Silk Is For Seduction by Loretta Chase Page A

more than what they want,” she said. “I can make them unforgettable . Have you drifted so far beyond the everyday concerns of life that you can’t understand? Is nothing in this world truly important to you, important enough to make you stick to it, in spite of obstacles? But what a silly question. If you had a purpose in life, you would give yourself to it, instead of frittering away your days in Paris.”
    He should have realized she’d strike back, but he’d been so caught up in her passion for her dreary work that she took him unawares. An image flashed in his mind of the world he’d fled—the little, dull world and his empty days and nights and the pointless amusements he’d tried to fill them with. He recalled Lord Warford telling him, You seem determined to fritter away your life.
    He felt an instant’s shame, then anger, because she’d stung him.
    Reacting unthinkingly to the sting, he said, “Indeed, it’s all sport to me. So much so that I’ll make you a wager. Another round of cards, madame. Vingt et Un—with or without variations, as you choose. This time, if you win, I shall take you myself to the Comtesse de Chirac’s ball.”
    Her eyes sparked—with anger or pride or perhaps simple dislike. He couldn’t tell and, at the moment, didn’t care.
    “Sport, indeed,” she said. “One rash wager after another. I wonder what you think you’ll prove. But you don’t think, do you? Certainly you haven’t stopped to ask yourself what your friends will think.”
    He hardly heard what she was saying. He was drinking in the signs of emotion—the color coming and going in her face, and the sparks in her eyes, and the rise and fall of her bosom. And all the while he was keenly aware of the place where her sharp little needle had stabbed him.
    “Nothing to prove,” he said. “I only want you to lose . And when you lose, you’ll admit defeat with a kiss.”
    “A kiss!” She laughed. “A mere kiss from a shopkeeper. That’s paltry stakes, indeed, compared to your dignity.”
    “A proper kiss would not be mere, madame, or paltry,” he said. “You may not pay with a peck on the cheek. You’ll pay with the sort of kiss you’d give a man to whom you’ve surrendered .” And if he couldn’t make her surrender with a kiss, he might as well go back to London this night. “Considering your precious respectability, that’s high stakes for you, I know.”
    One flash from her dark eyes before her face turned into a beautiful mask, cool, impervious. But he’d had a glimpse of the turbulence within, and now he couldn’t walk away if his life depended on it.
    “It’s nothing to me,” she said. “Haven’t you been paying attention, your grace? You haven’t a prayer of winning against me.”
    “Then you’ve everything to gain,” he said. “Easy entrée into the most exclusive, most boring ball in Paris.”
    She shook her head pityingly. “Very well. Never say I didn’t warn you.”
    She returned to her chair and sat.
    He sat opposite.
    “Any game you like,” she said. “In any way you like. It won’t matter. I’ll win—and it will be most amusing.”
    She pushed the cards toward him.
    “Deal,” she said.
    A t the time of the French Revolution, Marcelline’s aristocratic grandfather had kept his head by keeping his head. Generations of Noirots—the name he’d taken after fleeing France—had inherited the same cool self-containment and ruthless practicality.
    True, her passions ran dark and deep, as was typical of her family, on both sides. Like them, though, she was quite good at hiding what she felt. She’d had to teach her sisters the skill. She, apparently, had been born with it.
    But the casually disparaging way Clevedon referred to her shop and her profession made her blood boil.
    That was noble blood, too, running in her veins—no matter that hers was the most corrupt blue blood in all of Europe. But Noirot was a common name, as common as dirt, which was why Grandpapa had