Wicked Becomes You(38)
They stepped a foot into the crowd, and a shattering explosion pierced the din, followed immediately by another. She startled before realizing that someone nearby must be throwing glasses against the wall.
“How fortunate,” she began, laughing, and then realized she would need to raise her voice considerably. “How fortunate,” she shouted, “that I practiced breaking things yesterday!”
Alex cupped his ear. “What’s that?” he yelled.
She took a deep breath. “I said how fortunate—”
His laughter brought her to a halt. He’d heard her perfectly. She stuck out her tongue at him.
He leaned down and put his mouth against her ear. The touch startled her to a dead stop. “Watch out,” he said, his voice low and startlingly quiet, his breath hot. “Someone’s going to take that as an invitation.”
Goose bumps broke out on her arms. It sounded less like a warning than a promise.
As he straightened, a shiver moved through her. She touched her tingling ear and looked blankly away—and then blinked and peered harder at the stage. One by one, each of the dancers gave a great whoop, threw up her arms, and—Gwen went on tiptoes to confirm it—slid straight down to the floor, one leg stretched flat before her, the other extended behind.
Oh, no. If that was what the cancan required, she would not be learning it.
Without warning, Alex yanked her into his body. A high-kicking dancer pranced past, her slippered foot sailing past Gwen’s ear. “What a dangerous dance,” Gwen said in bewilderment. “Someone will lose an eye!”
He sputtered out a laugh, then nodded and yelled, “Outside, then, before we’re blinded by chorus girls.”
She started to protest, and then realized he did not mean for them to leave; he was leading her past the bandstand, toward a set of doors that opened onto a garden.
She took a grateful breath as they stepped into the warm night air. Strings of colored lanterns illuminated the grounds, and as a mild breeze blew over her, it loosed the sound of a thousand tiny bells, shivering and silvery, strung from the lime trees at the garden’s edge. She took a step, and then stopped dead, too startled even to squeak: a monkey had just raced past her skirts.
“They’re tame,” Alex said. “But I wouldn’t try to pet one.”
She gave him an astonished look—then did a double take. “There is an elephant behind you,” she whispered. The giant stucco beast towered over the small stage to its right. Save for its height—it might have outmatched a three-story building—it looked startlingly lifelike, its hide painted in mottled shades of gray, its great, drooping wrinkles scored by the hand of a very talented sculptor.
“Yes,” he whispered back. “A very overburdened elephant, with an orchestra in his rib cage and an Egyptian dancer in his belly. Alas, ladies are not allowed inside.” The flash of his white teeth lent this piece of information a pleasurable air of scandal.
“How unjust,” she murmured. At the front feet of the elephant, a fortune-teller was cooing destinies. Tucked under his tail was a refreshment stand. Nearby, a small queue was forming to play a machine made of painted wooden dials. A young lady pulled the lever on the side of the box; the wooden wheels spun round, coming to rest on various images: an apple, a pig, a tree. The result disappointed the audience, who hissed sympathetically.
“Beer?” Alex asked.
She nodded mutely.
They procured two glasses of Allsopp from the stand, but when they turned away, a freckled girl in a blue gown that barely covered her breasts bounded up and caught hold of Alex’s sleeve. She spoke in a colloquial patter that Gwen could not follow, and he replied at an unintelligible clip, sounding polite but amused. From the vehement shake of her curling black head and the tug she gave to his cuff, the girl disagreed. But she was having trouble maintaining her pout; it continually broke into a smile.
He glanced at Gwen, one brow lifting apologetically, and then stepped sharply free of the girl’s grasp. The girl spared her a glare before whirling away and stalking back into the ballroom.
“What did she want?” Gwen asked.
His lips canted as he handed her a glass. “Company.”
“Oh.” To her irritation, she felt a blush heat her face. “But—she knew I was with you!”
“I don’t think that bothered her,” he said, laughing.
It took a moment to follow the implication of this statement. Then, as she followed him to a nearby table, her hand flew to her mouth. No! Surely she was misunderstanding him!
To hide her shocked expression, she pretended a close interest in the vase of orange tulips sitting atop the tablecloth. Such a strangely domestic appointment amidst this bohemian scene. Her eyes rose again to the spectacle of the elephant, from which spilled a peculiar, foreign melody. A few couples were twirling to the song on the small, canopied dance floor.