For reasons I would never understand, I blurted out the truth just then to this woman I hardly knew. “I wonder if we have missed our opportunity.”
She nodded, her eyes warm with sympathy. “I know what youmean. It is not good to wait. When you know what you want, you must move towards the culmination, but carefully,” she warned. “These things must be done with delicacy, with grace. But there cannot be delay. A man will lose his nerve, and if his nerve is gone...” Her voice trailed off and she turned down the corners of her mouth.
“Yes, well. One would hate to see him lose his... nerve... as it were,” I agreed.
She leant forward, her expression serious. “The time is ripe, my dear. You must not permit further delays to wreak the havoc upon youramoureux.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“I suggest that you choose one of my private rooms, now, quickly. Before you succumb to doubts. A lovely woman has no need to perform, to seduce. She has only to offer herself,” she counseled.
“And if he puts me off?”
“Then you must play the bull! You must seize him and be the dominant one.”
I considered this. My attraction to Stoker was a complicated thing, not least because of the complexity of the man himself. His muscular masculinity concealed a gentle heart that throbbed to a poet’s rhythm. He was sentimental, tender even, where I was pragmatic and logical. In spite of his prodigious scientist’s brain, he was the most delightfully romantic soul I had ever known. Music could rouse him to passion or pity, and a few lines of Keats were as necessary as bread to him.
In contrast, my own emotions had so often to be buttoned and corseted and strapped into place, I hardly knew how to let them off the leading rein at times, preferring the tidy taxonomies of my work and robustly unsentimental couplings to unfettered feelings. It was not surprising that I was won over by a soul so different to my own in its expression and depth of affection.
But it was not his soul that kept me awake at nights, not his tenderness that drove me to chilly cold-water baths and vigorous exercise. No matter what I tried, there was a clamor in the blood that would not be quieted. Too often I had glimpsed that gorgeously developed physique, sculpted by the hand of Nature to perfectly suit my taste, I had no doubt. Every inch of him was firmly muscled and sleek, his thighs and shoulders beautifully molded, his flanks...
I dragged my thoughts away from Stoker’s flanks with a great deal of effort and even more regret. There was no help for it. I desired him in every sense of the word, and it was his masculinity, so pronounced and defined, so opposite my own form, that enchanted me. And the power of that masculinity was no small part of its attraction. Stoker offered the delicious paradox of a man who could easily force submission but would never attempt it. With him, I could surrender every bit of the control I had fought so hard to achieve. I could unbuckle the clasps, unbind the ties; I could simply be. And that notion was the most seductive of all. So Madame Aurore’s idea that the best way to resolve the situation was to play the aggressor was unsettling. I had my doubts it would work with Stoker—he could be maddeningly stubborn when he chose. And if it did work, did I even want him on those terms?
“You have given me much to think on,” I told her. “Thank you.”
She shrugged. “Of course.”
I dragged my thoughts back to the reason for our visit to the club. My gaze fell to the diamonds scattered over her gown. “Your stars are very beautiful,” I told her in a casual tone. “I have been admiring them.”
She dimpled at me. “Gifts. From my generous admirers.”
“They are all so similar, I wonder how you can tell them apart,” I ventured, hoping she would invite me to look more closely at them.
But she merely smiled her inscrutable cat’s smile. “Believe me, mademoiselle, I know them, each and every one. Of course,” she went on,“I cannot wear them all at one time. There are too many of them. I wear only a few tonight, and all of these are from an American gentleman I knew long ago.” I remembered what Tiberius had told us about her American millionaire and felt a rush of satisfaction. The prince’s Garrard star was not on display.
Madame Aurore gestured vaguely towards a closed door on the opposite wall. “My dressing room. The rest are all tucked away in a safe. One cannot be too careful with so many strangers about,” she said sagely. Her expression was touched with sadness. “One cannot be too careful in any case as a woman in London these days.”
“The murders in Whitechapel,” I murmured.
“Horrifying. One thinks of those poor wretches...” Her voice trailed off.
“And one thinks how easily it mightn’t be them,” I finished. Her eyes locked with mine and I knew we understood one another.How easily it might be us.
“I am told you endured the siege of Paris,” I said softly. “That must have held its own terrors.”
She gave me a measured look. “I suspect you are acquainted with terror yourself, my dear.”
I thought of the perils I had endured, the near tragedies I had survived, and for all my brushes with disaster, I could not number amongst them a fate as awful as what had befallen the women in Whitechapel.
“I have been lucky,” I said simply.
“Yes,” she said in a slow voice, “I think luck has a great deal to do with our fates. Our destiny lies in our stars.” She traced one of her diamond stars with a fingertip. “But enough of this grim talk for the evening! You have come to enjoy yourself. We will not think of the sad ones just now.”
She rose then, shaking the folds of her chiffon gown and passing ahand over her unbound hair. “I hope you have refreshed yourself, mademoiselle?”
She nodded towards the plate of tiny pastries. We had scarcely made an impression upon them, but I was conscious of the heavy sweetness left on my tongue. I rose, nudging Vespertine gently out of the way. He yawned, his jaws opening wide, and I gave him a pat of farewell.
“He likes you,” she told me. “He does not take to everyone.”
