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There was that glint ofsomethingkeen and sharp in the man’s eye, and I almost called Devere back. I would have if I could have thought of a reason to have him join us, but as they despised each other, no reason came to mind.
I fell into step alongside Rochefort, my heart beating in my throat again and my skin prickling. Although he was the same man who had attacked me, in this go-around, it hadn’t happened. Yet. We were just two men embarking on an evening’s entertainment. Nothing untoward in that.
The light above the door to the gentlemen’s club glowed as we approached, and Rochefort was invited inside without a word. The interior remained the same—tinkling glasses and voices, the smoke-laden air, and the drone of masculine voices.
Rochefort caught my eye, and I flashed him a polite smile.
The front rooms were another façade, presenting the formal face of perhaps more sordid things behind the scenes. If the desires of the men in Minerva tracked with those in Massalia, it seemed likely that the rooms behind all this swagger and opulence might offer places to shrug off social etiquette. But how far did the indulgence go? Had Jacapo gotten caught up in those affairs?
As before, Rochefort introduced me to the men I’d already met, and like before, they seemed equally appalled and fascinated by the purpose of my agency and me. As time wore on, shirt collars loosened, sleeves rolled up, and the whiskey flowed. Rochefort caught me watching some of the men come and go from a side door. “You seem intrigued. Is there something I should know?”
“What goes on back there?” I asked.
“Back there? Well… it’s a lot, for your first night in Minerva.”
“Sir, I’m a city man. I study criminality. I assure you, there is nothing happening in Minerva that I haven’t seen before.”
“Oh really?” The lord chuckled. “That sounds like a challenge if ever I heard one.”
With the whiskey on my lips and the smoke clouding my judgment, I’d almost forgotten who I was playing with. His salacious gaze soon reminded me.
“Did Jacapo frequent those rooms?” I asked.
Rochefort blinked and turned his head to follow my gaze. “I believe he did.”
That was new information. Considering the state in which Jacapo had been found, with rope burns around his wrists and neck and quite naked, there was clearly a side to the jovial toymaker’s life I’d yet to see. Another of Minerva’s hidden layers hiding in plain sight.
Rochefort eyed me slyly again, and I found myself almost backed into a corner, with the lord crowding close. The club and its clientele simmered around us, yet nobody appeared to notice how Rochefort had boxed me in, or perhaps they did not care to notice. Did he do this often? Was it an open secret that he sought the affections of other men despite the town’s backward thinking?
He leaned closer. His sweet cologne fluttered through my thoughts. He smelled like an exotic, desirable fruit, something fresh and forbidden. I didn’t want him—but a hungry, unhinged animal instinct within me, the same wild lust all men possessed, wanted his hands on me, all over me, his mouth at my neck, and his cock… Well.
He peered into my eyes, and I lost more and more of my mind in his.
This was wrong, wasn’t it? He’d take what I had no wish to give. I knew that, yet my body and mind were muddled.
“Excuse me.” I’d almost made it out from under him when he snagged my wrist, jolting me to a halt.
Fingers as cool and hard as ice locked on. “Hush, Valentine. There’s no need to fret.”
“What did you say?” Hush, where was she? I’d last seen her with Devere, when we’d argued about impossible things. Goodness, had it gotten hot suddenly? I tried to pull my arm from his grip and failed. “My beetle. Where’s my beetle?”
“You always were a sensitive one.” His teeth flashed in a sharp smile.
“I… What?”
His smile stretched too wide for the mouth it inhabited, briefly revealing sharp teeth.
“It’s all right. I’ll only give you what you desire.” He pulled me toward the door I’d been watching for much of the night. “A delicate thing, a man’s mind. Like a glass butterfly in the hand.”
“A… butterfly…” Like Devere’s glass butterfly? The one he’d crushed. How would Rochefort know about that? Had he been watching us? Or was Devere closer to all this than I had imagined?
“Or a bird?” He flung open the door and pulled me through into a narrow, dark corridor.
A bird. His meaning seemed so close. But as he hauled me along, his strength more than any man should possess, my thoughts tumbled, clawing for purchase. A bird, a butterfly. Hush, where was Hush? I needed her. I was falling into something terrible and could not stop myself. Did not want to stop it. Falling felt like freedom, didn’t it?
“Unhand me,” I mumbled.
“Not yet. We’re almost there.”
