Read Online Sleeping Beauty by Judith Ivory - Free Book Online Page A

market”? What did one pay for a sexual object par excellence? Or at least, for one of the more erotically straightforward and knowledgeable women in the civilized world?
    For surely she was this. Oh, his fancies. How impossible. This little woman. This delicate, underfed French person. She couldn’t possibly be as wild and salacious as he imagined. But French…. Oh, even this stirred him up. Trite. Silly. So ridiculously predictable. As with the most sensational of pornography, her faintly Frenchified air titillated his poor English mind.
    As demure as you please, she poured tea, moving things aside on the tea table to make room for his teacup. When she shoved her mail, a piece of paper came partway out of an opened envelope. A bank draft. He couldn’t see the amount, but he could see the signature: Julius J. Levanthal.
    James felt his stomach roll over; his eyes grew hot. He couldn’t help himself. He glanced at theroses again, then back at the check that peeked out, rebuking him. Only this time she caught him: when his eyes met hers again, she was laughing—that hair-raisingly quiet, unvoiced laughter of hers.
    “Oh, Dr. Stoker.” She bowed her head, but her laughter increased. She took the bank draft and envelope from the table, folding them together, and put them into her pocket. “Jay wrote it to me, of course.” She was teasing him.
    Though James resisted seeing any joke. He stared at her, utterly humorless.
    More laughter. “Oh, the priceless look on your face,” she said, then sighed, as if reluctant to be humane. She explained, “You see, I invest with him. These are my dividends this quarter. He manages some of my money, as a kind of financial advisor. He’s very smart about such matters. There is nothing untoward.” She paused, then gave way to more laughter. “No matter how much you or anyone else might like to believe there is.”
    “Levanthal, you should know, is tolerated here only for his financial connections. He is the worst possible sort of choice for you as a social companion, at least in London society.”
    “I didn’t realize there was a bad choice for me.” She looked annoyed momentarily, then cast her eyes down. She added, “Until last night of course.” As if in explanation, she murmured, “People in Paris like me. I go wherever I wish. I’ve had the emperor’s cousin to dinner at my home, sat him down at my left with a duke at my right. I have entertained Russian princes and American senators. I married an English admiral who loved me. Yet last night, I was someone to despise. It never occurred to methat”—her fine, intelligent eyes met his with genuine surprise—“London society would find me reprehensible.”
    He shouldn’t have said it, but he wanted to see if it would shock her. He wanted to hear her deny it: “London society whispers of you as their future monarch’s sixteenth birthday present.” He laughed as if he found this droll.
    Her lips pushed out, a quintessentially French moue of disdain, while her eyes came up to meet his, her scandalously beautiful eyes. She looked truly angry for a moment. Then she said, “Where the Prince of Wales puts his cock is no one’s business but his own, especially where he put it well over a decade ago.”
    James felt his face run cold. His mouth went dry. He tried not to be too obvious as he attempted to draw breath. He put the cigar into his open mouth, puffed and blew smoke—a screen—into the air before his face. He hoped it hid his expression.
    Apparently not. She said, “Oh, dear.” She bowed her head, smiling her fey, not entirely ingenuous smile. A smile that continued to make fun a little. “I’m sorry. It’s just that, when such things are said of me, I get…oh, I don’t know. Something ferocious in me rises up. I want to knock someone down.” She blushed slightly—and most attractively. “Or floor them figuratively.” She murmured, “I’m sorry.” Then, “I just feel especially misused when the