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Its pages held none of Madame Noirot’s remarks about Clara’s style—or lack thereof. At the time, he’d dismissed them from his mind. Or so he’d thought. Yet he found them waiting, as though the curst dressmaker had sewn them onto his brain.
When last he’d seen Clara, she’d been in mourning for her grandmother. Perhaps grief’s colors did not become her. The style ... Confound it, she was grieving! What did she care whether she wore the latest mode? She was a beautiful girl, he told himself, and a beautiful girl could wear anything—not that it mattered to him, because he loved her for herself, and had done so for as long as he could remember.
Still, if Clara were to dress as that provoking dressmaker did ...
The thought came and hung in his mind through the last scenes of the performance. He saw Clara, magnificently garbed, making men’s heads turn. He saw himself proudly in possession of this masterpiece, the envy of every other man.
Then he realized what he was thinking. “Devil take her,” he said under his breath. “She’s poisoned my mind, the witch.”
“What is it, my friend?”
Clevedon turned to find Gaspard Aronduille regarding him with concern.
“Does it truly matter what a woman wears?” Clevedon said.
The Frenchman’s eyes widened and his head went back, as though Clevedon had slapped him. “Is this a joke?” he said.
“I want to know,” Clevedon said. “Does it really matter?”
Aronduille looked about him in disbelief. “Only an Englishman would ask such a question.”
“Does it?”
“But of course.”
“Only a Frenchman would say so,” said Clevedon.
“We are right, and I will tell you why.”
The opera ended, but the debate didn’t. Aronduille called in reinforcements from their circle of acquaintance. The Frenchmen debated the subject from every possible philosophical viewpoint, all the way to the Hotel Frascati.
There the group separated, its members drifting to their favorite tables.
The roulette table was crowded, as usual, men standing three deep about it. Clevedon saw no signs of any women. But as he slowly circled it, the wall of men at the table thinned.
And the world shifted.
Revealed to his view was a ravishingly familiar back. Again, her coiffure was slightly disarranged, as though she’d been in a lover’s embrace only minutes ago. A bit was coming undone, a dark curl falling to the nape of her neck. The wayward curl drew one’s gaze there and down over the smooth slope of her shoulders and down to where her sleeves puffed out. The dress was ruby red, shockingly simple and daringly low cut. He wished, for a moment, he could have her captured like that, in a painting.
He’d title it Sin Incarnate.
He was tempted to stand beside her, close enough to inhale her scent and feel the silk of her gown brush his legs. But a roulette table was no place for dalliance—and by the looks of things, she was as engrossed in the turn of the wheel as everybody else.
He moved to a place opposite her. That was when he recognized the man standing next to her: the Marquis d’Émilien, a famous libertine.
“21—Red—Odd—Passed,” one of the bankers said.
With his rake another banker pushed a heap of coins toward her.
Émilien bent his head to say something to her.
Clevedon’s jaw tightened. He let his gaze drop to the table. Before her stood piles of gold coins.
“Gentlemen, settle your play,” the banker called. He threw in the ivory ball, and set the wheel spinning. Round and round it went, gradually slowing.
That time she lost. Though the rake took away a large amount of gold, she appeared not at all troubled. She laughed and bet again.
Next time Clevedon bet, too, on red. Round the ball went. Black—Even—Missed.
