Ways to Be Wicked (25 page)

“I never knew my own father. My mother and I were always desperately poor, and she died when I was very young. Much of what I did to survive—
most
of it—I would never boast about, or even wish to describe to you. I did what I needed to, and to this day I count myself bloody lucky that I’m not in Newgate, or didn’t end up swinging from a gallows. I suppose,” he said almost wryly, “if I were to reflect, I could arrive at a
few
regrets. But they wouldn’t include Jamie, and they wouldn’t include...” He looked up at her, seemed to lose his words for a moment. “They wouldn’t include you,” he concluded quietly.

“But I also know now it would be bloody. . .
unconscionable
to subject someone to the uncertainty of my life, of my reputation, when something so much better can be had for them.”

She wasn’t certain about the word “unconscionable,” but she was virtually positive it meant “wrong.”

“And Sylvie, this doesn’t make me a—what was your word?”

“Lâche?”
she supplied.

“Yes. It doesn’t make me a
lâche.
If you truly understood how . . . if you knew you would...” He dragged impatient hands over his hair. “You would know that it makes me...it probably makes me a...” He paused, as a revelation flickered over his face. “A damned
hero.
”

He ground out the last words, oddly, darkly amused, bemused. Clearly it was the last thing he’d ever, ever expected to be.

She considered them.

“It makes you bloody stupid,” she said flatly.

His head jerked toward her.

And then in one smooth startling motion he stood up, crossed the room, and grasped her chin in his hand.

She gasped when he tipped her face sharply up to him, tried to jerk her chin away. He held it firmly.

“Tell me, Sylvie, and answer me honestly for once: are you angry with
me
. . . or with yourself?”

“I—”

But then his mouth was on hers, hard.

It was a kiss that infuriated, confirmed, stirred, and then somehow . . . despite everything. . . became all she’d always needed, suspected she would ever need, which infuriated her all over again.

And it felt entirely final.

And then he stopped, released her chin. He closed his eyes briefly.

They were both breathing roughly. When he opened his eyes again, she saw the iron resolve in them.

“So stop blaming
me,
Miss
Chapeau.
It’s simply how things must be. If you gave it a moment’s thought instead of indulging your temper, you would realize that I’m right. And it’s just your own bloody misfortune to love two men.”

“I don’t—”

“Yes?” he said swiftly. His face tense. Waiting.

But when she said nothing, he nodded once, curtly.

“Tell me now who’s ‘bloody stupid,’ Sylvie. Tell me now who’s a coward.”

She looked at him. And for a moment she forgot his words, and simply looked, fell into the beauty of his hard, elegant face, the character and wear of it. Looking for a reason to hate him.

Finding only that it resembled her own heart. And this brought with it a quiet sort of terror.

“Don’t feel you need to stay,” he said softly. Ironically.

She turned abruptly.

And to spite him, because she knew he was looking for passion. . . she closed the door quietly behind her.

Chapter Sixteen

I
T WAS SO DARK
in her little nun’s cell of a room; her eyes remained open, and still it was as though she was looking at the inside of her eyelids. She’d found it comforting before, and snug. Tonight, somehow, it seemed to mock her mood. Shame was not nearly as comfortable a bed partner as a warm, passionate man.

A quick temper was her curse; she relived throwing things earlier today, the shouting, and put her hands up to her cheeks.
Mon dieu.
She wondered if her sister had a temper. It would be lovely to have someone with whom to commiserate about a family trait.

I think you are in the love with me, Sylvie.

Are you angry with me, or with yourself?

She knew how to be with Etienne, knew what to expect. Knew how the days of her life would play out. And she knew a moment of regret for ever leaving him, for now she was all too aware of the places in her he would never be able to stir.

And more aware than ever of the things he could offer her that someone like Tom Shaughnessy could not.

Indeed,
had
not.

This was the trouble, she realized, with surrendering to want.

And as she’d left his library today, she’d glanced down and seen the note that had been tucked beneath the paperweight she’d hurled:

Pinkerton-Knowles backed out. That is the last of them.

She knew what this meant: Tom had lost all of his investors, and thus all of his capital, too. His future was now nearly as uncertain as it had been when he was a child, stealing cheese. She felt it on his behalf, the winds of the abyss whistling at her ankles. She had fought too long, her entire life, to dance away from that abyss.

Sylvie stood and lit a candle, pushed open her trunk, unfolded the miniature of her mother from where she kept it wrapped, hidden, in a soft cotton shift. And stared down at it, holding the candle away from it so the wax would not drip down.

I will tell him who I am,
she thought.

It was something she wanted to give to him, a gift in parting—an apology, and her trust. To tell him he was right about everything after all—this was all it could be, and that she understood that this interlude was indeed over, and she would no doubt be gone soon.

To thank him. The gratitude didn’t seem specific. Perhaps she simply meant to thank him for being.

Her heart knocking, she traveled the dark hallway and found the stairs leading to his portion of the attic.

The room was dark. She hovered near the last step, listened for breathing, and heard none.

“Tom?” She whispered. She took the last step, lifted her candle.

The bed was tightly, neatly made. He hadn’t slept in it.

You can find me in it. . . most nights.

The pain was savage and instant and utterly shocking, and for a moment, it hurt to breathe, as though her lungs were suddenly made of rough-edged glass. She simply stood there on the step and stared at Tom’s made bed, in a room that smelled and felt so strongly of him it seemed impossible he wasn’t in it.

And this was when she admitted to herself that she hadn’t come to apologize for her temper. That she hadn’t come to tell him who she truly was. Or to tell him he was right about everything.

Though she
might
have done those things after they had made love again and again.

A clock somewhere bonged 3:00 a.m.

So she left, no less ashamed than when she had set out to find him.

Chapter Seventeen

D
OWN THE HALL
girls were dressing for the show in nymphlike togas, shimmering organza to match the shimmer of the grand oyster, smoothing rouge onto their cheeks, while Tom and The General discussed the final details of Venus. For tonight was the night: In the absence of all of his investors, the success of Venus was the pivot upon which Tom’s future turned.

“We need to make a damned fortune on this show, or we’re sunk.” Tom managed to say the words easily. This, in itself, did not come easily.

“We’ll make the damned fortune.” The General was quietly confident.

Tom shifted restlessly in his chair, patted his hand on the arm of it for a moment. “Gen...I had an inspiration.”

“Mmm?” The General looked up alertly.

“Well...what if I made the Gentleman’s Emporium a...Family Emporium.”

“A
what?
” The General sounded alarmed.

“Family Emporium.”

“Family,” The General repeated slowly, lingering over the word as if he’d never heard the word before in his life. “Emporium.”

“That
is
what I said, Gen,” Tom said irritably. “I thought, perhaps, there could be a floor for mothers to take tea together, and then a floor for fathers to drink with other fathers, we’ll have cards and games, a place to get ices and cakes, a floor for entertainment that men can bring their wives to, a place for children to play together on little pirate ships, and in castles, and...”

He trailed off at the look on The General’s face. As if he wanted to test Tom’s forehead for fever.

“Things of that sort,” Tom finished uncomfortably.

The General seemed to be searching for diplomatic words, which was highly unlike him.

“You have an area of expertise, Tommy...” he began slowly.

“Area
s,
” Tom corrected testily.

“Very well, then,” The General humored him. “Areas. Which is why you’re rich now.”

“Was rich,” Tom corrected. “Now every spare penny I had is in that building across town, and as I said, if we don’t make a fortune tonight...”

The General waved that away impatiently. “
This
...is what you know. Venus...” The General said over the word lovingly—neither one of them could say the word with any other sort of intonation—“is what you know. They resulted from your instincts, and following your instincts has made you a success.”

“It doesn’t mean I can’t develop other areas of expertise,” Tom said irritably.

“No,” The General agreed. Sounding as though he was humoring him.

“And it’s not a bad idea, though, is it?” Tom insisted. “A Family Emporium?”

The General shrugged. Which was something of a concession.

Tom fell into a near-brooding silence. Which was highly unlike
him.
“She called me a coward and threw things at me.” It was becoming a habit, it seemed, this exchange of confidences.

The General was quiet for a moment.

“The French,” he finally said, shaking his head in commiseration.

It amused Tom distantly that The General knew precisely who he was talking about, but perhaps he shouldn’t have been surprised.

Then The General’s head snapped toward Tom. “Wait. She called
you
a coward?”

“A
lâche,
more specifically.”

“And she’s still alive?”

Tom grunted a laugh.

“Should I ask
why
she called you a coward? And does this mean...do you mean to say...are you confessing that you did. . .
finally
. . . touch a dancer, Tom?” The General’s lips were pressed together, as if he was struggling not to laugh.

“I touched a dancer, Gen.” Tom sounded surly. “And she
is
a real dancer, as you said.”

“Mmm.” The General’s way of agreeing. His gaze drifted then, as if he didn’t want to look Tom in the eye. He sipped at his tea.

“The dance,” Tom began. “She...It’s...” He struggled for a word.

“Beautiful?” the General said.

“Yes.” Tom said, sounding defeated.

“So you saw it?”

“Yes.” He paused. “But there’s no money in it,” he added hurriedly.

“Mmm,” The General said. His gaze drifted again.

“Have you noticed that all the girls seem to be getting just a little thinner, Gen?” Tom peered hard at The General. “Almost as if they’ve been getting more exercise.”

“Hadn’t, really,” The General said, still looking elsewhere. “So. . . she threw things and called you a coward because...”

“A wealthy French nobleman apparently wants to marry her. I told her she should marry him. That she’d be foolish not to.”

He looked at The General, whose face, at the moment, was completely unreadable.

The General continued to stare at him. And then he frowned a little, looking oddly puzzled. His eyes scoured the murals searchingly, as if looking for the answer to whatever question was silently plaguing him. “Tom?”

“What is it?” Tom said curtly.

“Who’s that noble cove you told me about from the Greek myths, when we were having the murals painted? The one who lives with a wound, or some such, and suffered every day, and grew wiser for it?”

“Chiron?” Tom supplied, confused.

“Right. Chiron. Here’s the rub:
You,
Tom Shaughnessy, are
not
a noble cove. Not even close. It’s just not your nature, that martyr bit. That”—he pointed to Tom’s hand, and Tom stopped rubbing—“and this”—he made an eloquent circle with his hand to encompass the theater—“is
your
nature. You
fight.
You fight dirty, if you have to, for what you want. You like a little drama. All of which are benefits of
not
being a gentleman. You don’t”—he drawled the words mockingly—“‘quietly back away.’ ”

Tom considered this. “This is different, Gen,” he said ungraciously.

The General stared at him, those intense dark eyes bright beneath those thick brows, which then dived nearly to a point at the top of his nose.

Tom matched him glower for glower.

“Well I’ll be damned,” The General finally said, wonderingly. He gave a short incredulous laugh. Then he reached for his watch from his coat, peeked at the time. He stood and stubbed out his cigar.

“What?” Tom snapped.

The General slipped into his coat, headed for the door, and said the words over his shoulder.

“She was right.”

Seats creaked and coats rustled, a few throats rumbled to clear, then silence dropped, heavy as the velvet curtain that obscured the evening’s promised delights. And as raucousness, not silence, typically reigned at the White Lily, right up to and during the show, this silence underscored the momentousness of the occasion, built upon itself until the anticipation in the audience was so palpable it could almost be beaten like a drum.

Tom looked out from the back of the theater: row upon row of heads were upturned, pointed raptly at the stage. Behind that curtain, in the wings, a crew of boys were poised to fan the fish and pull open the oyster; the girls dressed as water nymphs were poised to drift out when Molly began her song.

Tom’s gut tightened in a way it hadn’t since the owner of the Green Apple Theater had threatened to slit his gullet for losing money on a show. So much rested on this single evening.

Josephine’s head, pale in the darkness, was turned over her shoulder, watching for his signal; at last, he lifted a finger, and she nodded and dragged her fingers across the pianoforte in a long glissando. The velvet curtain lurched up.

Tom heard the collective gasp with satisfaction, and exhaled his relief.

An enormous oyster shell rose up from the stage, ruffled at the lip and ridged across its roof, glowing in the footlights with an otherworldly luminescence. Wooden seaweed, painted a deep black-green and carved into appropriately, aquatically curved shapes, rippled by virtue of boys backstage drawing it slowly back and forth with pulleys. Enormous, gaily painted exotic fish hung from the rafters of the theater like Piscean kites, and were made to swim by boys perched there in the rafters, hidden away, wafting them with bellows.

The General was virtually vibrating with pride next to Tom. It was a triumph, a thing of wonder and beauty. Lacking only diaphanously clad maidens singing bawdy songs, which it would have in mere moments.

Josephine, as befit the gravity of the moment, was playing a variation of a delicate sonata. In three bars, the shell would glide open on pulleys to reveal...at long last. . .
Venus.

Josephine played one bar. . .

. .. then two bars . . .

. .. then three bars .. .

But nothing happened.

She continued to play. Bar after bar of the sonata rolled through the theater, but nothing whatsoever moved on the stage. And soon the rustle in the audience became one of restlessness rather than anticipation.

“What the bloody hell is wrong?” Tom hissed to The General, who had gone rigid and alert.

Suddenly one plump white arm suddenly popped out from between the oyster’s ruffled lips.

The crowd gasped.

The arm waved about for a bit, frantically, as if feeling for direction, looking for assistance. Disappeared into the shell again.

Sweet Merciful Mary.

“Bloody hell—that isn’t
Molly.
That’s—that’s
Daisy!
” Tom growled. “I’ll
kill
her.”

The crowd began to murmur wonderingly. Murmurs were
definitely
bad for business.

Josephine rolled panicked eyes toward Tom, but her fingers continued dutifully moving. The dreamy strains of the sonata continued to wash through the theater like the sea washing over the shore.

A leg burst out from between the oyster lips. The crowd gasped and visibly jumped in their seats.

It was really only part of a leg. A foot and a plump calf, covered in a pink silk stocking.

The leg kicked about a little.

“Did the thing...eat her?” someone in the audience speculated loudly, sounding half-confused, half-hopeful.

In the dark Tom could see The General’s face glowing with frantic perspiration. He darted a few steps up the aisle, then darted back when the shell began to creak open.

To reveal that it was, indeed, Daisy. On her knees, pushing up the ceiling of the shell with both hands, like Atlas, for God’s sake. One leg draped over the side.

“Oh, God!” The General squeaked, frantic, his hands gripping his head. “It must be the boys. Those bloody damned boys! The pulleys! What the bloody—”

Daisy beamed at the crowd, though her eyes were a little wild and her cheeks were flushed with the effort of holding the shell open.

But slowly, inexorably, despite her best efforts, it began to creak closed, buckling her little by little. And then the crowd, and Tom and The General, got a final swift and potent glimpse of Daisy’s panicked face before the shell clapped shut again and Daisy disappeared.

Laughter exploded.

All the while the liquid notes of the sonata poured caressingly through the theater, as Josephine dutifully played on.

“DO. SOMETHING.” Tom commanded in a growl to The General.

The General bolted toward the back of the stage.

For a moment, all was quiet. The oyster remained still, glowing its soothing, glorious nacre colors, while the sonata delicately scented the air, and the audience waited, primed now: Tom could sense it.

And then the shell inched open.
Creeeeeeak.

The audience inhaled in anticipation.

Abruptly the shell clapped shut again.
Clack.

A collective exhale.

The shell inched open again.
Creeeeeeak.

Another inhale of anticipation.

Then clapped shut again.
Clack.

It looked like—dear God—

“I think it’s
chewing
her! It looks like it’s chewing her!” Someone in the crowd marveled.

Like that.

The laughter became utterly helpless then. There really was no hope for it. Great roars of it ripped up the rows, a conflagration of mirth. Men began thrashing in their chairs, and the percussion of knees and backs slapped joined it.

“Bloody brilliant!” someone bellowed. “Shaughnessy, you’re a bloody
genius!
”

The oyster
creeeeeeaked
open again. Steadily this time: an inch, then six inches, then a foot, and then three feet.

The audience settled somewhat, leaned forward, eagerly waiting.

Until it finally opened enough to reveal Daisy. Disheveled, wild-eyed, a grin pasted on her mouth. Tentatively she began to raise her arms into the air in a pose; at the same time, she cautiously peered back over her shoulder at the shell.

It clapped shut abruptly and she vanished.

The audience roared.

Josephine, clearly at a loss for what else she might do, dutifully continued to play the sonata. From where he stood, Tom could see the perspiration gleaming on her face, too.

The delicate music was all but drowned out beneath the stamp of feet and roars of men.

The shell creaked open again. Slowly, slowly, slowly.

Daisy, her optimism clearly spent, was curled up in the center of it, her arms wrapped protectively over her head.

But when the shell remained open, she lifted her head up, peeped cautiously over her shoulder at it. Wildly mussed strands of her ruddy hair were puffing out around her ruddy face.

“It wants you for dinner, Daize!” an audience member bellowed. “Run! Run while you can!”

“You can be the pearl in my oyster any day, Daisy Jones!”

The shell remained open. Cautiously, tentatively, Daisy rose to her knees, facing the audience. She peered suspiciously over her shoulder at her nemesis, the oyster.

“Harpoon the beast!” someone suggested in a bellow. “Kill it before it eats you, Daize!”

More gusts of wild laughter.

One of Daisy’s enormous breasts had nearly freed itself from her gracefully wrapped toga in the tussle, and now, as she began to rise, it glowed in the footlights, a luminous, miniature twin of the oyster from which she’d emerged.

“Oh...my. . .
God!
” Someone howled in helpless mirth.