Promise Me Heaven (23 page)

“Why did he quit the ton?”

“ ’Tis said he found it too tame. I know he was rumored to be a member of the more dissolute circles of Europe. It stands to reason naughty Paris would charm him. I am not at all surprised to find him here.”

The voices faded as the two ladies left. Cat stared unseeingly at her own image. Desperately she told herself she was growing obsessed with Thomas. There must be any number of large, dark males in Paris. The overheard remarks need not be about him. She smoothed her hair, fidgeting with an escaped tendril. After all, when she had found him, Thomas had been in Devon firmly planted in his pasture, not in the corrupt courts of foreign princes.

Noticing how pale her lips were, Cat applied a bit of the bright red salve Aunt Hecuba had secreted in her reticule. The color was a dark slash in the dimly lit room, but as Cat stepped out into the ballroom, brilliant with taper, oil, and chandelier, her mouth glistened like a ruby enticement.

She saw Thomas at once. It seemed both inevitable and as though she was seeing him in a dream. The shift and pulse of moving figures obscured him momentarily. Craning her neck, she stared, sure this was some vision.

It was Thomas. But Thomas as she had never seen him. He was clad in close-fitting dark evening dress, his shirt flawless white linen, his cravat a snowy foil to his swarthy complexion. He was listening politely to one of his companions, but his eyes traveled the occupants of the room in a slow perusal even as he bent from his great height to catch the words of a jewel-bedecked beauty. He looked thinner and taller, darker and more dangerous. It was impossible to tell whether he had shed a mask or adopted one, so smooth and assured was his address, so polished and graceful his movements. An image of a Roman statue of a centaur came unbidden to her mind. All muscle and sinew, power and grace.

Flustered, Cat turned, seeking escape.

Thomas listened with feigned interest to the unblushing invitation of the woman at his side. To be once more in Paris, listening to feminine voices speaking overly familiar words, raised specters Thomas would have just as soon left buried. He had looked around, a tiny frisson of desperation in his scrutiny, searching to see if Mariette Leons was there even though he knew she wouldn’t be. Instead, he had seen Cat.

She laid his ghosts. There was simply no room for specters when Cat was in sight. Even though all he had was a brief, tantalizing glimpse of her, one immediately lost in the crowd.

With scintillating results, Cat had wholeheartedly embraced the French styles. No anemic little muslins for her. She wore a shimmering silk gown of an iridescent peacock blue. Her deeply cut bodice was adorned with brilliant crystal beads and gold embroidery.

Atop her gleaming nutmeg-colored curls, she had perched a ridiculous construction of lace and ostrich feathers that dipped gently in time to the sway of her hips as she walked. On most women, it would have looked absurd, but Cat had in her eye something that acknowledged the absurdity, making it, incredibly enough, provocative.

Thomas left the woman in mid-proposition. Cat was simply irresistible. He could not help being drawn to her side regardless of what her reception of him might be. He was as unable to withstand her attraction as he was incapable of denying it.

The crowd shifted as he passed, an occasional hand laid upon his arm, familiar voices calling his name, all seeking to delay him, all ignored. And then he was behind her. The curve of her neck, the jut of her shoulder blade, the gentle indentation of her spine cloaked by the transparent purity of her skin, were all infinitely tempting to him.

“Lady Catherine.”

She spun about. There was something of tears, the tiniest shadow of joy, before he saw it: distress so intense that his own sad smile became an acknowledgment of her pain as well as his own. In this, at least, they were companions. And then it was gone.

The brilliance of that one brief moment of honesty vanished. Her lips reworked themselves into some acceptable expression. She jerked her chin up.

At least
, he thought wearily,
now I know my lines
.

“You’ll get a crick in your neck doing that, Cat. Besides which, it has been done too often. Didn’t I teach you that allure relies on the novel, not the hackneyed?”

A spark of anger flashed in her incredible eyes. Her chin climbed higher.

Better fire than ashes
.

“And, Cat, I fear you have given Fielding rather more of a free hand with your toilette than her talents warrant.” He stepped back and perused her bejeweled, laced elegance with doubtful appreciation. “You look like some divergent form of a particularly gaudy butterfly.”

There was no reply.

“And this silence. Very effective in creating a momentary mystique, but you stand in danger of overdoing it.”

A young man in uniform approached from behind Cat, obviously intent on speaking to her, but Thomas could not let it end here. The look he shot the boy was deadly and proprietary. The lad veered sharply away.

“What are you doing here?”

He turned to her in surprise. “I find I have a yen to indulge myself in society.” His eyes glimmered roguishly. This was his special milieu. He was acknowledged king of this very sort of innuendo. He was a rake; it is why she had sought him out. It was why Daphne Bernard had sought him out.

She turned and walked away.

Thomas shadowed her from the room, following her into the dimly lit corridor before hailing her again.

“So, Cat,” he said, “how goes the game? Has the estimable Strap come up to scratch yet?”

She whirled around. “Strand! His name is
Strand
!”

“Ah yes, Strand. And has he?”

“No.”

She could not see his relief. The darkness spared him that.

“But he is at the precipice?”

Cat mistook the relief for amusement. “Yes. Of course. Was I not a star pupil?”

“Oh, methinks there is some honing that might be done yet,” Thomas answered. “And I, of course, in the spirit of true gamesmanship, humbly offer my services.”

“Are you mocking me?”

“Yes, milady, I believe I am.”

She glared at him, unaware how bewitching she looked, her hair gleaming like burnished bronze in the lamplight, her green eyes as mystical as a woodland pond, her breasts rising and falling in fascinating agitation. He was content to devour her with his eyes, unsure why he needed to goad her to anger, only aware he had been transfixed by the fear that her pursuit of Strand might have come to fruition.

Suddenly Cat was before him, a beguiling smile on her lips, her arms about his neck, tugging him down to her. Momentarily startled, he allowed himself to be drawn toward her parted lips, reflexively seeking her mouth with his. But she held him back. Her eyes danced triumphantly, staring straight into his own dazed ones.

“Caught you off guard, Milord Libertine? May-haps you have been too long from town, and ’tis
I
can offer
you
some instruction.”

But he was master of himself once more, and he only leered down at her, straining forward over her. “Whatever lessons you wish to bestow, I am all aquiver to receive,” he countered, daring her with the velvet of his voice to continue the contest.

She jerked back. “The devil take you for being so good at this!”

He mustered what will he had left and stepped back from her. “Well, after all, Cat, I have been at it much longer than you.”

“So then I can look toward my dim and distant future years with the hope of being able to play at seduction with the same sure-handedness that you do?”

“If you so wish.”

“Why are you here, Thomas?” she asked once more. “And no double meanings now, if you please. I am not a prospective conquest and I would you did not treat me as such.”

He shrugged in feigned hopelessness. “I cannot help it, Cat. It is an involuntary reaction whenever I am in the vicinity of a well-favored dame. My cross, but I bear it as well I can.”

He silently cursed as she paled. “Excuse me, Cat. You do it so well, I forget this is only a cloak you have donned and not real. I fear old age has made me forget appearances are, after all, deceiving.”

She shook her head, he suspected more angry that his words had affected her than at the words themselves.

“I have been here a fortnight, Thomas, and have put into practice what you have taught. I am well on my way to becoming in fact the fiction we authored. And here I was studying for advanced degrees when I had not even mastered the rudiments. There simply is no teacher in Paris who can offer me all of your experience and expertise. There is nothing for it,
Monsieur Ruin
, you shall have to take me back under your wing and become the latest of my lovers.”

Thomas’s head snapped back as though she had struck him. He raised a hand and, finding it shaking, let it fall to his side. He stared at her for a long moment before bowing stiffly. “I congratulate you.”

Turning blindly from her, he strode through the door.

He did not see the tears that slipped unchecked down her cheek, nor hear her soft litany after he had gone.

“Damn, oh damn.”

Chapter 20

T
homas made it to the Mertons’ library, feeling as though the hounds of hell themselves were on his heels. He shut the door with exaggerated care before bracing his fists on the back of a convenient chair and letting his head fall forward. Dragging great breaths of air into his lungs, he shut his eyes against the image Cat’s words had invoked. Cat and her “lovers.” A new wave of pain gripped him.

An unseen hand rapped on the door. Another applicant for his favors? Yet another forward little filly eager to see if his reputation stood the test of time? Eager to try his oft-tried body and see if his finesse, or dimensions, or staying power, or whatever the hell they sought, justified the reports?

He prowled to the door and threw it open.

Giles Dalton, Lord Strand, lounged against the doorjamb. The quip died on his tongue as his discerning eye took in the caged quality of his friend’s stance.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Giles asked quietly.

“Tell you what?”

Strand entered the room, devoid of his usual casualness. Some people said Thomas’s self-possession bordered on the cold-blooded. In the years Giles had known and worked with Thomas, only once had Strand seen him lose that self-control. The much-tortured and abused body of a French informant, not much more than a boy, had been dumped outside the inn where they waited. His expression now was similar to the one he had worn then: rage and indescribable grief. And the perpetrators had paid the ultimate price.

Strand closed the door behind him. “You should have said she was important to you.”

“I thought it was clear.”

“You implied a brotherly concern. You did not say you loved her.”

Thomas didn’t bother denying it. Not to Giles. “And what difference would that have made? Would your vigilance have been any less? Besides, the lady had set her mind on your seduction long ere I met her. Who am I to stand in the way of love’s true path?”

“Lady Catherine doesn’t love me.”

“She might come to.”

“She might already be in love.”

He gave a brief snort, empty of humor. “Not with me. She has just gone to considerable pains to tell me she has had lovers since arriving in Paris. I know she was hurt, but I didn’t expect her hurt had turned to hatred. And hatred is the only emotion I know of strong enough to make my little pragmatist imperil all her plans for a spot of revenge.”

“She was lying.”

Thomas’s expression grew sardonic. “I know she was lying. And I also know why. She wanted to draw blood. Lord, she must despise me to risk her reputation so! Any number of people could have overheard her! Thank God, I do not think any did.”

“One could wish you had informed me of how things stood, Thomas.”

“There was nothing to inform you of. Nothing has changed. The lady sought my expertise in the matter of seduction. You were, and are, the motive for the request. But you know that. Good God, man, all society knows it! She ain’t the most subtle thing.” Thomas’s smile was bittersweet.