Read Online Black Silk by Judith Ivory - Free Book Online

the turns at the center of the room. The orchestra suddenly stopped. People clapped. He thought he was about to leave Rosalyn behind once more when he was forced to look down. She did not clap. She would not relinquish the watches. He had to takeher hands in his and bend each of her fingers individually out of the chains and buttonholes at the bottom of his vest. Then he let out a harried breath. She had clutched two of his fingers into her fist. The orchestra began again.
    “It’s a Viennese. Listen.” It was indeed a fast Viennese waltz. Ever buoyant, she said, “Come dance and spin me round and round till I can’t stand. Then just at the end, kiss me. Let’s be happy and gay. And romantic.”
    “I think that wouldn’t go over very well.”
    “It would with me.”
    “Remember whom you’re entertaining.”
    “Certainly not you.”
    He sighed. “Rosalyn, I’d just as soon not remind anyone tonight of—anything romantic. Dinner was a bit much for me.”
    “What? That twit with the twins again? Come now, you can’t let people—”
    “But I do, apparently. I don’t like being the butt of these jokes. Not after suffering the reality of it all day. Be a good girl and understand.”
    She wrinkled her nose and mouth. “I’m not anyone’s good girl.”
    “No. Thank goodness.” He freed his fingers, enveloping her hand in both of his. “Now let me see what this woman wants. Then I’m retiring early. You can wake me when you come to bed.” He manufactured something more like a smile, which usually pleased her, but not this time.
    “You can’t leave. I was counting on you—”
    “You are doing wonderfully well on your own. I’m very proud of you. Proud for you. It has nothing to do with me, you must believe that. It’s your own doing in spite of me, in fact. I’ll come back before I retire, for an hour or so to say my good-nights.” When she didn’t immediately respond to that, he added, “And spin you once around the dance floor, if you’ll put up with my clumsiness.”
    “You’re never clumsy.”
    He touched two fingers, first to his mouth, then to hers.
    “But you’re a third-rate romantic,” she said, then with hardly a pause, “I love you.”
    He disappointed her again, somewhat perversely this time. “What a lucky man I am.”
    “Cad.”
    “A third-rate slander. You should have been in court this morning.”
    She lifted her skirts, turned, and dropped her eyes over one shoulder. “Well, if you can find me when you return—”
    “I’ll find you.”
    “If I’m not in the ballroom, you can check the carriages.”
    “Now who’s the cad?”
    “Women can’t be.”
    “Of course they can.” He forced her retreating chin around. “I love you, Rosalyn; happy?”
    She stuck out her tongue, didn’t look happy at all, turned and began to negotiate the masses. Half a dozen people away, she was talking animatedly again. Then she laughed so hard that she had to cover her mouth with her hand, and the laughter still came out noisily. He watched her, but she never looked back. The laughter was not for his benefit, he knew, but for her own. She had a facility for dredging up happiness from her bottommost moments, as though she tapped some hidden spring and up came artesian joy, an unending supply. Without props or prompts—this was a trick he would like to learn.
     
    Rosalyn Schild could have had a foul disposition and still been sought after. She was stunning. Large-boned, buxom, beautiful in an exuberant, unwithholding manner, she was as radiant and full-blown as a blood red rose with every petal bent back. People held their breath when they first saw her. She was wealthy and stylish. Tonight she wore a magenta gown for which there was not a match in the room (but then she had special access to the new aniline dyes, her husband reputedly being in textiles). She was as genuinely, wonderfully, certifiably fresh as anything Graham could imagine ever coming into his dismally homogeneous