The Dream Thief by Shana Abe Read Free Book Online Page A

but perfectly intelligible. Zane remained taut where he was as
she swept toward him, champagne in one hand and the other reaching for him.
    “Come along, come along! This is
the way!”
    He made an instant decision: she
didn’t appear to have a weapon; her breath reeked of alcohol; her delight
seemed genuine. He allowed her fingers to close over his and she led him across
the floor, over to a corner particularly dense with people…no, he saw, coming
closer, not merely people. Men. Dandies and lords, beaux in lawn and ruffles
and long-skirted coats, surrounding a solitary woman.
    This one was younger,
white-skinned, garbed in ruby silk cut very low across her chest. She was
laughing at something one of the beaux whispered in her ear, her chin down. Her
gloved hands clasped her fan across her lap.
    “ Chérie, only look!”
exclaimed Zane’s escort, presenting him with tipsy satisfaction. “Here he is!”
    The lady in ruby glanced around,
pleasure still teasing her lips and lighting her face, her eyes sparkling dark,
her hair powdered into heavy curls. Her skin was pearled, her cheeks brushed
with pink; she wore no patches for beauty, no jewelry, and very little
paint—and he grasped at once how she had managed to draw so many moths to her
corner. He had never seen a woman so exotically luminous. His mouth actually
went dry.
    But…surely he knew her. Aye, he
knew that he did—
    “It is he, is it not?”
insisted the tipsy woman, now hanging on to his arm. “I recognized him right
away, just as you said—those eyes, mais oui, such a color! I have the
chills! I said to myself, who else could it be?”
    The lady in the ruby gown lifted
her chin and fixed her gaze directly to his.
    “Yes,” she said in a velvet tone.
“You’re quite right, Marie. It is he.”
    And with a jolt of profoundly
unpleasant shock, Zane realized he was gaping at Lia Langford.

CHAPTER THREE

    S he had known precisely how it was
going to be. It was strange that she did, because she’d never actually seen any
of it, not the composition of the dancers and chairs, not the colors, not the
chamber; none of the dreams that came to her offered sight. But Lia had known.
    The moment she’d glimpsed the red
silk in the bowfront window of the mercer’s that rainy evening in Edinburgh,
she’d thought, This one. And the hair powder, from the Parisian salon: Yes,
this.
    The music, a Viennese piece still
new enough to stir a scandal at the school when one of the girls picked it out
on the pianoforte: That refrain.
    The bottle of scent, a gift from
her sisters.
    The lace fan.
    The city.
    The hotel.
    His face, because that was
unchanging: carved and wary, glorious in the way a feral predator could be
glorious, too far beyond human touch to be tamed, severe and beautiful even in
its ferocity. His skin was marked with candlelight. His eyes burned animal
bright.
    He wore ebony when everyone else
was done up in pastel flowers. His wig was a simple tye when all the other men
sported curls upon curls. He was the only male nearby who wasn’t even
attempting to ogle her chest.
    That was Zane. That was his
expression as she glanced up at him, and it was so familiar to her that for a
moment she only sat there, admiring him, forgetting all that he was and all
that she had done to get them both to this strange and exquisite place. For
that instant he was only Zane, the very dark man of her dreams. And because he
was there with her, her heart expanded with bittersweet pleasure.
    Stupid.
    He was still Zane. She should
have known he’d be an ass.

    He watched the corners of her
mouth lift. Part of him—the part that was still dazed by her magic, by the
shape of her eyes and the contrast of the crimson silk against her milky chest
and arms, and the swan’ s curve of her neck, and the mass of smoky-thick locks
that fell to her shoulders, half pinned, half not, like she’d just tumbled out
of some very soft bed—part of him only stood there and stared, as dumb