she moved a little, and it was only a little—the slightest shift of her shoulders—but she did it in the way of a lover turning in bed, or so his body believed, his groin tightening.
The light caught her hair and gilded her skin and danced in those laughing eyes. His gaze drifted lower, to the silken swell of her breasts…the sleek curve to her waist…
He was vaguely aware of the people about him talking, but he couldn’t concentrate on anyone else. Her voice was low, a contralto shaded with a slight huskiness.
Her name, he learned, was Noirot.
Fitting.
Having said to Mademoiselle Fontenay all that good manners required, he turned to the woman who’d disrupted the opera house. Heart racing, he bent over her gloved hand.
“Madame Noirot,” he said. “Enchanté.” He touched his lips to the soft kid. A light but exotic scent swam into his nostrils. Jasmine?
He lifted his head and met a gaze as deep as midnight. For a long, pulsing moment, their gazes held.
Then she waved her fan at the empty seat nearby. “It’s uncomfortable to converse with my head tipped back, your grace,” she said.
“Forgive me.” He sat. “How rude of me to loom over you in that way. But the view from above was…”
He trailed off as it belatedly dawned on him: She’d spoken in English, in the accents of his own class, no less. He’d answered automatically, taught from childhood to show his conversational partner the courtesy of responding in the latter’s language.
“But this is diabolical,” he said. “I should have wagered anything that you were French.” French, and a commoner. She had to be. He’d heard her speak to Orefeur in flawless Parisian French, superior to Clevedon’s, certainly. The accent was refined, but her friend—forty if she was a day—was an actress. Ladies of the upper ranks did not consort with actresses. He’d assumed she was an actress or courtesan.
Yet if he closed his eyes, he’d swear he conversed at present with an English aristocrat.
“You’d wager anything?” she said. Her dark gaze lifted to his head and slid down slowly, leaving a heat trail in its wake, and coming to rest at his neckcloth. “That pretty pin, for instance?”
The scent and the voice and the body were slowing his brain. “A wager?” he said blankly.
“Or we could discuss the merits of the present Figaro, or debate whether Rosina ought properly to be a contralto or a mezzo-soprano,” she said. “But I think you were not paying attention to the opera.” She plied her fan slowly. “Why should I think that, I wonder?”
He collected his wits. “What I don’t understand,” he said, “is how anyone could pay attention to the opera when you were in the place.”
“They’re French,” she said. “They take art seriously.”
“And you’re not French?”
She smiled. “That’s the question, it seems.”
“French,” he said. “You’re a brilliant mimic, but you’re French.”
“You’re so sure,” she said.
“I’m merely a thickheaded Englishman, I know,” he said. “But even I can tell French and English women apart. One might dress an Englishwoman in French fashion from head to toe and she’ll still look English. You…”
He trailed off, letting his gaze skim over her. Only consider her hair. It was as stylish as the precise coifs of other Frenchwomen…yet, no, not the same. Hers was more…something. It was as though she’d flung out of bed and thrown herself together in a hurry. Yet she wasn’t disheveled. She was…different.
“You’re French, through and through,” he said. “If I’m wrong, the stickpin is yours.”
“And if you’re right?” she said.
He thought quickly. “If I’m right, you’ll do me the honor of riding with me in the Bois de Boulogne tomorrow,” he said.
“That’s all?” she said, in French this time.
“It’s a great deal to me.”
She rose abruptly in a rustle of silk. Surprised—again—he was slow coming to his feet.
“I need air,” she said. “It grows warm in here.”
He opened the door to the corridor and she swept past him. He followed her out, his pulse racing.
Marcelline had seen him countless times, from as little as a few yards away. She’d observed a handsome, expensively elegant English aristocrat.
At close quarters…
She was still reeling.
The body first. She’d surreptitiously studied that while he made polite chitchat with Sylvie. The splendid physique was not, as she’d assumed, created or even assisted by fine tailoring, though the tailoring was exquisite. His broad shoulders were not padded, and his tapering torso wasn’t cinched in by anything but muscle.
Muscle everywhere—the arms, the long legs. And no tailor could create the lithe power emanating from that tall frame.
It’s hot in here, was her first coherent thought.
Then he was standing in front of her, bending over her hand, and the place grew hotter still.
She was aware of his hair, black curls gleaming like silk and artfully tousled.
He lifted his head.
She saw a mouth that should have been a woman’s, so full and sensuous it was. But it was pure male, purely carnal.
An instant later she was looking up into eyes of a rare color—a green like jade—while a low masculine voice caressed her ear and seemed to be caressing parts of her not publicly visible.
Good grief.
She walked quickly as they left the box, thinking quickly, too, as she went. She was aware of the clusters of opera-goers in the corridor making way for her. That amused her, even while she pondered the unexpected problem walking alongside.
She’d known the Duke of Clevedon was a handful.
She’d vastly underestimated.
Still, she was a Noirot, and the risks only excited her.
She came to rest at last in a quieter part of the corridor, near a window. For a time, she gazed out of the window. It showed her only her own reflection: a magnificently dressed, alluring woman, a walking advertisement for what would one day—soon, with a little help from him—be London’s foremost dressmaking establishment. Once they had the Duchess of Clevedon, royal patronage was sure to follow: the moon and the stars, almost within her grasp.
“I hope you’re not unwell, madame,” he said in his English-accented French.
