Improper English (16 page)

“What’s in those bloody condoms?”

“Huh? The condoms? What do you mean, what’s in them?” I dropped the pillow and walked over to face him.

He looked up with a “what now?” expression etched on his handsome face. “The damn thing is stuck. I can’t get it off.”

“Stuck? No, it’s just latex and a little flavoring, it can’t be stuck. Move your hands and let me try.”

“I know how to get a condom off—the damn thing is stuck to me!”

I put my hands on my hips and glared down at him. “That’s impossible. Condoms do not get stuck!”

As it turns out, they do, especially if they’ve been treated with a flavored coating, and even more so when they sit in the sun, melting the coating and turning it into a pretty powerful adhesive.

I threw away the condoms after that. Alex’s bellows of outrage as I ripped the sticky part of the condom from where it had bonded to his pubic hair just weren’t at all conducive to romance.

Lady Rowena lay in her lover’s arms, sated, happy, fulfilled in every womanly way. She turned her head and nuzzled the broad expanse of masculine chest that lay under her cheek.

“Raoul, my beloved, you are not still pouting over that little accident with Doctor Beesom’s Eternal Balm of Aphrodite and my best silk stockings, are you? I have apologized over the mishap—who knew the balm would turn into a substance resembling glue if left near the fire too long?—and promise you I will dispose of the bottle as soon as possible.”

Lord Raoul grunted and absentmindedly rubbed at the reddened shilling-size bare spot on his groin. “I’ll look a damned fool if my short and curlies don’t grow back!”

Rowena patted the manly curls that surrounded the unfortunate bare spot, and sighed again. “At least we saved my stocking. Silk is so very expensive these days.”

I glanced up from my manuscript. “That’s the end of chapter twenty-eight. I’m almost to the end of the story. What do you think? Is it a best-seller?”

Jacquie, the receptionist at Maureen Tully’s office, gave me a look of profound indifference. I didn’t know if it was me, my writing, or the fact that she was working on a Sunday. “I don’t read that sort of book, Miss Freemar, so I couldn’t say.”

“Really? Too bad. What sort of books do you read?”

Staccato noise burst from her keyboard, then paused just long enough for her to favor me with another disapproving glance.

“I don’t read any books, Miss Freemar. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

“You mean you work for a literary agency and you don’t even read the stuff your boss sells?”

She didn’t deign to reply.

“Huh. I would have figured you’d have people hitting you up all over the place to try and get in good with Maureen by sending you stories to read. Well, OK, so you don’t read much—you can still tell me if you thought the love scene I just read you was effective. How did it rate on your personal tinglemeter?”

She stopped typing and stared at me. “My what?”

“Your tinglemeter. You know, did it make you feel tingly all over? Was it sexy? Did it make you feel all hot and flushed and wanton? Are you ready to jump the nearest thing in trousers?”

“Miss Freemar!”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to step over the line, but I’m desperate for love scene feedback. I just have my own response to go on, you see, since the only people I know
in London are either men, lesbian, or not given to smut, so it would mean a lot to me if you could tell me if my love scene turned your crank or not.”

Her eyebrows collected into a frown as she turned back to her work with a decided sniff. “I do not answer such personal inquiries by clients.”

I sighed and moved over to the chair she had indicated when I arrived, absently poking through the stack of magazines on the table. I flipped through an old copy of
Writer’s Life
, stifling an inner sigh. I’d given it my best shot, but I was simply going to have to hand over the almost-completed manuscript to Maureen and hope the love scenes were tingly without being too blatant.

“Eight point five.”

“Hmm?” I glanced over to where Jacquie was busily tapping away on her keyboard.

“That’s how I would rate the scene. On a scale of ten, it was an eight point five.”

A victorious smile crept across my face. “Thank you, that’s nice to know.” Eight point five, that had to be a good sign! Of course, it wasn’t a perfect ten…and damn it, it should be! I had written my heart into that love scene, attributing to Rowena everything I had felt with Alex, and our evening had certainly been a ten—if not more. “Um…if you don’t mind my asking…what would have made it a ten?”

Tackidy tickedy tackidy went the keys. After a minute and a half, she spoke.

“If Lord Raoul had tied Rowena to the bed, it would have been a ten.” She gave a little shiver and sighed heavily.

“Ah. I believe I see what you mean.” Bondage? Bondage would have made that scene perfect? I thought back
to the wonderful second act Alex and I had performed in the comfort of Stephanie’s daybed, and tried to envision the same events with me tied down. I made a face. It just didn’t appeal to me, but if it were
Alex
whose hands were tied to the brass railing of the daybed…

“How about if Lord Raoul were tied and Lady Rowena had her way with him? Would that be a ten?”

“No,” Jacquie said abruptly, pursing her lips and typing away industriously. I turned back to the table of magazines when she added an afterthought. “That would be a fifteen.”

I smiled. We were in agreement at last.

“Good morning, Maureen. It’s nice to see you again. I’ve brought my manuscript as you reques—”

“Morning. Sit. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

“—ted.” I narrowed my eyes and mentally rolled up my sleeves as she talked quickly and without stopping into the phone, telling someone named Cerise that she had to be patient, that patience was almost as important in this business as talent, and that she (Maureen) had promised she would sell her (Cerise’s) story, and she (Maureen) would if she (Cerise) would stop calling her every week to find out what was happening.

Polite conversation would obviously be wasted on my busy agent, so I decided to pare down my own comments to the bare minimum. Two could play the telegraphic talk game.

“Synopsis?”

“Huh?” I looked up from where I was folding and refolding one corner of the cover sheet. “Oh, yes, the synopsis. I have it here. I wasn’t quite sure what you wanted, so I threw a bit of everyth—”

“I have someone who might be interested in your book,” Maureen interrupted, lighting one of the inevitable cigarettes while she held out her hand for my manuscript.

I stared at her, unsure I’d heard her correctly until her open hand started fluttering at me.

“Oh, sorry, here.” I put both the manuscript and the synopsis in her hand, backing away quickly so as to keep from breathing in any of the smoke. “I’m a bit confused—you say you have someone who might be interested in my story?”

She nodded and waved away the blue haze of smoke as she leaned back to read my synopsis. “That’s what I said. He’s a new publisher, looking for something different and cutting edge. Beyond
Bridget Jones
. I told him you were perfect.”

“But…but…”

Her light blue eyes flickered toward me and pinned me back in my chair. “You said you were willing to work, to take chances. Are you backing out now?”

I sat up straight and tried to look cutting edge and different. “No, of course not, I’m just confused how a publisher who hasn’t even seen my work can be interest—”

“I know what he likes. He’ll like this.” She tapped on the manuscript, brushing away a blob of cigarette ash.

“But it’s historical. I haven’t read it, but I thought
Bridget Jones
and those sorts of books were contempor—”

“Voice.”

“—ary. Ah…voice?”

She nodded. “It’s all in the voice. Bryan is looking for a strong, sassy voice. That’s what you have.”

I gave her a watery smile. I wasn’t sure it was good to be sassy; my mother always used that word as an insult rather than a compliment. “Oh, OK. I’m sure you know best. So, you’ll edit what I just brought you and wait until I finish the last few chapters before sending it to this publisher?”

“Three chapters.”

The telegraph talk was giving me a headache. “What about them?”

“I’ll edit the first three chapters and we’ll sell it as a proposal.”

My head felt like it was filled with molasses. I just couldn’t keep up with her jumps in logic. “I read in a writer’s magazine that new authors always had to finish a book before they could find either an agent or a pub—”

“I signed you, didn’t I?”

“—lisher.” Well, she had a point there. I never would have thought I could find an agent without having a completed manuscript, but I did. And not just an agent, one who also ran an editing service. Surely the odds against that were tremendous. Maybe luck was on my side this time.

“That’s true, but publishers—”

“Do you have faith in me?”

That stopped me cold. “Well…that is, of course you…it’s not that I—”

“Do you have faith in me?” Those pale blue eyes were almost frosty in their regard. I swallowed back my objections and nodded.

“Yes, I do.”

“Good.” She gave me a curt nod and ground out her cigarette. “You do your job and let me do mine. I wouldn’t be here working on a Sunday if my clients
didn’t have faith in me. I’ll have the edited three chapters ready for you in two days. Make an appointment with Jacquie to come in then, and I’ll discuss them with you.”

“OK.” I gathered up my things and headed for her door, pausing as I worried over what she had said. “Maureen, I know you know your job and all, but are you sure you can sell my entire book off of just three chapters?”

“You have to have faith,” she said, tossing my manuscript onto a towering stack of paper on the left side of her desk. It looked like those other papers were manuscripts as well, since they were all neatly rubber banded. If she had all of those to read and edit, how would she ever find time to get to mine, let alone give it the attention she said was needed?

“Faith,” I said, experiencing a decided lack of that particular sentiment. I let Jacquie set up another appointment for me, and wandered out of the dark, cool office into the street feeling a strange combination of hopelessness and bemusement.

“It’s her job to worry, let it go,” Bert said to me an hour later when I stood on the landing and recounted my experience. She and Ray were going out for the day, she told me, out boating on the Thames with some friends.

“I suppose you’re right,” I said with a rueful smile. “I just can’t help but worry a little, though. It is my whole entire life we’re talking about!”

Bert laughed as she adjusted a stylish straw hat and called over her shoulder for Ray to hurry. “You need to stop working so hard, Alix. What are your plans for the day?”

I blushed a little as I recalled asking Alex that very same thing earlier in the morning, when I lay sweaty and
exhausted across his heaving chest. “I thought I would go see Westminster Abbey and maybe St. Paul’s.”

“I’m sure you’ll enjoy them,” Bert said with a knowing smile. “Will you be going with anyone in particular?”

“Coyness does not become you, Bert.” She giggled. I snickered with her. “If you’re asking how things are going with Alex”—she nodded and patted my hand as Ray marched out of the flat with her arms full of a red plastic cooler and two bulging cloth carrying bags—“you can rest assured that all is well there. Alex and I have resolved our differences.”

“Knew that,” Ray said, rolling her eyes as she pushed past a widely grinning Bert to stomp down the stairs. “Your bed squeaks.”

“Huh?” I glanced between the two women for a few moments, then looked upstairs. My flat was just above theirs. “Oh, good Lord! Don’t tell me you heard us—oh, hell!”

Bert laughed and patted me on the arm one last time as she followed after Ray. “Don’t let it bother you, Alix. We were pleased to know that you and Alex turned out to be compatible after all.”

“Oh, Lord,” I moaned softly to myself, closing my eyes as I made a mental promise to hunt down a bottle of household oil so I could lubricate the daybed’s springs.

“Even if the noise from your morning bout of compatibility woke us up,” Bert continued.

“Oh, Lord!” I moaned louder. I’d have to move the bed to the other side of the flat.

Bert’s voice echoed slightly as it wafted up the stairwell from the floor below. “The first bout, that is. I didn’t hear the second one since I was in the shower then, but Ray says it sounded very…vigorous.”

“Aaaaaaah!” I screamed in embarrassment, covering my face with my hands and wondering how I could ever look either woman in the eye again.

“Have a lovely day,” Bert called up as she continued her descent.

“Gah!” I yelled down at her, and trod slowly up the stairs, praying that no one else in the house had heard Alex and me being compatible.

I paused for a moment at my floor, then climbed the next flight. Alex had said he had to go in to work that morning to deliver his report, but he hoped to be home by lunchtime. It was still morning, but I thought I’d see if he had made it back earlier than he expected.

I tapped at his door, but there was no answer.

“Poop,” I told it, then decided I’d go move the bed by myself.

“Alexander? Oh, it’s you, Alix. How lovely you look this morning. Your dress is just the shade of Alexander’s eyes when he’s aroused. Do you have a moment? I’d like to ask your opinion about a wall treatment.”

I looked down at my sleeveless dress. She was right about the color, damn her! “Morning, Isabella. Sorry if my knocking disturbed you, I was just checking to see if Alex was home yet.”

“You didn’t disturb me at all, dear.” Isabella held her door open and waved me in. I followed obediently as she led me down the little hallway to a huge room that opened at the end. “What do you think of the peach? Is it too pink? Too boudoir?”

I stood in the doorway of the room and blatantly gawked. It was Isabella’s bedroom, a study in oatmeal and taupe and teal, but what made me stand and stare like a rube was the bed. It was huge, shaped like a scalloped
clamshell, framed with teal curtains that formed a huge bow above a gilded miniature replica of a boat’s prow proudly riding a teal wave.

“That’s some bed,” I said, wondering if she ever cracked her head on the odd headboard. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a clamshell bed outside of the movies.”

Isabella turned from where she was contemplating two chairs holding a variety of wall-treatment samples. “The bed? Oh, yes, Anton gave that to me. He fancied himself Poseidon. He was Greek.”

“Ah. Anton was your…husband?”

Isabella tittered a light, twinkling little laugh that I could never achieve if I tried for a hundred years. “I’ve never been married, Alix. Anton was my lover.”

“Oh, of course, how stupid of me. He was your lover. No husband. Sorry.” How many lovers had she had? There were Alex and Karl that I knew about…not that I wanted to think about Alex with Isabella, especially at that moment when I could still feel the fires that his hands and mouth had started earlier that morning. I eyed her, trying to determine how old she was. She certainly didn’t look like the type of woman who had lots and lots of lovers, not with that cool, elegant, silver beauty, but I knew her type. Men dropped at her feet, giving her the pick of the litter while the rest of us made do with her rejects.