Ilya jumped out of the carriage and walked to the salon door as Demetri followed. They had three stops to start the night, more if more came to hand.
Demetri went to enter first.
Ilya’s hand shot out and stilled him. “I believe it’s now my privilege to go first.”
Demetri scowled.
It might be petty, but a wash of satisfaction filled him…he, Ilya was the eldest Prince of St Petersburg as far as London was concerned. He would get the honors and attention accorded that position. And now, as Demetri stepped aside, his brother would feel what it was like to always be second.
Demetri lifted the large brass knocker and tapped their presence on the glossy black door to the modest establishment on Portman Square and stepped back. The area nestled close enough to Park Lane to be of some standing which meant those who frequented it would be suitably connected to ensure invites to social events would follow. The door opened and they were ushered into a softly lit corridor. It sported a mural painted by one of the impressionists who was rumored to have fallen for the salon’s patroness. Their hats, canes, gloves, and coats were taken, and they were led to a large curtained space. In pure theatrical style the plush red velvet curtains were drawn open, and their arrival announced.
“Prince Vladimir Petroski and General Vladimir Petroski of St Petersburg.”
Ilya stepped forward, his brother behind him, at his shoulder.
The room went silent, all eyes on them.
They inclined their heads.
This was an informal affair. These were the demimonde, the bohemian, the artistic, the flaunters of convention. There were few formal curtsies and bows in return. Yet a wave of fan flickering passed across the room, as well as assessing gazes and nods which showed interest and welcome at their arrival.
A superbly dressed woman with mahogany hair and intelligent eyes, glided over to them.
“Welcome to my salon, I am the patroness, Madam Debuverey.”
“Madam Debuverey.” Ilya took her hand, kissed it, eyes glancing up at her. He was in his element. “Enchanted. The Russian court stands in envy.”
Her eyes creased. Women like her knew men like him and liked the dance as much as he did.
Demetri also took her hand and bowed over it, but she smiled over his head back at Ilya.
“Two Russians, London is lucky indeed,” she purred.
Her arm slipped through Ilya’s. “Let me introduce you around, show you the salon and the entertainments we have to offer. I hope we will not disappoint.”
The rooms were well appointed, comfortable, and fashionable, but a man like himself, a man who played in the corridors of the Russian court, had seen better and grander. This was a stepping off point, a place to connect and make offers before going somewhere more suitable to have them met.
They walked through the first room and were introduced to the people there, a few painters and a novelist.
The second room was a theatre of sorts where some women, scantily clad in togas, lounged on settees before an audience of active voyeurs. Displays of silhouetted flesh by those who thrived on being looked at.
A voice drifted in from the third room, the words not quite discernible.
The rhythm of his heart changed; nerves rippled to life under his skin. Not in lust. Not in any way he’d felt before. Something essential, something fundamental, yet hard to define. Like the way he felt as he lay in the summer grass, the sun behind closed eyes as the heat soaked into his skin.
But that didn’t make sense.
The voice, feminine and rich in its tone held his attention as he shook hands with a group of men, titled men, men they would come back to.
The meter of the words, the pauses and starts. It was a reading of sorts. Prose, poetry, something equally mind-numbing—but that sensation grew the longer he listened.
“And in the third room?” he asked their hostess as they moved away.
“Not something I think would interest you a great deal. Tonight, we have readings from our local poets. A weekly occurrence that brings a more literary crowd. Do you like poetry Prince Vladimir?” The look she gave him said she read him well. He didn’t. What man who was awake and had a cock that worked, would?
But that sensation, all warmth, all beckoning, continued to wrap around him.
Comforting, familiar, and alluringly unknown.
Ilya moved closer, released the arm of his hostess, and stepped to the arched entrance of the room.
Heart suddenly beating faster, he glanced in and around to the voice.
“And, little bird,” she read, “will you trust me?”
Every part of him stilled as he looked at her.
Looked at her and saw in a way he had never seen before.
“The widow Seraphina Seymour, Duchess to the late Duke of Somerset.” His hostess said in a hushed voice so as not to disturb the reading.
“Will the little bird sleep in my fur as the wind howls?”
He passingly registered the beauty of her body, perfect skin, desirable figure, pale gold hair piled on a head that boasted a face of even, balanced proportions. A mouth whose smile was its natural state. Blue eyes that shone with intelligence, strength, and softness. And yet that’s not what he saw.
No.
He saw happiness.
His happiness.
He saw children playing on the long green lawn of his country estate in the late Russian summer. Heard her laughter, the way she would gaze at him, the knowing look couples have in shared contentment. He saw the woman he was meant to have, that single person in a million he was destined to be with.
And in those moments, he saw the man he was meant to become.
“Will you singe your perfect wings against the flames when the hunter comes?” Her poem, whatever it meant, paused.
She smiled and their eyes met.
Heat, lust, want, need… he’d felt them all before but not like this.
Never like this.
Recognition reverberated through her as well. He knew because he saw. Ilya tracked every telltale sign as it moved through her; the short sudden intake of her breath; the loss of thought that stopped the flow of her words; the frozen movement of her body. The stillness as basic instincts rushed to determine the response to threat—to invasion by something that had well and truly taken hold despite no outer barrier being breached. Then the delicious moment of recognition, the flutter of her pulse, the widening of her eyes, the soft color racing up her neck.
“Yes…said the little bird… and the wolf…”
Her audience murmured as her rendition came to a stuttered halt.
Their gazes held.
Random heads turned as people looked back at him, fans lifted, fluttered as voices whispered and giggles passed through the intimate audience clustered around her on love seats, tub chairs, stools, and wingbacks like supplicants to a goddess.
“Prince Vladimir Petroski of St Petersburg, Russia.” He said to her…not the room. The room be damned—he just saw… her.
She swallowed.
He felt the movement in his own throat.
Her stilted breath was his, her flush his.
Ilya instinctively reached for what he knew best, he gave her the look, the face that had won a thousand conquests. “My apologies at the interruption please continue, I was enraptured.” He gave a small bow of his head but not enough to break eye contact. There was a twitter of feminine voices, there always was, but it was only her he looked to for a response.