Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty Read Online Free PDF

Book: Sleeping Beauty Read Online Free PDF
Author: Judith Ivory
Tags: Fiction, General, Romance, Historical
constrained to accommodate his new and temperamental ally, who, in turn, seemed to be trying to calm his wife. Mrs. Athers gesticulated, arm extended, finger pointing—in the direction of the hapless Mrs. Wild. A little stab of fear ran through James.
    “They’re going to throw her out,” he murmured more to himself than his friend.
    Without thinking further, he set off straight across the dance floor, weaving his way through the crowd. As he walked purposefully, Mrs. Wild—Nicole, he reminded himself, Coco—bobbed in and out of view, between heads and swirling bodies.
    He glimpsed her speaking to her companions, her dark eyes animated. The group laughed as she spoke. She looked intelligent, interested and involved in the conversation. If she were a trifle too vivacious, too flirtatious, well, she was French after all. Her mien was continental, her energy Parisian. She had the air of a hostess of a literary salon—
    Or a Greek hetaera, he told himself as he watched her. Aspasia among the friends of Pericles. She could be…. It seemed possible for a moment. Then not possible.
    Still surely such things existed as courtesans bred to cater to the powerful, the educated, men who had the taste and money for something better than what was found at Piccadilly or Pigalle.
    No. No, no. As James navigated closer, it seemed more and more unlikely that this lovely woman could be, well…She was too…beautiful. More than beautiful. Gracious. Her manner was kind and inviting. There was a high style to her that was both marvelously elegant and totally unintimidating. Perfectly lovely. The way a well-stocked, well-laid-out library invited you to take down and use its embossed, illuminated, gilt-edged books, to slouch into its soft crushed leather chairs—
    James collided into a dancing couple, then watched spinning feet as he sorted himself out again, lost in the in-and-out movement, having disconcerted himself. That he should liken a decent woman to a library, a place where lots and lots of men could visit…use a book, put it back, thenreturn and use it again…. How very ungentlemanly.
    Yet, when he looked up and got another unobstructed view of Mrs. Wild, James couldn’t help but think (loving good libraries as he did), Here stood a well-stocked, well-laid-out woman. She was slightly long-waisted, small yet willowy, narrow in the right places, full where she caught a man’s eye, and divinely dressed tonight in silver satin that rose and dove in a kind of heartshaped neckline across her bosom, rounding over each breast, plunging between, yet somehow modest. Her shoulders themselves were all but bare, swathed in organdy so sheer it was like silver air. Her dress was proper, not too tight, not a moment’s criticism, yet it left nothing to the imagination when it came to where and how the perfections of her figure lay.
    She was stunning. Whether or not she had made a fortune off her charm, she could have.
    Out the corner of his eye, James caught sight of the majordomo cutting his own path toward her, walking briskly. James sped up the last few yards, sure he could avert an embarrassment for everyone.
    He came up to her group, behind her, with her in quarter profile. He touched her arm, and a thousand details seemed to assail him. Everything about her suddenly seemed erotic. Intentionally erotic. Her long gloves up her arms. The way she held her fan. Her dark, shining hair caught at her nape in a silvery net dotted with silvery beads. Her necklace of cut garnets, blood red, sparkling in a delicate display of bits and drops against her ivory throat. And her perfume, not heavy, hardly that of a trollop, but faint and fragrant in a way that invited you closer.Breathing it was like wanting to stick your nose—lose your face—down into the center of a flower.
    His exchange with Teddy was suddenly vivid again.
    Who is her “protector”?
    No one, these days. Giving a woman all that money, so many things…well, she simply doesn’t
Read Online Free Pdf

Similar Books

The Right Side of Wrong

Reavis Wortham

Reunion

M. R. Joseph

The Rescue

Joseph Conrad

Sacrifice

Denise Grover Swank

Everything He Risks

Thalia Frost

Into the Ether

Vanessa Barger

Love Lies Beneath

Ellen Hopkins

The Irish Duchess

Patricia Rice