“Well, what?” He would play along. He liked games. They usually worked out in his favor.
“Are you going to stand there all night? Or make yourself useful?”
He stepped forward, oddly flat-footed. He usually had no trouble making himself useful to a woman—in a wide and imaginative variety of ways, if he said so himself—but with this woman he was flummoxed. “I’m not sure where to start.” Sometimes the truth worked best.
She heaved a great sigh and tipped her head to the side. “You’re not a stagehand, are you?”
“Erm, no.”
Annoyance crossed her face. “No matter. You have hands, don’t you?”
He held them up and rotated as if putting them on display for a prospective buyer.
“Surely you can use them to unknot this dreadful corset,” she said, exasperated.
“I see nothing dreadful about your corset.”
In fact, the corset did amazing things for what was a stunning figure. Emphasizing the curves of her waist. Rounding the generous mounds of her bosom.
She snorted. “You don’t have to try breathing in it, do you?”
“Touché.”
She stood, back still to him, and placed her palms flat on the dressing table. He closed the distance separating them, thinking perhaps he shouldn’t. This interaction wasn’t proceeding at all how he would’ve liked.
He stopped three feet from her and contemplated the rather dauntingly complex system of laces and knots. This corset must date back to the 1750s, well before his time of unknotting ladies’ corsets, which these days were simple stays.
“I’m afraid this may be well outside my level of expertise,” heconfessed, buying time, really. For here was the thing: if he began tugging one knot open, then another, and another, he wouldn’t stop until he had the garment on the floor and convinced La Contessa to join him in his bed—or against that wall over there.
“Then what use are you?” she huffed.
Oh, she really didn’t want an answer to that question. He gave her the answer that fit within the bounds of propriety. “Not much, according to more than a few people.”
Her head canted, and again her gaze met his in the mirror. “You’re a proper nob, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know about the proper part.”
Her gaze narrowed. Clearly, her mind was running a calculation, and one and one weren’t making two. “What are you doing here?”
“Enjoying an evening’s entertainment.”
She shook her head. “Here…withme.”
Now, they were getting somewhere.
“As it turns out, I’m here to ask a very similar question of you.” He made her wait a few ticks of time. “What areyoudoing here? End of.”
Chapter Two
Valentina pivoted and faced the nob. With his blonde hair nearly the color of platinum and eyes that called to mind skies of vast clear blue, he looked like an angel. Even his evening coat was pure white.
Then one peered into those clear blue eyes.
And one realized if he was an angel, he was a fallen one.
Further, an unpredictable energy shimmered about this fallen angel.
He was going to foil the finely laid plans that had led her to the Five Graces.
