“No. Forgive me, Vivienne. As it happens, it is for the best that you asked me to go. I have just remembered that I was supposed to meet someone.”
Highly unlikely. But she supposed it served her right for putting him off.
“After midnight?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. I cannot be late.”
He could not possibly be telling the truth. No, they were playing the same game with each other. Advance and Retreat.
“Then it is a good thing you remembered it.”
He only nodded.
She would not ask one word more. Vivienne silently reproved herself for her pique. She hoped he did not see the tinge of angry scarlet in her cheeks.
They got through the adieus politely enough. He turned to go without touching her again.
The sound of his boot heels on the stairs died away and the front door closed behind him. Vivienne went to the window. She pulled the heavy drape aside and looked out in time to see him stride to his black coach. Its windows were shielded on the inside of the glass with rich material she could just see under the streetlamps. Their light revealed the falling rain, turning it into sparks of gold that pattered down upon the black-lacquered top of the coach.
The sight was beautiful but it filled her with melancholy. Rain often did. There were times when she could not stand the sound of it against the windowpanes.
How long had it been falling? The night had been clear when her other guests departed one by one. Of course, that was hours ago. In Kyril’s arms, kissed so well, she had not heard the storm blow in.
The horses shook their heavy heads, jingling the bits in their velvet mouths as their master approached. They were stamping their hooves on the wet cobblestones, eager to be off. As he passed a dark doorway, Vivienne saw something move. She narrowed her eyes when a man stepped forth from it.
His long, matted beard and ugly coat gave him the look of a beggar or a lunatic. The sleeves were so long his hands were covered and the hat he wore was strangely shaped.
Vivienne studied him. He might be only a poor foreigner. London was full of them.
Kyril did not seem to see the man. She put a hand upon the window, ready to open it and warn him…no, it was no longer necessary. The rain drove the bearded man back into the doorway. Vivienne retreated behind the drapery.
The coachman turned around and tipped his hat to Kyril, spilling the rain accumulated in its rolled-up brim upon his own greatcoat. She imagined the fellow’s curse—she could not hear it. The heavy rain obliterated the sounds outside.
Kyril spoke to him before he got into the carriage, swinging up one long leg and entering without a backward glance at her house. Damn the man. Where could he be going after midnight? She regretted her decision to make him wait. She ought to have let him have his way with her, permitted herself the physical pleasure he was so determined to give her, however fleeting it might be. Men’s hearts were fickle.
As was her own, she reflected. Not that she had always been cynical. But London was a sophisticated city that did not hold love in high regard. After some years of dwelling here, she no longer hoped to find it again. She had loved once and loved well—but not wisely.
Her gaze fell upon a closed case on the nearby shelf, a flat thing that looked like a little book but was made of engraved metal. It held a miniature that she often looked at. She had taken it out from her desk just that morning. She had painted the image herself, with mousehair brushes on an ivory oval, of a small face, like an angel, with closed eyes. It was a face she had seen only once, as if in a dream, when she had been nearly out of her mind with grief. But she had captured its delicacy of features and expression. The miniature had become a sort of amulet that she always kept nigh, but not where anyone would see it.
Vivienne crossed in front of the window and swiftly picked it up. She opened a drawer in her desk and put the little case away, then happened to touch the letter that had come for her today.
Her hand drew back as if she touched something filthy. But the folded paper was immaculately white, folded to hide the lines penned upon it. It had come from someone demanding a meeting. Someone she knew well—and never wanted to see again. But she would have to.
If only…. Suddenly she wanted Kyril to hold her, right now, until the sun came up. For whatever reason he pleased. He might do as he wished with her. She craved his warmth, his sensuality, his amorous determination—animal qualities that had nothing to do with romantic nonsense. Not loving but definitely life-giving. He might ease the coldness in her heart. That would be enough.
The wheels of the black coach moved slowly forward, then back, as the horses strained against their harnesses. Radiating misery from his dripping hat to his drenched back, the coachman settled himself stolidly upon his high seat and flicked the whip at the horses. The carriage lurched a little over the cobblestones of Cheyne Row and rolled on. She watched it rattle away around a corner.
He would be home soon. She had never been to his house but she knew that Kyril lived only a few miles away, near Grosvenor Square. She pulled the drape closed, imagining the place for a few seconds.
His clothes were not at all showy; his house was likely to be just as sober. It would have, oh, tall columns framing the entrance. It would be built of pale stone blocks fitted together with the utmost precision. A paneled black door with no glass inserts and no hint of what was beyond it. She added just one touch of whimsy to her mental picture: a polished doorknocker in the shape of an animal’s head, holding the heavy ring that did the actual knocking in its brass jaws. He was not British, so it did not have to be the obligatory lion. No, a wolf would do nicely.
He had money. What of it? So did she. But she was not sure where his came from. Months ago, a mutual friend had explained the Taruskin family’s long association with the British Society of Merchant-Adventurers. She had not listened closely, preferring to look at Kyril.
Now, with nothing else to do but think, she tried to remember what bits she had heard. The immense wealth of the Russian aristocracy…the vast country’s unexploited riches, there for the taking…the necessity for the Society’s foreign agents to learn excellent English…
Glancing constantly at Kyril as her friend spoke, captivated by everything from his handsomeness to his height, she had paid little attention to any of it.
Her former lover, a duke who lived apart from his cantankerous duchess, had introduced her to Kyril—without explanations—shortly after his arrival in London. Horace had seen to it that Vivienne was often thrust into the company of the dashing newcomer at the assemblees and balls they attended, social occasions at which the duchess never appeared.
Had Horace hoped Kyril would sweep her off her feet when he was bored with her?
It had not happened. Kyril had been the soul of propriety until tonight. Horace had been forced to take up with someone else and incur the expenses of two mistresses for a while. The duke had complained that Vivienne was as serene as a statue when his eye wandered elsewhere.
He had not been entirely wrong about Kyril, however. Her attraction to him had been obvious to an old roué like Horace. Vivienne had been curious about Kyril, invited him to several soirées of her own, hoping to draw him out or at least overhear if he talked of anything more personal than the theater and music and books. But he never had. Kyril was discreet to a fault.
He
