Beast (47 page)

The question became, though, how long could an intelligent woman lie to herself?

Louise knew as she lay there. She knew that the duality that had confounded her for more than a month had drawn into one clearly defined entity, and she was staring right at it: her husband. No, no, she thought again. She wouldn't admit it. Perhaps by ignoring it, it wouldn't be true. She smiled at him. "Thank you, Charles. Thank you for so much. You are so kind, so good to me."

She watched him leave, still not admitting to herself who exactly walked quietly past her bedpost and out her door. Accepting it would mean, of course, that her dear, loving husband was not so perfectly devoted and straightforward as she might like, that he was perhaps a crafty old soul with a twist or two in his nature. And, if so, well, then her chief weapon, her defense against all comers, her perfect exterior, was not as all-powerful, as omnipotent and fearsomely protective, as she'd thought.

He'd laughed right past it within the first twenty-four hours of knowing her.

Five minutes later, downstairs where he was pouring his fourth shot of whiskey, Charles heard a loud scream, a kind of feminine roar, then something—two somethings, one crash, two—hit what sounded like the wail in Louise's room.

Fine, he thought, as he emptied the shot glass. The woman upstairs—the victim of a biological comeuppance—was throwing things. In the interval of silence that followed, however, Charles decided he should make sure Louise was all right.

He made it up the stairs without mishap, reflecting absently at the top that he was amazingly stable. He could already feel some of the liquor in his blood, yet it registered in that deceptive way whereby everything seemed clearer. As he opened the door to Louise's room, every detail stood out, sober, lucid.

Louise stood by her washstand in her nightgown—the pretty lilac one he had only ever seen up till now in bits of lace escaping the dread purple bathrobe. Her eyes lifted to his from the sight of her washbasin and pitcher that lay in pieces by the far wall, thrown a good twenty feet. He watched emotions flit across her features: anger, dismay, almost perplexity, as she looked at the broken bits, then up at him, and her frowning face crumpled.

"It's all right," Charles murmured. He stepped into the room. She let him fold her into his arms. "It's okay. You can break everything in the damn house."

He was about to say more, but she took his breath away by leaning back then running her palms up his chest. Two hands up the front of him, then out over his shoulders and down his arms till she stopped, poised there, her hands on his wrists behind her as she leaned out—the leverage pressing her hips with alarming snugness to his. She stayed like this, elbows back, her face frowning, scanning his features, looking for something, God knew what.

Her lips parted, as if she might say something. Yet her soft, damp mouth remained speechless. Inside, he could see the slick top edge of even, white teeth. And something, maybe the liquor, made him a little dizzy for a moment. Louise's hair was disheveled. His hands supported her, her long, graceful back narrowing beneath his palms into the small, his forearms resting on the curve where her hips flared, full and feminine. And there it was: unendurable. He would have kissed her.

Except, surprisingly, she kissed him first, pushing forward and standing on her toes. It was a hungry kiss, full, eager, welcoming, her mouth wet and hot as it should be. Yet as he took what she offered—the moment he twisted his head, tucked her up against him, and tongued her mouth the way he wanted to—her fists came up to pound two hard blows on his chest. Mystifying.

Charles knew, though, that something had changed. He picked her up and had them both on the bed with surprising alacrity for a man who was starting to feel the room sway.

Lord, she was soft and smooth. And he was greedy. He found her most tender, vulnerable place then loved the leap of her body, her crooning pleasure, as he slid his finger inside her. Oh, yes, he thought, she was slick, copiously wet. The room began to spin, maybe partly from the whiskey, but definitely mostly from Louise.

As he pulled at buttons along the fly of his trousers, she murmured, "Tell me."

So he did, as he kissed her neck, her cheek, her jaw. "I am mad for you. I want to touch you everywhere, love you with my body, weigh you down, feel you—"

"No," she said and shoved at him, then rotated in his arms. "Oh. Charles." Inconsolable again. She curled up.

No? He curved around her, pulling her into him, thinking to comfort her—whereby his very stiff erection, now free, ended up nudged into the valley between two smooth, warm moons of buttocks. He shuddered, trying to figure out why she'd turned and what
no
was all about when every other cue said
yes
. But poor man. So desperate. His hips moved forward.

one stroke through the cleft and into the tight space between her thighs, and his body lit up like a sky at sunrise. His mind went blank, a hot, bright white from the feel of the intimate surround, the powdery-warm smoothness of her flesh along the shaft. Then—the real one-eyed monster—the tip of his penis, like the end of a divining rod, found her wetness. His hands seized her hips, and the head was in before he even knew what he'd done.

She resisted a moment, though it was hardly anything, for he had vigorous hold of her. Her flesh seemed to cling to him, slippery, grabbing, pulling, releasing then sliding and reaching again, complemented by this other long, blissful caress through her creamy-smooth haunches. She moaned—he couldn't tell if it was the sound of pain or pleasure, dispute or cooperation. He wrapped his hands, his arms about her and gripped her with all the strength in him, entering again.

And Louise, sweet Louise, angled her buttocks, cocked it back as she pushed into him and bent forward over her knees, an instinct so right, so blessedly right. He went so deep he bumped the neck of her womb. And exploded. That was it. Bursts. Bright cannonballs with a seeming weight and force that scattered him.

He came to a semblance of sanity with the bed's canopy doing a slow tilt and rotation that lifted his stomach. The whiskey was rampant at this point, chased into his veins by the pounding bliss of Louise. A few square inches of his body was full of gladness, but the rest of him was under siege. And Louise herself…

She did say something, but he only shook his head. He should take his arm off his eyes, he thought; the room would move less if he kept his sight focused. This advice to himself was the last thing he remembered. Exhaustion, anxiety, unconsciousness, whatever it was, it took him.

A ritual exists among whalers: Immediately upon hefting a sperm whale onto the deck, harpoons
are struck deep into the animal's hindgut. These harpoons' tips, withdrawn, are then smelled for
the telltale odor of a quick fortune.

Charles Harcourt, Prince d'Harcourt

On the Nature and Uses of Ambergris

The legend had grown from this: an elopement after two weeks' acquaintance, public kisses—not just on the mouth, but on the knuckles and palms and at the wrists between buttons of gloves. These witnessed facts were embellished by rumors of a wedding night that could not outwait dinner, with wild, literally upturning results. From the serving classes came the additional gossip of a cavort through the house that left a trail of water and wet clothes from the bath down the hall, through a sitting room, and into the bedroom. Add to this a necklace of excessive and uxorious value (which that very next night to the opening of a play, Louise was suddenly and appreciatively able to wear without tearing it from her neck) and, well—

There was not much Charles could have done about it. He found himself the idol and envy of every man, the amorous ideal of every woman, he met, with Louise his female counterpart. The Prince and Princess d'Harcourt were pronounced the most romantic couple up or down the Riviera—a title bestowed on them, no matter how modestly he had tried to redefine it, by family, friends, eventually mere acquaintances, strangers, finally reading it in the morning's newspaper two days after the mayhem of Louise's discovered pregnancy and what Charles now thought of as the worst sexual debacle of his life.

"Well, someone didn't waste time. Listen to this." he said to Louise over breakfast.

They sat in their formal dining room in Nice, the large space being required, since "breakfast" entailed a bewildering feast. Louise, who had arranged it, ate with appetite. Charles drank
cafe au lait
as he read from the morning paper. " 'And guess who is expecting a little prince or princess of their own? None other than those two lovebirds that have us all swooning from heatstroke just watching them: the Prince and Princess d'Harcourt. Rumor has it that the next generation of old French "royalty" may even be just a teeny bit early. Wicked congratulations, Your Highnesses. Apparently even old royal blood can come to a boil a bit faster than strictly correct.'"

Louise laughed.

Charles looked up over the edge of newsprint at her. She sat eater-corner to him at their long dining-room table, where she scooped "American" scrambled eggs onto a fork. "Oh, that is vicious!" Her laughter became hearty. If she found the snipes in the society columns mean, they were apparently a brand of meanness that she could deeply appreciate. As tasty as the bacon she took to go with the bite of eggs.

He made a pull of his mouth. " 'Heatstroke'?"

"They're being silly," she said.

" 'Heatstroke'?" he repeated. "You cry in the bath or you threaten to slap my face, and they get heatstroke?" He couldn't even speak aloud of their one strangely at-odds sexual union night before last. It demoralized him. All he knew was that since then Louise was somehow edgy and angry with him. And that he didn't even want to consider what this might imply.

She grew quiet and buttered her toast.

Charles folded the paper, "So were your parents suspicious?"

"Regarding what?"

He nodded a glance toward her stomach, toward the baby that would arrive early.

"Aah," she said. "No, I don't think so. I'm glad we're not telling them who the real father is."

Charles had convinced her not to tell their families the "truth." He smiled, pleased that at least this complication, and humiliation, had been removed from his path.

Then he wasn't pleased at all to hear, "No, the only-one we really need to be honest with is the father himself. How do we get in touch with. ah. who did you call him? Baghdad Al?"

"We don't." Charles set his coffee cup down stiffly.

"He has a right to know."

He frowned. "No, he doesn't."

"Wouldn't you want to know if you had a child on the way?"

"Absolutely not. I would definitely not wish to be told I had fathered a child on some woman during a brief affair on a ship."

She made a dubious face that sweetly called him a liar. "Yes. you would," she said. "Ask him to dinner."

"What?" Charles laughed at first.

"Invite him to dinner," she said.

"I most certainly will not." He pushed away from the dining-room table and stood. "He wouldn't come anyway, Louise." A virtual certainty.