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

walked to the back of the theater. Sylvie looked toward the door through which she had entered the White Lily. Outside, it was daylight and an unfamiliar London.
    She turned her head back to the theater, where Tom Shaughnessy’s broad back and shining head were rapidly moving away from her.
    She knew which void she preferred to leap into.
    Sylvie scrambled to follow him.
    Tom stopped before a door and tapped on it. Behind it she heard giggles and the sound of rustling fabric, familiar sounds to her; the sounds any roomful of women was bound to make, unless they were in mourning. And even then, she’d known a few—
    The door swung open to reveal a startlingly lovely woman.
    “Good day, Mr. Shaughnessy,” she said breathlessly. She dropped a curtsy.
    “Good day, Lizzie. May we come in? Are the lot of you fully clothed?” He asked it playfully.
    “Would it matter, Mr. Shaughnessy?” She lowered her head and peered up at him through her lashes.
    He gave a laugh, which in fact sounded more polite than flirtatious to Sylvie’s ears. And he waited, with a sort of calm authority. As he was the man in charge, after all, the girl stepped aside to allow Tom in, Sylvie behind him.
    Sylvie found herself plunged into a veritable nest of girls. The room was windowless but aglow from dozens of small lamps and littered with mirrors and dressing tables and well-worn wooden chairs, and it smelled powerfully, provocatively of female—powder and a stew of different perfumes and soap and stage makeup, kohl and rouge. It was a scent familiar to Sylvie, as she’d dressed in rooms just like this before performances many times before.
    A glance over the girls. One was dark-haired and sloe-eyed, another had marble-fair skin and silver-blond hair, another had cheeks warm as hothouse peaches. Each unique but for one shared characteristic: they were all lushly rounded—arms, breasts, hips—in the ways that mattered to men. Sylvie could imagine the flocks of men arriving at the theater night after night for the pleasure of watching—or pursuing, if they had the money to do the pursuing properly—their favorite.
    She wondered if Tom Shaughnessy partook of these young ladies as one would a box of sweets.
    To a woman, the box of sweets returned her perusal.
    “
What
is
that?
” One of the lovelies murmured under her breath, her eyes fixed on Sylvie. A chorus of hushed giggles followed.
    Tom either didn’t hear the question, or pretended not to hear it, and Sylvie would have wagered the latter.
    “Good afternoon. Molly, Rose, Lizzie, Jenny, Sally...”
    Sylvie lost track of all the English names and studied the girls instead. Pretty, all of them, some startlingly so.
    “Allow me to introduce Miss Sylvie Chapeau, ladies. She will be joining you onstage. Please make her welcome. I trust you will extend the appropriate hospitality? As you know, The General expects you for rehearsal very shortly. I apologize that I cannot remain longer, Miss Chapeau, to assist with your orientation, but I have an important engagement.”
    Sylvie glanced at Tom Shaughnessy; his eyes were glinting in fiendish merriment. The silent message in them was:
See if a knitting needle will help you now.
    And then he gave a crisp bow and left Sylvie to the mercy of the girls.
    All those pretty eyes, brown and blue and gray, continued to stare at her. Sylvie had seen more hospitality reflected in a row of icicles.
    “It’s a chicken,” the one called Molly mused thoughtfully, answering her own earlier question. “Plucked. With great staring eyes.”
    Giggles, musical as strummed harp strings and malevolent as cholera, rustled through the room.
    Chin up, Sylvie let the giggles wash over her. For her, jealousy was like ants at a picnic...a tiny annoyance that merely confirmed the grandness of the main event.
    And Sylvie, of course, was accustomed to being considered the main event.
    “Does it ’urt very much?” Molly asked when the giggles had faded away, her brow