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

and Lili travel sometimes, but rarely to New York, so I think of the house as mine. We have another house in Paris, and that's where they usually go when they want to trade the country for the city.”
    â€œParis is my favorite city in the world,” I said. “I'd give anything to live there.” I told him I knew who Elic was, but I wasn't sure about Lili.
    â€œLong dark hair, very exotic looking. She and Elic are devoted to each other.”
    I wasn't sure how to respond to that.
    Inigo said, “You're wondering why you've seen them with other people. It's because Elic can't . . . Well, it's complicated, but they can't make love to each other.”
    I didn't question that, not wanting to display my naïveté, but I must have looked puzzled, because he said, “When I say, ‘make love,’ I'm talking about actual, you know . . . intercourse. They can do other things. Or rather, he can do things to her, but it doesn't work the other way. I'm saying too much. You're confused, and I can't . . . Archer's always telling me to keep my big . . .” He sighed and shook his head. “Sorry. I get a little too talkative sometimes.”
    I've wondered ever since why a man who wasn't impotent should be unable to have sex with just one specific woman. “Must they sleep with other people?” I asked. “Can't they just . . . do without?”
    Inigo smiled and shook his head. “I'm afraid that wouldn't be possible.”
    I was about to question that when, in a conversational backtrack, he told me that although he kept a house in New York and sounded American, he wasn't. He said people often speculated on his origins, and that he was frequently accused of having gypsy blood, for some reason, but that he was actually born in Santorini. I said I knew all about Santorini. It was the Greek island cluster that Kit Archer had identified in his novel as being the real Atlantis. Inigo told me he'd helped Kit with his research.
    Inigo said he'd been born Inignacios, which had been Latinized to Ignatius when he lived in Rome, and then to Inigo when he made his home among the Basques on the border of France and Spain. I asked where his house in New York was, and he said, “Greenwich Village—the East Village.”
    â€œOh, my word,” I said. “That's where I know you from. I saw you once. It was just in passing, but I know it was you. You were leaving Bertha Chalmers's brownstone just as I was walking up the front steps. You tipped your hat and smiled as you held the door open for me.” That smile had made me weak in the knees (you had to see it to understand) but of course I didn't tell him that.
    â€œYou know Bertha?”
    â€œI attend her literary salons. That's where I met Kit. How do you know her?”
    â€œShe spent a week or so here a while back when she was traveling through Europe. Ah, Bertha. She had it all—wit, beauty . . .” He looked off with this dreamily carnal smile, shaking his head a little, as if she still held him in her sexual thrall.
    â€œWhen was this?” I asked. “That she stayed here?” Bertha Chalmers had to be eighty if she was a day.
    â€œOh. Um . . .” He lifted his cup, took a sip, shrugged. “It was some time ago. We've remained friends.”
    â€œYes, but . . . I mean, she's—”
    â€œDid you like the books?” he asked, nodding toward the lump under my skirt.
    I've never been much of a blusher, but I could feel my cheeks growing warm as I took the books out from under my skirt.
    â€œYou know, you really don't have to hide that kind of thing around here.” Pointing to
My Secret Life,
he said, “What do you think of that one?”
    â€œNot much. I was told it would help me to understand the sexual inclinations of men, but . . .”
    â€œOf men who ought to be locked up, maybe. Who told you that?”
    â€œLord Hickley.”
    â€œOf course. They're cut from the same