Dancing With Danger (Goode Girls #3) - Kerrigan Byrne Page 0,20

lance of trepidation speared her gut. “You’ve spotted him, too?”

Turning, he lifted his hand in a wave at their voyeur.

Mercy almost slapped it out of the air before he informed her, “His name is Clayton Honeycutt. He’s one of my Fauves.”

“You’re being followed by your own men?” she asked in disbelief, blinking over at their shadow, who nodded in greeting.

“We tend to trail each other. To go very few places alone. Our backs are never exposed, and it keeps us honest—well—at least among our own.”

Something about the way he said this caused her to examine him more closely. He was being wry...and yet...a tightness appeared at the corner of his mouth that hadn’t been there before.

“You have a good eye,” he praised. “An admirable instinct for such things. Not many people can pick us out of a crowd like this.”

Mercy tried to hide that his words pleased her, and found it impossible.

So delighted was she, in fact, that she neglected her defenses against him for a rare, vulnerable moment. Forgot that his masculinity was honed to a razor’s edge, wielded with masterful ease. That his musculature was well-thewed and sculpted like that of a lean predator, one that relied on his speed and stamina as well as his strength.

One that moved about the world with nothing to fear.

And everything to claim as his own.

It became increasingly hard to believe that such a charismatic man, radiating a sort of godlike beauty, walked among mortals like her.

She forgot that she’d promised not to be charmed by him. Not even intrigued.

Let alone enthralled.

Her moment of weakness was all he needed.

His glittering grey gaze, like the silver tip of an arrow, found a chink in her armor and skewered her right through.

He looked at her as no man ever had. As if his eyes only ever sought after her. As if they only knew her, and no one else. No other woman.

And that was a dangerous lie.

One he hadn’t exactly told her, and yet she found herself wanting to believe it.

She needed to quit his company, before she let something more dangerous than a kiss happen...

Before she initiated it.

Marching forward, she kept her eyes on the gate, needing to think of something—anything—other than the kiss he stole from her.

The tender sweep of his lips across hers.

“I don’t think Mathilde loved you either,” she said, half to consider the notion, and half to whip him with it.

“Pardon?” His voice held an edge she didn’t want to look over and identify just now.

“Well, when she wanted to escape her brutal husband, she came to the Lady’s Aid Society...rather than to you. Why do you think that is, Mr. Sauvageau?”

“I couldn’t rightly say...” He sounded pensive. Troubled. And Mercy was glad to hear it, because it made this man seem human.

“Did she tell you she was leaving?” Mercy ventured. “Did she ask you to go with her?”

He was silent for a beat longer than she expected an honest man to be. “No. I knew Gregoire was going back to France, but I was not privy to Mathilde’s plans to leave him, even though I’d demanded she do so many times.”

“Would you have gone with her if she asked?” Mercy slowed her march. Suddenly the gate was getting too close, and she didn’t feel as though she could breathe until she heard his answer.

Which was patently absurd.

“No,” he said again, his tone measured with a chemist’s precision. “Mathilde knew me too well to ask.”

She could think of nothing in reply to that, so she drifted silently forward for a while. Usually, the beavers and waterfowl in the gardens would charm and distract her, but today her notice was captured by a different sort of beast.

It was he who broke the silence. “Mathilde had a ball to attend the night after next, she’d have considered it the greatest tragedy to miss it.”

“Indeed.” Mathilde had informed Mercy of the Midwinter Masquerade being held at Madame Duvernay’s. All of the demimonde would attend. Famous actresses and courtesans. Women who were kept by dukes and royalty. Mediums and occultists, writers and scholars, indeed, artists of all renown and modality.

These had been her people, and Mathilde had wanted to say goodbye before she left forever. She was most adamant about it, in fact, making furtive explanations about people who she might see.

Might her murderer have tried to stop her from attending?

“What will you do now, Miss Goode?”

His question broke her reverie. “Nothing’s changed. I intend to find Mathilde’s murderer, of course. Don’t think