Aware that she was staring, Mariana redirected her gaze and took in the room around her. To her right stood the gaming table. Seated in one of its five chairs was a gray-bearded croupier, who sat with his face bent to the task of fuzzing the cards. All beards now suspect, she narrowed her gaze on the man before determining this one was genuine as the man’s hair was the same gray.
Her gaze swung left toward the room’s other dominant feature: the most massive and ornately carved bed she’d ever seen. With its scarlet and velvet coverings, it looked like a caricature of a bed one would find in a bordello.
A hot flush crept up the cleft of her décolletage, and her eyes squeezed shut. A specific memory from last night came to her: her hands braced against the bedpost, Nick’s body positioned behind her, short bursts of his breath on her neck, capable fingers unraveling the flimsy scraps of cloth separating her naked skin from his . . .
The door clicked shut, blessedly drawing her attention away from the bed and a memory that served no good purpose. The Madame was gone.
“Madame Larousse has a place for you,” Nick said, “if your arrangement with me ever sours.”
“She thinks me a strumpet?” Mariana felt not an ounce of surprise or outrage at the Madame’s assumption. In fact, it might even delight her.
“What other kind of woman would you be?” he asked, eyes wide and guileless.
A short laugh escaped her. “Life as your spy is infinitely more interesting than life as your wife.” She wasn’t certain when they’d last engaged in light banter, but it felt new. If she wasn’t careful, it could feel like a beginning. She would be more careful.
“The meaning ofla coquine?” she asked in an attempt to right the conversation before it went completely sideways.
“Minx.” He paused before continuing, “Or hussy, depending on your point of view.”
“So this place is what I think it is?”
“Yes.” Nick stepped to a side bar and poured two tumblers of whiskey neat.
“I don’t drink whiskey,” she said, assuming one glass was meant for her.
“Tonight, you might reconsider.”
He offered her a half-full glass, and she took it. “Is there a reason I might need the fortifying effects of whiskey?”
An enigmatic smile curved his lips. “After receiving your request that we meet tonight, I decided this was the perfect place to begin your . . .lessons. . . regarding the fundamentals of espionage.”
“You’re giving me spy lessons”—He winced at her phrasing—“in abrothel?” She thought he would teach her a few tricks of the trade tonight and send her on her way.
“We have three nights until your nexttête-à-têtewith Villefranche.” He set his whiskey on the nearest table and slipped his right hand into the interior pocket of his evening jacket, pulling from its depths a long and slender object.
It was a cigar.
The sudden blaze of mortification fired through Mariana as Nick snipped off the end before striking a match and puffing the cigar alight. A thin and winding column of smoke wafted toward her, its acrid scent of earth and decay filling the room. Cigar secured between thumb and forefinger, he asked, “Would you care for a puff? It is my understanding that life thus far has denied you the pleasure ofappreciatinga man’s cigar. Although, if memory serves—”
“You were there today.” Her heart threatened to thunder out of her chest.
The cherry end of his cigar began to gray with ash. “I have—”
“People,” she finished for him.
He tapped the ash into a crystal dish. “You will never be alone or unsafe, Mariana. Never.”
His words elicited a powerful charge of emotion within her, and she glanced away, lest he see it within her eyes. The moment elongated as neither of them spoke. Nick did enjoy prolonging a moment. In fact, she remembered just the sort of moment he most enjoyed prolonging . . .
Years. It had been years since she’d indulged such thoughts about him. She wasn’t one for dwelling on past failures, but with one touch of his body last night, those years threatened to fade into irrelevance.
Nick cleared his throat, breaking through her unhelpful reverie, before stubbing out his cigar in the dish. His point made, he held up the glass in a toasting gesture and tossed back the entire contents of his glass. She took a compliant sip and couldn’t help a grimace.
“It’s bourbon whiskey from the Americas,” he explained as he began walking toward her. She instinctively braced herself. “Tonight, we will play poker.”
“Poker? It sounds menacing.”
“It’s a card game played on Mississippi riverboats,” he explained in the patient tone one would use with a toddler. “One must employ duplicity and guile to win at it. You mustn’t give yourself away.”
