Bohemian, hell. The man was practically a relic of the Regency, with that gesture.
I really should be in Lima, Alex thought, and he took a long swallow of his drink.
The pianist launched into the first bars of the melody. Bizet—the Habanera aria from Carmen. Christ. Unfortunate choice. It required a certain earthiness that she would never manage to pull off.
And then Gwen opened her mouth and began to sing.
Glass to lips, he froze.
From the very first bar, it became clear why she’d kept him, and everyone else, ignorant of her talent: her voice did not belong in drawing rooms.
Table by table, silence spread.
“Quand je vous aimerai?” she sang. “When will I love you? Heavens, I’ve no idea. Maybe never, maybe tomorrow . . . but certainly not today!”
An odd panic fleeted through him—an irrational impulse to stand and leave, or to plug his ears like a frightened boy.
A cheer went up from the back. Her lashes fluttered in startled, gratified reply. Then she threw a wink at the audience.
More cheers, now. God help him, her hand was slipping toward her skirts. She hiked up her hem, flashing an ankle as she launched into the next verse.
“Love is a rebellious bird that nobody can tame. You will call her in vain, if it suits her better to refuse . . .”
As she twirled, her skirts rose higher yet. She was wearing white silk stockings embroidered with scarlet flowers. Her calves were as slim and firm as a can-can dancer’s.
He felt certain that he had not needed to know this.
Indeed, he had not needed to know what her voice sounded like, either. It seemed to wrap around him as sinuously as her arms had done, pressing like a palm against his throat, soft and hot, poised equally to caress or to throttle him. There was power in that voice—power too rich and dark for a sheltered, untested debutante.
But she was not untested, of course. How hard he had tried to forget this: that she had lost and suffered, just as he had. If her smiles came easily, that was not a testament to shallowness or inexperience. It was a testament to her peculiar, unfaltering strength.
“My God,” Barrington breathed. “Where did you find this girl, de Grey? That’s no common music hall voice.”
Alex drew a long breath. Oh, the music hall might be a good start. But Barrington was right. A voice such as hers—as low and smoky as an army encampment, able to transform a mildly risqué French aria into a pornographic fantasy—probably deserved a rarer setting. A harem, say.
Or his bed.
He felt a smile twist his lips. Yes, better to think of that—of beds, and bare limbs, and sweat. Wiser, safer, to focus on what he could slot under the common label of lust.
She dropped her skirts and spun, hands lifting in mimicry of a flamenco dancer, her voice low and silken. “Love is the child of Bohemia; it has never, ever recognized any law . . .”
Richard’s mother had briefly been an actress.
This piece of information disgorged itself wholesale into his consciousness. He could not recall the conversation in which he’d learned it, or any of the details, but he felt certain he was correct.
A strange sensation passed through him. He looked at Gwen with new eyes now. She was doing more on that stage than having a little fun, as she’d put it. She was flaunting something that she had spent most of her life learning to conceal.
His will seemed to split apart beneath the revelation, as neatly halved as beneath a blade.
He rather liked her as she’d been. The Gwen he knew was manageable.
Then again, he’d always thought she could be a great deal more.
He cleared his throat and massaged one wrist. His pulse was banging like a jackhammer. Idiot. All right, bully for Gwen; she was cutting up her heels now in a very fine fashion. But her talents, her courage, had nothing to do with him.
As the pianist segued into the passage that would rightly be sung by the opera chorus, Gwen lifted her hand and curled her fingers in invitation to the crowd. First one man, and then another, picked up the lyrics; as they sang, her eyes found his, sly humor tipping her smile to one side.
The smile jarred him. For a brief moment, he felt thoroughly disoriented—as on those rare occasions when he looked into a window pane and realized, between one blink and the next, that what he had mistaken for a reflection was, in fact, the true scene behind the glass. He forced his attention away from her, though it balked and wanted to linger; he focused on mundane moorings, on the words the drunkards were singing at her bidding. And as he listened with ferocious single-mindedness, understanding suddenly dawned on him.
He laughed out loud. No wonder this song appealed to her. “If you don’t love me, then I love you,” the men were singing, “and if I love you, you’d best beware!” It made a fine summary of Gwen’s love life, to date.