tonight. Tedious.”
Stryke accepted the tickets. He wasn’t much for jewels, but he’d made the decision to take in as much of the city as he could while here. This was the first time he’d been overseas. He wasn’t sure he could survive being cooped up in an airplane for nine hours to ever make the return visit, so while on land he would do the town up right.
“Maybe one of my brothers will go along with me. Do I have to dress up?”
“You’ll probably want to wear the suit Vail sent to your place. Thanks, Stryke. I’ll call you in the morning with details on the job.”
Rhys clapped a hand across Stryke’s shoulder then wandered back inside the six-story black granite building where he did business.
Stryke tucked the tickets in his back pocket and shook his head as a bright pink Vespa scooted by. A gorgeous woman wearing a skirt commandeered the scooter. She even wore high heels. The women here were so different from back in the States. They liked to look good, no matter what the activity.
He didn’t understand a single word of the language, so he had gotten more sneers and snide side glances than he’d experienced in a lifetime. He was taking it in stride. He wasn’t the sort to anger easily. That was his brother Trouble’s forte. Maybe by the time he boarded the plane for the return trip home he’d actually know a bit of the language and have found that fantasy werewolf he dreamed about meeting?
Then again, he’d be thankful to not starve—because he couldn’t ask for what he wanted in French—not get arrested, and not make a fool of himself if a pretty woman did glance his way.
And if he was lucky he might happen upon some danger. Because before he started the dream family and pack, he needed to satisfy a soul-deep craving for adventure. His brothers always seemed to find danger and excitement in spades.
Stryke had survived a near-death experience last winter. Time to live his life and make the most of it.
Private gallery, 10:00 p.m.
Two hundred people wandered about the airy gallery off the Rue de Rivoli. Excellent turnout. The champagne flowed, and the silver-dusted vanilla macarons catered from Pierre Hermes were nibbled even by those women who would never deem to smudge their lipstick. It wasn’t the calories, chéri; it was the humility of being seen chewing in public.
Blyss Sauveterre had owned the gallery for two years and it wasn’t so much a labor of love as her means to keep tabs on society. By featuring a new exhibit every month she ensured the flow of the rich and famous in and out of the gallery doors never ceased. The diamonds on display this evening were once Marie Antoinette’s prized possessions. Gifts from her lover, Count Axel von Fersen.
Blyss wasn’t sure she believed the provenance. Axel Fersen had been a rake, a solider, an opportunist. Had he really garnered enough wages to afford such elaborate diamonds for the queen? History painted him more a lover than a businessman, which she was inclined to agree with. Whether or not he’d had an affair with the doomed queen? She certainly hoped that part was true.
The fantasy of it all intrigued her, and no one this evening had questioned the story behind the beautiful gemstones glinting within their rococo silver-and-gold settings.
The exhibit tonight was a preshow to the grand event Blyss and her assistant planned to feature perhaps next month—the unveiling of Le Diabolique to the public.
Le Diabolique was a fifty-carat black diamond that glinted red from within. History told that it had been given by a seventeenth-century Belgian duke to the French Queen Anne. It had been stolen less than a week after she’d taken it in hand. The diamond had been recovered and stolen throughout history many times over, and rumor told that anyone who possessed it faced great torment, wickedness and terrible evil. If not the ultimate misfortune of death.
Blyss believed the rumors. The diamond would prove her greatest torment should she not pull off the heist properly this evening. Part one had already been accomplished. Now the handoff.
“Blyss!”
Her assistant, Lorcan Price, was bedecked in a pink bespoke suit and bright purple bow tie. He adjusted his thick black-rimmed glasses and crossed the room, weaving between patrons and wielding champagne flutes in each hand. He gained her side and pressed a cool champagne glass into her hand.
The man seemed to possess a sixth sense about how to please her. Bon mots uttered at the precise moment she was beginning to doubt herself, a compliment about her designer shoes, even a conspiratorially catty wink from across the room during such events as tonight.
Blyss tilted back a few sips of bubbly, eyeing the crowd over the crystal rim as she did so. Most men had a woman draped on their arm this evening and looked oh-so-bored. If they were wise, they’d pay attention to those things that attracted their partners’ eyes, such as all things sparkly. Blyss’s usual type, an older man who wore an expensive suit, tended his nails and hair, and who reeked money, were spread throughout the gallery. Some had even come alone. Such fortune.
But tonight she required someone different.
“The show is going well,” Lorcan said in his quiet yet enthusiastic voice. “The duchess Konstantinov has suggested to me she may loan the gallery her grandmother’s sapphire collection. She’s from old Russian money. Wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve a Fabergé egg stashed away, as well. Isn’t that spectacular?”
“Exquisite,” Blyss agreed. Yet the intrigue of whether or not the duchess did own a Fabergé egg didn’t pique her curiosity. Her heart wasn’t in the moment. Too much to think about. The plan must go off or she faced a horrible future.
“Is all well with the, erm...big surprise?” he whispered conspiratorially.
“Oui, bien sur.” At least, not if anyone cared to study Le Diabolique too closely. “Soon, Lorcan. But I don’t know about announcing it tonight.”
“I will leave it to you, then. You do have the only key to the storage room.”
Always trying to gain that access, Blyss thought. Maybe someday she would trust him to tend the acquisitions. But not yet.
“Keep working the room, Lorcan. And do be sure to introduce yourself to Madame Horchard. She’s filthy.” As in rich. A shorthand the two of them shared. Because if there was one thing that had drawn Blyss to Lorcan, it was his desire to climb the social ladder by means of attaching himself to money. “I must make another round through the gallery.”
They bussed each other’s cheeks. Lorcan knew well that Blyss abhorred getting her lipstick or her hair mussed.
Clutching the goblet, she strode slowly through the crowd, nodding in acknowledgment to those she knew. Normally she noted the flash of bling on ears, at necks, and wrists and fingers. So she had managed ten carats from her lover? Lucky girl. But tonight her mind was a scatter. Nerves made her tense.
Her heartbeats thundered. She inhaled and then exhaled deeply, vying for calm. She hated this feeling of desperation that had settled into her being the past few days. She’d thought to have perfected her life and that smooth sailing was all her future held.
Until her father, Colin Sauveterre, had shown up at her door a month ago, slobbering drunk and crying. His gambling debts had caught up to him. He’d needed her help. But by helping him, she had placed herself on a precipice
