Wicked Becomes You(37)
He nodded and set down the glass, then looked around the room, this collection of various over-moneyed European riffraff eating and drinking themselves into a stupor. “This isn’t the right place to begin,” he said. “We’ll go to Pigalle, shall we?” Why not? Wasn’t as if he needed to sleep.
Her smile caught him off-guard. It made something curious and sweet stir in his chest. “Brilliant! Pigalle it is. But—” She leaned to whisper, and he caught the scent of her, the warm stir of air from her décolletage, and as simple as that, he was hard again. “Let’s tell Elma we’re going to the boulevards instead.”
Gwen took Alex’s arm and stepped down from the carriage into a tremendous din—screams clashing with whistles and clanging bells, snatches of rollicking music, drunken choruses of song. A girl in bicycle bloomers went running past, inserting herself between two gentlemen, grabbing an elbow from each and then shrieking with laughter as they swung her off her feet. The air smelled of tobacco smoke and roasting chestnuts from the street vendors’ braziers. A lilac petal drifted past, pink as a rose in the livid glare.
“Wrong way,” Alex said mildly, and steered her by the elbow to look behind her.
Her jaw dropped.
Above her towered the red-thatched windmill of the Moulin Rouge, its great, electrified blades slowly revolving against a backdrop of low-hanging, scarlet-tinged clouds. Red bulbs flashed along the blades’ edges, and blinked in multilayered strings along the windows and doorways. The combined force of these lamps cast a crimson glare over the crowd passing beneath them, throbbing across the white cutaway jackets and spats of young men, drawing glitter from the stoles and beaded feathers of the women who loitered by the entrance.
“Good heavens,” she said. She felt as electrified as the lights.
“Gwen. Can you not think of a less pious exclamation?”
She slanted a glance at him. “Stars?”
He laughed. “Hopeless. Onward, then.” He proffered his elbow.
Strange that she should feel a moment of shyness as she took it. She stole a glance at his profile as he led her forward. The twins always insisted that he not wear a beard; they admired his jaw greatly, and Gwen supposed they weren’t wrong. It had a sharp, square definition, and made a pleasant frame for his long, mobile, very wicked mouth. But his looks were not what held her interest now. It was his agreement to take her here, although he clearly hadn’t wanted to—and perhaps, also, the stroke of his hand over hers at dinner—that seemed to have set off this fever in her. Every time she looked at him now, some hot, pulsing feeling seized her.
It felt curiously like jealousy.
He doesn’t try to be scandalous, Caroline had once said. He simply can’t be bothered with worrying about what’s proper.
Even now, navigating this chaos—two boys careened past, hooting; a bicycle swerved out of their way—he seemed so at ease. He was not pretending, she realized. His composedness operated at some muscular level. It made sense, in a way: a man who traveled the world must make a home of his body. Alex carried his certainty, his sense of belonging, in his bones.
Like a turtle carrying its shell, she thought. The silliness of the comparison made her swallow a giggle. Still, how comfortable it must be to live as he did! She had no idea how to acquire such confidence, but he made her realize that this was her aim.
They passed under the archway into a hot, cloistered hall done up in red velvet and brass gilding. A false redhead wearing a bored grimace sat inside a glass-boxed booth, collecting money. Alex surrendered two francs for broad cards. The music from the interior was very loud, a vigorous schottische punctuated by muffled cries and laughter.
Alex handed her a card, then stood looking down at her, a slight smile playing over his lips. “All right,” he said. “Chin up, Maudsley. Your fall from grace draws nigh.”
She laughed. “What fall? I intend to jump.”
Two steps onward, the corridor opened abruptly onto a grand dance floor encircled by small tables, flanked by tiers of boxed seating that rose up several stories. Electric chandeliers glared onto the crush of people filling the floor. The blasting music made the floor vibrate. The gleam of lurid red satin drew her attention, and then the sparkle of champagne flutes, the shine of black silk tall-hats, skipping flashes of light across paste jewelry at throats and wrists. At the left, on a stage festooned by scarlet silk drapery and long yellow banners, several women formed a dance line, twirling so madly that their ruffled skirts lifted over their legs, exposing ribboned socks that ended at their bare knees. The denizens of the orchestra pit beneath them were very gentlemanly, Gwen thought, not to look up.