Dancing With Danger (Goode Girls #3) - Kerrigan Byrne Page 0,50
believe your story. To be certain you had nothing to do with her death.”
Felicity kicked her ankle.
“I understand,” the Duchesse said around another melancholy sigh. “It is hard for us—was hard for us—as you might imagine. And because of where she came from...Mathilde did not trust easily.”
“Of course it was difficult; people are not very understanding, are they?” Leaning over, Felicity placed her cobalt glove over that of the Duchesse. Sapphires over rubies. “I am sorry you lost your love.”
Mercy allowed Felicity’s endlessly romantic heart to soften her own toward the idea of the woman’s innocence.
The Duchesse gave Felicity’s fingers a grateful squeeze, then snatched her hand away. “Please do not be kind to me,” she pled in a watery voice. “Not yet. I will have time to shatter into pieces of grief, but first she must be avenged.”
Visibly grappling for her composure, Her Grace followed Mercy’s gaze out toward the crowd. The revelers had taken on a fantastical quality, like a painted tableau or a moving picture. Vibrant, silken butterflies too frenetic to land.
Mercy put a thoughtful finger to the divot in her chin. “Do you wonder if your stepson has found out about the two of you and disapproved enough to be remonstrative?”
The Duchesse shook her head most violently. “Armand would never get his hands dirty, though he might have hired it done, a local ruffian, no doubt. I was trying to find out when...” She trailed off as something caught her attention.
It wasn’t at all difficult to follow her gaze to exactly what had seized the Duchesse’s notice.
Raphael Sauvageau demanded the consideration of any room he entered.
It was as if he claimed every plot of ground he trod upon, and dared someone to take it from him.
Mercy told herself that her heart only leapt because of the circumstance.
Not the man. Nor the sight of him in formal attire, his shoulders straight and jaw sharp.
Lucifer himself couldn’t have been more devilishly handsome nor shrewd and savage than he, striding at the head of a handful of men who were nigh on nipping at his heels, as if his word, alone, held them on a short leash.
He approached a group of lads playing billiards. All of them, Mercy noted, were not fellows who easily wore white-tie finery, and yet each sported crimson carnations in their buttonholes.
“Do you know him?” Mercy asked the Duchesse.
“Who doesn’t?” she replied ruefully. “I know he is playing a dangerous game tonight. That there are men here baying for his blood.”
“What do you mean?” Mercy asked, unable to tear her eyes away from him.
The Duchesse shifted in her seat. “I overheard a conversation only moments ago between a man named Marco Villenueve and a Lord Longueville. Apparently, Mr. Sauvageau, he—how to say this?—he retracted a deal and blamed it on someone...a butcher?”
“The Butcher of High Street?” Felicity supplied with owl-wide eyes.
“Yes, yes, that’s the one.” The Duchesse nodded. “Everyone who stood around him looked as though they would have murdered him on the spot if they weren’t in the public domain. He’d admitted to taking their money and sending it to Russia.” She placed a hand at the base of her throat. “Russia, in this day and age? Madness.”
Mercy suddenly understood what she was looking at. A tense conversation between the High Street Butchers—a particularly organized rival gang—and the King of the Fauves.
Her lover.
She tried superimposing the man who’d occupied her bed and body last night over the man who stood across the increasingly crowded billiards room.
He’d been rumpled and randy or, at times, tender and tentative. Touching her as if she were as delicate as one of the carnation petals he now plucked from the buttonhole of his enemy and crushed beneath his shoe.
What the devil was he thinking? That was tantamount to a public challenge to men like them, even she knew that.
Wars had been started over less insult.
“Lord Longueville is a dastardly man,” Felicity offered, turning so she could covertly peek over her shoulder in the guise of a stretch. “I heard Father once called him a pustulant boil on the arse of the empire. He is said to have lost his fortune, and thereby became this Butcher of High Street. Why, I wonder, is Mr. Sauvageau challenging him?”
“It makes no sense. He’s generally considered to be a suave and politic fellow...” The Duchesse trailed off again, her eyes narrowing on him. “I heard the men talking about moving against him the moment he leaves tonight. More will be outside the courtyard