She stopped short and looked up at him. He was smiling, a self-satisfied curve of his too-sensuous mouth. "I'm what?" she said quietly.

"You're afraid," he said. "You're the one who's afraid of what people will say-of you-and how they'll behave-toward you. You're quite ready to sneak in like a thief, hoping n.o.body notices, but you're terrified to enter with me, with everybody looking at you."

"It distresses me to shatter you illusions, your grace," she said, "but what you and your friends think and say is not as important to other people as it is to you. I hope no one will notice me for the same reason a spy prefers not to be noticed. And it seems to escape you that the thrill of going where one isn't wanted and hasn't been invited-and getting away with it-will make the party more fun for me than it will be for anyone else."

She walked on, her breath coming and going too fast, her temper too close to the surface. Her self-control was formidable, even for her kind, yet she'd let him provoke her. She only wanted to dress his wife-to-be, but somehow she'd been drawn into the wrong game altogether. And now she wondered if she'd bollixed it up, if he'd got her into a muddle with his beautiful face and falsely innocent smiles and his fingers brushing her skin.

His voice came from behind her.

"Coward," he said.

The word seemed to echo in the empty pa.s.sage.

Coward. She, who at scarce one and twenty had gone to London with a handful of coins in her purse and overwhelming responsibilities on her shoulders: a sick child and two younger sisters-and staked everything on a dream and her courage to pursue it.

She stopped and turned and marched back to him.

"Coward," he said softly.

She dropped her reticule, grasped his neckcloth, and pulled. He bent his head. She reached up, cupped his face, dragged his mouth to hers, and kissed him.

Chapter Four.

Mrs. Clark is as usual constantly receiving Models from some of the first Milliners in Paris, which enables her to produce the earliest Fashions for each Month, and trust that her general mode of doing business will give decided approbation to those Ladies who will honour her with a preference.

La Belle a.s.semblee, or Bell's Court and Fashionable Magazine, Advertis.e.m.e.nts for June 1807 It was no surrender, but a slap in the face of a kiss.

Her mouth struck and opened boldly against his, and the collision rocked him on his heels. It was as though they'd been lovers a long time ago and hated each other now, and the two pa.s.sions had melded into one: They could fight or love, and it was all the same.

She held his jaw with a powerful grip. If she'd dug her nails into his face, that would have seemed fitting: It was that kind of kiss.

Instead she damaged him with her soft mouth, the press of her lips, the play of her tongue, like a duel. She damaged him, above all with the taste of her. She tasted like brandy, rich and deep and dark. She tasted like forbidden fruit.

She tasted, in short, like trouble.

For a moment he reacted instinctively, returning the a.s.sault in the same spirit, even while his body tensed and melted at the same time, his knees giving way and his insides tightening. But she was wondrously warm and shapely, and while his mind dissolved, his physical awareness grew more ferociously acute: the taste of her mouth, the scent of her skin, the weight of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s on his coat, and the sound of her dress brushing his trousers.

His heart beat too fast and hard, heat flooding through his veins and racing downward. He wrapped his arms about her and splayed his hands over her back, over silk and the neckline's lace edging and the velvety skin above.

He slid his hands lower, down the line of her back and along the curve from her waist to her bottom. Layers of clothing thwarted him there, but he pulled her hard against his groin, and she made a noise deep in her throat that sounded like pleasure.

Her hands came away from his face and slid between them, down over his neckcloth and down over his waistcoat and down further.

His breath caught and his body tensed in antic.i.p.ation.

She thrust him away, and she put muscle into it. Even so, the push wouldn't have been enough to move him, ordinarily; but its strength and suddenness startled him, and he loosened his hold. She jerked out of his arms and he stumbled backward, into the wall.

She gave a short laugh, then bent and collected her reticule. She brushed a stray curl back from her face, and with an easy, careless grace, rearranged her shawl.

"This is going to be so much fun," she said. "I can hardly wait. Yes, now that I think about it, I should like nothing better, your grace, than to have your escort to the Comtesse de Chirac's ball. You may collect me at the Hotel Fontaine at nine o'clock sharp. Adieu."

She strolled away, as cool as you please, down the pa.s.sage and through the door.

He didn't follow her.

It was a splendid exit, and he didn't want to spoil it.

So he told himself.

Yet he stood for a moment, collecting his mind and his poise, and trying to ignore the shakiness within, as though he'd run to the edge of a precipice and stopped only inches short of stepping into midair.

But of course there was no precipice, no void to fall into. That was absurd. She was merely a woman, the tempestuous type, and he was a trifle... puzzled... because it had been a while since he'd encountered her kind.

He went the other way, to find his friends-or the bodies of the fallen, rather. While he arranged for their transport to their respective lodgings and domiciles, he was aware, in a corner of his mind, of a derisive voice pointing out that he had nothing more important to do at present than collect and sort a lot of dead-drunk aristocrats.

Later, though, when he was alone in his hotel and starting a letter to Clara because he couldn't sleep, he found he couldn't write. He could scarcely remember the performance. It seemed a lifetime ago that he'd sat in the theater, antic.i.p.ating his next encounter with Madame Noirot. His notes about the performance became gibberish swimming before his eyes.

The only clear, focused thought he had was of Madame de Chirac's ball looming mere hours away, and the fool's bargain he'd made, and the impossible riddle he'd insisted on solving: how to get the accursed dressmaker in without sacrificing his dignity, vanity, or reputation.

When Marcelline returned to her hotel, she found Selina Jeffreys drowsing in a chair by the fire. Though the slender blonde was their youngest seamstress, recently brought in from a charitable establishment for "unfortunate females," she was the most sensible of the lot. That was why Marcelline had chosen her to play lady's maid on the journey. A woman traveling with a maid was treated more respectfully than one traveling alone.

Frances Pritchett, the senior of their seamstresses, was probably still sulking about being left behind. But she'd come last time, and she hadn't taken at all to playing lady's maid. She wouldn't have sat up waiting for her employer to return, unless it was to complain about the French in general and the hotel staff in particular.

Jeffreys awoke with a start when Marcelline lightly tapped her shoulder. "You silly girl," Marcelline said. "I told you not to wait up."

"But who will help you out of your dress, madame?"

"I could sleep in it," Marcelline said. "It wouldn't be the first time."

"Oh, no, madame! That beautiful dress!"

"Not so beautiful now," Marcelline said. "Not only wrinkled, but it smells of cigar smoke and other people's perfumes and colognes."

"Let's get it off, then. You must be so weary. The promenade-and then to be out all night."

She had accompanied Marcelline on the Longchamp promenade and obligingly faded out of sight when Marcelline gave the signal. Unlike Pritchett, Selina Jeffreys never minded in the least making herself inconspicuous. She'd been happy simply to drink in the sight of so many rich people wearing fine clothes, riding their beautiful horses or driving their elegant carriages.

"One must go where the aristocrats go," Marcelline said.

"I don't know how they do it, night after night."

"They're not obliged to be at work at nine o'clock every morning."

The girl laughed. "That's true enough."

While she was quick, it was efficiency rather than hurry. In a trice she had Marcelline out of the red dress. She soon had hot water ready, too. A full bath would have to wait until after she'd slept-later in the day, when the hotel's staff were fully awake. Meanwhile Marcelline needed to scrub away the smell of the gambling houses. That was easy enough.

The taste and smell of one gentleman wouldn't be eradicated so easily. She could wash her face and clean her teeth but her body and mind remembered: Clevedon's surprise, his quick heat, the bold response of his mouth and tongue, and the thrumming need he'd awakened with the simple motion of his hand sliding down her back.

Kissing him had not been the wisest move a woman could make, but really, what was the alternative? Slap him? A cliche. Punch him? That hard body? That stubborn jaw? She'd only hurt her hand-and make him laugh.

She doubted he was laughing now.

He was thinking, and he would need to be thinking very hard. Harder, probably, than he'd done before in all his life.

She felt certain he wouldn't back down from the challenge. He was too proud and too determined to have the upper hand-of her, certainly, and probably the world.

It would be entertaining, indeed, to see how he managed her entree into the comtesse's party. If it ended in humiliation for him, maybe he'd learn from the experience. On the other hand, he might come to hate Marcelline instead, and forbid his wife to darken the door of Maison Noirot.

But Marcelline's instincts told her otherwise. Whatever his faults-and they were not few-this was not a mean-spirited man or the sort who held grudges.

"Go to bed," she told Jeffreys. "We've a busy time ahead of us, preparing for the party. Everything must be perfect."

And it would be. She'd make sure of it, one way or another.

Awaiting her was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, nearly as important as stealing the about-to-be d.u.c.h.ess of Clevedon from Dowdy's.

Clevedon had complicated what ought to have been a straightforward business. On her own, getting in would have merely demanded expert camouflage, evasive maneuvers, and, of course, thorough self-a.s.surance. But no matter. Life had a way of wrecking her careful plans, again and again. Roulette was more predictable than life. Small wonder she was so lucky at it.

Life was not a wheel going round and round. It never, ever, returned to the same place. It didn't stick to simple red and black and a certain array of numbers. It laughed at logic.

Beneath its pretty overdress of man-imposed order, life was anarchy.

All the same, every time life had knocked her plans awry, she'd made a new plan and salvaged something. Sometimes she even triumphed. She was nothing if not resilient.

Whatever happened this night, she'd make the most of it.

That night It would have served the insolent dressmaker right had Clevedon made her wait. He was not accustomed to taking orders from anybody, let alone a conceited little shopkeeper. Nine o'clock sharp, she'd said, as though he was her lackey.

But that was a childish reaction, and he preferred she not add childishness to the list of character flaws she seemed to be compiling. She was sure to ascribe any delays to cowardly heel-dragging. She'd already as much as called him a coward, in offering to release him from the wager.

He arrived promptly at nine o'clock. When the carriage door opened, he saw her outside at one of the tables under the portico. A gentleman, whose manner and dress proclaimed him English, was bent over her, talking.

Clevedon had planned so carefully: what to wear to the ball and what to say to his hostess and what expression to wear when he said it. He had taken up and discarded half a dozen waistcoats and left his valet, Saunders, a heap of crumpled neckcloths to tend to. He had composed and rejected scores of clever speeches. He was, in short, wound up exceedingly tight.

She, on the other hand, could not have appeared more at ease, lounging under the portico, flirting with any fellow who happened along. One would think she'd no more on her mind than an idle conversation with yet another potential payer of dressmakers' bills.

And why should she consider anything else? It wasn't her friends who'd be whispering behind her back and shaking their heads in pity.

He could easily imagine what his friends would whisper: Cupid's arrow had at last struck the Duke of Clevedon-and not on account of Paris's greatest beauty, not on account of its most irresistible courtesan, not on account of its most fashionable, sought-after t.i.tled lady.

No, it was a n.o.body of an English shopkeeper who'd slain his grace.

He silently cursed his friends and his own stupidity, stepped down from the carriage, and strolled to her table.

As he approached, her dark glance slanted his way. She said something to the talkative fellow. He nodded at her and, without taking any notice of Clevedon, bowed and went into the hotel.

When Clevedon came to the table, she looked up at him. To his very great surprise, she smiled: a warm, luscious upturn of the mouth that had nearly brought him to his knees.

But he was not slain, not by half.

"You're prompt," she said.

"I never keep a lady waiting," he said.

"But I'm not a lady," she said.

"Are you not? Well, then, you're a conundrum. Are you ready? Or would you prefer a gla.s.s of something first, to fortify yourself for the ordeal?"

"I'm as fortified as I need to be," she said. She rose and made a sweeping arc with her hand, drawing his attention to her attire.

He supposed a woman would have a name for it. To him it was a dress. He knew that the sleeves would have their own special name-a la Taglioni or a la Clotilde or some equally nonsensical epithet, comprehensible only to women. Their dresses were all the same to him: swelling in the sleeves, billowing out in the skirts, and tight in the middle. It was the style women had been wearing throughout his adulthood.

Her dress was made of silk, in an odd, sandy color he would have thought bland had he seen the cloth in a shop. But it was trimmed with puffy red bows, and they seemed like flowers blooming in a desert. Then there was black lace, yards of it, dripping like a waterfall over her smooth shoulders and down the front, under a sash, down over her belly.

He made a twirling gesture with his finger. Obligingly she turned in a complete circle. She moved as effortlessly and gracefully as water, and the lace about her shoulders floated in the air with the movement.

When she finished the turn, though, she didn't pause but walked on toward the carriage. He walked on with her.

"What is that dreadful color?" he said.

"Poussiere," she said.

"Dust," he said. "I congratulate you, madame. You've made dust alluring."

"It's not an easy color to wear," she said. "Especially for one of my complexion. True poussiere would make me appear to be suffering from a liver disease. But this silk has a pink undertone, you see."

"How can I make you understand?" he said. "I don't see these things."

"You do," she said. "What you lack is the vocabulary. You said it's alluring. That is the pink undertone, which flatters my complexion, and the magnificent blond lace, close to my face, is even more flattering as well as adding drama."

"It's black," he said. "Noir, not blond."

"Blond lace is a superior silk lace," she said. "It doesn't mean the color."

This exchange took them to the carriage. He had braced himself for a continuation of last night's battle, but she behaved as though they were old friends, which disarmed and bothered him at the same time. Too, he was so preoccupied with the nonsense of blond referring to every color under the sun that he almost forgot to look at her ankles.

But instinct saved him, and he came to his senses in the nick of time. As she went up the steps and took her seat, she gave him a fine view of some six inches of stockinged, elegantly curving limb, from the lower part of her calf down.

Last night came back in a dark surge of recollection, more feeling than thought, that sent heat pumping through him. He saw himself bending and grasping one slim ankle and bringing her foot onto his lap and sliding his gloved hand up her leg, up and up and up...

Later, he promised himself, and climbed into the carriage.