Page 4 of What Happens in Hedone

Iphigenia. Jay snapped back to the present, to the pleasure club and its tableau, to the entrancing woman in Grecian robes singing to the lyre, her voice hauntingly lovely. In his head he heard again that laugh, that lilt to her voice that matched the sparkle in her large eyes, the secrets hidden in that sweetly curved mouth.

The scent of salt air and sea-watered earth had clung to his nostrils all afternoon. He couldn’t quell the wanting she’d called up within him, the longing to stand beside her again and see the world as she did, as a place of enchantment, laden with mysteries and delight.

He longed to touch her and see if that cheek would feel smooth as a pebble beneath his palm. To pull apart the pert coils of hair, or unwrap the green pelisse and find the soft, beating heart of the human woman beneath. Little wonder he’d come to a place called Hedone trying to distract himself. Little wonder he’d chosen Greece.

But no, the woman singing would not be his nymph. That could not be the same curved mouth with the mischievous pucker at the ends. He was simply so besotted with the girl he’d met that he was imposing her face on the next woman who caught his attention.

He had a sudden vision of himself spending the rest of his life searching for a glimpse of that girl from the beach. He might go about painting her visage onto every woman he met, seeking her laugh in every woman’s voice until doomsday. Jay had never been a man given to fancy, nor quick to give his heart; Burnhams were born with a shield against the world, wariness bred in their bones. Now he was hollow, thrown open to the world, and even this tableau stirred and pained him.

He understood what it meant. A circle of women, sufficient unto themselves, engaged in their own leisure and pleasure. No one to serve but their own inclinations, no obligations to fulfill, no charge to be dainty or attractive or conciliatory or anything other but what they were. One embroidered; one held a wax tablet and tapped the stylus to her lips, as if composing. The bare-breasted woman, older, wearing a matron’s years, dabbed at a painting of the singer, the face already emerging from the canvas as if they’d done this several times before.

“The Muses,” the gentleman spectator said. He shifted in his chair, sounding strained, and Jay wondered what the other man had come for. Simply to watch women, to know what they did in secret among themselves?

The women continued, not acknowledging him.

“There were nine Muses,” said the woman in the audience. She watched the tableau with a sharp, hungry look on her face. “These must be the Graces.”

The singer switched her song to something slow and melancholy. Jay had heard it before.

The moon and the Pleiades have set,

it is midnight,

time is passing,

but I sleep alone.

“That is by Sappho,” Jay said. “This is her school at Lesbos.”

He would have to tell his sister Nora that her obsession with ancient Greece had proven useful for him after all. Though perhaps he wouldn’t go on to tell his sister that he had patronized a secret pleasure club where visitors used mythical aliases and the members acted out fantasies in various states of undress.

The group broke apart. The singer laid aside her harp and rose, and Jay stared at the lithe form revealed by her clinging robe as she walked to the alcove and pulled the curtain across the scene. His imagination was going to give this form to the naiad who’d ensorcelled him on the beach, and between the graceful figure of the one and the enchanting laugh of the other, he would find no sleep tonight.

“What happened? Why did they stop?” Jay asked.

“You guessed the theme.” The other gentleman seemed irritated to be wrong.

“They will prepare another. Shush,” said the seated woman.

He could leave now. No one had recognized him; no one had even taken note of him. He could tell Farren he had taken his recommendation and visited the club, that he appreciated the premise but it was not Jay’s particular inclination to peer into the secret fantasies of others.

He would go back to his empty bed in his friend’s lodgings and the next day’s bricks and business, dignity intact, and he would take care himself of any particular urges that arose from the memory of the water nymph who had lighted his world with her laugh, or from the shape of the mouth on the masked woman as she sang.

The curtain drew back on the second scene, and Jay was obliged to admit that he was lying to himself. He was extremely interested in peering into the secret fantasies of these women. One in particular.

Chapter Two

One of the other women lay on the chaise in an attitude of sleep, head resting on her arms, golden curls spilling behind her. Her arms and legs were almost entirely bare, as was part of her breast. The sheet trailed over her waist as if it might, at any moment, slide off and reveal more. The sensuality of the scene bound Jay to his chair as much the curiosity of wanting to know what would happen next.

Whispers came from edge of the curtain, where the other three woman stood. “I’m afraid I’ll burn her.”

Another of the younger women, with glossy black hair and dark skin, passed a candle in its broad holder to the woman who’d played the lyre. The singer was slightly taller than the others. The candlelight picked out bronze tints in her brown mane, the warm tones of her skin. One lock fell from her bandeau and brushed the curve of her shoulder, where a golden clasp held her chiton in place.

How very easy it would be to undo that clasp and watch the fabric fall.

“Your candlewax.” The matron held out a small pot of paint. The singer dipped her fingertip.

The other two moved to the edges of the alcove and took up a quiet song, their voices blending sad and sweet.