CW: Smut warning! (And, long chapter warning!) Also, racist language is used briefly in this chapter.
"I beg your pardon?" The woman closest to him asks, her eyes narrowing at Lena, who's sidled up next to Arthur.
Lena waves her free hand in front of Arthur as if showing off a new house. "Look how he grasps that bottle!" she says, in a simulacrum of terror, joining the throng of women to face him. "By the base; the same circumference as your neck." She chokes at her own throat, her tongue lolls briefly from her mouth. The women shake their heads in disgust and move away from her, off to another, less strange, quadrant of the party.
Arthur hears the lead woman remark, "They'll let anyone into the country these days," as Lena releases her neck, winking at him, sipping at her champagne. He returns the bottle to the table, moves closer to her to whisper, "We're kind of trying to be discreet, you know."
She spits some of her champagne back into her glass, eyes widening, a coy smile pulling at the corners of her reddened lips. "Then why did you bring him?" Lena gestures her hand of vices - the champagne and cigarette - to Bill, who's audibly gagging in front of several concerned observers, a recently-voided oyster shell in his hands. Bill seizes two champagne glasses from a nearby waiter and guzzles them, one after the other.
"OK, fair enough, have your fun, Miss," Arthur salutes her, makes to walk away. It was one thing standing next to her in polite silence on the balcony; being able to talk to her freely, to see all of her affectations up close - that damned way she holds her smoke - is a privilege that comes with complex emotions he doesn't think he has time for.
"Oh, come on, I was hoping you'd have some with me," she pouts, taking a drag from her holder and blowing smoke out of the corner of her mouth, taking the sleeve of his jacket in her silk glove. His heart leaps at the contact, he feels temporarily frozen, his tongue numb.
"I-," Arthur fumbles the first words out of his mouth, trying again, "I have to talk to the Mayor, if I can even find where he's at." He makes a show of scanning the party, a polite excuse to look away from Lena for a moment. He'd been attracted to her since that dream at Clemens Point awakened him, but she was particularly intoxicating like this, all of her charms and best features sharpened, on full display.
She brightens. "Well, I can introduce you, but later," she says, pointing through the crowd to a man in small oval spectacles and a top hat, mutton chops limning his narrow cheeks, intently listening to a pair of Native Americans. "I don't want to interrupt them; those men never get that kind of time."
Her genuine concern unlocks his early impressions of Lena, before he'd learned about her family. He lets himself stare at her, feels his heart ache for having left her behind, and then, a miracle: lets the shame go, rolling off of him. Choosing to see this party as a gift of more, unexpected time, Arthur breaks into a smile and holds out his arm for her to take, which she does, happily. "Fun it is, then."
*
They wheel about amongst the guests. Lena is the natural lead for them both; not only providing a safe inroad to Arthur's sudden shyness around the debauched-yet-snotty Saint Denis elite, but a safe one for herself to ensure that her brother doesn't know what she's up to. For any existing Bronte contacts, she speaks in Italian and moves on quickly, tugging at Arthur's sleeve.
But; for people she hasn't met, there is a gleeful trying out of all manner of identities and configurations. Arthur finds it increasingly difficult to hide his laughter at the elaborate introductions she invents, and the faces made by her conversation partners, wavering between polite confusion and then, either laughter or a slow anger as they find that they may have been insulted or duped. Arthur and Lena move on by the time that perception lands, snickering together and seeking out another person to "meet."
"...and this is my husband, Louis Fitzhampton - lost all of our money at the poker table but made it right back selling walnuts, didn't you, caromio?"
"Just wait until my Stephen hears this! My husband, Stephen Swinehound, yes, how do you do - Stephen, this woman fired her housestaff when she realized she could hire Mexicans for a third of the price! Isn't that the most deplorable thing you've ever heard, in absolutely every way?"
She swans among the crowd naturally, and he's delighted to follow after the train of her gown, stands proudly next to her, wincing-yet-willing to accept whatever ridiculous backstory she's applied to him. So, when he hears her introduce herself as "Mrs. Timothy Withers... oh yes, Italian actually, my Tim ordered me from a catalogue..." he shakes his head, chuckling, and steps forward to introduce himself - defend himself, more likely - to whomever she's said this to.
Meeting his eyes as he reaches for a handshake are the warm, brown ones of Hosea, whose grin matches Arthur's agape look in its intensity. "Mr. Withers, a pleasure," he crows, "what a find you've got in the Missus, here." Lena looks between them, smile belying a growing confusion at their apparent familiarity with one another.
"You may've some idea about that, already, Mr. Lafonde," Arthur intones, giving Hosea a knowing look, using his alias. Realization dawns on the older man's face as he recalls their conversation at the gazebo and he looks closer, appraisingly, at Lena, whose smile is fading slightly, her eyebrows knitting together. Hosea takes her gloved hand again in both of his, a flinty tear gathering in his eye.
"I'm just so delighted to meet you, my dear Mrs. Withers," he says, planting a kiss on her hand and clapping Arthur's shoulder. "So glad to see you both enjoying the party. Maybe you should enjoy each other's company a little, don't worry so much about meeting everyone here? Take care now." Hosea leans in to Arthur as they shake hands to part ways, "I like you with that fiery one." Arthur returns his grin, and then crooks his arm for Lena to take as Hosea vanishes back into the milling tuxedos of the party.
"Are we in trouble?" She murmurs, flagging a waiter for them each to grasp a glass of champagne.
"No, you just met Hosea." Her eyes fly open wide, and she beams up at him, astonished, looking back to the spot where they'd just spoken. "Really?" Arthur can't wipe the grin tugging on his cheeks, so much it's nearly painful. There was something so normal about that decidedly abnormal interaction - taking Lena to meet his father. He gives himself a shake, dispelling the foolish hope that rises in his chest, the grin finally subsiding into something manageable.
"He liked you, too." He leads her to a half-wall on the fringe of the party, and they lean on it, a small relief against standing on the flagstones for hours.
"Good," she smiles to herself, clutching her champagne glass to her chest. "How is little Jack?"
Arthur smiles. "He's good, spoiled as hell after you got to 'im." She laughs, and he continues, "always talkin' about 'Zia Lena' this and 'pantofola' that. But serious now, I know his mama's real grateful you were there to take proper care of 'im."
"He is a joy," she murmurs.
"That he is," Arthur replies, but seeing her eyes grow wistful, quickly jokes, "you ain't never getting that little outfit back you dressed him in, though. John tore it to shreds, feral man he is, can't stand to be around fancy things."
Her mouth drops open, about to laugh in delighted surprise, but closes again, quickly, as she leans towards him. "The Mayor is free, Arthur," she whispers. "I'm going to introduce you, but I can't speak much - he knows my brother."
"OK," he nods, taking her proffered, empty champagne glass. "The Mayor doesn't smoke, so come and offer me a light in a minute," she continues, holding his gaze for a moment and smiling before making off to the Mayor in his brief moment alone.
The Mayor's face alights as she approaches. "Ma chérie Elena," he coos, grasping her hand and kissing it, to which she demurs.
"Mayor Lemieux," she replies, giving him a gentle curtsey, moving her hand, once released, to her cigarette holder and case. They speak for a few moments, she occasionally laughing and batting at his chest or arm, playfully, and then she fits a cigarette into her holder and, presumably to Arthur, asks the Mayor for a light.
He pats his pockets and Arthur begins to approach them, but another man steps up, first. "Allow me, little lady," he slurs, proffering a lighter and stumbling towards her with it. She makes an obvious face of disgust and looks for Arthur, saying, "Scusami, no English," in her put-upon accent.
"Ah, another one for your collection, Mayor?" The man says crudely, hitting the Mayor with the back of his hand. "This one loves the darkies, and apparently guineas, too!" He laughs at them both, but the laughter's cut short by Arthur, who's seized him by the elbow and begins marching him forcibly away from the pair.
"Hey!" The man retorts, trying to twist from Arthur's firm grasp. "Hey, nothin'," Arthur says darkly, "you're pretty drunk, friend, why don't you go and sleep it off." He gives the man an unceremonious shove towards the outskirts of the property and returns to the Mayor and Lena, wiping his hands on his jacket.
"Thank you, sir," the Mayor says, reaching for Arthur's hand. "Henri Lemieux... I hope you're enjoying my party."
"The Mayor?" Arthur pretends, cocking an eyebrow. The tip of Lena's cigarette is still cold, and he reaches forward to light it.
"Allegedly," Lemieux smiles, "And this is Elena Bronte, the charming sister of one of my- my benefactors."
"Tacitus Kilgore, how do you do?" Arthur asks her, and she makes a motion with her hand, gathering her fingertips together and bobbing them in front of her chest.
"Non capisco, scusi," she says, shrugging, looking to Lemieux as if for guidance.
"She hasn't bothered to learn English, if you'll believe it," Lemieux says conspiratorially to Arthur, "But quite charming all the same, as I'm sure you'll agree."
"Quite," Arthur nods, sneaking a wink at Lena, when a bang sounds off and the patio guests are briefly illuminated in a wash of golden light. The crowd "oohs!" in unison.
"Enjoy the fireworks show, the party, Mr. Kilgore," Lemieux says, stepping off from them. "Thank you, again." Lena and Arthur are alone again, staring up at the dazzling explosions of colour and light above them.
"So," Arthur leans sideways to murmur in her ear, "everyone in this town speak Italian or somethin'?"
She can't quite tear herself away from the display in the sky, the fireworks glittering in her eyes. "I was speaking French to the Mayor, Arthur, our guttural cousin." A smile plays on her lips.
"And what's this one?" He mimes her hand gesture from moments ago, pinching his fingertips together and shaking his hand in front of her face.
"That one is Italian, it means, 'what are you saying? I don't understand.'" She mimics the gesture to him, using both hands and pulling a face.
He smiles back. "And what'bout this one?" He drags his fingers across the bottom of his jaw as he'd seen her do at her brother on the balcony, but her eyes widen like saucers and she grasps his hand in both of hers, whisper-shouting, "No! Stop!" She's laughing at him, clutching his hand between her own, the smooth silk of her gloves delightfully cool and soft against his calloused palm.
"What'd I do?" He asks innocently. "That's the bad one," she hisses, "you can't do it!" She leans into him, releasing his hand with one of hers to cup his ear and whisper, "It means, 'go fuck yourself.'" And then she laughs giddily, clutching his hand to her chest, tears of mirth forming at the corners of her eyes.
The word, "fuck," breathed hotly into his ear is too much for Arthur. He grazes his free hand down her side, resting it at her waist. She feels the warmth of his palm, stops laughing, meets his eyes. "I want you so bad, darlin,'" he says, as if strangled, the hand on her waist clutching briefly, yearning. She rests her hand there, over his, reaches her other one towards his face, when Arthur's pushed from behind, setting them both off-balance.
"Pardon, sir, so sorry, miss, excuse me," a servant rushes past them, forcing his way through the collection of firework admirers to get to Lemieux.
"Can't it wait, Pierre?" Lemieux grumbles, gesturing at the show in the sky.
"Mr. Cornwall was quite insistent, I'm afraid, sir," the servant replies, and Arthur tunes out the rest, his ears rushing with the name of the man who'd nearly had them gunned down in the streets of Valentine, Leviticus Cornwall. He springs away from Lena just as Dutch's telltale top hat approaches him, whispering, "Did he just say something about Cornwall?"
"Yes, I'm followin' 'im." Arthur makes off after Pierre, who's marching purposefully back towards the mansion, in the opposite direction of the rest of the partygoers. In pursuit, Arthur slips between them effortlessly, always better at evading, rather than seeking, notice.
He allows himself a moment, trailing Pierre, to curse his rotten luck. Stealing a kiss from a beautiful woman during a fireworks display seemed like something out of one of Mary-Beth Gaskill's romance novels and not something that could have happened in his own life, but he'd been damned close, for a change.
He realizes with a guilty pang to his heart, too, that he'd just left Lena standing there, alone. Damn loyal dog, the familiar refrain blooms in his mind while he waits for Pierre to finish talking to a patrolling guard at the side of the house. Their conversation finished, Arthur follows the man through the house without incident and observes him entering a room on the second floor, the door of which Luca Napoli had hastily closed only a couple short hours before, placing a document into the writing desk inside. As Pierre moves off from the room, Arthur enters, quiet as a ghost, jimmying open the desk's drawer with a letter opener.
"Mr. Leviticus Cornwall, top secret, extremely confidential. Very interesting," Arthur murmurs to himself, scanning the document before folding it carefully and slipping it into his breast pocket. He hears the open door click shut behind him and whirls around, seizing the letter opener as his only defense.
Lena holds up her hands in mock-surrender, glancing at the blunted knife gripped in his hands before returning her gaze to meet his eyes. The rosy flush in her cheeks is creeping down her neck and across her exposed collarbones; she bites her lip, brief, startling white on a red field.
Arthur doesn't think, just acts: he drops the knife to the floor, where it bounces dully off the carpet. He doesn't embrace so much as gather her, collecting both of her wrists and holding them against the door above her head in one hand, lifting her willing body to wrap around him with the other arm. They kiss, deeply; he tastes champagne, her strange brand of cigarettes, and a sweet clarity that is unmistakably Lena - crisp alpine water in this southern hellmouth.
He thrusts to her, instinctively, a gentle meeting of his clothed hips to hers. She breaks from his kiss to moan despairingly, "too much clothes," her breath hitching in his ear, rousing him further, pressing his mouth to her neck and exposed chest. He lifts her skirt, her crinoline, to see what she means - she's corseted, her undergarments a complex architecture. Arthur finally clues into what she's saying - there's no way to get her out of, and back into, this dress.
Arthur releases her wrists, lowers her to the ground, trying to conceal his disappointment. He half-sits on the desk, closing his eyes. Their first time together, in the cabin, he'd been so tentative; afraid of being with a woman after so long. He had been ready for her tonight, he realizes. Ready to reciprocate her eager playfulness, her attentions and affections. Foiled by underwear.
He's about to apologize to Lena, at a loss, but she's not paying attention to his miniature tantrum. She's retrieved the letter opener from the floor and has worked under her dress with it. He's dumbfounded, and she steps to him, just past him, squeezing the expression from his cheeks with her hand, putting her lips to his ear again, how she knows he likes. "Una soluzione," she whispers, reaching past his hips to return the letter opener to the desk, trailing her hand back across them, brushing against his hardness.
Arthur sweeps her up from the floor and she squeals, returning her back to the door, her arms around his neck, fingers in his hair. He holds her up by her thighs, fingers kneading into her flesh, pushing into her with a shudder, moaning into her mouth.
"Fuck, darlin'," he growls into her neck, pressing his lips there, on her shoulder, nipping at her earlobe. She grasps his jaw to stare at him, kiss him, murmuring, "m'fai impazzire," before panting hotly into his ear, biting down on his shoulder.
Arthur finishes with a cry, pressing Lena's whole body to him, just as they hear a voice echo up the stairwell outside the office. "It really is urgent, I might just bring the letter to Monsieur Lemieux and have him sign it down at the party."
Luca, she mouths at Arthur, sudden terror replacing the bliss in her eyes. He drops her as gently as possible, she seizes his hand with one of her own, using the other to keep her skirts hitched up as they run into the adjacent room, and then through a set of doors to the house's front balcony, thankfully deserted and darkened. They sit under the window, chests heaving. Arthur hands her his pocket square and she kisses his cheek, cleaning herself before throwing it over the balcony, letting the small white cloth sail into a shrub.
"I would'a kept that," he growls playfully into her ear, and she reddens. "Che osceno," she whispers back, hitting at his shoulder, resting her hand there, fingers trailing over the old injury. They straighten out their clothing, their hair, her makeup.
Arthur's about to rise from their hiding place when they hear Luca's voice ring out from the room, "Is- is someone in here? È qualcuno qui?" They sit frozen, listening to Luca's tentative footsteps come closer.
Lena turns to Arthur suddenly, grasping his hands. "You'll come to the opera with me, next week? Saturday, eight o'clock. Meet me at the theatre."
Arthur's slow to react, still coming down. "'Course I will, but-"
"Wear that suit, amore," she winks at him, planting a hard kiss to his mouth before rising from seated, crashing through the door.
"Luca!" He hears her crow, "Mi sei mancat', Luca Napoli." She says his full name in a feigned drunken singsong, and he hears the lackey stammer something to her in Italian. Arthur risks a glance over the windowsill, and sees Luca struggling to lead her out of the room, back towards the terrace where her brother lies in wait. Arthur rises from his place, slipping through the balcony door, the anteroom door, out of the study.
On the stairs, nearly free, Arthur hears Bronte bellowing at Lena in Italian, the unmistakable sound of a slap. His heart rises in his throat, but he presses on, finding Dutch and the others making their way to the carriage.
They retrieve their weapons from the chest by the front gate, start filing into the carriage. "Did you get it?" Arthur pats his pocket, nodding.
"Were you followed?"
Yes, Arthur thinks, and feels a heat rise in his cheeks. "No, don't think so."
"Took you long enough," Dutch admonishes, making room for Bill to climb in next to him.
"Well, had to make sure I weren't followed, didn't I?" Arthur retorts, and Dutch chuckles.
"Fair enough, Mr. Morgan," he says, raising his hands apologetically, and the carriage begins its slow trundle back to camp.