Denys knew he’d be sailing close to the wind with this moment, but she was silent so long, he feared he’d just crashed on the rocks.
Still, there was no drawing back. “My opinion is we should marry,” he said, striving to seem matter-of-fact about it all when he was actually nervous as hell. He rolled to his side, propped his weight on his elbow and his cheek in his hand. “It’s the usual thing when people love each other.”
Instead of answering, she sat up, pulling bed linens up from the side of the bed and wrapping them around her, covering herself. It seemed an odd thing for her to do after the passionate lovemaking in which they’d just engaged, and he felt his nervousness deepening.
“Do you remember my first day of rehearsal?” she asked. “That night when you came by with sandwiches and I told you about the sort of dancing I used to do?”
“Of course.”
“You asked me how I ended up in that situation. I didn’t tell you everything.”
“No?”
“No.” She looked down at her hands in her lap. “There was a man I met there. He saw me dance. He wasn’t the usual sort who came to the dockside taverns, so I noticed him right away. He was very elegant, very handsome, and very rich. His name was Robert Delacourt. A few nights later, he came back, and he asked me to have a drink with him. As you might guess, I did. I mean, he wasn’t at all the sort of male attention I’d been accustomed to. I fell for him like a ton of bricks. We became lovers.”
Denys had the feeling this was the man who’d been her only other lover, and he really wanted to stop this conversation, but he couldn’t.
“I thought it was all very romantic. He was a railway tycoon. New money, you call it. I didn’t care. I thought he was wonderful. He bought me gifts, flowers, dinners.”
This was sounding far too familiar, far too much like his own seduction of her, and to the man he was now, it all seemed so shallow, and so unsavory. He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Go on.”
“We were together for several weeks, and then, one night, Robert told me he was having dinner with a very important man. A senator visiting from Washington. Robert wanted me to come to dinner with them, explaining that he’d told the senator about me, and the senator very much wanted to meet me.”
Denys frowned. It sounded innocuous enough, and yet he felt uneasy. Perhaps he just had a suspicious mind, but when he looked into her eyes, the awful suspicion he’d begun to harbor was confirmed, for though Lola was looking directly at him, he knew she wasn’t seeing him.
“The senator was a very powerful man in Washington, Robert said, a man who could help him put a railroad deal through out west. We were to have dinner with him at the Oak Room. The Oak Room! I was so excited, I was giddy. I was so stupid.”
She laughed a little, laughing at herself, and Denys’s heart constricted in his chest.
“I thought he wanted me there to be the woman on his arm when he made this important deal. His helpmate, you know, or maybe even his future wife. But that wasn’t it at all. He introduced me to the senator in a private dining room, and then, he just . . . left. I asked the senator when Robert would be coming back, and he said Robert wouldn’t be back. I was his now, he said, and that he would be taking care of me from now on. It was as if I had just been traded.”
As he had the night she’d told him about her days in burlesque and what had happened to her as a girl, he felt anger rising on her behalf, but again, he kept it in check. “What did you do?” he asked, and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Did you bash him with an Erie?”
Her lips twitched just a little. “They don’t have cast-iron skillets in the Oak Room. At least not on the tables.”
“Ah. Champagne bottle, then?”
She frowned, looking confounded by his reaction. “You seem quite sure I rejected him.”
“I am sure.”
“But how can you be?”
“Because of what you said that day in my office. Don’t you remember?” he went on as she continued to stare at him in bewilderment. “After I kissed you, and you became so angry with me—”
“Justifiably so,” she cut in. “Given what you said.”
He nodded, conceding that point. “Granted, but when you lost your temper, and fired off your guns at me, you told me you’d only been with two men in your life.”
“I said that?”
“Yes. Don’t you remember?”
She shook her head. “I was so angry with you that day, I don’t remember what I said, to be honest. But given I did say that, how do you know I was telling the truth?”
“Because I just . . . do. I trust you. I believe you.” He kissed her nose. “I love you. And,” he rushed on before she could speak again, “I definitely know that one of those two men is me, quite obviously. The other, I now know, is this Delacourt bastard. Hence my conclusion regarding the senator. So, are you going to tell me what your response actually was to this odious man?”
“I tossed my wine in his face. Then I got up and left.”
He laughed. “Perfect. Ripping perfect.”
“It’s not funny.”
“You’re right.” He sobered at once, giving her a level, steady gaze. “I’m sorry, and don’t think for one moment that I don’t want to find this Robert Delacourt and call him to account, because I do. In fact, what I’d really take great pleasure in doing is thrashing him within an inch of his life. And the same applies to the man who tried to assault you when you were fifteen. And to that senator for thinking for one moment you were the sort of girl who would—”
“But that’s just it, Denys,” she interrupted. “I was that sort of girl. I told you, I used to take my clothes off in those taverns in Brooklyn. Robert saw me do it. The cowboys back in Kansas City used to come into the saloon just so they could watch me pull up the hem of my skirt and give them a peek at my ankles while I sang. I can’t blame any of those men for thinking my virtue was for sale, and neither can you. You seduced me, too, if you recall. You made me your mistress. I’m—” She stopped, and bit her lip. “That’s the sort of woman people think I am.”
Given his own culpability, he couldn’t really take issue with most of what she’d said, but he could take up the last bit. “You talk as if you’re fated for that. You’re not.”
She looked down, her hair falling over her face. “Sometimes, I think I am,” she whispered. “Men have wanted me since I was old enough to wear a corset, Denys. I’ve always known it, and I’ve never had any compunction about using it when I had to.”
“Women have been doing that since Eve, my darling.”
“Most women don’t do it on a stage, but I did. Hell, I made a whole show out of it.” She shrugged, plucking at the counterpane. “After that episode with the senator, I knew I had to leave New York. If I stayed, I was afraid of what Robert, or the senator, for that matter, might do. So I took what money I had, bought a steamship ticket, and went to Paris.”
She gave a deep sigh. “Another ticket out of town and another fresh start. I’d read about the dancers in Paris, and I thought I could do that. French cabaret was an enormous step up for a girl like me. The only thing was, I’d never danced the cancan in my life.” She shook her head, laughing a little as if in disbelief at her own brass.
“But it turned out you were right. You’re good at it.”
“Yes,” she admitted. “I thought if this is the sort of woman that men think I am, well, then, why not exploit it? So I did. I changed my name to something I thought sounded deliberately seductive. I made a dance routine, I learned to sing in French, and do the cancan, and how to kick off a man’s hat with my foot. I learned how to make anything I did—a crook of my finger or a wink of my eye or a shrug of my shoulders—seem like a promise to every man in that audience, but I knew it was a promise I’d never have to keep. And it worked. Men went wild over my act.”