Read Online Bound in Moonlight by Louisa Burton - Free Book Online Page A

people unawares and listen in on their conversations.”
    â€œAre you serious?”
    â€œRarely.” Shifting his gaze to the window, he said, “So, which one is the son of a bitch?”
    I sighed. “Randolph Lytton, Baron of Hickley.”
    â€œAh, Randy Randy. What an excellent judge of character you are, Miss Townsend.”
    I invited him to call me Emily. “I say, who is that woman under the umbrella with him?”
    Squinting, he said, “That's Priscilla Brisbane,” as if it were blatantly obvious.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œYou know Randy, but you don't know his mistress? I've only just met them—they'd never visited before—but I'm told they've been together for four years, that they're never seen apart, and that he would marry her in a heartbeat if she weren't an actress with no name and no money. Have I said something funny?”
    I realized I was laughing, not ha-ha laughing, but that kind of bitter, exhausted chuckling that sometimes comes out of you when you're just too far gone for tears. I told him I was just a little giddy from not having slept well.
    Outside, a coachman took a lady's umbrella as he handed her up into a landau, the one that had been the scene of Claude Morel's little tryst out in the carriage house the day before. The lady was Helen, whom Elic had so thoroughly rousted in
le Boudoir des Miroirs
the night before. She was smiling, as well she might have been.
    I asked Inigo if he knew who she was, and he said sure, he was always briefed on the visitors who came to Grotte Cachée. He told me her name was Helen Forrester, and that she'd come there in the hope of getting pregnant. Her husband was evidently sterile (she was fairly sure it was he, and not she, because his first marriage had produced no offspring, either). She was desperate for a baby, but she balked at taking a lover for this purpose, not only because she loved her husband, but because she wanted her child to be of Forrester blood. She found out that her husband's estranged brother, a Don Juan named Cyrus Forrester, would be visiting Grotte Cachée, so she followed him there in the hope of convincing him to father a child on her. A lecher he may have been, and a leather fetishist as she soon discovered, but he had too much honor to cuckold his brother, estranged or no. Helen's tears and entreaties fell on deaf ears, so she was in despair of remaining childless—until she learned that a woman named Cassandra had booked an overnight stay in
le Boudoir,
and that Cyrus intended to pay her a visit. Helen somehow convinced Cassandra to let her take her place, which she did, wearing the hood so as to disguise her identity.
    â€œShe looks pretty happy,” Inigo said, “so the little ruse must have worked. Here's hoping it bears fruit.” He lifted a cup as if in a toast, then said, “I'm being even ruder than normal. I've brought a pot of java. Would you like some?”
    â€œPlease.”
    Inigo patted the couch next to him and poured me a cup, offering to spike it with brandy, like his, but I declined. As I settled down next to him, taking care to tuck my two dirty books under my skirt, I considered and rejected the notion of telling him what I'd seen in
le Boudoir
the night before. Mostly I didn't want him to know what a snoop and voyeur I was. And how could I tell him that it looked as if Elic might have switched genders, something a crazy old handyman had told me certain demons did in order to achieve a
“transfert de sperme”
between a human couple?
    Instead, I inanely complimented the coffee, telling him it was the best I'd had since leaving the States. I asked him if he was from New York, because he sounded as if he was.
    He said, “Not originally, but I love New York, and I have a house there. Well, we share it, but—”
    â€œWe?”
    â€œI live here with some friends—in addition to the Archers, of course, and
le seigneur
and his son. Elic