9. A French Fancy

He caught sight of her across the room, and scent came next: soft, too soft tonight, poised to slide beneath the senses and ensnare. Her fingers were twitching for a light, but they were not alone on the veranda; even so early in the evening, a crowd had gathered around their newly risen queen, Carter Baizen charring her dyed pink cigarette with the end of his own and Serena lifting a strand of her hair and glancing towards the onlooker with a look which could have been called poisonous. He knew better to approach when the cut on her cheekbone still burned bright, taunting and haunting him in equal measures, pearly pink beneath several layers of powder.

Fortunately, he wasn't the only one watching.

Leaning elegantly on the balustrade, Prince Louis Grimaldi had the combined advantages of both being very handsome, which was common in a prince, and very rich, which was not. He had come to New York for a taste of a land of the free where the only names that mattered were old, Dutch, and embossed on the invitations.

"Who is she?"

"Miss Blair Waldorf, from Manhattan."

Miss Blair Waldorf looked 'fresh', which was the new way of saying that she looked young and glorious and that the moonlight seemed to scatter silver across her lashes. Her dress was deceptive, masking her décolleté with a fold of spangled gauze; as the shimmer followed the line of her tiny waist, however, the glossy pink under-gown was revealed, drawing the eye back upward to where each breath swelled and then teasingly withdrew her tightly laced chest.

She was watching him too.

The rim of the champagne glass brushed Blair's lips at precisely the angle she meant it to, spilling a stream of bubbles across her tongue that set to work bursting with the butterflies in her stomach. She had positioned this tableau just so, flanked by other deities who would only brighten her own star. Serena was staring as openly at the prince's companion as Carter was staring at Serena, eliminating them from the game before one could even decide if they were knights or pawns. She, their snow white queen – thanks to the gratuitous use of rice powder to cover her still glowing cheek – stood surrounded but alone, letting her lashes droop over her night dark gaze to conceal her expression.

"Go," she breathed, and the crowd around her dispersed like magic.

Blair had fixed upon Prince Louis as a prospect the very moment she had decided to attend the consul's ball and, because she liked to be prepared, requested a guest list. He was everything a possible husband should be, by all accounts: attractive, chivalrous, polite and positively golden with wealth. The problem came in that there was no time for courting, not with the wolf still hot on the trail of her little red cloak. No, Louis would have to be seduced, and for once chivalry and politeness would be two of the most important things barring her way.

But she was done with civility for the night, through with charged glances on his part and coquettish avoidances on hers. He was going to come to her, and she was going to play him properly.

As if to emphasise her point, she mimicked his position, one elbow propped on the railing with a hand cupping her opalescent cheek. When footsteps sounded on the tiles, she cast her eyes dreamily towards the stars and breathed in slowly, filling her lungs with the intoxicating taste of triumph and the thrill of the hunt.

Across the board, the black king moved into position.

"Miss Waldorf. One hears tales of sirens, you know."

"Does one?" Blair didn't turn her head. "Well then, perhaps you should stop up your ears with something stronger than wax."

"The lady reads Seneca."

"A little."

"The original text?"

"There is nothing more pure or beautiful than Latin, don't you agree?" She smiled with half her mouth, and felt his gaze linger upon it and then upon the moonlit line of her throat, her pale arms.

"I believe there is something far more beautiful than Latin, Miss Waldorf. I also believe you set up that compliment very prettily."

"And your parry was remarkable, naturally." The spangles on her dress glittered as Blair straightened, accepting the prince's proffered hand and meeting his blue eyes with a look as seductive and smoky as she could muster. Slowly, he withdrew the cigarette from between her fingers, then dropped it to the floor where its merry little light flickered out.

"And now," said Louis Grimaldi. "There is something far purer."

"Touché."

Chuck observed silently as they slipped into the interior of the consulate, exhaling smoke in a neat cloud which utterly obscured his expression. After a long moment where his face appeared to have been carved from stone, so still was it, he flicked his own cigarette to the tiles, ground it out beneath the heel of his shoe and followed.

Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York
1897

"Come back!"

He clutched at her sleeve, her wrist, and still she tore free from him and raced onwards. Her little bare feet slapped against the floorboards, and he couldn't help but think that she had taken her stockings off with a far more innocent intent than the one with which she ran and he chased after her. He was quite prepared to grab her, shake her, slap her, hold her still or pin her down – if only she would listen to him.

"Blair!"

"No!" She burst into a room that was inexplicably filled with flowers, skidded behind a lily laden table to create a barrier between them. Chuck almost hurtled into it, then righted himself and glared.

"What the Hell is wrong with you?"

She threw a flower at him, its petals tumbling as it flew. "I saw you with that...that whore!"

"She came to me! Blair, I don't want her!"

"But you don't want me!" Tears were washing away her rouge and leaving her ghostly pale. "I keep trying and trying because I know that's what you want, and I know it's what I want, but you keep pushing me away! What's wrong with me? What don't I know?"

"There is nothing wrong with you."

"Liar!"

"Nothing!" He roared back at her. "You are the most pure and perfect thing in the world! It's like you're asking me to put fingerprints all over crystal! You're asking me to give in to the thing that I want second most – because most is something else that I want from you – of all. You're trying to give me the most precious thing you have in return for what? Nothing? How in the world am I supposed to equal that?"

Spilled pollen stained her fingertips orange, and she reached for his hand.

Lilies were behind Blair's head as she laughed, wreathing her in a rich white tableau and contrasting too well with all the shades of her dark hair. Though she never so much as glimpsed anything further than the line of Louis' shoulders, she had her mind whirring and working on a thousand things at once: where she would take him, what she would say, how far she would go this time to get what she wanted. She noted in an absent sort of way that the last time – the first time – she had gone so far for something she wouldn't have, but that was a moral grievance that could wait until she was a princess and beyond the reach of the Bass arm.

"Your favourite flower?"

"Roses," she lied seamlessly. "I find myself entranced by tradition, don't you?"

"And yet you read Plato and Kant, and quote Seneca at me when I try to flirt. You are hardly a traditional woman, Miss Waldorf."

"I don't think you were trying to flirt."

"No?"

"You were succeeding."

He smiled, and it was a true smile: free of malice, only just touched with desire at the corners. Blair let her lips curl upward in an expression that was far more dangerous to her morality, fighting to restrain a wince as her cut stretched. She had been washing it twice daily and cleaning it after powdering besides, so it was healing cleanly, but extremes of emotion tautened the skin and made her jaw twitch with pain. Luckily, the prince seemed oblivious to anything but her fluttering lashes.

"The gardens here are lovely, the consul tells me."

"I hear the gallery's prettier." The weight of those words clogged her throat.

And then he was looking at her like they all looked at her, those hounds with their bowler hats or toppers who came to drink tea with her when really all they wanted was to see the line of her bodice up close. Every man was the same with the same choice laid before him, and in the war between chaste love and corrupting lust, lust would always emerge carrying the ace of trumps. It was exactly what she'd wanted, and still she'd hoped for better from him.

But Louis did not even raise an elegant eyebrow.

Because prince or pauper, he was no better.

"Lead the way."

~#~

A short way away, Jenny Humphrey lay still beneath the rafters. The beams in the attic hung low enough to hit a man in the head, and she often thought it beneath her dignity to sleep in a place where rules about chastity were enforced by the architecture. It seemed far too droll that Eleanor Waldorf could keep the help virtuous even when they were out of sight, yet could not control the antics of her own daughter. But then, if that daughter had been faced with Chuck Bass...Jenny rolled over and pressed her face into the pillow, nipping at it with her teeth as her stomach lurched.

She could at least claim to have been kissed. She had kissed coachmen and houseboys and, on one memorable occasion, a drunken party guest who may or may not have been an Astor. Kissing was pleasant and it made people do things for her, but Blair's charm seemed entirely rooted in the fact that she never kissed anyone – and then conversely, Chuck Bass followed her around and chased her into the slums because she'd gone further, to the brink of ruin. She still teetered there, and though she had worn a golden dress to an illicit party and been touched by him, Jenny still longed to push her over the edge and watch her fall.

Because now she knew what she wanted, and it was yet another thing that the lovely Miss Waldorf had.

While the brink of ruin appeared an uncomfortable place to be, there was a certain glamour to it. Ladies' maids were allowed to sit outside the windows or just beyond the veranda at balls, and Jenny could imagine herself telling the others that 'it wasn't that bad', that she 'couldn't understand what all the fuss was about'. She wanted to have some experience of it in the way that would hurt her and make her seem unskilled, and after she wanted what Blair had been given so freely and had thrown away so easily.

Jenny Humphrey wanted Chuck Bass.

She wanted to come apart in his arms as her mistress had, but everything would be different with her. He would marry her, and damn the gossips, and then take her with him to the wonderful place that was called California where they would live without the shadows of servitude or regret over their heads. He would forget everyone but her. He would love her. She would be the richest, the most beautiful, the most beloved. They would be together, and it would be supreme.

Horses clattered up and down the avenue and sleep came slowly to many of its occupants that night, but the dreams of the Waldorfs' youngest maid were vindictive and unutterably sweet.

~#~

They were kissing; he was kissing her. Her back was hard up against the portrait of someone famous or at the very least affluent, but she didn't care. Her plan was succeeding. The pieces were falling into place. His hand was on her neck and then on her waist and then her thigh, catching her just below the knee and pulling her leg up around his hip. It made her unsteady, made her sway, and that just made each and every kiss more fervent as Blair struggled to stay upright and Louis slowly encroached on the most sacred territory. There were flashes as his hand slid along her pink swathed thigh: flashes of light, flashes of memory. She could have screamed for the recollections in her head which blocked her mind's eye and made her feel cheap, made her feel dirty and sordid for seizing the day and taking what she was due. She was owed a chance for happiness. She was owed the chance to escape. She was owed the chance to feel all this again, and damn the original sin she couldn't forget.

"I hope," she sighed, midway between speech and breath. "You don't think less of me, simply because..."

"Because you feel?" Came the reply, almost infuriatingly amused. "I could never condemn a lady for feeling." He touched her face, her hair, and his blue eyes were blinding. "Especially one as exquisite as yourself."

Blair closed her eyes and let him kiss her again. It was not an objectionable experience, but it was one which made her feel very empty for no discernible reason. There was an ache beneath her ribs that was something like hunger, and though her lips moved and her lungs pushed and pulled against her stays, she could no longer feel her heart beating – but it had to be, or else she would not be still standing.

"Elle est trop belle," Louis murmured, and then his hands were slipping into her hair, deftly removing the pins.

"I would bow, Your Highness, but I'm afraid you'd return the nicety and drop her."

Mere feet away, the white queen felt her gorge rise.

"No..." The word was a whisper, a thread of sound, but Louis was already straightening and scowling and putting her to rights. His mouth formed a grim slash of distaste at the intruder, at his flawlessly cut suit and his pomaded hair, at his black gold cat's gaze and his casual lean to the left of the doorway.

"Who are you? What are you doing here?"

"I'm Chuck Bass," said Chuck Bass, quite casually. "The love of her life."

The room faded out of focus for a moment, and then Blair hissed that he was lying with her hair falling down in silky waves around her white, enraged face. Chuck advanced a few paces and smirked at Louis as Blair snarled, "I do not love him. I have never loved him."

"It wounds me to hear you say that," he returned, with a curl of the lip and a hand on his heart. "Truly, love of my life, it does."

"I am not your love!"

"Oh, but you are."

"Am not!"

"Are too."

"Am not!"

"Are. Were. Always will be."

Louis coughed. Blair could hardly blame him, since Chuck was faultlessly pressed and she had reeled him in like a courtesan with a game plan and now was apparently feuding with an old lover. Her eyes rushed over every part of him that would have been so wonderfully ideal: his immaculate clothing, his grace and stature, the aura of hauteur which was so alluring when attached to a prince and so galling in Chuck, the Basstard of new money, the black king standing across the board with his face betraying nothing of the soul that she still somehow knew he had. Perhaps that was why she couldn't just stick a knife in his chest, no matter how much she wanted to.

He wasn't worth Hell.

"I'm so sorry," she ground out from between her teeth. "But if you could –"

"Of course." Louis Grimaldi disappeared like an escapee from a fairytale, the prince fleeing the ball as the clock struck while the princess watched him go with her face threatening thunder.

Chuck selected a convenient pillar and lounged against it, his eyes hooded and his expression never changing. "You really know how to hurt people. I admire you for it."

"This is all your fault; I would've never needed Louis if you hadn't turned me into a social pariah in the first place!" Blair began to pace back and forth before his pillar like an angry cat, silver spangles flashing. "You make me inaccessible, you make me undesirable, and tonight you made me debase myself by throwing myself at a perfect gentleman, all in the hopes of freeing myself from you! You made me use him!"

"I didn't make you do anything," he drawled. "You were just you, and neither you nor I want you raising your skirt for the kind of 'perfect gentleman' who was ignorant enough to be rather enjoying your sacrifice. Don't you see we're the same? Stop trying to fight it."

She screeched to a halt before him, heels barely slipping on the highly polished floorboards, her blanched skin making the cut on her cheekbone stand out like a red flag to Chuck's shame. "I will fight until my last dying breath because any resemblance to you is something I would hate about myself!"

His nonchalance evaporated as Blair sneered the words, spitting them at him and watching the consequences ricochet and scatter like fireworks. Chuck seized her shoulders, the delicate bones prominent beneath a gauzy gown which only added fuel to the fire of his disdain, his disgust at her for acting the temptress, the tension that had been writhing and twisting up from his gut and throttling him all night long. They hit the panelling before he realised he was moving her, and she said nothing, only bit her lip and raised her chin and stared straight into his eyes as if she'd rather like to put a bullet between them.

He waited.

She waited.

Dozens of pairs of painted eyes glared their disapproval as Chuck moved forward with all the impetus of the freight train rattling within his ribcage, glorying as Blair's eyes shut even before his mouth was upon hers. They two closed, they shuddered, and then her tongue was sliding between his teeth and drawing him into her, into a far darker and deeper place than he was sure she had ever been with the paper doll prince. She tasted delight in the consummation of so much anticipation, so much waiting to be stabbed in the back or bent to his will against hers. Now she was bending, and it was electrifying to feel her flesh crawl and her body soften simultaneously. Her spine creased when his fingers found it and she sagged, warm and pliant and sweet beneath his touch. He inhaled flavour and fragrance and bit her, first gently, then harder, prompting gasps and tiny whimpers and returns of the atrocity. It was the same – why did she have to be the same? – and that forced rationality into his brain with the same unwelcome power as cold water in the face.

He broke the kiss.

They were both breathing hard, scorching the other's lips with every exhalation, chests rising and falling and hearts banging together. Blair burned at his audacity, at the way Chuck Bass touched her as if he had a right; he was trying to impress upon her that she was his, his possession, and would remain so no matter how many princes she kissed or courted. That presumption seemed to fill the whole gallery, to hang over their heads and spill from his palms where they gripped her waist.

"I won't be alone but for you," she vowed. "I won't have nobody to turn to but you."

"You won't even have me," he murmured, pressing the corner of his mouth to hers.

Blair shivered and shook her head. "I will find someone to love me – and no matter how hard you push, that person will never be you."

Chuck closed his eyes as her mask descended, as she pushed back against him once again and moved them to opposite sides of the board. The train in his chest stalled, and there was nothing but wilderness all around.

"I wasn't lying, you know."

"What?" She was fitting the fragments back into a whole, twisting easily from his grasp and winding up her hair into a shaky imitation of its earlier magnificence, smoothing down her dress and cooling her cheeks with the backs of her hands. Her focus was on everything but him: on her slim white arms, on her unsteady fingers, on the embroidery on her gown that still needed to be rearranged.

"Thus far, I have only expended so much energy on one woman: you. Since the rest charge by the hour or are more than happy to offer themselves gratis for nothing more than that...you are technically the love of my life. Make of that what you will."

It took until she was back in the throng, enshrined – or possibly entombed – in the arms of Cornelius Jackson Vandergelt III for Blair to remember the only promise he'd given her that evening, one spoken so flippantly and one so disconnected from the subject of her seduction or his surrender that it had escaped her notice. She caught sight of a retreating figure over Mr Vandergelt's shoulder and knew that, to all intents and purposes, the party was over for them both.

Are. Were. Always will be.

She laid her fingers on her lips and shivered.

...and now we return to our scheduled programming. Thanks to: threewordseightletters, blair4eva, Laura, signaturescarf, dreamgurl, Curious Blonde, DaKoTaDiArIeS, Star-crossed92, LeftWriter224, CBfanhere, IndigoandViolet, ggloverxx19, teddy bear, Krism, katharienne, Trosev, Kate2008, flipped, MegamiTenchi, Tru7, Arazadia, SaturnineSunshine, UPDATE ASAP PLEASE, ggoddess, Poinsettia, KM, Nikki999, maribells, UPDATE, Noire Ballerina, jamieerin, Temp02, UPDATE (again!) and mlharper. Big hugs to all my friends and fans on Tumblr, Twitter, Gossip Girlsss and Fan Forum.