Ways to Be Wicked by Julie Anne Long Read Free Book Online

chandelier—twined brass supporting row upon row of dangling crystal—presided over the subtly domed ceiling. And when she lowered her gaze once again, slowly, she noticed that not a single inch of the walls was bare: murals of gods and goddesses clad—well, “clad” was perhaps too emphatic a word for what they were— diaphanously, chasing and being chased by each other, as was the wont of gods and goddesses.
    The place was unabashedly, cheerfully lurid; it was a celebration of sex, the way a man no doubt saw it— necessary, pleasurable, a game perhaps—and made no apologies for it.
    “Couldn’t stay away, Mademoiselle?” The soft words came from the left of her.
    She jumped and turned to find Tom Shaughnessy.
    And for a moment she couldn’t speak, for the man’s face was a fresh shock. It seemed the sort of face that one would always find something new in, its assemblage of angles and shadows. His pale eyes were bright in the dim theater.
    When he bent that broad-shouldered frame into a low bow so elegant it nearly mocked, it occurred to her that she hadn’t yet spoken, had only gaped, which no doubt gratified the man’s vanity.
    “Says yer a relation, Tommy.” The hackney driver had poked his head in the door. “Ye’ve a lot of bloody relations, if ye’ ask me. All female. But there must ’ave been a male in the lot somewhere t’ ’ave spawned all these females.”
    Tom laughed. “What can I say, Mick? The Shaughnessys must be exceptionally...fertile.”
    Mick, the hackney driver, laughed with him. Sylvie suppressed a gusty sigh. If one more man took amusement at her expense, she might very well need to throw something.
    And then, and this was the last thing she expected him to say, Tom turned to her and asked, “Are you hungry? Would you like something to eat?”
    Sylvie was weary and light-headed and wondered what sort of compensation he intended to extract from her in exchange for paying the hackney driver, and hoped he would say and do nothing untoward, as she wasn’t certain she had it in her to employ her knitting needle again when his face was sheer poetry. But no. Though her stomach was empty, it twisted, rebelling at the idea of more food of
    the sort she’d been given at the coaching inn today.
    “No,” she said. “I am not hungry, that is. Thank you.”
    “You ate very little at the inn.”
    He’d been watching her? Perhaps as aware of her as she’d been aware of him? Difficult to know with one such as he. In her profession, she had known flirts very nearly as skillful as Tom Shaughnessy. It was a skill they shared generously with nearly every woman, a means to keep it honed.
    “Perhaps I require very little, Mr. Shaughnessy.”
    This made him smile slowly, his way of turning her words into an innuendo. “Oh, I doubt that, Mademoiselle. I expect you require rather a good deal.”
    She felt the corners of her mouth start to tug up in response, an accomplished flirt’s reflexive response to another accomplished flirt; it couldn’t quite completely become a smile, however. She was too weary. Too wary. Too angry at herself for leaving herself no other options.
    And, though she hated to confess it even to herself. . . simply, quietly afraid.
    The hackney driver cleared his throat.
    Tom swiveled in his direction. “Oh, of course, Mick. My apologies.” Tom fished about in his pockets, came up with a handful of coins, pressed them on Mick. The hackney driver disappeared for a moment and reappeared with her trunk, which he deposited unceremoniously on the floor of the theater.
Clunk.
    “Thank you for looking after her, Mick,” he said somberly. “I...have her now.”
    Mick tipped his hat to the two of them; the door swung shut, and suddenly all was silence.
    I have her now,
Sylvie thought.
    “Now...I believe you are now in my debt. Shall we discuss how you should repay me?”
    Her heart began to trip. She was as interested in the dance of flirtation as in the art of ballet, but