Sleeping Beauty (8 page)

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 be
fore 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 are you? This gaiety of yours, how much is real? How much is well-rehearsed pretense—a metaphorical black-iron gate with wild thorny roses defending where pointed pickets don’t suffice?

What he blurted, though, was, “I would like to suggest we meet regularly. As man and woman. I am not poor. I have—”

“Dr. Stoker. Please.” She lowered her eyes there in the dimness of the hallway. “I don’t walk the streets. I never have.”

A misstep. James’s heart raced. He’d leaped somehow, somewhere to a horribly wrong conclusion. Yet he hadn’t. He couldn’t get his bearings. She was the classic confusion to the male mind: a woman who could drop terms like
cock
into a sentence while still holding on to a self-possessed—
lady-like—poise. The lady. The whore—the word itself so beyond the pale of decorum, one never said it in public. Which left him somehow the idiot. He couldn’t form a coherent sentence, let alone an appropriate apology. “I’m so sorry,” he stammered, “mortified. I can’t tell you how—”

She put her hand up over his mouth. Her small, cool hand. He quieted instantly.

They stood there in the shadows of the hallway, with James breathing in the fragrance of her fingers. They were unperfumed. She smelled simply sweet, naturally so, the curve of her hand almost waxy in its smoothness, soft, moist—redolent of vanilla orchids, the sort that vined their way up through the canopies of treetops. He counted the heartbeats of the duration of her touch, her hand against his lips.

When he could stand it no longer, he took hold of the back of her hand, pressing her palm to his mouth, kissing it.

She let out a sound, consternation, went to pull back. He wrapped two fingers round her wrist. Her arm went rigid. She wet her lips, stared at him. With her hand cupped in his, hovering at his mouth, she shifted her weight, the shushy-silk of her dress rustling, echoing in the narrow corridor.

He murmured, “You are sad, somehow. I want to help.”

“That’s not why you came.”

“No,” he admitted. “I came because you are the most lively, most interesting, cultured, lovely woman I have ever met. You please me a thousand ways. Tell me what to do, how to court you—”

She laughed again, a light, slightly nervous sound. “Oh, you are dangerous. So honest and ro
mantic”—more faintly anxious laughter—“and cheeky.”

“What do you want?” he asked. “Tell me.”

She bit her lips together, frowning up at him, her upturned regard lingering over his features in a way that made his whole body warm. She said, “You mean, What is my price?”

“All right. What is your price?”

She let out a burst, more edgy laughter, then stammered, “I, um—ah—” She blinked, shook her head. “I don’t have a price.” She extricated her hand, then couched her face in the shadows of the hall. She took a breath, then heaved air out in a long sigh. “Dr. Stoker—”

“James,” he murmured.

“James, then. Don’t judge me. I’ve made choices in my life. I would make them again. They were the right choices—”

There was an unexpected sadness in her posture, to her words—an unveiled moment that drew him, held him. He murmured, “Choose me.”

She shook her head vehemently. No, no, no; he had it all wrong somehow. She said, “Honestly, just for argument’s sake, I ask you: How? Can you imagine how you could begin to court”—she let out an indignant snort—“the Prince of Wales’s birthday present? Without causing yourself all manner of embarrassment, even injury to your career? Important people don’t like me—”

“
I
like you. And I wouldn’t be embarrassed. Moreover, those few people who did know would think me bold and worldly. If anything, debonair.” He laughed.

“Oh, dear,” she said. She looked away, but he
caught a sideways glimpse of her expression—the slightest curve of a smile, amused and full of a cynicism he was perhaps not meant to see. “
That
kind of courting,” she said, then expelled a vocalized huff of dissent. “I’m finished with half-attentions and dark stolen moments, Dr. Stoker. I’m done with being someone’s unadmitted guilt. What I loved about my husband—the reason I married him—was that he loved me in the light of day, in front of everyone. I deserve that.”

She kept her face turned, her expression hidden, though her voice contained an unhidable malaise. She said, “Do you know, I have been in London three months and only last night did I understand that people here think I’m dreadful.” She paused. “You think I’m vulgar. You think you can walk in here and buy me like a sporty new horse for your carriage.”

“No, I—”

“Yes,” she said. But added benevolently, “Though you’re young. You don’t understand. You are too innocent even to know how mean you are to stand here like this. Now good day, Dr. Stoker.”

“I’m sorry—I just—”

“It’s all right. You make me feel foolish.” She laughed. “Innocent myself.” She tilted her head sideways, looking up at him—letting him see her moodiness in all its glory for a moment. She laughed again, skeptically. “Which is saying something.” The door opened a crack, her hand resting on the knob. She’d let a thin beam of light into their sheltered conversation.

“When will I see you again?” Don’t make me leave, James kept thinking. She was so delicate, yet
beautiful; formidable, yet wounded. He was amazed to discover a fragile piece to her. Amazed and fascinated.

“I have things to do. I won’t be in London again till Michaelmas—”

“Perfect. There is a university break then. I could come to London—”

“But I am only here a day before I leave for France again, where I’ll live till June. Then I always spend the summer in Italy.”

James didn’t know what to say. She was telling him that she wouldn’t alight long enough for him to catch up with her.

She offered a wide, bright smile—that gregarious display of goodwill she could call up in an instant that could so completely, and dishonestly, mask the distress she’d let him see just moments before. “So,” she said. “If we meet again, we’ll be friends, all right?”

It was a boundary, not an invitation.

James felt a jolt of chagrin—even as he knew she behaved somehow from motives of self-interest, self-preservation.

Her charm and cordiality were more impediments than the niceties they pretended to be, ways to keep others out. Particularly him at the moment. Coming up against them was like trying to find a way through a thicket of politeness, a bramble of good cheer.

Fine. Since he understood what was happening here so well, there was no reason for a mature man to take offense. Not a mature man with mature attitudes—which was what she adored, after all, and what he was without a doubt. He was absolutely in
the same league as all her rumored lovers—as good as any defunct prince or effete Napoleon. Or fat old Prince Bertie, for that matter, who laughed too hard and ogled actresses. Or the Bishop of Swansbridge, for godssake. Nigel Athers. His Grace the Bishop. Now
this
astounded James. Nigel. The idea of her and Nigel nose to nose was roughly as appealing as Nigel trying on James’s trousers or taking his new carriage out for a spin.

And another burr, another thorn: if she had had a full-fledged affair with Athers, why wouldn’t she favor James with more than ten minutes’ of her time and a cup of tea? Why not? What was wrong with him? Why not
him
?

But
no
was
no
. And being mature, James would just dust off his pride and leave.

In a minute.

He put his hand up, meaning to stop the opening of the door—a man wanting a halt, time out, a moment to think about maturity and wanting a woman just because his rival appeared to have had her. The notion bore consideration. It was something a man should understand.

From here, the rest just happened. He pushed his hand out quickly—afraid she would have him out into the street before he’d had a moment to gather himself—and the heel of his palm hit the door’s edge harder than he’d meant. The door shut with a small, firm, surprisingly loud, well
…slam
.

Her eyes opened widely. Her head leaned back. If James hadn’t seen a brightness, a little thrill, in her eyes, or thought he had, he wouldn’t have proceeded. But the light in her eyes seemed there, and it lit something inside him. The next he knew, he’d
slipped his arm round her waist, turned her, pressed her to the door, and kissed her.

She scuffled immediately, unsurprised—no stranger to the mad, frenetic grope. He tried to make it sweeter than that. It was damn sweet for him. Her lips were smooth and springy, as youthful to the touch as to the sight. They were full, yet small and well defined. He could feel the neat ridge of her philtrum curving up, then down, then up, making a chiseled bow of her top lip, while her bottom lip was plump, pink, and soft.

She shoved him in the chest, while he kissed this very female mouth, thinking,
Oh, yes, this is romantic
. Except it almost was. Her lips didn’t pull away exactly. Not immediately. The pressure of her hands against his chest was businesslike, angry. But the sweet-plump mouth clung to his for two or three heartbeats that made his head swim, made him forget whatever it was he thought he was doing.

Which was as far as it got. She broke away, turning her head, breathing hard, audibly, there in the hall. He kept hold of her, though he cranked back his head a degree, mostly for fear that if he stayed too close, this reversal of hers would see him bit or spit upon or something equally unpleasant. He stared; she looked up at him. Neither spoke.

It became a game of who would look away first. Not him. Not so long as he could watch the incredible, mythic eyes of La Belle Coco. That’s what they’d called her; how could he have forgotten?

She looked up at him from beneath black lashes, her regard reminding him of the silent inscrutable wariness of Muslim women he’d seen in Africa. Women swathed in black from head to toe, veiled;
all eyes. Constrained women. Women who’d made him afraid to think what mutinies might boil inside them.

“Turn me loose,” she said.

God bless, he was loath to. But the look in her eyes said he’d best comply. When he did, she stepped away, brushing at herself, straightening her sleeve where it had pushed up her arm.

He was going to apologize. He certainly should have. He said, “I—ah—I got carried away.”

“I’d say so.”

Further contrition would not arrive. Regret, yes. He regretted that he had missed the way into her good graces. He regretted that he was so inexperienced with such matters as to be awkward and not able to gauge anything properly, because there was an inroad here somewhere. He just couldn’t find it. Moreover, she needed someone and it should be him, but he didn’t know what to do to make it so.