Page 80 of The Art of Theft
?On the night of the reception, as Lord Ingram had explored the château’s hidden passages and looked through the spy ports, he had seen the interior of two rooms. One, small and utilitarian, was on the other side of the château. Charlotte now stood before the door of the other.
She exhaled deeply, inhaled, exhaled again. Lord Ingram had already entered the room a minute ago. The guard at the linen closet, two doors down, pressed his lips together in contempt upon realizing that it was a man rendezvousing with another man. Charlotte pretended to be ashamed.
Once inside, she leaned against the back of the door and bit her lower lip, giving every impression of hesitancy. Lord Ingram, who seemed to have been pacing back and forth in the room before her arrival, stood still for a moment, looking at her from behind his glittering yellow-and-green mask—the better to convey his surprised and tremulous happiness that she, or the man she was pretending to be, had showed up after all.
He closed the distance between them and braced a hand by the side of her head.
“Lieutenant Atwood didn’t laugh,” she said softly. The watchers inside the secret passage most likely couldn’t hear them, but she didn’t want to take the chance.
He grinned. “Lieutenant Atwood is a better man than I.”
He ran his fingers lightly along her beard, and then just as lightly over her paunch. Heat skittered along her nerves, even though he’d yet to touch her skin.
“All right.” His expression turned more somber. “In this position, the watcher can see only my back and the bits of you that I don’t entirely obscure. Once we leave this spot, be more careful.”
“Where is the spy port?”
“Concealed by the ornamental sunburst under the window seat with the books. You ready?”
He turned her and maneuvered her so that her back was against the nearest bedpost. To avoid dislodging her stomach, he stood to her side rather than directly in front. And now he traced the outline of her mask, his cool fingertip leaving a scalding trail.
“Lie with me,” he said in French, in case the watcher could read lips.
He should say things like that more often. She gripped the edge of the bed to show her trepidation. “Monsieur, that is... that is... I don’t know...”
“Do you doubt what I feel for you,chéri?”
Perhaps on the inside he still wished to laugh, but she no longer did. His tone was deeply serious and perhaps a little afraid. As an actor he could not do better. And if he were in any way channeling his own sentiments...
He had said that he loved her, under questioning by the chief inspector who’d suspected him of murder. Dressed as Sherrinford Holmes, she’d been in the same carriage when that happened. But he’d made the admission with his head turned away from her and had never mentioned it again.
Certainly not like this, gazing directly into her eyes, his expression open and vulnerable, his yearning naked.
Her voice caught. “My dear sir, so much stands between us and any possibility of happiness.”
“Yet where the possibility of happiness exists, do we not owe it to ourselves to try?”
Her breaths turned shallow. “I—my life is tidy and contained, sir. I don’t know whether anything will remain tidy and contained anymore, after we... try.”
He set his hand against her cheek. “Perhaps our lives will become more complicated. But that we will be together, does that not mean anything to you,chéri? Does that not make up for some difficulties here and there?”
Her skin scalded at his touch. She set her hand on his wrist. Beneath her fingertips, his pulse raced. Her heart, too, was racing. “What will happen to our friendship? Love can easily dissipate. Should our hearts founder, will we still be friends—or will we become strangers?”
For the first time since she had entered the room, he looked away from her. His hand left her face. Silence, their old companion, returned once again.
A strange melancholy settled over her. In playacting, had they been more truthful with each other than they had ever been in real life?
He turned toward the door. “That may be my wife.”
This, too, was part of the script. She mentally shook herself. They still had their difficult and dangerous task ahead; she could not afford any distractions.
He went to the door, walking without his usual animal grace, but with his shoulders hunched, his gait almost shuffling. He listened, glanced back at her, and said, “You stay here, my friend.”
That was her signal that it was indeed Mrs. Watson and the maharani outside. After he closed the door behind himself, she set her ear to the keyhole and could just make out the sound of Mrs. Watson giggling. “But why, Monsieurle garde, why should we go into a bedchamber? We are not doing anything that requires a bed, are we,mon choux?”
The maharani giggled, too, a rather shocking thing to hear. “Non, mon petit choux doux.And we like how you look at us, don’t we?” she said, now with a distinct Russian accent to her French.
“Please, Mesdames—”
