“And I!” the marquise gushes, giving an ecstatic little shudder. “Heavens, that face! I swear it shall follow me directly into my dreams. Was it truly le Diable, do you think? I imagine it can’t have been anything else.”
“Very doubtful, my lady,” I say, taking heed to mask my turmoil. “Of course, I cannot say for certain, but it is worth remembering that Lesage is only an illusionist. Not a sorcerer, and certainly no dark priest. All this was not so different from his magic act. More a dangerous mockery than anything else, of a ritual that should only ever be undertaken with the proper respect.”
The two lapse into pensive silence for a moment, mulling this over. Perhaps this is how I might sway them back toward me, I think with a flare of hope. By convincing them that there is a protocol to dallying with the devil. A certain way these things must be done.
In other words, my way.
“But the images in the mirror!” the vicomte insists, his ruddy cheeks blotching even further. I remember his wish, the craving for excitement in any form. Of course he would want to believe in something so thrilling as having seen the devil’s face. “Not only that countenance, but the fire, and those stunning panoramas! I cannot imagine how any of it could have been feigned. But you, madame, are you not acquainted with Lesage? Do you have any notion of how it was done?”
“I’ve no idea, I’m afraid,” I reply, shrugging as if Adam’s secrets hardly matter. “We do know each other, but it is as they say. Magicians are loath to reveal their tricks.”
“Well, perhaps you will entice him into some disclosure yet,” the marquise suggests coyly, fingering the silken ends of a ringlet and tipping her head toward the back of the room. “He seems … rather partial to you.”
I glance over to where Adam holds court with several of the other nobles while gazing my way, eyebrows lifted in invitation. Making my excuses to the marquise and the vicomte, I wander toward him. He extricates himself from his admirers at my approach, leading me lightly by the elbow toward the impromptu dance floor, where a few couples drift in a slow pavane like lily pads caught in a lazy current.
“Well?” he asks as he whirls me around. “How did I do? I am all but dying to hear your thoughts.”
“My thoughts are that you are a scoundrel and a rake,” I say under my breath, keeping my tone studiously placid and my expression smooth. “Neither of which comes as any great surprise.”
“My, such harsh words!” That wolf’s smile again, curling the corners of his mouth. “Come now, my lady, all pique aside. Were you not pleased by the performance? I did so hope you might enjoy it.”
I struggle with myself for a moment, torn between aggravation and curiosity.
“How was the illusion done?” I demand. “And let us not prevaricate. That was no more the devil himself than it is the devil who reads their wishes by my hearth.”
He purses his lips into a tantalizing moue, tilting his head back and forth as if deciding what to divulge. When I start to pull away from him, he makes an apologetic noise and tugs me delicately closer.
“Stay with me tonight,” he murmurs into my ear. “After they’ve all gone. Stay with me, and tell me that the next Messe will find us standing together, as black priestess and her priest. If you agree, I will do one better than tell you—I will show you how it was done.”
“That is what you wish?” I ask, both taken aback and, despite myself, a little gratified. “A partnership with me? That is why you invited me here under such brazen false pretenses?”
“Of course,” he says blithely, as if it should have been clear to me from the start. “Is it not the obvious next step? With forces joined, would we not command immeasurably more influence?”
I stare consideringly into his eyes, so dark they look almost black in the room’s low light. There is merit to his suggestion. What could we achieve if we merged our respective powers instead of continuing our struggle to upstage each other? With our stars yoked together, what blazing constellation might we scrawl across the heavens?
Together, what might we become?
“We could own them, Catherine,” Adam says fiercely, just above a whisper, sensing the soar of my temptation. The first time he has used my Christian name. “All of them, up to le Roi Soleil himself. Louis may be enthralled by the novelties of science now—but when faced with advisers such as the two of us, with your scrying gift and my legerdemain? Nothing would be beyond our reach. Not even the space just behind the throne.”
Such power, I think dreamily, swept up by his vision of us as shadow regents, weaving our dark stratagems from the catacombs. And the vast influence and wealth that might be amassed in this fashion, the staggering freedom that would come with it.
Surely no one else would be my master then.
When I shake my head, it is reluctantly, and with a tinge of genuine regret.
“To stand beside you, I would have to trust you with my future,” I say with an almost rueful smile. “And underhanded as you have been tonight, how could I trust you with anything of mine? No, I’m afraid we are better suited as we are.”
“Perhaps you are right,” he says, shedding some of that banked intensity and slipping back into his easy smile. “Or perhaps you will take some time to reconsider? Because I am not going anywhere, my lady. And while I do not consider us enemies now, is that not what we are destined to become, if we do not choose to thwart fate by becoming friends instead?”
With a kiss brushed over my knuckles, he releases me and melts back into the fray.
