Page 41 of Razors & Ruin

I very much hope Sweeney attends to the chin—and the neck—of the child-troubling man of means who is the subject of the nearby conversation. I like the idea of directing my murder-happy lover in such a way that he could be one soul’s angel and another’s damnation, depending on each party’s perspective.

Then I see him. My Sweeney Todd, holding court at the center of a small crowd. He is cutting the hair of none other than Lord Francis Wetherby, who is sitting on a chaise of his own and looks about as comfortable as he might if he was watching someone fuck his wife.

From where I’m sitting, he may yet get to do just that. The woman tucked beside Wetherby has only taken up so close a position to her husband because it gets her closer to the barber she clearly finds so fascinating.

Beneath her finery, she’s frothing for him to an almost embarrassing extent. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear I can smell her cunt from here.

She can certainly smellmine, emanating from Sweeney’s collar like the tag of a territorial animal, and yet she persists, pouting and flexing her body as Sweeney moves around His Lordship’s head, trimming and shaping.

Behind her pink feathered half-mask, her eyes are liquid, like honey, and they never falter as she watches my man work.

Mr. T is more at home than he’d admit. Far from the circus he expected, the attention on him is more restrained, like he’s a craftsman and should be respected as such.

He likes it.I see it in his movements; he’s not tense with hatred but loose, moving languidly through his hips in a way that makes me really, really want to fuck him.

I’m not the only one.

I drain the fizz and snatch another. Wetherby’s odyssey of grooming is complete, and the precision of Sweeney’s handiwork draws a smatter of applause.

I have to laugh to myself; it seems the wealthy are curiously lacking in interests. Although, of course, that’s what this venture is all about—to dive below the glossy surface and see what’s in the mud.

“Beatrix!” Wetherby calls to his wife as she springs to Sweeney’s side. “Won’t you come over here, dear, and tell Mrs. Wynter about Cannes?”

“Oh, but I don’t?—”

My chest seizes as Sweeney takes her hand. He kisses it, and I swear the bitch gushes beneath her skirt. He leans in to whisper something in her ear, and she flushes, apple-cheeked and precious beneath her dark curls.

Then she’s away back to her husband’s side, for now. I’m surprised she doesn’t slip in her own puddle as she goes.

Sweeney shakes hands with The Beadle and a few others. He’s obviously spent some time hobnobbing before I arrived, and his new friends assure him they will bring their whiskers for his magical attention before the week is out.

He thanks them with a restrained politeness that has me enthralled; who knew he could act this way? He fucking hates everyone in this room with a passion—the chiffon at my throatand my long sleeves hide the evidence of what festers at the core of him.

Yet tonight, in this place, he’s metamorphosed into something else, and I find myself pondering the possibility of keeping at least some of this version for myself.

Mrs. Nellie Todd. I always wanted to take on a name and pretend my parents called me Nellie as a nickname. Ellen or Eleanor? Mrs. Eleanor Lovett-Todd?

There’s no way Sweeney would let me cling to Harry that way. He’d own me entirely or not at all.

Nellie and Sweeney. Sweeney and Nellie.

I’m blurry from the champers, lost in thought, and I don’t notice Mr. T until he’s practically on top of me. His eyes pass over mine, hidden in the hollows of my gold mask, and it’s all too clear; he simply doesn’t recognize me.

In my girly dress, bright and clean in candle-lit luxury, he can’t see who I am. The likes of me don’t belong here; he expects to find me in this room as he expects to find a cluster of syphilitic whores, or a plague of rats. Things that have their place, but that place is not here, so it never crosses his mind.

He passes by and out the door, but I know I’ll see him again. He’ll drift back into the party in his better coat, fae-like disguise in place, ready to lure the cunt-struck Lady Wetherby to a secluded corner and woo secrets from her.

I belch, and a woman standing nearby glares at me.

“Fuck yourself, you fat slag,” I say, and her hand flutters to her throat as she scuttles away.

The champagne tray sails my way once more, and I pick up my third glass, watching with narrow eyes as Lord Wetherby rolls his eyes and gives his pretty wife his back. Beatrix Wetherby produces a compact from her beaded purse and begins to primp.

I tap the waiter on the shoulder as he walks away. “Wait,” I say. “Give me another one of those.”

I sidle over the shiny floor toward my mark. “Ooh, did you see him?” I ask, affecting the budgerigar-like trill I keep hearing in these cultured voices. “What an uncommon man, Mr. Todd. Such talent.”

Beatrix takes the offered glass and gives me her slightly unfocused gaze. She’s a little sloppy, which makes things easier for me.

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