His mouth went dry when she bent forward and untied the laces of her boot. She kicked the boot off her foot and paused, possibly having second thoughts. “You don’t have to do this.”
Her gaze shot up to meet his. “But Yvette and Lisette are so impressed.”
“A dubious honor, at best.”
Her eyes lit up with humor before they darted away, and gratification surged within him. How he delighted in amusing her. He was in trouble.
From the edge of his peripheral vision, he watched Mariana take her dress in hand and lift it fold over fold until the hem rested on her thigh. In a thrice, she freed the stocking from its garter and slipped it down the smooth length of her leg. Secured between forefinger and thumb, she tossed the delicate stocking, allowing it to flutter to the table. Yvette and Lisette clapped with glee.
Nick needed a large dose of spirits for his suddenly parched mouth. He reached for the whiskey and refilled his tumbler before setting the decanter on the felt. He suspected he would need several more top ups before this night was finished.
Play resumed, and Mariana lay a flush face up, a shy, sly smile curling about her rosy lips. Delectable was that smile. He wanted a nip of it. Of course, she wouldn’t give him one, not once he showed his cards.
Yvette and Lisette laid down two pairs each, and Nick hesitated. Mariana had agreed to potentially strip naked based on the strength of her hand, and his full house was one of the few combinations that beat a flush.
Like ripping a bandage off a fresh wound, he slapped his cards face up onto the felt tabletop. He half expected Mariana to throw her cards at his face or, perhaps, never speak to him again.
She did neither. Her lips firmed into a straight frown—he experienced a pang of loss for her cute, curly smile—and she fixed him with an intense glare. “How do you know of this place?”
Impressed by her restraint, he cleared his throat. “In mymétier, one learns of such venues.” He tugged his cravat loose and tossed it into the pot as his wager.
“Paris,” she began in a conversational tone that he didn’t trust, “must be ripe withsuch venues.”
He nodded a terse response, hoping to suppress this particular conversational thread, and pretended to focus on the game. Yvette and Lisette tossed one garter each into the kitty. Mariana reached down and again gathered up her dress fold by fold before unhooking the garters on her other leg, her movements quick and efficient as if this situation was mundane, banal even.
Like a green boy on the verge of his first view of female flesh, Nick’s heart doubled its rate. He should avert his gaze. It was the gentlemanly course of action, but all hope of the high ground was lost when his gaze snagged on the instep of her narrow foot. The bones of her feet matched the rest of her: long and lithe. Elegant. The woman had elegant feet.
He must gain control over himself. This was an example of how a moment could spin out of control around Mariana. How easily he could ask if her feet ached, if they required a massage. It was this sort of moment he’d been avoiding for most of their marriage. No matter how he feigned indifference, he wasn’t. The wordcheapcame to him again.
Finally, she straightened and tossed both stocking and bright pink garter into the kitty. It was an unusual pink of the sort one would expect to find in the tropics where everything and everyone ran just a bit hotter . . .
In a desperate bid to regain control of this night, Nick picked up the discarded remnant of their conversation and began stating facts in the hope they would rescue him from the erotic fiction his mind was creating. “In the thirteenth century,” he began, his tone brisk and matter-of-fact, “Louis the Ninth decreed prostitution legal on nine streets in Paris in an effort to control its spread throughout the city. Rue de la Huchette was one of those streets. Today, more than one hundred and eighty brothels populate Paris.”
“Such a precise number,” she said. “One might think you aconnoisseur.”
Her voice had grown cold and distant. Just where he needed it to be. Hot and close was too distracting. “Connoisseurisn’t the correct word for my interest. And you know it.”
“Do I?” she countered. “Do I know a single true thing about you?”
“Yes,” he stated, daring her to look at him.
Her gaze, however, remained steady on her cards. She was processing his response and, more specifically, that word.Yes. Wouldn’t it have simplified matters to have saidno? Implicit in that word would have been that she’d never known him.
But he’d replied the opposite. It was as if he had a basic need to preserve the thread of their old connection, a thread he’d severed. Or so he’d convinced himself. One day in her presence outed the lie.
Her brows lifted to her hairline, and she gasped, bringing her fingertips to her mouth. Nick followed the direction of her gaze, and a far more cynical response escaped him in the form of a short, single-note chortle.
Yvette and Lisette had stood and were now slinking around each other, slowly unbuttoning one another’s dresses. In unison, they shimmied their shoulders and allowed their dresses to fall to the floor. Neither wore a chemise, only short pantalettes and small corsets that served to lift exposed breasts, nipples immodestly puckered.
Waves of tension radiated off Mariana as the trollops tossed their dresses into the pot and giggled. Nick knew better than to react.
All eyes swung toward Mariana, even the croupier’s. Hers was the next move. A flush of deep rose crept along the delicate ridge of her collarbone as she did the unexpected: her fingers reached across her body and found the three buttons located on the side of her dress before flicking them out of their loops.
The night might have gotten away from him.
“Mariana”—He spoke up, because he must—“you don’t have to do this.”
“Don’t I? I must abide by the rules of the game if I’m to stay in the game, correct?”
