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

gossip is based on ill-bred, unimaginative public speculation. As in Bertie’s case. As if anyone would conduct something as touchy as an assignation with a future monarch by lettinghim and his friends sit with her in her balcony box at the opera.”
    James blinked, frowned, and tried to decipher her comment. Good, he thought at first, she was denying the liaison. Then, no. What was wrong here? She was denying it. But Bertie…. James realized she referred to the Prince of Wales—using the name by which only his close friends and family addressed him.
    She continued, “Why do people persist in wanting to know other people’s private business?” She looked at James squarely, contemplatively, for a moment, then laughed. “And, no, I won’t deny my association with Bertie any further than that, nor any other rumors you present. So don’t bother going down the list you have made in your mind. I won’t be put in the position of denying one rumor or another, while by not denying some, I seem to admit too much.”
    A list. James blinked. He wanted to say, A list? You can envision a list?
    She pressed her lips together as if she could make herself contrite. “In any event, I didn’t mean to shock you. That wasn’t what I was trying to do.” A pause, then a slight smile: an earnest one. “I don’t think,” she added. At which point she laughed outright. Peals and peals, like soft, clear-ringing bells.
    The sound just about undid James. Coco Wild’s laughter, in all its variety, so appealed to him, he would like to have inhaled it, put his nose down inside it, smelled it like a flower. Then eaten it out of her mouth.
    Yes, he would like to be on her list. At the top.With all the others crossed out. He wanted her. He was here to negotiate having her, he admitted to himself. Just as others had. How marvelously straightforward. Here was how matters should be done.
    Yet the precise nature of the “how,” the way to phrase it, to conduct himself, eluded him. How did one approach the subject? James had not the first idea how to approach a regular woman-of-the-profession, let alone—what? What was she?
    Oh, gad, the idea made his skin prickle. With horrid delight. With blessed relief. A professional. A woman who sought to please a man, skillfully, purposefully. Sexually. No faints or flutters or pretense or disgust.
    James reached forward and stubbed his cigar out in a dish. Stupid. All this circling. He was about to tell her that it was he who was sorry, who was being circuitous and difficult.
    Yet before he could say anything further, she stood. “Well,” she said. James was half-risen when she announced, “I have an appointment in half an hour. It was kind of you to stop by.” She smiled cordially as she offered her fingertips—that friendly, arm’s-length gesture from the Continent she embraced so easily, bestowing yet withholding herself.
    He took her hand, from simply not knowing what else to do, kissing smooth, cool knuckles, her fingers dewy soft as they slid through his. The maid appeared out of nowhere with his hat. James took it, again more out of a loss for any other immediate alternative. He tapped the brim twice on his leg before he could think to say, “When may I see you again?”
    Coco, turning to lead him out, paused halfway around. She said, “I’m afraid I shall be out of town for a while.” She seemed wistful for an instant, then shrugged helplessly. “I leave day after tomorrow.”
    “Ah.” He nodded. In fact, he himself had to be back at Cambridge for Easter term, which began in a fortnight. “When do you return to London?”
    “In three weeks.”
    “I see.” He couldn’t keep the disappointment from his voice.
    He followed, mulling, churning over how to stop his being thrown out—while she led him down the entry hall toward the front door again.
    What he wanted, when she stopped before the front door, was to say, Tell me more about this ferocious thing that rises up inside you. Who