She forgot that she’d promised not to be charmed by him. Not even intrigued.
Let alone enthralled.
Her moment of weakness was all he needed.
His glittering grey gaze, like the silver tip of an arrow, found a chink in her armor and skewered her right through.
He looked at her as no man ever had. As if his eyes only ever sought after her. As if they only knew her, and no one else. No other woman.
And that was a dangerous lie.
One he hadn’t exactly told her, and yet she found herself wanting to believe it.
She needed to quit his company, before she let something more dangerous than a kiss happen...
Before she initiated it.
Marching forward, she kept her eyes on the gate, needing to think of something—anything—other than the kiss he stole from her.
The tender sweep of his lips across hers.
“I don’t think Mathilde loved you either,” she said, half to consider the notion, and half to whip him with it.
“Pardon?” His voice held an edge she didn’t want to look over and identify just now.
“Well, when she wanted to escape her brutal husband, she came to the Lady’s Aid Society...rather than to you. Why do you think that is, Mr. Sauvageau?”
“I couldn’t rightly say...” He sounded pensive. Troubled. And Mercy was glad to hear it, because it made this man seem human.
“Did she tell you she was leaving?” Mercy ventured. “Did she ask you to go with her?”
He was silent for a beat longer than she expected an honest man to be. “No. I knew Gregoire was going back to France, but I was not privy to Mathilde’s plans to leave him, even though I’d demanded she do so many times.”
“Would you have gone with her if she asked?” Mercy slowed her march. Suddenly the gate was getting too close, and she didn’t feel as though she could breathe until she heard his answer.
Which was patently absurd.
“No,” he said again, his tone measured with a chemist’s precision. “Mathilde knew me too well to ask.”
She could think of nothing in reply to that, so she drifted silently forward for a while. Usually, the beavers and waterfowl in the gardens would charm and distract her, but today her notice was captured by a different sort of beast.
It was he who broke the silence. “Mathilde had a ball to attend the night after next, she’d have considered it the greatest tragedy to miss it.”
“Indeed.” Mathilde had informed Mercy of the Midwinter Masquerade being held at Madame Duvernay’s. All of the demimonde would attend. Famous actresses and courtesans. Women who were kept by dukes and royalty. Mediums and occultists, writers and scholars, indeed, artists of all renown and modality.
These had been her people, and Mathilde had wanted to say goodbye before she left forever. She was most adamant about it, in fact, making furtive explanations about people who she might see.
Might her murderer have tried to stop her from attending?
“What will you do now, Miss Goode?”
His question broke her reverie. “Nothing’s changed. I intend to find Mathilde’s murderer, of course. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that you mentioned you might have an idea of who it could be.”
His eyes shifted, as if sifting through the truths to give her.
“There’s no need for you to find a lie,” she prompted. “You can tell me what you know. You can trust me.”
His assessment of her was slow, but not languorous nor seductive as it had once been. This time, it was full of questions she couldn’t define, and a cynical sort of sadness that slid through her ribs to tug at her heart.
“A man achieves what I have by trusting only that other people will betray him. In my world, naïveté is the chief cause of untimely death.”
“How awful that must be.” She grimaced with distaste. “Why anyone would join a world like that is beyond me.”
“Some of us have no choice,” he murmured, his eyes fixing to a far-off point. “Indeed, it is the belief of the Fauves that the entire world is just such a savage place. We merely chose to accept the fact, and then grant ourselves the greatest chance of survival in this jungle man has crafted for us.”
Mercy considered this. Considered him. For the first time, she imagined that she peeled back the years from his sardonic beauty. Erased the cynical set to his mouth and the ever-present tension in his shoulders. She relieved him of the mantle of menace and the threat of violence, to uncover who he might have been once upon a time.
A boy. Carefree and mischievous. Precocious and witty with that disarming dimple in his left cheek.
What sort of variables formulated by the Fates created this man who stood before her?
What choices had he made?
What choices were made for him?
“How do you know, then, if anyone is ever giving you correct information?” she wondered aloud.
He pondered this. “Oftentimes, if they owe me, or if our interests align, that can make an ally for a time.”
“Well, there we are then!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands together once. “I suppose I owe you for the gold you gave Nora and Titus, so—”
He shook his head in denial, and the sun shone blue off his ebony hair. “That was a payment for services about to be rendered. And I forfeited that to your sister and her husband, not to you.”
“What about a transaction, then,” she offered. “Surely that’s a language you understand.”
At that, his eyes flared with interest. “I’m listening.”
“You tell me what I want to know, and then I’ll tell you what information I have. A fair trade, wouldn’t you say?”
His expression flattened. “Not the transaction I was hoping for, but... I suppose it’ll do.”
“Excellent.” She offered her hand for a shake to seal their deal.
He took it, looking a bit bemused.
Even through her glove, she was suffused with the potency of his touch. Something as innocuous as a handshake with this man felt wicked.
Not wrong, per se.
Illicit.
She was aware of every tactile sensation. Of the rasp the very whorls his finger pads made on the silk. Of the restrained strength in his grip. The way he lingered over the gesture, as reticent as she to let go.
Clearing her throat, Mercy plucked her hand away and reached into her reticule, pulling out a notepad. “You first. Who do you suspect wanted Mathilde dead?”
Raphael’s voice altered as he spoke, too heavy and low to be easily heard over the squeals of happy children, the sounds of unhappy animals, and the chatter of the London elite. “Mathilde was a woman of glorious highs and devastating lows. She often indulged in...substances to help her manage these riotous moods of hers. I knew this could be destructive, but I could not bring myself to admonish her for seeking to control her suffering.”
“Did you provide her with these substances?” Mercy asked, careful to keep the judgment from her voice.
“Sometimes.” He looked out over the heads of the crowd, as if searching the past. “She had spells when she seemed as though her energy would never cease. She did reckless, devastating things. Initiated brawls in public. Seduced other women’s husbands. She even stole from me once to sell to her friends in the demimonde. I’ll admit I have killed for that, but I would never hurt a woman, least of all, her.”