House of Cads (Ladies of Scandal Book 2) Page 20

  “I can hardly judge myself,” he told her. “But I’m told I’m not half bad at it.”

  “What a shame we don’t have one here,” said Amy. “You could play it for us, if you would.”

  “Of course,” he said while looking again at the top of Marie-Anne’s head. “I’d never refuse a request.” The light flush now spread to her décolletage, and she’d stopped her embroidery.

  “Well, I’d much prefer to hear a proper harp, if you don’t mind my saying so.” Mr. Harner had been quietly waiting to suggest reading a sermon out of his book, but apparently would settle for a discussion of appropriate music. “We do very well to teach ladies the pianoforte, of course, but some variety would be not be amiss.”

  Phyllida argued that ladies would be better served by the study of philosophy, which sparked a debate among the guests about the merit of educating ladies at all. Marie-Anne fell silent rather than participating. She offered no witticisms that highlighted the absurdities of their arguments, or called attention to their hypocrisies. She just put her needlework aside as they chattered on, gave Mason a brief but direct look that he could not interpret, and said, very succinctly, “I am going to bed.” She left without a word more.

  Hours later he sat in his room at the desk, struggling to draw the delicate flush on her cheeks. The part of her hair, the curve of her ear, the light shining on her curls – these were easy now. But without color there was no way to show the soft rose that had suffused her face.

  Without warning, the panel in the wall opened. She came through, pulling off her wine-colored dressing gown and dropping it to the floor as she walked with purpose. There was only the thin shift beneath. She went straight to the bed, never looking at him. She climbed onto it and, on hands and knees, with a saucy grin, looked back over her shoulder at where he sat stunned.

  “Do not be slow,” she advised him as she pulled the shift up around her hips, baring herself to him. “Or do you refuse my request?”

  He was already out of his chair. There was nothing beneath her shift but skin, and the smell of her readiness. The barest touch, his hand to her thigh, and her whole body responded. She pressed back against his hand, that sweet hum deep in her throat as she stretched like a cat. He wasted no time sitting on the floor with his back to the bed and tugged at her ankles, prompting her to put her feet to the floor on either side of him, urging her down over his face.

  “I take it this means that I win?” he asked before opening his mouth over her.

  She pushed herself against his tongue, fingers of one hand gripping his hair as the taste of her flooded his mouth.

  “Mais non,” she gasped, in a voice slightly muffled by the counterpane. “I believe we both win.”

  He was not inclined to disagree.

  “Say it again.” His voice was a sonorous rumble in his chest where her head rested against him, their naked legs entwined beneath the bedclothes.

  “Rapscallion.”

  She purposely said it like it was a French word, and indeed it very easily could be, the way it rolled off the tongue. He laughed. He loved it, as he loved when she said Kentucky. It was wonderful – she had forgotten how wonderful it was, to have someone who loved every little thing about her, and who seemed not to want to change a thing.

  “You make it sound like a vegetable. Or a sauce. Rapscallion en croûte. Or pâté de rapscallion.”

  “Rapscallion Provençal,” she offered with a kiss behind his ear. She caught his earlobe lightly between her teeth and relished the way he tried to pull her even closer. “I have known more than one rapscallion from Provence, so it fits very well.”

  “I don’t think I like the idea of other rapscallions in your life.” She burbled with laughter, because he said the word in a creditable French accent, mimicking her. His hand, large and warm, came up to hold her breast, and the laughter dissolved into a very different sound. He caught the peak between his fingers, teased her as he lowered his mouth to hers in a deep, deep kiss. “Your life before is your own business, of course.” He was moving his mouth down her throat, little nipping kisses between his words. “But I sure do hope I’m enough scoundrel for you now.”

  His mouth had traveled down to her breast, where he sucked at her. He had the most marvelous way of reducing her to little more than whimpers. She was not used to this. She had never tolerated a selfish lover, but she had not dreamed a man could be like this. A lover who thought of her pleasure first, who was dedicated to it and excited by it, whose own pleasure depended utterly on it – this was new to her. She found it intoxicating.

  “Mm, I think you are enough.” She was beginning to lose all sense of herself. “But perhaps you must prove it.”

  He took this challenge immediately to heart, pressing his fingers inside her as his mouth worked at her breast. It was not long until she was gasping and shuddering, but he did not relent. It was the most exquisite torture, and he knew it. More than that, he knew how she loved it. She pushed against him, spread her legs, panted and bared her teeth – but he kept her there on the edge. It was unbearable. It was everything she wanted.

  Finally she gasped, “I must beg?”

  He took his hand away, smoothed it over her hip and the swell of her buttock as he held himself just an inch away from her. She could feel his heat all along her body, his chest grazing her nipples, their thighs almost touching. She was on fire.

  “Yes,” he said softly in her ear, the heat of his breath sending shivers through her. “Beg.”

  She did. She begged with abandon, with no idea if she was even managing to do it in English. It didn’t matter. It was enough for him. He shoved himself inside her, heavy and hot, the only thing that could satisfy her. The way he groaned at the end, the little catch in his breath as she arched against him in release and he let himself go – oh, she could live on that moment for days, if she must.

  And after, the sweet haze of coming back to herself and finding him there beside her, was just as satisfying. Even more satisfying, when he had that contented half-smile and the beginnings of an auburn beard dusted his jaw. She could feel him fending off sleep, as she did, because to be awake and alone together like this was so very sublime.

  Tomorrow she would wonder if this was foolish. Or perhaps in a week. No, a month at least. What was the hurry in coming back down to earth? Reality was vastly overrated. Aurélie had used to say that the true foolishness was to invite the end of a dream to come any sooner than it must, and Marie-Anne had taken this view as her own, over the years.

  It was true, what he had said. The summer would end and with it, the chance to be with him. If there was one lesson she had learned best in her life, it was that she must not squander the time she had with the people she cared for. She and Richard had thought they would have a lifetime instead of barely two years. But they had not wasted a minute of their time together and though their impulsiveness had come with a price, she had no regrets at all.

  And just so, she should not waste any time she could have with Mason. An hour, a day, a few weeks left in a waning summer – she would take whatever was given, in a world so fickle. Here now in this bed with him, limp with lovemaking and giddy just with the memory of his laughter, she could not remember ever being more content. There was a weightlessness in the pit of her belly, the place inside her that wordlessly informed her she had fallen in love. Very much in love, and it was probably very foolish to love a man like him, but she would think of it tomorrow, or next week, or in a month.

  She traced a finger down his breastbone and up again, then over the arc of muscle at his shoulder. It was remarkable to her, this body so hard and strong from work but with hands that could make art to steal her breath away.

  “Tell me why you make money and run away,” she said. “This is your custom, isn’t it? But what is the money for?”

  His breath stopped for a few moments. In the silence she said a little prayer – thick with dust, as her prayers tended to be – that she had not invited too much r
eality. But she wanted to know. She wanted more of him. More and more.

  “It’s what money’s always for,” he answered at last. “There’s not some grand plan, if that’s what you mean. I’ve always just done whatever honest work I can, to get by.”

  “But this is not honest, Mason, what you do here. You have lied very much.”

  She regretted saying it. It was better to make a joke, to tease so that he was excused from taking it seriously. But he only put a hand over hers to still the movement of her fingers across his skin, and looked at the ceiling as he answered her.

  “What I come from, Marie-Anne… This is nothing. Small lies to trick fools into telling me the truths that they’d rather hide. When I was a boy…” He gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “This is nothing,” he repeated.

  “What is it you come from?” It was not just being poor, she was sure of it. She knew the smell of shame. “You cannot shock me, you know. I was raised by prostitutes.” His head pulled sharply away and he turned surprised eyes on her. “Oh yes,” she assured him. “I told you I have known many. The ones who were my closest friends, they were les dames entretenues. Women who are kept by rich men – well, their men were not always rich. I went to my cousin in Paris, and I found she had a very neat little appartement. A man had met her in a house of prostitutes and became her patron. There were two other women like her who lived in the same street. I was like their little pet. They took care of me, as much as they could.”

  “But you didn’t – I mean, you weren’t…”

  “No, I was never a prostitute, or bought by a rich man.” She smiled at his reluctance to ask it, as if she would be offended. “I thought I would be. It is not too terrible, if you can find a good patron. That is what I thought. But my friends, they wanted me to have a husband, or at least to try. They did not start out as prostitutes. They wanted better for me.” She thought of them when they had met Richard, how Delphine’s face had lit up with joy. “And I did find better. But before I did, I saw very bad things, and very bad people. This is why you cannot shock me.”

  There were questions in him. She could see them forming just behind his lips, but he did not ask them. What a pleasure, to see he was not dismayed. He only put his questions aside and then tensed as he prepared to tell her of his own life. It made her want to soothe him, to run her hands over him in a reassuring caress, an instinct that was tied to the weightlessness in her belly. But she made herself lie still and wait instead of touching him as she wanted to, until he finally spoke.

  “I was kind of an orphan too. I didn’t have a father, and my mother died before I ever knew her, so my uncle and cousin were all the family I had.” He interlaced his fingers with hers and tucked her head close under his chin. It was very comfortable and warm, and a perfect way for him to not have to look at her as he said these things. “My uncle raised me to be a sort of thief. I don’t know what else to call it. We lived on the river. The Ohio. People – settlers – they travelled along the river to go west. And our business was tricking them out of their money.”

  She remembered how he had handled the playing cards, so practiced and deft. “Do you mean gambling?”

  “Sometimes. But it was cheating, not gambling. We worked up and down the river, wherever the new people came through. They were families, most of them, traveling with everything they owned in the world, looking to make some kind of life for themselves. Not rich people.” She felt him hesitate. Her body tried to tell his not to fear, shifting so that she curled around him and gave all the warmth she had. “We had a system, different acts we put on. Different ways to fool them. Cheat at cards to take their last penny. Sell them a fake deed to land someone else owned. Convince them to trade their valuables for a sack of gunpowder that was mostly just dirt.”

  She listened to his heartbeat and wondered. Charlatans were everywhere in the world, and she had seen many in the streets of Paris. It did not seem so much more terrible to her than what he did now – lying and cheating – except for the kind of people who suffered from it. She said so, and felt him stiffen.

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Then you must explain,” she urged him.

  “I don’t know how much you know about America, or Kentucky. But in lots of ways, it’s not any better than here.” He seemed to consider how best to make her understand. He took a deep breath and finally said, “We sold sugar water to dying people, and told them it was a miracle cure. My uncle struck a deal to help the local slavecatcher. Do you understand?”

  He paused as though he had guessed, correctly, that she needed to absorb this overlooked fact, this glaring reality of the far-off place she had incorrectly pictured.

  “That’s what I mean when I tell you he didn’t care who got hurt. That’s what I was taught – money from anyone we could get it from. The consequences didn’t matter as long as we weren’t the ones to suffer them.”

  Marie-Anne braced herself in case she might hear an answer that made her hate him. “How long ago did you do these things?”

  “I was about thirteen years old before I really understood how bad it was. But I knew before that, that we were doing unforgivable things. I’d already started to see the truth.”

  She felt him rub a curl of her hair between her fingers. He was waiting for her to tell him he was unforgivable, but she would not. It was very young, thirteen – the age when a boy should begin to see these things but still too young to know what to do about them. “When did you stop?”

  “Right about that time. One day I just saw… I just decided.”

  His voice had taken on that slow rhythm, that way he had sometimes when he was relaxed and talking about this beautiful, brutal place he had lived. There must be more to such a decision, but she could feel how much he did not want to talk about that time.

  “It’s an ugly world, Marie-Anne. It might be easier to see some places, or dressed up in pretty clothes other places, but I never went anywhere that didn’t have some kind of ugliness at the center of it. And maybe you can’t change it, but sometimes you get a moment. Just moments, where you can choose something. You can choose not to hurt people who don’t deserve it, for one thing. That’s what I mean when I say these gossip papers are nothing. Even if we ruin a reputation, it’s always someone who can recover from it eventually. And it’s never life and death, like it was back home. I make sure of that. I have some rules for myself. My uncle never did.”

  She had relaxed into him again. She could not like the gossip papers, but she knew, just as he did, that there were many varieties of cruelty in the world. And among them, his funny little drawings hardly signified. “You wish to leave that life behind you?”

  He pressed his lips to the top of her hair. “I aim never to be that bad again. I know I did shameful things, and nothing I do now will ever make it right.”

  “You were a boy.”

  “And a quick learner, and a valuable asset. I was good at looking innocent and wholesome. Me and my red hair and freckles – my uncle said they fooled as many people as my forgeries did.” He played with a lock of hair that draped over her shoulder. “I could write out the letters with curls and embellishments, and everything looked official. It was the only use he had for my artistic aspirations.”

  “This is why you do not value your talent?” she asked. He stiffened, which meant she had been too blunt. She did not know how to be gentle, though, when it was such a terrible waste. She propped herself up on her elbow and faced him. “Someone has taught you that this art you make is not special. To me, this is unforgivable.”

  It was very hard not to kiss him, when he had that little wrinkle of concern between his brows. “The rest is forgivable, you mean?”

  “You were a boy,” she repeated. Confident he was no longer selling land he had no right to, she waved this aside and continued with her present concern. “Tell me about these artistic aspirations. It was your uncle who was the imbecile, to say your talent is not special?”

  “Marie-Anne, i
t’s just–” He seemed to search for words, a little exasperated. Very well, she was used to exasperating people. “No one had to tell me it’s nothing special. I never studied it. I just fiddle around whenever I have paper. I never even saw anything that could be called real art until a few years ago, when I went to Boston.”

  Well, now he was exasperating her. He had taught himself this miraculous thing, with no examples to follow, and still he pretended it was nothing unusual! Little Phyllie with her stupid ideas about unspoiled nature would fall in love with Mason next, if she knew.

  Marie-Anne tried very hard to be patient. “Did you not say to me that you wished to use color? To learn painting?”

  “Yes, but.” The purple flush began on his neck. Now she could see how it radiated down to his chest, too. “I can’t.”

  “But why? You do not know where to find the paint?” He didn’t answer, and the flush did not abate. “Why, this can’t? Tell me what is to stop you.”

  “Because it’s not for people like me,” he said, like it was absurd that he had to explain something so simple. “You think they’d let someone like me into the Royal Academy? It’s like this house, and these people. I’m not supposed to be here. They don’t let people like me into places like this.”

  Marie-Anne took a breath, prepared to dispute this before she realized that she could not. She didn’t know how anyone was let into the Royal Academy, but he was probably very right. Anything with “royal” in the title must, to her mind, be obscenely exclusive. It would be the same if he tried to learn from any worthwhile teacher. It always required introductions and the right connections. And money, of course.

  She put her hand at the base of his throat, her fingers cool against his flushed skin. “You believe you are not good enough.” She stopped abruptly to swallow down the sudden tears that pressed at the back of her throat. It was not his art he didn’t think good enough – it was himself. He had not had, as she did, people who told him he deserved better. “But your talent is immense, that is what matters.”