Savage Nights: The Savage Trilogy by Mia Gabriel

Author:Mia Gabriel
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781466888500
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2016-02-01T23:00:00+00:00

9.

Gaspari’s reminded me of Delmonico’s in New York: a large, lavish restaurant with a great deal of gleaming dark wood and glittering chandeliers. The tables were covered with snowy linens, and the silver and china were of the first quality. Black-clad waiters with immaculate aprons hurried among the tables, carrying steaming dishes over their heads as much to display the savory contents as to protect them. Conversation and the clink of heavy forks and crystal created a well-bred undercurrent of sound, punctuated every now and then by the pop of a champagne cork.

Also like at Delmonico’s, the diners were mostly male, a well-fed sea of black and white evening clothes and bristling whiskers beneath the haze of expensive cigars and cigarettes. I recognized their smugness and their arrogance, the sure signs of money and privilege. Because the hour was late for respectable women to dine the few ladies with these men—beautiful bright spots of silken plumage—were perhaps not ladies at all but actresses, opera singers, artists’ models.

When I’d accompanied my father to Delmonico’s, I’d always looked at such women with curiosity and fascination, and with a certain pity, too. They were the women ladies called “fallen” in a melodramatic whisper, as if their taint could be caught like a cold. As a girl I’d wondered what they’d fallen from; later I’d learned it was from respectability and decency, marking them forever as the sort of women gentlemen didn’t marry. Yet still they’d fascinated me, for they’d always appeared to be not only the most glamorous women in Delmonico’s but also the ones who were having the most fun.

It came as something as a shock to realize that being here tonight at Gaspari’s, in my golden silk gown and on the arm of a gentleman who had given me the pearls around my throat but would never be my husband, I’d become exactly the same as those long-ago women I’d glimpsed at Delmonico’s.

And because that gentleman was Savage I didn’t care one bit that I was. I’d been miserable in my respectable marriage. With Savage I felt vibrant, sensual, and happier than I’d ever been, and if that was the meaning of “fallen” then I’d embrace it.

Yet there was more than that: I was proud to be seen with him, proud to have nearly every eye in the large room turned towards us as we stood in the doorway. Savage had said he’d wanted to show me off, and he was doing exactly that.

Instead of offering me his arm he’d placed his hand on the back of my waist, a clear sign of not only familiarity but also possession. There’d be no doubt in anyone’s mind that we were together, and even that little touch, the pressure of his spread fingers and open palm at my waist, made me glow and warm with pleasure.

“Your table is waiting, my lord,” murmured the maître d’hôtel, bowing to one side before Savage.

“In a moment,” Savage said, his gaze swiftly scanning the room like a hawk searching for prey.

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