made it all the more bizarre that he could detect nothing of Mademoiselle Rabelais’s scent.

Yet he’d detected a scent from the female voyeur on the bridge. Weren’t the women one and the same? It was puzzling and he had no patience for more puzzles.

Perhaps if he made his way closer. No. It was that sort of rambling that had very nearly led to the demise of a statue earlier. Numerous other objets d’art were displayed along the path to her. Better to maintain his position and hope she approached him. He’d been here nearly an hour and she was the only female in the room who hadn’t.

The Cossack spoke again, raising his glass in a caricature of a toast. “Good luck to you then. I’ve attended these salons every Thursday for the past three months and still haven’t won a turn in that one’s bed. My pockets are deep enough, so I can only assume it’s my pedigree that Mademoiselle Rabelais’s guardian finds objectionable.”

Lyon’s gaze narrowed on their host, Monsieur Valmont, the apparent owner of these apartments. A tall, slender man with preternaturally white hair, he was handsome, Lyon supposed. But so pale that he put him in mind of a portrait his eldest brother had in his vast collection. The one that depicted Vlad the Impaler, a Romanian prince with an infamous past and an appetite for blood.

He returned his gaze to the more pleasant perspective of Juliette Rabelais. One of ten women set amid nearly three dozen men, she was the obvious trophy. She was one of those women whose every gesture put him in mind of the soft slide of a velvet drape across warm flesh—soothing, lush, and full of sexual promise. Something about her was hypnotic. Watching her was a pleasure he could quickly grow accustomed to.

As if she were blithely unaware that every man in this luxurious salon panted after her, she serenely held court on her satin throne, like an orchid set among a besotted cast of dandified thistles, pigweed, and toadflax.

“Six months for me and still nothing,” a Frenchman on the Cossack’s other side commiserated. “Why I still come is un mystère.” He gazed into the depths of his glass, then back at the green-eyed object of his desire as though unable to prevent himself.

Lyon never understood this sort of talk from men. Like his brothers, he had a voracious appetite for the company of women, both in and out of bed. But though he had come to Paris specifically to locate his bride and had to his amazement found two candidates rather than one, he was under no illusion that Juliette Rabelais would fell his heart any more than Sibela had.

Conversation ebbed around him and her voice reached his ears. His hand tightened on his glass. Hearing an attractive, available woman speak in French was almost guaranteed to gift him with an erection. Particularly a woman with almond hair and a long white throat. Particularly one whose every deliciously accented syllable caused her lips to purse as though she were kissing the air. Particularly a woman he planned to bed.

That decision had been made for him the moment he’d scented her on the bridge. Then, when she’d spoken, he’d felt something inside himself shift. Unlock. Open.

In that instant, even as he lay atop another woman, a need to protect this one had been born within him. A need to keep her from want. A need to bury his heated, straining cock so deep inside her that she would be forever branded as his.

Here was the intense, immediate attraction he’d not found with Sibela. But of course, it wasn’t love.

“If you wish to visit Valmont’s back rooms, approach one of the girls for hire,” yet another Frenchman volunteered. “Negotiations for the favors of Mademoiselle Juliette are done in a different manner than for the others.”

Lyon cocked his head. “How so?”

The first Frenchman eyed him, obviously beginning to worry all this coaching might lead Lyon to usurp his own chances with her. “Such arrangements are made through M. Valmont,” he said with reluctance. “Ask about her culinary talents. You’ll only waste your breath if you directly request that she visit your bed. If an agreement for her favors is made, it’s understood she’ll serve you at your table as well as in your boudoir.”

“It’s said that she sets a table comparable to some of the finest chefs in all of Paris,” someone chimed in.

“It’s likely true if these éclairs are anything to judge by,” said the second Frenchman as he lifted one from his plate. He consumed the pastry with a single gulp of his greedy mouth. “And have you tried the cream-filled baguettes?”

“If I ever get Mademoiselle Rabelais to myself she is more than welcome to suck the cream from my baguette,” the Cossack groused darkly into his glass.

This was met with a burst of randy, good-natured guffaws from his companions. Except for Lyon, who shifted all six and a half feet of his muscular form toward the man, sending a crystal, swan-shaped bowl on the pedestal between them tumbling to the floor in the process.

“I’m certain you must have business elsewhere that calls you away from this establishment. I suggest you attend to it.” Amber glinted dangerously, coloring his words.

The Cossack’s eyes widened and his drink sloshed as he sidled away. “Pardon me—I must…yes, I…” Without finishing, he strode off, his boots tripping in his haste to put distance between himself and Lyon’s annoyance.

The others drifted off on various excuses as well, wary of him now. He stared into his wine, shocked at himself. And a little embarrassed. He’d never been jealous about a woman in his life.

If he was testy, it was likely due to the frustrations of the evening and anticipation of Moonful, he reassured himself. His blood was already quickening in preparation for tomorrow night’s Calling, and he was more easily roused to lechery, anger—and jealousy, apparently.

He looked up, toward the woman across the room. Her eyes darted away. She’d been watching him again. Could she handle what he would become tomorrow? Would she, willingly?

With a curl of her delicate wrist, the tip of her painted Chinese fan traced her collarbone, then drifted lower toward the ripe curve of a porcelain breast. More than one male eye followed its downward path.

She was dressed to tempt, in a shimmering gown the color of her hair with silver edging along a neckline that barely concealed her nipples. A frown creased his brow. No doubt even those were on display to the man seated beside her, if the direction of his eyes were any indication. He and every other man in the room studied the shift of her breasts as she turned, evading his overly familiar hand.

He realized he’d begun staring at her in a manner he feared was as besotted as his previous companions and his fist tightened on the fragile stem of his glass. That she’d had other men before him mattered not a whit. Considering the inauspicious circumstances of their prior meeting, he could only hope she would be as generous toward him.

His gaze slid over her bodice and traveled boldly lower. In another venue, he’d have been more circumspect, but everyone here knew her body was on exhibition. He studied the drape of her skirts, looking forward to discovering the shape of her below them, for a woman’s derriere held her greatest attraction for him.

Never mind a blushing cheek or pretty lips. Give him a nicely rounded ass and he was more than content with that asset alone.

Mademoiselle Rabelais chose that moment to rise to her feet and see to one of her duties as hostess. Leaving the men on the dais to their own conversation, she went to survey the food displayed on the side table.

Lyon saw his chance and took it.