huff and puff.

The weight of the thick envelope in the inner pocket of his jacket will soon be relieved, as it is always at this time of the month as Lord Cunningham makes his way along the drab halls of the poste de police, nodding his head curtly to familiar officers as he passes. He undoes a button of his suit coat as he walks, the end of his walking stick sitting the polished stone floor and announcing every step.

His relationship with the law is the more delicate of the ones he fosters across the city -- he doesn’t trust its intricacies with any of his hired lackies, even the most loyal of them. It requires personal involvement to hold the scales in his favor.

He only gives Léonard’s door one brief rap with the silver head of his cane before he enters without invitation, not minding any scene or work he may be interrupting. 

“No wonder you’re in such a dour mood on all occasion, old sport,” Drake muses aloud as he makes his way towards the window of the police captain’s office, looking down to the street below to make sure his driver is taking good car of his new motorcar where it is parked on the corner. 

“The halls of this place are dark and damp and there isn’t a pretty girl in sight. It’s goddammed depressing.”

Men like this are dangerous after sunset. He knows exactly what he is doing, and every move he makes seems to be as well-practiced as her own. A tried-and-true kiss to her hand, the intentional innuendo of his comments, every inch of him is dripping with confidence like champagne that she is eager to drink up. She makes no attempt to hide the shade of pink creeping across the apples of her cheeks, hiding beneath her freckles. 

“Be careful now, mon trésor, or you may just make me blush.” As he releases her hand she brings it to her hair, twirling a curl around her finger to distract herself from the chill wrapping itself around her spine and squeezing. 

With an excited, though not eager, smile on her face, she takes the seat next to him, her fingers resting coyly in her lap. 

“Not bad, but certainly not as exciting as my dear cabaret across the river. Though is it the music or my dancing that you find so lively when you visit the Moulin, my darling?” She smiles as she graciously plucks a cigarette from the case and places it between her lips. 

“Can you spare a light for me, mon trésor? I would be ever grateful.” 

“It seems as though I already have,” Drake notes as his eyes move over her face, catching the faint rush of blood to her cheeks. It has to be said that there is a certain satisfaction to making a courtesan blush, especially one as notorious as Charlotte Leigh -- the Moulin’s very own Sparkling Diamond. As a man of business, Drake prides himself on having an immaculate read on people -- the little tells they give away without meaning to. A shift in the body showing discomfort, a downcast gaze to avoid facing a lie, the way a woman’s body angles to his to show her interest.

The delicious thing about a blush is that it is impossible to fake. And if he can get that from her by just kissing her hand...Well, he wonders what else he could make her do.

“I would be made a liar if I said your dancing didn’t stir something in me,” he admits with a low chuckle, his brow slightly raised as he watches her collect a finely rolled cigarette from his case. He takes one of his own before placing it back into his pocket, replacing it with the cigarette lighter in his grip.

“You’ll have to lean in close,” he says temptingly as he holds the spark to light his own, smoke escaping from the corner of his mouth as he flicks the device once more and offers it to the blonde. 

“Though you seem the kind of woman who finds fun in playing with fire, hmm?”  

She could only wonder what was going through the man’s mind as she sat their joking around about scandal and asking for a seat on the bench. Perhaps he wished she’d go find some patch of grass far away from him to plonk down on. All doubts aside, he still scooted over and allowed her a place to sit, smirk and all. What was she doing, sitting with some man she did not know, his arms draped over the back of the bench like some panther lounging in the branches of a tree… perhaps the panther wasn’t hungry, and she’d survive this encounter. “Oh… shush, you… and thank you.” An amused smile curled onto her face as she took her place on the bench beside the gentleman.

Maybe this encounter might give her something to write about. 

She flipped her notebook open, balancing it on her lap, and pulled her pen out from where she’d stuck it behind her ear. There was nothing more intimidating than a blank first page on a new notebook. It stared up at her, an absolute horror, a mystery that was yet to be solved. 

“I do hope you are far more witty on the page,” Drake tells her with a scoff of amusement, flipping over the page of his paper to the business section. His eyes scan the page with occasional interest, laying the document on his lap as he reaches into the inside pocket of his coat and extracting his gold cigarette case engraved with his initials. He casts a sidelong glance at the woman jotting next to him.

He’d always found that offering a cigarette was a good way to gauge a woman’s morals without asking them explicitly.

“Perhaps one of these would get you going?” The Lord suggests as he notes her starkly blank page. He opens the case towards her, much like a serpent tempting Eve in the garden.

“I always find it assists me in thinking...creatively.”

“You come highly recommended by one of my board members,” Drake mentions as he leans back in his desk chair, eyeing the pretty young woman who he had invited  into his office after he’d offered her a seat.

“A Monsieur Lennox? Said you’d planned a lovely coming out party for his daughter several months ago and handed me your contact information so I could see if your were suitable for what I have in mind.”

He slid some papers over on his desk and referenced the napkin where her information had been written by his colleague. If he had to be honest, he was pleasantly surprised that the woman wasn’t the matronly type that he’d imagined. This whole affair of planning his birthday soiree would be so much more agreeable with someone pleasing to look at.

“Have you been doing this long?”

She, like everyone else in the room, had noticed him when he’d walked in. It would have been difficult not to. 

It wasn’t as if they hadn’t crossed paths, however briefly, in the past. Their social circles often overlapped, though much to her dismay, there had been no meetings between the two of them that veered toward the less formal side of the spectrum. Though they sit at opposite ends of the Cafe Etoile, she steals quick glances at him from across the room until she decides she is tired of waiting for him to approach her. 

A flick of her wrist  frees the pin that had been keeping her hair piled in a twist atop her head, sending a hurricane of blonde waves to cascade around her shoulders. She uses her fingers to shake her curls loose before setting off toward the bar, conveniently passing his table as she goes. Her hips sway as she walks, and if she were less practiced in the art of making it look natural it would certainly look like something out of a cartoon. 

A sly smirk crosses her face as he takes her wrist in his hand, and as she turns to face him she turns her arm in his grip so that he is holding onto her hand – which she, of course, extends for him to press a kiss to her knuckles. 

“Monsieur, I am a lady. Would I really be so forward to approach you and interrupt your conversation?” She raises a teasing eyebrow and seeing the look on his face, she feels her cheeks flush.

“Hello, bonjour. You weren’t going to let me join you without a drink, were you?”

He mentally notes her blush with a satisfactory smirk, ensuring that his lips linger a beat longer on her knuckles that what would have been viewed as polite in any of the circles that he ran in during the daylight hours.

The rules, however, were different once the sun went down.

“I’d happily let you interrupt any conversation, even if millions were on the line,” he hums, voice low as he brushes the pad of this thumb over her knuckles. It isn’t true, of course, but it’s the kind of thing that women enjoy hearing. He has yet to find a woman that can be more powerful and enduring than money -- if she exists at all.

However, as he releases her hand, he can’t help but briefly let his mind wander to how those fingers would look clinging in pleasure to the lush sheets of his bed.

But, no. Not yet.

“What kind of gentleman would I be if I didn’t keep you satisfied?” He muses, and he means every bit of innuendo that she may translate from it. Drake casts a pointed gaze to the cohort who had been sitting opposite of him, the man growing wide-eyed and excusing himself swiftly from the table. Drake hooks his good foot on one of the chair legs and pulls the seat next to his.

“Please, do me the pleasure of joining me.”

He waves a passing waiter over and tell them a scotch and a rose cocktail for the lady -- and to keep them coming. 

“How do you find the music here?” He questions her, leaning back in his seat and opening his cigarette case to Charlotte. 

“Not quite as lively as what they play at your Moulin, is it?”

English. Oh, thank god. She didn’t have to feel bad about bumbling through the elegance of the french language with her accent heavy on her tongue. How many years had she lived in the city, and still Isla found herself apologizing profusely to native french speakers for forgetting the right word or mispronouncing something. 

“Oh, please,” She scoffed at the idea of a chaperone. Her, a woman of 27, a girl who’d been on her own for several years… in need of a chaperone? She found the idea rather amusing. “Scandal and I are very well acquainted with one another. I avoid him at every chance I get…” She paused, giving the gentleman a once over. Something about his eyes told the smarter part of Isla’s brain to keep walking. And yet, Isla didn’t seem to be in a listening-to-logic mood. Really, what was the harm? She’d talk, maybe make a new friend, maybe not, and maybe even get some sort of writing out of him (not that he’d be aware of that, anyway). 

“What about you? Will I be stirring up some drama, making some lovely young lady terribly upset by sitting down with you? Would I be the cause of your scandal? Because I could just keep walking,”

“I’m sure that there are plenty of women that would be sullen if they were to see you next to me,” he mentions idly as he flips the page of his paper, flicking his eyes over in the young woman’s direction once more. She seemed to be a chatty one, which wouldn’t do wonders for his hangover, but he had always found that a little bit of pretty company always did well to pass the time.

It helped that she was blonde. Had she been darker haired, he would have likely directed her to another bench.

He adjusted his body, shifting himself over on the bench to allow more room for her to take a seat.

“I would enjoy nothing more than to have you be the cause of my scandal,” he smirks, lounding an arm over the back of the bench after laying his paper in his lap. He looks the young woman over once more.

“But with a face as sweet as that, it’s hard to believe anyone could say a word against you.”