an awareness of the larger world pressed in on him again: the salon with its swords strapped into crosses against the wall; the clatter of carts and the screams of street vendors filtering in through the single-paned windows; the irritating telegram from Belinda that had been delivered to his hotel suite this morning.
GWEN TO PARIS WITH ELMA STOP FEAR SHE SEEKS VISCOUNT STOP ELMA OBLIVIOUS STOP PLEASE REASON WITH HER STOP
This development was beyond irritating. Rightfully Gwen should be opening wedding gifts right now. Penning her thank-you notes. Alex had imagined receiving such a note from her. He’d looked forward to it. It would be the moment, he’d decided, that would mark the conclusion of his obligation to Richard.
Instead, she had popped up in Paris, a turn of events that unleashed some irrational foreboding in him. Foreboding . It was the lowest and most pathetic order of worry, based on nothing more solid than a twinge in the gut. A cousin to indigestion. But there was no other word for the feeling encroaching upon him. Rightly Gwen belonged to the same lot of obligations that included his sisters and nieces—an easily managed group, requiring only gifts at the holidays, notes on birthdays, and the occasional postcard (preferably something with a horse or kitten: so Caroline’s littlest had recently informed him). She should not be in Paris. He should not be in Paris. He did not need to be checking on her, or playing his brother’s keeper. If Gerard had sold the lands to Rollo Barrington, let Rollo Barrington have his joy of them. Where Alex needed to be was in Lima, uncovering the plans that Monsanto was hatching.
But no. He was half a world away, tracking down a man named Rollo , for God’s sake, and plagued by a bunch of lunatics in the process. Gerry refused to account for his behavior. Nothing in Pennington’s background suggested that he could afford to flee such a sum of money. And Gwen—well, Jesus Christ. If she thought he kissed about as well as Trent, she’d suffered a serious blow to the brain, somewhere.
Bruneau delivered the obligatory slap to his back. (And now Gwen had him daydreaming , Alex realized with disgust.) Dutifully, he pounded the man in return. The Frenchman retreated a pace and uttered some respectful remark.
Properly it fell now to Alex to suggest a drink at the bar across the street, where they would trade stories of good fights and unfair opponents, and exchange jibes that would add spice to their rematch tomorrow. He would have been glad to buy a round—except, God damn it, he now had to track down not only Barrington but also one naïve heiress and her featherbrained chaperone.
He cursed the invention of the telegram.
All the life in the world teemed on the boulevards, jostling beneath tree limbs laden with lilacs. On the green benches that lined the pavement, dandies lounged in white coats with fur collars, their long mustaches framing cigarettes that they smoked with frowning care. Smartly dressed ladies hopped fearlessly from omnibuses, and servants shuffled past with their various charges—nannies escorting little boys in velvet knickerbockers and cuffs of Belgian lace; maids dragged by tonsured poodles, which lunged at the olive peddlers and made the girls selling fresh carnations shriek and jump away. Every lamppost in view was plastered with colorful playbills, and the boy at the newspaper kiosk cried the headlines continuously, with a voice long since grown hoarse.
Gwen sat beneath the striped awning of a charming little café, sipping a glass of wine and marveling. Twice before she had visited Paris, but she remembered none of this. Previously, her mornings had been swallowed by the dark corridors of the Louvre, her afternoons suffocated in the satin boudoirs of Laferriàre, Redferns, and Worth. Yesterday Elma had insisted they waste the evening in some dark little box at the Opera. But the truth of Paris was not to be found indoors. It was here ,
GWEN TO PARIS WITH ELMA STOP FEAR SHE SEEKS VISCOUNT STOP ELMA OBLIVIOUS STOP PLEASE REASON WITH HER STOP
This development was beyond irritating. Rightfully Gwen should be opening wedding gifts right now. Penning her thank-you notes. Alex had imagined receiving such a note from her. He’d looked forward to it. It would be the moment, he’d decided, that would mark the conclusion of his obligation to Richard.
Instead, she had popped up in Paris, a turn of events that unleashed some irrational foreboding in him. Foreboding . It was the lowest and most pathetic order of worry, based on nothing more solid than a twinge in the gut. A cousin to indigestion. But there was no other word for the feeling encroaching upon him. Rightly Gwen belonged to the same lot of obligations that included his sisters and nieces—an easily managed group, requiring only gifts at the holidays, notes on birthdays, and the occasional postcard (preferably something with a horse or kitten: so Caroline’s littlest had recently informed him). She should not be in Paris. He should not be in Paris. He did not need to be checking on her, or playing his brother’s keeper. If Gerard had sold the lands to Rollo Barrington, let Rollo Barrington have his joy of them. Where Alex needed to be was in Lima, uncovering the plans that Monsanto was hatching.
But no. He was half a world away, tracking down a man named Rollo , for God’s sake, and plagued by a bunch of lunatics in the process. Gerry refused to account for his behavior. Nothing in Pennington’s background suggested that he could afford to flee such a sum of money. And Gwen—well, Jesus Christ. If she thought he kissed about as well as Trent, she’d suffered a serious blow to the brain, somewhere.
Bruneau delivered the obligatory slap to his back. (And now Gwen had him daydreaming , Alex realized with disgust.) Dutifully, he pounded the man in return. The Frenchman retreated a pace and uttered some respectful remark.
Properly it fell now to Alex to suggest a drink at the bar across the street, where they would trade stories of good fights and unfair opponents, and exchange jibes that would add spice to their rematch tomorrow. He would have been glad to buy a round—except, God damn it, he now had to track down not only Barrington but also one naïve heiress and her featherbrained chaperone.
He cursed the invention of the telegram.
All the life in the world teemed on the boulevards, jostling beneath tree limbs laden with lilacs. On the green benches that lined the pavement, dandies lounged in white coats with fur collars, their long mustaches framing cigarettes that they smoked with frowning care. Smartly dressed ladies hopped fearlessly from omnibuses, and servants shuffled past with their various charges—nannies escorting little boys in velvet knickerbockers and cuffs of Belgian lace; maids dragged by tonsured poodles, which lunged at the olive peddlers and made the girls selling fresh carnations shriek and jump away. Every lamppost in view was plastered with colorful playbills, and the boy at the newspaper kiosk cried the headlines continuously, with a voice long since grown hoarse.
Gwen sat beneath the striped awning of a charming little café, sipping a glass of wine and marveling. Twice before she had visited Paris, but she remembered none of this. Previously, her mornings had been swallowed by the dark corridors of the Louvre, her afternoons suffocated in the satin boudoirs of Laferriàre, Redferns, and Worth. Yesterday Elma had insisted they waste the evening in some dark little box at the Opera. But the truth of Paris was not to be found indoors. It was here ,
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