The creature unfurled, emitting a growl, and snapped so quickly at Dartois that it nearly got one of his fingers.

“Sacré bleu!” the Marquis exclaimed, snatching his hand away.

“Lutin, no!” Emilie scolded, stifling a laugh.

“Evil little imp!” Dartois nursed his slender fingers as if the small dog really had bitten them. “Why you are wont to keep such a cur as your companion, I shall never understand.”

Emilie bristled. Lutin was indeed a cur—a little stray she had found outside the Théâtre des Tuileries begging for scraps as an abandoned puppy. The memory only incensed her further as she considered the person who had dumped the unwanted animal—defenceless—in the centre of Paris.

But she swallowed the feelings down. She had learned to do so many years ago. Men did not like outbursts of emotion from women. They did not know what to do with them and considered them a nuisance, an irritating by-product of an otherwise entertaining object.

She feigned a laugh, tickling Lutin under the chin, causing the little terrier-like dog to gaze up adoringly at his mistress. “Not you, nor Lucien,” she said, referring to the Comte de Vergelles. “But this petit monsieur—he is my sweetest comfort and safest confidant, are you not mon petit hérisson?”

“I have yet to meet a hedgehog that bites,” Dartois replied waspishly. “Now, where was I?” He launched back into his description of the sculpture and was just regaining his flow when Emilie caught sight of Lucien.

The noble, clad in silver silk, had an effusion of lace at his throat and diamonds twinkling from both there and the buckles on his gleaming shoes. Gliding through the rooms, he gave off some feeling of otherness, moving like a phantom among the living. That’s what had so captured Emilie initially. He had seemed to exude some power over others. A power she could not account for, nor understand.

Many female eyes followed Vergelles’ progress. Eyes that vied to be those of his future wife. Emilie was not in the running.

The title of wife would not be dangled before her. No. The Comte had offered her a different one, befitting her status as a commoner—that of mistress.

She had not realised what the Comte expected in return for his lavish gifts at the beginning of their acquaintance. He’d spelled it out for her soon enough and she had been on the verge of letting him down gently when her living at the theatre had gone up in smoke. Now, her position was precarious and unless some other security appeared, Emilie would be forced to consider accepting his offer.

But not yet.

“Bonsoir, ma cherie,” the Comte murmured as he reached her side.

The French nobleman bowed over her hand, kissing the air above an emerald ring he had gifted her, hoping to speed her choice. Upon rising, his pale eyes ran over her appearance, and one dark brow arched.

“No matching earrings?”

Emilie’s fingers tightened involuntarily around Lutin’s collar.

“I have a fondness for my pearls.” She raised a hand and traced a fingertip over the perfect white gem dangling from her right ear.

They were not the earrings that Lucien had gifted her to match the emerald ring.

“And I think they suit this gown better than the emeralds,” she said lightly, as if it were a little thing, and turned away from his unyielding gaze. Readjusting the little red neckerchief on Lutin’s neck, she focused on breathing, in and out, in and out. He would give in soon. She had to wait for his initial anger to subside, and then she would throw him one of her disarming smiles and hope that he would not hold it against her.

When she finally looked up at him and smiled, he said nothing. Nor did he return the happy action.

She was fast learning that the Comte had particular requirements when it came to the women he courted for the position of his paramour. Number one among them was obedience.

“Sebastien,” Dartois began. “You found him well?”

Emilie thanked the Marquis for distracting the Comte’s ire from her. She needed to keep the Comte on her side while she made her decision. If she said yes, she would be given financial security beyond what she ever could have imagined. If she said no… well, he could destroy her in Society.

The Comte had turned from the duo to observe the room. His eyes did not stop scanning as he withdrew a solid silver snuffbox from his pocket and flicked the lid open with his index finger. He proceeded to take a pinch in each nostril before deigning to answer his friend.

“Bien,” Vergelles replied, eyes drifting from one female to another around the room. “He has been very busy, our Sebastien. I understand his latest employee has proven a good return on investment already.”

Emilie noticed several of the young women blush under the Comte’s gaze before hiding their whispers and giggles behind painted fans.

“Positive news,” said Dartois, not in the least put off by the Comte’s impolite lack of attention. “I expect that return on investment to be passed on to us when the time comes.”

Emilie knew better than to join in with this conversation. She half-listened, fingers twiddling Lutin’s wispy hair into spikes along his back—her little hedgehog.

“You will tell him I am visiting him soon?”

“I already did,” the Comte replied, snapping the snuffbox shut. “Mademoiselle Cadeaux, are you of a mind to game or converse this evening?”

She was of a mind to do neither, but she knew better than to say so.

“Whatever my Lord desires.”

A smile crept slowly across the Comte’s face, not meeting the pale eyes that contrasted so shockingly with his coal-black brows. Others said he was handsome, but the sharp jaw and aquiline features were ones that Emilie tolerated, not admired. She accepted the Comte’s attentions because she understood her place in the world and its inherent precariousness. She did so because she wished to survive.

CHAPTER TWO

Half an hour later, Emilie and the Comte were at play with two others. Loo was the game, one which Emilie knew the Comte did not care for, but he would rather play than join in what he termed, ‘the pointless chatter of the would-be philosophers’.

While Madame Pertuis’ salons were held to discuss the latest works of the great thinkers of the day, there were plenty whose limited understanding led to uninformed debate, filled with ignorant rantings and self-assured statements that stood on little foundation and large ego. The Comte considered himself above all this. He had no use for chatter about abstract ideas that seemingly had no bearing upon him. Only where philosophy became action did he take note, and that was slow in fermenting in the French populace.

Emilie knew better than the Comte, though she would never say so. Yes, here were the arrogant and the narrow-minded, but there were also those who considered the challenges of the day, or grappled with the preconceived notions Society held. Those discussions, when Emilie heard them, were electric.

Because she was not from the world of these people—the nobility and the elite. She saw parts of Society they were not privy to. The parts that these Societal ideas could shape and affect. But as the Comte’s interest began and ended with his own affairs, she was not given the opportunity to listen to those around her. No. Instead, she was here at play with him and two unknown gentlemen.

“You play better than I,” said one of the strangers.

Emilie had not seen him before. He was English, and though every now and then she heard him converse a little in passable French, he mainly spoke in his mother tongue. She noted that when she had been introduced to him as the Comte’s companion, there had been the slightest hardening of his brown eyes and an almost imperceptible pursing of his lips.

“Merci,” was the only reply the Comte offered, laying another card on the table.

Vergelles did not appreciate chit-chat while at play.

“Have you been in Paris long, Your Grace?” the second stranger, one of Emilie’s own countrymen, asked.

“Nay—I have arrived only lately. A week on Wednesday. This is my first real venture into Society,” replied the Englishman in his deep voice.

He carried a tone of… what was it? Emilie couldn’t put her finger on the impression he was giving off. At first she thought it arrogance, that slow way of speaking, the drawl, but she was not sure from his relaxed pose and half-interest in the game. Perhaps he was one of the ton whose laissez-faire attitude was born from an excess of wealth. It would have no effect on the Englishman if he won or lost at the tables tonight.

“And your first engagement is to Madame Pertuis’ salon? God must be smiling upon you if you secured an invitation so readily,” the French stranger responded.

The Englishman smiled lazily, a note of mocking in his next words. “I am all gratefulness at such a happenstance.”

His cavalier attitude grated on Emilie. She found herself taking an instant aversion to the man. Madame Pertuis may occasionally grate on Emilie, but she was a gracious hostess and to mock the fortune of an invitation to her gatherings was insulting.