Page 52 of A Treacherous Trade

Luckily, I had that much and more on my person, as I’d made the hasty decision to keep Night Horse’s coin with me even after I went home to change.

“Very well,” I said, then cleared the hoarseness out of my voice with another—more careful—sip. “I shall be happy to pay that and more.”

I could only imagine that my face matched the scarlet of the walls. To this nondescript porter of people, I was placing an order for sex. With another woman.

Technically, this wasn’t illegal. Oscar had once bemoaned the fact that criminal sodomy only pertained to men.

“Likely because the law was written by men, and men like the idea—the sight—of women with each other,” he’d said. “No man in their right mind would prohibit that by law.”

I’d giggled at his wickedness that day, yet mourned the unfairness of his plight.

The footman bowed and abandoned me to wallow in my own mortification, and I did so by draining the glass of champagne.

A man caught my eye.

I hesitated to call him a man, as he was undoubtedly younger than my nine-and-twenty years. Scandalously younger… by perhaps as much as a decade. Gold hair and tawny skin festooned a form so graceful and agile that I might have guessed him a young athlete at University.

As he chatted with a small gathering over a billiard table, his smile was easy, confident, and his blue eyes alight with interest and mischief.

His beauty was undeniable. Unrivaled by anyone in the room.

I stared so long without blinking that the light began to blur a little, as did his features, until a memory superimposed itself over reality.

A blonde university lad standing over a table full of loved ones, toasting the future.

Our future.

A going-away party seeming like practice for the engagement soiree we’d host once he returned from America.

Loose-limbed confidence bordering on arrogance as he twirled me in a reel… looking at me as ifIwere unrivaled by anyone in the room.

Kissing me in the dark.

Hands everywhere.

Promising me the world.

I hadn’t realized I’d been biting my lip until a sting permeated my memories and I winced.

“You like what you see?” A dark whisper in my ear tinged by lush, Russian sobriety.

With a littleeepof surprise, I jerked taut, but didn’t turn, knowing whom I would find.

Jorah David Roth would stand taller than any man I knew, his lids heavy as he looked down his patrician nose at me in wicked analysis. Hair the color of desert soil darkened with pomade and arranged with a perfect part. Eyes as difficult to read as it was impossible to determine the color. Green? Grey? Brown?

All of these. And none of these.

He kept everything about himself a secret. His name to most. His age to all. His residence, provenance, and motives were nothing but fodder for intense speculation.

I’d given him every opportunity to avoid me tonight. Yet here he was, as if eons of pain didn’t lie between us.

I blinked, and the blonde boy’s face was his own again, as he sifted a hand through his hair in a gesture meant to call attention to the sensuality of his every move.

I suddenly noted the presence of a few men in the room mingling with others… rather than white or black, their neckties were blood red. Like the gowns.

He was employed by the house, this boy. Jorah surely catered to every taste.

“I was merely considering how brave you are, to offer men to other men,” I said, proud that my voice sounded like my own, even in the proximity of such power.