“That’s all?” Beaumont asked. “Are you going to leave us in suspense? What does she look like?”
Dain shrugged. “Black hair, grey eyes. Something near five and a half feet, and between seven and eight stone.”
“Weighed her, did you?” Goodridge asked, grinning. “Would you say the seven to eight stone was well distributed?”
“How the devil should I know? How could anyone know, with all those corsets and bustles and whatever else females stuff and strap themselves into? It’s all tricks and lies, isn’t it, until they’re naked.” He smiled. “Then it’s other kinds of lies.”
“Women do not lie, my lord Dain,” came a faintly accented voice from the door. “It merely seems so because they exist in another reality.” The Comte d’Esmond entered, and gently closed the door behind him.
Though he acknowledged Esmond with a careless nod, Dain was very glad to see him. Beaumont had a sly way of getting out of people precisely what they least wished to reveal. Though Dain was up to his tricks, he resented the concentration needed to deflect the cur.
With Esmond present, Beaumont would not be able to attend to anyone else. Even Dain found the count distracting at times, albeit not for the same reasons. Esmond was about as beautiful as a man could be without looking remotely like a woman. He was slim, blond, and blue-eyed, with the face of an angel.
When he’d first introduced them a week earlier, Beaumont had laughingly suggested they ask his wife, who was an artist, to paint them together. “She could title it ‘Heaven and Hell,’” he’d said.
Beaumont wanted Esmond very badly. Esmond wanted Beaumont’s wife. And she didn’t want anybody.
Dain found the situation deliciously amusing.
“You’re just in time, Esmond,” said Goodridge. “Dain had an adventure today. There is a young lady newly arrived in Paris—and of all things, it’s Dain she runs into first. And hetalkedto her.”
All the world knew Dain refused to have any dealings whatsoever with respectable women.
“Bertie Trent’s sister,” Beaumont explained. There was a vacant chair beside him, and everyone knew who it was intended for. But Esmond wandered to Dain’s side and leaned on the back of his chair. To torment Beaumont, of course. Esmond onlylookedlike an angel.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “She does not at all resemble him. Obviously it is Genevieve she takes after.”
“I might have known,” Beaumont said, refilling his own glass. “Met her already, have you? And did she take after you, Esmond?”
“I encountered Trent and his kinswomen a short while ago at Tortoni’s,” Esmond said. “The restaurant was in an uproar. Genevieve—Lady Penbury, that is—has not been seen in Paris since the Peace of Amiens. It became very clear she had not been forgotten, although five and twenty years have passed.”
“By Jupiter,yes!” Goodridge cried, slamming his hand upon the table. “That’s it, of course. I was so stunned by Dain’s astonishing behavior with the girl that I never made the connection.Genevieve. Well, that explains it, then.”
“Explains what?” Vawtry asked.
Goodridge’s gaze met Dain’s. The former’s expression grew uneasy.
“Well, naturally, you were a trifle…curious,” Goodridge said. “Genevieve’s a bit out of the common run, and if Miss Trent’s the same sort of—of anomaly, well, then, she’s rather like those things you buy from Champtois. And there she was, in the very man’s shop. Like the Trojan horse medicine case you bought last month.”
“An odd piece, you mean,” said Dain. “Also, undoubtedly, an outrageously expensive one. Excellent analogy, Goodridge.” He raised his glass. “I could not have put it better myself.”
“All the same,” said Beaumont, glancing from Goodridge to Dain, “I can’t believe a Parisian restaurant was in an uproar over a pair ofoddfemales.”
“When you meet Genevieve, you will comprehend,” said Esmond. “This is not merely a beauty, monsieur. This isla femme fatale. The men plagued them so, they could scarcely attend to their meal. Our friend, Trent, was much provoked. Fortunately for him, Mademoiselle Trent exercises great restraint upon her own charm. Otherwise, I think, there would have been bloodshed. Two such women…” He shook his head sadly. “It is too much for Frenchmen.”
“Your countrymen have odd notions of charm,” Dain said as he filled a glass for the count and handed it to him. “All I noted was a razor-tongued, supercilious bluestocking of a spinster.”
“I like clever women,” said Esmond. “So stimulating.Mais chacun à son goût. It delights me that you find her disagreeable, my lord Dain. Already there is too much competition.”
Beaumont laughed. “Dain doesn’t compete. He barters. And there’s only one type he barters for, as we all know.”
“I pay a whore a few coins,” said Dain. “She gives me exactly what I require. And when it’s done, it’s done. Since the world seems to be in no danger of running out of whores, why should I go to what we all know is excessive bother for the other sort?”
“There is love,” said Esmond.
His listeners broke into loud guffaws.
When the noise subsided, Dain said, “There seems to be a language gap, gentlemen. Wasn’t love what I was talking about?”
