The Beautiful (The Beautiful #1)(29)

Celine waited for him to clarify, then sighed to herself when he didn’t. Not because she was troubled by his evasiveness, but rather because she understood his wish to thread a needle with every word he spoke.

Yet another similarity.

Vexed by this realization, Celine eased back on her left heel, the toes of her right foot tapping against the thick carpet.

A smile ghosted across Bastien’s lips. “I’m irritating you.”

“You’re enjoying it.”

“I am.” His mouth shifted to one side, again pressed into that maddening pucker.

Silence settled between them once more. Then Bastien took a step closer to Celine, no doubt to see how she would respond. If she moved back, she’d reveal her unease, thereby granting him the upper hand. If she shifted forward, she’d reveal her attraction . . . which also granted the fiend the upper hand.

Celine did not give ground. She was a mountain. A hundred-year-old oak. A tower refusing to bend. “I can stand here forever in irritated silence. It is no bother to me.” She crossed her arms tightly, her forearms winding beneath her breasts, pushing against the boning in her corset. “You can perish wondering what I’m thinking, for I’ll never tell.”

“Likewise.” The angles in Bastien’s features hollowed further. His eyes dipped downward instinctively before he caught them, his jawline flexing, sharpening.

He glanced away.

At first Celine did not understand his odd behavior. She let her gaze drift lower, only to drop her arms as though they’d burst into flame. “If you think I used my wiles to catch your notice like a girl trying to fill her dance card at a ball, then—”

“Whatever I think has nothing to do with you,” Bastien interjected. “My behavior is not your responsibility.”

His response unseated her. Shocked her into silence. She’d never heard such words fall from any man’s lips. Celine’s father had always scolded her for wearing anything that accentuated her figure. Alas, the latest fashions sought to do just that: give life to every line, sway to every curve. Even a lady’s unmentionables were designed to grant her the appearance of an hourglass. Nevertheless, Professor Guillaume Rousseau had encouraged his daughter to wear modesty pieces about her throat and dress in layers, even when the Parisian summers were at their worst.

Bastien took a deep breath, as if he were biding his time. “I made you uncomfortable. I . . . apologize.”

“You might be the first man who didn’t blame me for it,” Celine confessed, masking her shock by arching a brow.

He nodded, his expression grim. Then he rubbed the back of his neck, the gleaming leather of his shoulder holster stretching, catching the light. “To answer the question you didn’t ask, my father was of Taíno heritage. I spent several years of my life in San Juan. Spanish is the language of my childhood.”

This accounted for the trace of something different in his accent. Celine didn’t know what Taíno meant, but she remembered reading about a city named San Juan in a former Spanish colony somewhere in the Caribbean. She found herself wanting to know more. To learn why it was that his uncle had raised him from childhood.

Because Celine wanted to know, she asked nothing.

It was safer that way, for them both.

“Are you enjoying your time in New Orleans?” It was the first question Bastien had posed to Celine that sounded contrived, as though it were meant for polite company. It grated her to hear it, for theirs had never been polite company. She preferred it that way.

Celine tilted her head. Cut her gaze. “How long are we going to pretend what happened earlier this evening didn’t happen at all?”

Bastien’s laughter was quick. Caustic. “You’re rather certain of your moral rectitude, Mademoiselle Rousseau.”

“Just as I’m certain it benefits you to be so dismissive, Monsieur Saint Germain.”

His gunmetal-grey eyes glittered. “I’ve irritated you again.”

“Yet you still have not offered a reason why.”

“I don’t enjoy explaining myself. My actions speak for me. If you feel them to be heartless and cruel, then so be it; I am heartless and cruel.” He spoke in a glib fashion. “Trust that I will be the last person to correct you.”

“It must be quite a life, not having to explain yourself.”

“You should try it sometime. It’s rather freeing.”

“I imagine it would be freeing to care only about oneself.” She heaved a dramatic sigh. “Alas, I am not a man.”

A frown touched Bastien’s lips. The first sign that Celine had struck a nerve. But he did not reply. This time, the silence around them hung on the cusp of something weightier. A bolt of lightning before a crash of thunder.

“Why—”

“Are—”

They both stopped. Exchanged daggered smiles. This close, Celine could see flecks of steel in his eyes. The way the stubble along his jaw accentuated its fine lines.

“Please,” he began, canting his head, giving her leave to speak first.

“Why did the man in the alleyway call you Le Fant?me?” Celine asked. “Do you have a habit of dressing like a ghoul and terrorizing those around you?”

Amusement rippled across Bastien’s face. “It’s a nickname from childhood.” He paused before returning the volley. “Do you have a habit of dragging darkness with you wherever you go?”