The Dressmakers: Silk Is For Seduction Part 4

Then he realized what he was thinking. "Devil take her," he said under his breath. "She's poisoned my mind, the witch."

"What is it, my friend?"

Clevedon turned to find Gaspard Aronduille regarding him with concern.

"Does it truly matter what a woman wears?" Clevedon said.

The Frenchman's eyes widened and his head went back, as though Clevedon had slapped him. "Is this a joke?" he said.

"I want to know," Clevedon said. "Does it really matter?"

Aronduille looked about him in disbelief. "Only an Englishman would ask such a question."

"Does it?"

"But of course."

"Only a Frenchman would say so," said Clevedon.

"We are right, and I will tell you why."

The opera ended, but the debate didn't. Aronduille called in reinforcements from their circle of acquaintance. The Frenchmen debated the subject from every possible philosophical viewpoint, all the way to the Hotel Frascati.

There the group separated, its members drifting to their favorite tables.

The roulette table was crowded, as usual, men standing three deep about it. Clevedon saw no signs of any women. But as he slowly circled it, the wall of men at the table thinned.

And the world shifted.

Revealed to his view was a ravishingly familiar back. Again, her coiffure was slightly disarranged, as though she'd been in a lover's embrace only minutes ago. A bit was coming undone, a dark curl falling to the nape of her neck. The wayward curl drew one's gaze there and down over the smooth slope of her shoulders and down to where her sleeves puffed out. The dress was ruby red, shockingly simple and daringly low cut. He wished, for a moment, he could have her captured like that, in a painting.

He'd t.i.tle it Sin Incarnate.

He was tempted to stand beside her, close enough to inhale her scent and feel the silk of her gown brush his legs. But a roulette table was no place for dalliance-and by the looks of things, she was as engrossed in the turn of the wheel as everybody else.

He moved to a place opposite her. That was when he recognized the man standing next to her: the Marquis d'emilien, a famous libertine.

"21-Red-Odd-Pa.s.sed," one of the bankers said.

With his rake another banker pushed a heap of coins toward her.

emilien bent his head to say something to her.

Clevedon's jaw tightened. He let his gaze drop to the table. Before her stood piles of gold coins.

"Gentlemen, settle your play," the banker called. He threw in the ivory ball, and set the wheel spinning. Round and round it went, gradually slowing.

That time she lost. Though the rake took away a large amount of gold, she appeared not at all troubled. She laughed and bet again.

Next time Clevedon bet, too, on red. Round the ball went. Black-Even-Missed.

She won. He watched the rakes push his coins and others toward her.

The marquis laughed, and bent his head to say something to her, his mouth close to her ear. She answered with a smile.

Clevedon left the roulette table for Rouge et Noir. He told himself he would have come whether or not she was here. He told himself she was on the hunt for other men's wives and mistresses and he wasn't the only well-to-do bill payer in Paris. emilien had deep pockets, too, not to mention a wife, a longtime mistress, and three favorite courtesans.

For about half an hour Clevedon played. He won more than he lost, and maybe that was why he became bored so quickly. He left the table, found Aronduille, and said, "This place is dull tonight. I'm going to the Palais Royal."

"I'll go with you," said Aronduille. "Let's see if the others wish to join us."

The others had moved to the roulette table.

She was there still, in the crimson silk one could not ignore. The marquis remained at her side. In the same moment Clevedon was telling himself to look away, she looked up. Her gaze locked with his. An endless time seemed to pa.s.s before she beckoned with her fan.

He would have come whether or not he'd expected to find her here, he a.s.sured himself. He'd come, and found another man glued to her side. It was nothing to him. Paris abounded in fascinating women. He could have simply nodded or bowed or smiled an acknowledgment and left the hotel.

But there, she was, Sin Incarnate, daring him.

And there was emilien.

The Duke of Clevedon had never yet yielded a woman he wanted to another man.

He joined them.

"Ah, Clevedon, you know Madame Noirot, I understand," said emilien.

"I have that honor, yes," Clevedon said, sending her his sweetest smile.

"She has emptied my pockets," said emilien.

"The roulette wheel emptied your pockets," she said.

"No, it is you. You look at the wheel, and it stops where you choose."

She dismissed this with a wave of her fan. "It's no use arguing with him," she said to Clevedon. "I've promised to give him a chance to win back his money. We go to play cards."

"Perhaps you will be so good as to join us," said emilien. "And your friends as well?"

They went to one of Paris's more discreet and exclusive card salons, in a private house. When Clevedon arrived with the marquis's party, several games were in progress in the large room.

By three o'clock in the morning, the greater part of the company had departed. In the small but luxurious antechamber to which the marquis eventually retired with a select group of friends, the players had dwindled to emilien, a handsome blonde named Madame Jolivel, Madame Noirot, and Clevedon.

About them lay the bodies of those who'd succ.u.mbed to drink and fatigue. Some had been playing for days and nights on end.

At roulette, where skill and experience meant nothing, Noirot had won more often than not. At cards, where skill made a difference, her luck, oddly enough, was not nearly as good. The marquis's luck had run out in the last half hour, and he was sinking in his chair. Clevedon was on a winning streak.

"This is enough for me," said Madame Jolivel. She rose, and the men did as well.

"For me, too," emilien muttered. He pushed his cards to the center of the table and dragged himself out of the room after the blonde.

Clevedon remained standing, waiting for the dressmaker to rise. He had her to himself at last, and he was looking forward to escorting her elsewhere. Any elsewhere.

"It seems the party is over," he said.

Noirot gazed up at him, dark eyes gleaming. "I thought it was only beginning," she said. She took up the cards and shuffled.

He sat down again.

They played the basic game of Vingt et Un, without variations.

It was one of his favorite card games. He liked its simplicity. With two people, he found, it was a good deal more interesting than with several.

For one thing, he could no longer read her. No wry curve of her mouth when her cards displeased her. No agitated tap of her fingers when she'd drawn a strong card. When they'd played with the others, she'd exhibited all these little cues, and her play had struck him as reckless besides. This time was altogether different. By the time they'd played through the deck twice, he felt as though he played with another woman entirely.

He won the first deal and the second and the third.

After that, she won steadily, the pile of coins in front of her growing while his diminished.

As she pa.s.sed the cards to him to deal, he said, "My luck seems to be turning."

"So it does," she said.

"Or perhaps you've been playing with me, madame, in more ways than one."

"I'm paying closer attention to the game," she said. "You won a great deal from me before. My resources, unlike yours, are limited. I only want to win my money back."

He dealt. She looked at her card and pushed a stack of coins to one side of it.

He looked at his card. Nine of hearts. "Double," he said.

She nodded for another card, glanced at it.

Nothing. No visible sign of whether the card was good or bad. He'd had to practice to conceal his small giveaway signs. How had she learned to reveal or conceal them at will? Or had Dame Fortune simply smiled on her this night? She'd won at roulette, a game, as she'd said, of pure chance, though men never gave up trying to devise systems for winning.

She won again.

And again.

This time, when they'd gone through the pack, she swept her coins toward her. "I'm not used to such late hours," she said. "It's time for me to go."

"You play differently with me than you did with the others," he said.

"Do I?" She brushed a stray curl back from her eyebrow.

"I can't decide whether you've the devil's own luck or there's something more to you than meets the eye," he said.

She settled back in her chair and smiled at him. "I'm observant," she said. "I watched you play before."

"Yet you lost."

"Your beauty must have distracted me," she said. "Now I've grown used to it. Now I can discern the ways you signal whether it's going well or badly for you."

"I thought I gave no signals," he said.

She waved a hand. "You nearly don't. It was very hard for me to decipher you-and I've been playing cards since I was a child."

"Have you, indeed?" he said. "I've always thought of shopkeepers as respectable citizens, not much given to vices, especially gambling."

"Then you haven't been paying attention," she said. "Frascati's teemed with ordinary citizen-clerks and tradesmen. But to men like you and emilien, they're invisible."

"The one thing you are not is invisible."

"There you're wrong," she said. "I've pa.s.sed within a few yards of you, on more than one occasion, and you didn't look twice."

He sat up straighter. "That's impossible."

She took up the cards and shuffled them, her hands quick, smooth, expert. "Let me see. On Sunday at about four o'clock, you were riding with a handsome lady in the Bois de Boulogne. On Monday at seven o'clock, you were in one of the latticed boxes at the Academie Royale de Musique. On Tuesday shortly after noon, you were strolling through the galleries of the Palais Royal."

"You said I wasn't your sole purpose for coming to Paris," he said. "Yet you've been following me. Or should I say stalking me?"

"I've been stalking fashionable people. They all go to the same places. And you're hard to miss."

"So are you."

"That depends on whether I wish to be noticed or not," she said. "When I don't wish to be noticed, I don't dress this way." One graceful hand indicated the low bodice of the crimson gown. His diamond stickpin twinkled at him from the center of the V to which the bodice dipped. She lay the cards, precisely stacked now, on the table in front of her, and folded her hands.

"A good dressmaker can dress anybody," she said. "Sometimes we're required to dress women who prefer not to call attention to themselves, for one reason or another." She brought her folded hands up and rested her elbows on the table and her chin on her entwined fingers. "That you failed to notice me in any of those places ought to prove to you that I'm the greatest dressmaker in the world."

"Is it always business with you?" he said.

"I work for a living," she said. She turned her head, and he watched her gaze sweep over the various bodies draped over furniture and sprawled on the floor. The look spoke the volumes she left unsaid.

He was nettled, more than he ought to be. Otherwise he would have pretended not to understand. But these were the people with whom he customarily a.s.sociated, and her mocking half smile was extremely irritating. Provoked, he said it for her before he could catch himself: "Unlike me and these other dissolute aristocrats, you mean. The bourgeoisie is so tediously self-righteous."

She shrugged, calling his attention to her smooth shoulders, and unfolded her hands. "Yes, we're great bores, always thinking about money and success." She took out her purse and scooped her winnings into it, a clear signal that the evening was over for her.

He rose and came round the table to move her chair. He gathered up her shawl, which had slid down her arm. As he did so, he let his fingers graze her bare shoulder.

He heard the faint hitch in her breath, and a bolt of pleasure wiped out his irritation. The feeling was fierce-fiercer than it ought to have been after so slight a touch and so obvious a ploy. But then, she gave so little away that to achieve this much was a great deal.

Though no one about them was conscious, he bent his head close to her ear and said, in a low voice, "You haven't told me when I'll see you again. Longchamp, the first time. Frascati's this night. Where next?"

"I'm not sure," she said, moving a little away. "Tomorrow-tonight, rather-I must attend the Comtesse de Chirac's ball. I suspect that gathering will be too staid for you."

For a moment he could only stare at her, his eyes wide and his mouth open. Then he realized he was gaping at her like a yokel watching a circus. But he'd no sooner erased all signs of surprise than he wondered why he bothered. What was the use, with her, of pretending that nothing surprised him when everything did? She was the least predictable woman he'd ever met. And at this moment he felt like one of the men who'd walked into a lamp post.

He said, slowly and carefully, because surely he'd misunderstood, "You've been invited to Madame de Chirac's ball?"