Amberlough(50)

“My dry cleaner will be furious.”

She tugged his undershirt over his head and sent it after the rest. “More like grateful; after all, I’m keeping them in business.” Turning her back, she said, “Unzip me.”

He did, in one smooth motion. The dress came loose around her waist and she let it fall. Kicking her feet free of the puddle of black satin, she looked over her shoulder at Cyril.

Oh, but he was easy on the eyes. Hazy light from the street picked out the gold patch of curls in the shadow of his lean chest, the fine stripe of hair below his navel. His belly was sliced clean down the center by a neat silver scar, but Cordelia liked a man who’d been marked a little by life. Blue shadows lay across his face, and a piece of hair had fallen in a curve over his forehead. His lips were swollen from kissing.

He didn’t scold her for staring. Instead, he backed away, snatched up his glass, and drained it.

“If that’s what it takes,” she said. She meant it as a joke, but he sighed into his chest and then, so quick it made her jump, snapped his empty glass back onto the table. The impact made the record skip.

“All right,” she said, crossing her arms. “What’s wrong?”

Something about the slump that came into his shoulders—she knew where she’d clocked him before. “You and Ari was together at the Bee one night.”

Streetlight shivered across the sharp movement of his eyes. “I suppose it’s possible.”

“Swineshit. I know it. I seen you both, cozy as kippers.”

“What’s your point?”

She took him in, from his downcast face to the flat front of his trousers. “You don’t go in for tits, do you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” But it came out lackluster.

When she laughed, he looked genuinely surprised. “Queen’s sake,” she said, “I ain’t pinned about it. Just curious how come you got Ari to pick you up a peach. I mean, I know what’s in this scheme for me, but I can’t clock your why-sos.”

He stared at her for a long moment, his face slack with wonder. Or horror. She couldn’t tell which, and not knowing pinched her sharp. “What?”

“It’s just … I’d realized you were from the Mew. But it certainly comes out, doesn’t it?”

“I cover up pretty good,” she said, though she wasn’t bothering now. “We’re alike that way.” She offered him her empty glass. “Now be a swan and top us up, and we’ll have a nice jaw over all the little gems our Ari didn’t tell us.”

He laughed again, this time with genuine humor, and caught the rim of her tumbler between two fingers. “You could make a whole necklace out of mine.”

*

“How long you two been sparkin’?” she asked, a while later. They were sitting on Cyril’s sofa—fine linen damask, soft as lily petals—with the better part of his liquor cabinet in their bellies. Sometime in the last hour, the radiators had gone off. Cyril had fetched a flannel dressing gown for her, and draped an afghan around his own bare shoulders.

“A year,” he said. “Give or take.”

“You oughta get a medal. I can’t stand him for more than ten minutes. Say, you got any straights?”

“Liquor cabinet,” he said. “In the office.” A loose wave of his hand indicated the direction.

She got to her feet, steadying herself on his knee. Through heavy double doors, she found a book-lined room done in dark wood, highly polished. A desk topped in red leather fronted a big bay window. Across from it, under an unlit stained-glass panel, was a three-sided cabinet with a marble-topped wet bar.

“What exactly do you do?” she asked, scanning the labels of his stock. She didn’t recognize many of them. What she did clock, she knew she could never afford. “Or don’t you work at all?”

“Oh, I work,” he said.

But tastes like this didn’t come with steady employment. “You’re from money though, ain’t you?”

“DePaul,” he said, his voice pitched loud enough she had no trouble hearing. “You don’t know the name?”

She shrugged, then realized he couldn’t see her. “Not as I can remember.” She started pulling drawers out, searching for his cigarettes. Each one was silent on its casters. There were shakers and shot glasses, sugar and stir sticks. No straights, though.

“Diplomatic service,” Cyril went on. “My father was ambassador to the Asunan court, and my sister’s in Porachis, now. Grandma was a military genius, a decorated general—you could say she won the Spice War for us, and you wouldn’t be exaggerating. Amberlough’s done well by the DePauls. And the DePauls—” Here he stopped, and she thought she heard him laugh. “Well, the DePauls have always done well by their state in return.”

“You don’t have a city accent,” she said.

“I spent most of my childhood in the northwest weald. The family has an estate there, near Carmody. Moved south too late to pick up the drone.”

She was glad he couldn’t see her face, the rueful shake of her head. “Course you did.” She opened a shallow drawer beneath the slate-topped counter and found a humidor, stocked with cigars and straights. “You want anything?”

“Whatever you’re having.”