The Duke of Shadows (26 page)

As they crested the stairs, they came upon a woman perched atop a table, her nude form draped in grapevines. Emma took Julian's face as her guide. He looked supremely detached, and so Emma also strove for impassivity. A young buck, on a settee at the table's edge, was plucking fruit from the vine as he conversed with a handsome blonde in very low-cut aubergine satin. He split the grape with his teeth, and as Emma watched, his hand dipped into his companion's bodice. He lifted her breast out and ran the grape over her nipple.

"You should have worn powder," Julian said calmly. "Your blushes will excite interest."

"If they call me a fraud simply because I blush—"

"No, I mean you will draw
interest.
It will be an inconvenience for us."

"I will keep my eyes on the floor, then."

"Yes, that would be better."

But she had a difficult time restraining herself. They passed through a drawing room with food and wine set out on a sideboard. People drifted from low, silken cushions to the card games scattered throughout the room. Their manner was very informal; they helped themselves to trays of comfits, laughing and talking as they raised their glasses in toasts. A few men nodded to Julian as they passed, and looked with curiosity into her veil.

"Are there no servants about?"

"No," he said. "Not unless you count the guards."

She looked back as they exited the room, and saw what she had missed before—two men, dressed very plainly, sitting by the doorway. They both wore pistols.

"Why would he need guards?"

"There was a murder here once. It drew attention. Colthurst does not like that."

They turned into a long hall. The gas lamps set into the walls were interspersed with authentic rushes, braced in iron brackets that jutted out like curling black tongues; brass urns were positioned beneath to catch the drippings. The torches spat out a temperamental light that lent the hallway the look of hell. There was a peculiar smell in the air—dark and sweet and dizzying.

"An interesting scene," she said.

"You overextend that word."

They followed the Persian leader, passing thick oak doors that transmitted an array of noises: moans, laughter, the discordant clash of piano keys … a cry of pain? She could not tell, and when a muffled groan was overlaid by a piercing scream, she glanced quickly at Julian. His forearm was tense beneath her hand; a muscle in his jaw ticked.

"Marwick said he saw it in the study," he said beneath his breath. "Down this way."

"You look very uncomfortable."

He blew out a breath. "I have not been here in a very long time. It was not always so…"

"Unnerving?"

"Only that I would not have brought you, had I known."

"It will be all right," she said gently. Her left hand was already resting on his forearm; she brought her other around to cup his elbow, so her grip encircled him. "Very easy, in fact. You've gotten me out of much worse."

His head turned at that. Under the lick of the inconstant light, his face was all gold and shadows, but his eyes glittered. They were a light of their own, and beneath them, the hall rocked a little, as if she had just lost her balance.

What was she doing?

She withdrew her hand. He was helping her. That was the end of it. They were not even friends. Not really. She did not think
she
could be friends.

"Are you all right?"

She realized she had come to a stop. She stepped back into a niche in the wall; the depressions in the carpet suggested a bench had recently been removed. "I'm just a bit … dizzy."

"The opium smoke, perhaps." He lifted away the veil to study her face. "You can always tell by the eyes."

"Yes," she said. "I remember that."

"Do you?" His finger curved beneath her chin, as if to lift her face—but he made no move to raise it. So she did, merely to escape his touch. It felt like sunlight on her skin; it aggravated her dizziness.

"I threw the laudanum out," she said. "Afterward. Did I ever tell you?"

"No," he said softly.

She wondered what he saw in her face. If her expression matched his, so solemn. "Are my pupils large?"

"Perfectly normal." He brushed his knuckles up her cheek and into her hair, to slide out a pin. She made a sound of protest and reached up to stop him. He shook his head. "You must look the part."

Yes, that was right. She must look the part. She stood very still as his hands moved though her chignon, submitting to the small twinges as he plucked out her pins. Her hair came down in pieces: first a lock, then another; and then the whole thing, tumbling past her shoulders. In the hallway. Where anyone could see. She should care. She leaned back against the stone wall, watching him.

"It grew out," he said.

"It took a very long time. A mind of its own."

He smiled a little. "Well, and what did you expect? It is
your
hair, after all."

A door flew open down the hall. Much squealing. Someone came racing down the hallway toward them. She reached up for her veil, and Julian leaned forward. "Just in case," he said, the barest thread of sound; and she felt his hair brush past her ear, felt his lips press against her neck.

No.

She opened her eyes on the darkness. A woman streaked past, her gown split to the waist; a man was hard on her heels. She was about to be caught, but she did not look sorry for it.

Julian pulled back. He pressed his thumb into her lower lip. "You've been kissed," he said, soft and matter-of-fact, as he massaged her mouth.

She wondered why he did not use his mouth to achieve the effect.

"Yes," he said after a moment. "Appropriately wanton." He pulled her out from the wall and flipped down her veil. She licked her lips and tasted the salt from his skin. She remembered this—the feeling of hunger, but not for food.

Down the hallway they went, past the huddled shadows of the man and woman. The couple was lying on the carpet, the man on top; he was whispering something into the woman's ear that made her giggle tremendously.

"Here," Julian said, pulling her around a corner to a set of double doors. The handle would not turn. He felt inside his jacket and produced a key.

"How in the world—"

"Servants can be bribed." He fit the key into the lock, and the door swung inward. "I'm locking it, but we should be quick about this. Find the lamps and turn them up."

Inside, she felt her way toward the dim glow of a lamp along the wall, biting back an exclamation when her shins collided with a table. Julian got to the other one first; the strengthening flame on his end revealed a dreadful fresco of nymphs and satyrs. She turned hers up and found herself staring at a tapestry. "No," she whispered, turning full circle. "No! Where could it be? Wait—" There was a crate resting against the credenza. "Gould that be it?"

Julian went down on his knees and put his hand to the edge of the wood. The effort to pry the thing open made the veins pop in his forehead. He shook out his hand and tried again. This time the wood gave with a sharp snap that froze them both in place.

"Nothing," Emma said after a moment. "I don't hear anything. Go on."

He broke away the board, and then another and another, casting each piece to the floor. Together, they lifted out the painting. Emma ripped the brown paper wrapping away.

"This is not my painting," she said. The nude woman was lying on her back, being tickled by a small dark creature. "Good God, and it's a terrible painting, at that. But—" She looked around once more. "It's not here, then!"

"Marwick saw it with his own eyes. I can't—"

"If he's moved it—"

His palm was suddenly covering her mouth. "Shh."

She heard it too: Soft laughter from the door. A thump, followed by a curse.

She stiffened. "They're coming in here," she said against his hand.

"Colthurst," he said. "Unless someone else has bought a key."

Yes, that was the rub. It would be more than a little difficult to explain why they were breaking into the man's possessions. "Perhaps you can fit beneath the desk." He cast a look around for likely weapons. They might be able to talk their way out of it, but if Colthurst got riled, it would be better to leave him unconscious. "I will—"

"No. His guards are armed. Pistols, Julian. I saw them."

"Yes, but they're hardly going to shoot a peer," he said. "Now go see if you'll fit."

"But we cannot risk it." She swallowed. Her hands rose to his face. The lightest pressure on his cheeks.

"Perhaps—perhaps they will not be surprised to find us doing
other
things in here. Perhaps it would … distract them from noticing. The crate, I mean."

It took him a moment to hear what she was suggesting. His thoughts snapped back from the sounds on the other side of the door. "Possibly," he said.

"Just for show," she said. "Just for a moment, until they shut the door again."

"Yes," he whispered.

She made no move, however. Simply stared at him. Poor Emma. She really did not know her own mind. He weighed alternatives, in that brief, fleeting moment. They would tell Colthurst the door had been open and they had wandered in seeking privacy. They might make it out of the house before he noticed the mess they'd made. Even if he noticed, they could come up with some story. But things might get sticky, and Colthurst might demand to see her face. That would not be acceptable.

Emma might never give him another chance, either. He could not trust her in this; she couldn't even trust herself.

On a breath, he leaned forward. It was such a small space to close. Such an infinite distance to cross.

Her lips trembled beneath his. Uncertain, hesitant; nothing like the sureness he remembered from her. He kissed her softly, willing the party at the door to pause, to change their minds, to think of better games; for he knew that gentleness would not convince them, and it was what she required in this. He stroked her lips with his, and her fingers went lax on his cheek, slipping down to his jaw.

He opened his eyes. She quickly shut hers. She had been watching him.

He closed his eyes again and willed her to look her fill.
Open your mouth,
he thought, and ran his tongue along the corner; and her mouth opened, and he used his tongue to trace the lining of her lower lip, to draw her out, so her breath caught and her body pitched forward and her arm came around his neck.

The taste of her: familiar and strange at once. Like falling into a dream, at last finding it real. She gave him her full weight, her breasts pressing into him; the dress, the damned dress was like tissue paper, and when he had told her to alter it she had taken him seriously; she was not wearing a corset. He did not feel gentle anymore. He put his hand to her hip—to her waist—it rose of its own accord, and the weight of her breast, cupping her, was beyond—

The key was now definitively turning in the lock. A flash of mockery, for himself alone,
yes, make sure to convince them, Sinclair.
He bent down and hooked an arm under her knees; she made a small, startled noise as he lifted her up and seated her on the sideboard. But her legs fell open; she was not averse, and as he rose, his hand ran up her calf and thigh, lifting her skirts to her waist. He stepped between her legs and his cock pressed against her through his trousers and he gasped and so did she; her eyes were perhaps open but he had shut his again, and his hands hooked behind her ears as he bore her back against the wall behind her to pin her and kiss her hard enough to forestall any protest she might be foolish enough to make.

The door latch clicked open. "Oh! I say! In here, are you?"

Julian pulled his mouth away. "The door was open. Is it a problem?"

"Auburn! No, no. Carry on."

The latch clicked shut.

He went very still above her. Her hands on his back momentarily paused their kneading. But she did not let go. Their breath mingled, harsh and rapid.

"This means nothing," she whispered.

"Nothing," he said, and kissed her again, and his hand moved back to her nipple. It peaked beneath his thumb, beneath the rasp of his nail, and she moaned. He broke away from her mouth to bite the side of her neck; and then fell onto his knees to lift out her breast and take her nipple between his teeth, harder perhaps than he should have; she had tried to get away from him, hadn't she? Her nails dug into his scalp, and he bit her again, on the other breast. She whimpered, and he wet her, sucked her into his mouth. Her thighs trembled where they pressed against his ribs. He slid a hand beneath one, at the very top of her thigh, in the warm, damp crease between thigh and buttock. A flick of his fingers, against the moistness of her quim.
"Julian,"
she said, and her voice broke.

He reached up to press his palm over her lips as he pushed two fingers into her. Her muscles tightened around him; he looked up at her and her eyes came open as he pushed up against her passage, his thumb finding her clitoris, rubbing. "Do you want this, Emma?"

She tried to speak, and he meant to let her; but instead his palm was pressing harder against her mouth, forcing her head back against the wall as he rubbed her quim more insistently. There was a light sheen of sweat on her upper lip; all around him, the darkest base note of her fragrance, everything that was Emma, suffused the air. "Nod," he said, in a voice he did not recognize as his own;
you
will scare her.
But good, he wanted to scare her like she had scared him, for years, four goddamned endless years of it.

Her head jerked in a nod. He gave her another finger, watching her face now, the small twitches as she adjusted to the feel of him, the quivers of the slick flesh around his hand. Her thighs strained apart as he touched that secret part of her, deep inside; her face said she had never known it was there; he had not showed her, he supposed, there had been no time for it back then. He put more pressure on the upward thrusts of his hand, and her eyelashes fluttered and her head tipped back, allowing his palm to trace down over her chin, along the smooth slope of her neck, as she came.

Her quim was still contracting when he bent further down and ran his tongue along the skin stretched by his fingers. Now her exclamation was sharp; she did not like it, she wanted to be done now. He closed his lips around the nub of engorged flesh, and stroked with his fingers again, ignoring her when she tried to pull his head up. It was painful, being pushed across one's limits. He knew it well enough. His free hand caught her wrists and set them to one side, holding them there. She subsided; she seemed to like being held still. Of course she would. It was not her choice then, was it? It meant nothing. She merely submitted.

Another orgasm now, weaker. He could do better. Now that he knew how she wanted it.

He withdrew his fingers, reached for her arms to pull her down. Her legs folded bonelessly as she slid down into his lap. With one hand, he freed his cock from his trousers. She looked down at it, and wet her lips; she was dazed, he thought, quiescent, purposefully so; she fell back against the credenza and invited him with her eyes to do as he liked. Her eyes offered everything to him and promised nothing. They spoke the phrase again, more clearly than her lips could:
It means nothing.