what anyone might say otherwise, it was clear Bastien ruled La
105
9781524738174_Beautiful_HC_INT_pass05.indd 105
6/28/19 2:56 PM
Cour des Lions, from its coffered ceiling to the snake slithering across its plush carpets.
Lucifer in his den of lions.
Instead, Bastien remained silent. The bronze skin around his
eyes and forehead softened, the set of his shoulders unwinding.
Before Celine could take a breath, charm oozed from him with
the kind of natural grace reserved for nobility.
It was an unnerving sight to behold.
Bastien bowed to Pippa. “Welcome to Jacques’, mademoiselle.
I am Sébastien Saint Germain. C’est un plaisir de faire votre
connaissance.” The consummate chameleon, he reached for her
hand, bending to place a kiss on it.
Though Pippa’s cheeks pinked at his touch, she cleared her
throat. Extricated her fingers. “We’ve met already, sir.”
Celine smothered a grin.
“Quel charlatan!” Odette snorted as she sipped her wine.
“They know who you are.”
Bastien did not appear the least bit perturbed by her mock-
ery. “But I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced.”
“Then permettez-moi.” A devious light glimmered in Odette’s
eyes. “The stunning young lady to your right, with the raven hair and the eyes like Egyptian emeralds, is Celine—” She stopped
short. Laughed. “I just realized I don’t know your proper name,
mon amie.”
Celine put out her hand, channeling indifference. “My name
is Celine Rousseau.”
Bastien took it. She sensed a hint of hesitation the moment
his long fingers wrapped around hers. The slightest twinge, like
106
9781524738174_Beautiful_HC_INT_pass05.indd 106
6/28/19 2:56 PM
he’d made an error in judgment and realized it far too late. A current of fire spread into her arm, moving slowly, as though
the creature in her blood wished to savor the experience. Be-
fore Bastien could bend to kiss her hand, Celine tugged her
palm from his grasp.
Something unreadable passed across his features, there and
gone before Celine could take in a breath. Then his smile turned
savage in its amusement. An unspoken challenge.
It emboldened Celine further. If he was going to play a game,
she would simply play it better. She looked at Pippa and tilted
her head, allowing a knowing twinkle to shine in her eye. Just
the sort of look she’d seen countless young women of Parisian
society share among themselves, as if they alone were privy
to a delicious secret. “This is my dear friend, Miss Philippa
Montrose.”
Bastien bowed again to Pippa. “Enchanté, Mademoiselle
Montrose.”
Pippa nodded, her unease obvious. Though Odette tried to
appear indifferent to the unfolding scene, her attention flitted
between Celine and Bastien as if she were witnessing a thread
start to unravel. When she caught Celine staring at her, she di-
verted her gaze, focusing on Pippa’s wine-stained skirt.
“Merde!” Odette swore. “I’m an absolute wretch. I completely
forgot about your gown. Come with me.” She began walking
with purpose toward the staircase.
Pippa shook her head. “Don’t trouble yourself. It’s not—”
“Nonsense.” Odette pivoted in place. “I’m certain Kassamir
will have some—what was it?” Her fingertips snapped together,
107
9781524738174_Beautiful_HC_INT_pass05.indd 107
6/28/19 2:56 PM
the sound crackling through the air. “Tonic water to remove the stain, as Celine suggested.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“I insist.” Odette took Pippa by the hand. “If you don’t allow
me to fix it, then at the very least you must permit me to re-
place your gown. The fabric is such a lovely . . . voile, isn’t it?”
Her features brightened, an idea already taking shape in her
mind. “We could go together tomorrow to see my modiste.
She doesn’t have Celine’s eye or training, but she’s quite adept
at—”
“Please don’t trouble yourself, Mademoiselle Valmont. This
gown isn’t worth it. It’s very old. It . . . was passed down to
me from a cousin.” Pippa winced at this admission, and some-
thing knifed behind Celine’s heart. Clearly it pained Pippa
to disclose this detail, and Celine did not have the slightest
inkling why.
It bothered her to realize how little she knew about her only
friend.
Only an hour ago, Pippa had remarked that they weren’t truly
friends. Not yet. It had chafed to hear it then, but Celine could not deny its truth now. Real friends freely shared their thoughts and feelings, their secrets, their fears. In Paris—before that terrible night—Celine had had two such friends, Monique and
Josephine. She wondered if they thought of her now. If they
worried about her. Questioned where she’d gone.
If they knew she was now a murderess.
After Pippa’s pained admission, Odette kept silent for a time.
When next she spoke, her words were gentle. “Please let me
108
9781524738174_Beautiful_HC_INT_pass05.indd 108
6/28/19 2:56 PM
help with this, ma choupette.” She took Pippa’s hand again, this time with less insistence. “And do call me Odette. I much prefer
when my friends call me that.”
In that moment, Celine decided that—one day—she would
like to be friends with Odette Valmont, too. Pippa waited a mo-
ment. Then nodded once with a grateful smile. The two young
women made their way toward the first-floor restaurant, on a
quest to find Kassamir.
Leaving Celine in a den of lions . . . standing beside Lucifer.
109
9781524738174_Beautiful_HC_INT_pass05.indd 109
6/28/19 2:56 PM
Des Questions, Des Questions
i
The moment their friends vanished downstairs, Celine and
Bastien shared a glance. A charge hummed through the
air, swirling around them like the beginning of a storm.
Their smiles faded the next instant.
A thick silence descended like a cloak about their shoulders.
A part of Celine relished it. It felt honest. Absent pretense. In this moment, she could be who she was. It did not matter if she
failed to adhere to the social mores of her day. Bastien would
not judge her, for he was not a gentleman, just as Celine was
not a lady.
His posture relaxed further, almost as if he had come to the
same conclusion. He spread his feet and settled into an infor-
mal stance. Celine found she enjoyed seeing him in this com-
fortable light. It made him appear more like a living, breathing
person, rather than a subject of salacious gossip. He was, after
all, nothing but a young man.
Albeit a devilishly attractive one.
Bastien pushed his lips forward again in obvious calcula-
tion. It drew attention to his mouth in a way that made Celine
avert her gaze. She swallowed, dismissing a flurry of wanton
110
9781524738174_Beautiful_HC_INT_p
ass05.indd 110
6/28/19 2:56 PM
thoughts. Half of her felt angered by this proof of her attraction. The other half appreciated the stark reminder that Bas-
tien brought the worst version of Celine to the surface. The one
cloaked in vice and sin.
Another minute passed in silence. The longer they went
without speaking, the heavier the charge in the air grew, until
it took on a life of its own, a hooded specter looming above
their heads.
Celine refused to be the one who spoke first. Under pain of
death. He could wait until the sun rose high in the sky tomor-
row morning, for all she cared.
“You arrived to New Orleans recently.” Bastien offered this as
a statement of fact, rather than a question.
“A little more than a week ago.” Celine paused, wondering if
he recalled seeing her that first evening near Jackson Square.
“You speak Spanish.”
He nodded. “Because of my father.”
“Your father was Spanish?”
“No.”
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.”
111
9781524738174_Beautiful_HC_INT_pass05.indd 111
6/28/19 2:56 PM
“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 attrac-
tion . . . 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 for-
ever 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 inter-
jected. “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 fa-
ther had always scolded her for wearing anything that accen-
tuated her figure. Alas, the latest fashions sought to do just
that: give life to every line, sway to every curve. Even a lady’s
112
9781524738174_Beautiful_HC_INT_pass05.indd 112
6/28/19 2:56 PM
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 sum-
mers 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 stretch-
ing, 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 ac-
cent. Celine didn’t know what Taíno meant, but she remem-
bered 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
113
9781524738174_Beautiful_HC_INT_pass05.indd 113
6/28/19 2:56 PM
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, Mon-
sieur Saint Germain.”
“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 Fantôme?”
114
9781524738174_Beautiful_HC_INT_pass05.indd 114
6/28/19 2:56 PM
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?”
“What?” It stunned Celine how precisely he managed to
strike another nerve.
“
Selene was a lunar goddess. A Titan. She drove a chariot of
white horses across the sky to usher in the night.”
How . . . lovely. Celine had never heard the story of the god-
dess Selene, which surprised her because her father was a lover
of the classics. Her parents had named her for a family relation, long-since dead. A great-aunt named Marceline. She didn’t
know when they’d first taken to shortening it. Likely when she
was very young. Perhaps even when she lived along the coast of
her mother’s country.
“No, I was not named for a goddess,” she replied. “Celine . . .
is a nickname from childhood.”
“I deserved that.” Bastien’s soft laughter filtered through the
air. Those in their immediate vicinity turned to peer at them
in disbelief, one of their ranks blowing a stream of pale blue
smoke from an elaborate water pipe. It was the first time Celine
had ever heard Bastien laugh freely. It sounded low. A rich
baritone swathed in silk. She ignored the way it made her
appreciate each of her senses all the more.
Celine found herself settling into their exchange, without
once feeling the need to play a role. The diligent worker. The
obedient daughter. The pious young woman. Someone who
115
9781524738174_Beautiful_HC_INT_pass05.indd 115
6/28/19 2:56 PM
floated with the current, rather than making her own waves.
Did the lunar goddess Selene also rule the tides, like the
moon? If so, Celine wished to go through the rest of her life
channeling this deity. It was true she didn’t know whether this
goddess was her namesake, but perhaps she could choose to
take on the mantle herself.
Celine relished the thought. The idea of being a Titan who
wrapped the sky in a fleece of stars.
“Why did you leave Paris?” Bastien asked, shattering the im-
age forming in Celine’s mind.
Her pulse fluttered at the question, her nerves going taut. “I
never said I was from Paris.”
“You didn’t need to.” His grin was devastatingly charming,
despite the sharp angles of his features. “You told Odette. Now
even the gutter rats know.”
At that, Celine laughed. It felt easy. Too easy.
Nearby, the sounds of ivory dice striking against burl wood
mingled with a chorus of raucous laughter. Her attention drifted
toward the roulette table. Celine smiled to herself, again struck by the realization she felt comfortable here, amid practitioners