At this Juliette straightened up, peering at him from underneath her blackened eyelashes, waiting for the catch.
“Though I must say,” Paul continued, looking apologetic, “I am not yet very high in the ranks. You would have to stick around for some time while I work my way up.…”
Juliette barely refrained from rolling her eyes. Paul was still blabbering on, but she had stopped listening. He was only after a power trip. He couldn’t make himself useful after all.
“Excusez-moi, mademoiselle.”
Paul abruptly shut up as the voice spoke behind Juliette, giving her a blissful few seconds without his prattling. She silently thanked the French intruder, then took it back the moment she turned and faced the masked blond man standing before them.
Oh hell.
“Voulez-vous danser?”
Though Juliette could feel a vein in her forehead throbbing dangerously, pulsating with the rhythm of her anger, she took the opportunity to escape.
“Bien sûr,” she said tightly. “À plus tard, Paul.”
Juliette snagged Roma’s sleeve and dragged him away, her fingers curled so tightly that her right hand turned numb. Did he think she wouldn’t recognize him just because he was wearing a blond wig and a mask?
“Do you have a death wish?” Juliette hissed, switching to English as soon as Paul was out of earshot. Then, noting all the British ministers and merchants around her, she lowered her tongue into Russian instead. “I should kill you right now. Your audacity!”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Roma replied, his Russian fast and biting. “Would you risk allowing the Scarlet Gang to be seen as violent brutes in front of these foreigners just to get rid of me? The price is too high to pay.”
“I—” Juliette clamped her lips shut, swallowing whatever else was poised on her tongue. They had paused in the fray of the dancing, amid a gathering of couples steadily increasing with the change in music. The pull of strings from the quartet was coming fast—the tune was livelier, the rhythm was teasing. Roma was right. Juliette wouldn’t dare, but the foreigners had been the furthest thing from her mind. Juliette wouldn’t dare because no matter how big her talk was, she still couldn’t separate the hatred broiling in her stomach with the sudden lurch of adrenaline that came to life with his proximity. If her body refused to forget who Roma once was to her, how was she to make those same limbs rebel from their nature, make them destroy him?
“Penny for your thoughts?”
At Roma’s switch back into English, Juliette’s gaze jerked up. Their eyes locked. A tremor shuddered along the back of her hands. In the midst of so many swishing skirts, the stillness between them was starting to look suspicious. Really, Juliette wondered how Roma avoided looking suspicious anywhere he went. He moved too well. Had someone told her four years ago that he was a god in human form, she would have believed them.
“I doubt you have a penny on you,” Juliette finally replied. Reluctantly, she took a step forward and raised her hand; Roma did the same. They didn’t need to speak to make the complementing gesture. They had always known how to predict what the other was about to do.
“I
ndeed, but I have plenty of larger bills. Would you offer more thoughts for those?”
The music grew louder, spurring the couples all around them to move with a renewed vigor. Roma and Juliette were forced to circle each other, hands extended but not touching, hovering but not steady, needing to move to blend in but unwilling to make contact, unwilling to pretend to be more than what they were.
“What are you doing here, Roma?” Juliette asked tightly. She did not have the energy to play along with his trivial conversation. At such an intimate distance, she could hardly keep her breath even, could hardly hide the trembling that threatened to shake her extended hand. “I gather you are not risking your life just to have a little dance.”
“No,” he replied surely. “My father sent me.” A pause. Only then did it seem like Roma was struggling to get his next words out. “He wishes to propose that the Scarlet Gang and White Flowers work together.”
Juliette almost laughed in his face. She quavered at the rising numbers of the dead lost to the madness, yes, and she feared another outbreak within her own house—this time targeting those of her blood, those whom she knew well and held close to her heart. But it hadn’t happened yet, and it wouldn’t happen if Juliette could work fast enough—alone. No matter how much more efficient it was for the two gangs to work together, to join a divided city into one, she had no incentive at all to agree to Roma’s proposal, and he appeared to think the same.
The words coming out of his mouth were one matter, but his expression was another. His heart was not in it, either. Even if working together could merge their territory, even if it could bring a momentary peace to the feud so they could discover why their gangsters were being picked off one by one, it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to set down the hatred and the blood, to resolve the fury that Juliette had been nursing in her heart for four years.
Besides, why would Lord Montagov, of all people, propose an alliance? He was the most hateful of them all. Juliette could only come to one conclusion, the most likely: it was a test. If he sent Roma here and the Scarlet Gang agreed, then Lord Montagov knew the extent of their desperation. The White Flowers didn’t truly want to work together. They only wanted to know how hard the Scarlet Gang had been hit, so they could use the information to strike even harder.
“Never,” Juliette hissed. “Run home and tell your father he can choke.”
Juliette whirled on her heel and broke away from their half dance, but then the music changed to suit a waltz, and Roma snagged her arm, pulling her back until her other hand landed on his shoulder and his came around her waist. Before she could do a thing about it, he had pulled her into the proper stance, chest to chest, and they were dancing.
It was like she was under compulsion. For a moment she allowed herself to believe they were fifteen again, spinning on the rooftop they liked to hide on, moving to the jazz club roaring beneath their feet. Memories were beastly little creatures, after all—they rose with the faintest whiff of nourishment.
She hated the knee-jerk way she leaned into him. She hated that her body followed his lead without resistance. They used to be unstoppable. When they were together, they never had an ounce of fear, not when they were hiding at the back of a noisy club playing cards, nor when they made it their mission to sneak into every private park in Shanghai, a bottle of whatever Juliette had stolen from the liquor cabinet tucked underneath Roma’s arm, giggling like a pair of idiots.
It was all too familiar. The feeling of Roma’s hands on her waist, his hand tucked in hers—those hands were of such grace, but she knew better than anyone that blood was soaked through and through the lines of his palms. Lines that read like scripture in appearance were in truth nothing but sin.
“This isn’t proper,” she intoned.