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He felt the slight, restless movement of her head against him before she said in a muffled voice, “No. You know that of course I could never blame you for anything. And you were never hypocritical, as she was. But you’re right, and I must really learn to be impartial and not swayed by emotion.”
Half-asleep already, Sir John recalled the question she had asked him and said suddenly: “Getting old! You were asking about your Aunt Solange, weren’t you? Well, Jarvis is a good chap. Very shrewd, very clever. And most useful of all, he has connections everywhere. Underworld, half world—highest circles as well. Younger son, you know. Eton and Oxford. Quite the rascal in his day, and his family never quite forgave him for taking up a profession. But he’s the very best, and I know him personally as well as on the professional level. If this Aunt Solange who liked young Guards officers is still alive, Edwin Jarvis will find her. And what’s more, he’s the one you should retain to handle all the business affairs, because he’s honest and he’s blunt. He’ll tell you to your face that you’re a damned fool if he thinks so.”
“Then I hope...I know that I will never give him the opportunity to say so. Mmm! Oh, how deliciously warm it is out here. And how glad I am that your friend the Conte was kind enough to lend us his villa. And—would you prefer that I should try to think hard too?”
When she was answered by a grunt that was followed soon after by a slight snore, Alexa patted his knee with an affectionate smile before she stood up again and went back to the warm stone wall and her contemplation of the sea below and the terraced hills that marched down to meet it. Tiny fishing boats bobbed up and down, punctuating the vivid blue swells with their colored sails. She could see, further off, the tall masts of some of the ships anchored in the harbor. The faint strumming of a mandolin floated up to he
r, accompanying a clear tenor voice singing of unrequited love, and jealousy and passion. In spite of the Neapolitan dialect, she found she could understand most of the words. Passion! Alexa thought, while her eyes narrowed reflectively against the dipping sun. I wonder if that is what I gave way to that night? Passion—or lust, as some might term it—was all too easily aroused, she had learned. And men, when their weapons of seduction were used against them, could be brought to fever pitch and rendered mindless by desire. A glance from beneath lowered lashes, a teasing smile. An “accidental” touch, a sigh through parted lips. Invitation and then rejection, followed by invitation again. That was the coquette’s way. But there were also other ways to make slaves of men that were practiced and had been perfected by the great courtesans of the world, who could pick and choose their own lovers and their price and could incite proud men to fight duels over them and to beg like fawning hounds for their favors.
How warm still was the slowly setting sun! And how sweet the plaintive ballads of the singer! Alexa turned her back on the sun and the blue and white sparkle of the sea to feel the warm caress of the sun across her shoulders; but the words of the songs the unknown tenor sang continued to penetrate into her thoughts and stir them. Music should always be an accompaniment to the game of lovemaking, she had been told. And there were a myriad, endless ways of making love, although that expression meant nothing more than the arousal and exciting of the senses up to a certain point; and there were some men, she had been told, who preferred harder, coarser words. There was also a great deal more that she had learned, for all her “teachers” in these particular matters were considered the best and the most sought-after courtesans in each country they had visited so far.
There had been a certain elegantly decorated house in Calcutta, which was frequented only by Indian Princes and rich and titled Englishmen and whose talented inmates had come from almost every Eastern country—Java and Penang and Siam and China and Japan—as well as from all the different provinces and kingdoms of India. They had all been young and supple and beautiful; and in addition to being accomplished in the dances and music of their homelands, each one was renowned for a certain specialty.
When their ship had turned about after picking up its quota of passengers for England, they had visited many other ports and places—Mauritius, Madagascar, Cape Town and finally Le Havre and Paris. Everywhere there had been something new to learn, and especially in Paris, where they had remained for two weeks. The most famous demimonde in Paris, a slim, elegantly gowned woman in her early thirties, numbered Kings and Princes among her lovers and was known for her exquisite taste. She had taken quite a fancy to Alexa, and it was from Leonie that the young woman had learned of subtlety and its importance, and how to make a study of each man—learning his habits, his likes and his dislikes, not only in the bedroom but also in his choice of cigars or clothes or horseflesh. One also had to learn everything about the best wines and vintages, and how to set an elegant table and act as hostess to an informal gathering that might consist of royalty as well as some of the oldest and most distinguished titles of Europe. Also about food, about art and furnishings; not to mention being able to converse intelligently and with knowledge on any number of subjects that might range from politics and international intrigue to great music and literature.
“In short, cherie, you can never allow yourself to become—how shall I put it?— jaded, perhaps. Stale, like cigar smoke from last night. You have seen the visitors in my home, yes? Sometimes it is a salon where every subject may be freely and openly discussed. And I know something about everything, my dear, because I have made it my business—that is a good word, no?—to do so. When I am with a lover I become almost like his reflection. When he invites his friends to dine he knows that everything will be exactly right, from the meal itself to the wines and cigars and the musicians I hire for the evening. I not only know all his desires and needs, but I anticipate them. So, you begin to take my meaning?”
Some men wanted a tigress, some a temptress-siren, others a harem odalisque. Alexa had learned as much from talking with these women who had been her instructors as by watching their often lively demonstrations of the arts of love and reading certain Editions Privies of books on the same subject which also contained beautifully colored, carefully detailed illustrations to accompany each topic. None of the women she had met had been ashamed of their profession, but rather were proud instead, of having reached the highest pinnacle possible. Indeed, Leonie had, with a typical shrug and a wave of her thin, gold-edged cigar, admitted that she could have made a successful marriage on several occasions if she had wished to but had chosen to be as she was instead.
“A wife? And why should I go from pampered mistress to household slave? It is not these poor jeunes filles who are married for their family name, a dowry, or to beget heirs, who really know their men, but women like me. And while my lovers court me with gifts and words of flattery and adoration, their wives receive formal politeness and a grudging household allowance. To give me pleasure in bed they will expend a thousand kisses and caresses and tender embraces; with their wives it is quite different, of course. A hasty fumbling in the dark under her flannel nightgown and a few snores. It is only to get children and not out of feeling, you understand? And in making love—well, it is the feeling, the emotion that is shown that makes your lover yearn to come back again and again. You comprehend?”
Since they had left Paris there had been first Lisbon, then Cadiz, and finally this retreat in Naples where they could both rest in the sun for a week or so before visiting Rome and the Vatican. And then it would be London, but only if she wished it. While Sir John still slept with an occasional peaceful snore, Alexa frowned rather uncertainly until she remembered, with a rueful smile, to smooth out her brow. A woman’s looks—her complexion and her skin—were assets to be carefully protected with creams and oils and lotions in the same way that her figure, if it was good, must be kept supple and slender with certain exercises performed daily and followed by a warm bath perfumed with richly emollient oils to soak into the skin; imparting a glowing sheen to it.
So many things to learn and remember, Alexa thought. And so far, she had not yet had the experience of putting everything in which she had received instruction into practice. Ironically enough, she was still—her lips twisted in a bitter grimace at the memory the word recalled— “virtuous, ” if no longer innocent, but she was certainly not ignorant either, and thanked God for that. It appalled her, even now, to think how little she had really known or understood about the realities of life and even about her own body. In the kind of society where innocence and ignorance were considered to be synonymous with virtue, it was no wonder that so many young girls fell easy prey to seduction by an unscrupulous male. And no wonder either that brothels flourished; for once a girl had succumbed without first getting a ring on her finger, she was no longer “good” and there was seldom any other course open to her.
With her eyes closed and the sun still warm on her face, Alexa leaned backward against the stone parapet and felt its roughness under her elbows. Oh, to be able to give her body completely to the sun and feel its seductive heat penetrate every inch of her skin until it turned bronzed and glowing, like the skins of the village women she had sometimes come upon during her rides over the patnas of Ceylon, giggling together as they bathed under a small waterfall with their wet black hair sleeked against their bodies, down to their waists. As for her hair— She had merely swirled and twisted it into an untidy knot at the back of her head before coming out here, and now, without thinking, Alexa pulled out the few pins she had secured it with and tossed them over the parapet before she let her heavy mass of hair fall down behind her. If it had not been so late in the afternoon she might have been tempted to fling off all of her clothes and lie naked, atop them like an offering to the sun. And run down the marble stairway still naked, and into the pool whose waters had been diverted from a mountain stream that ran through the property and watered the olive orchards. Swim there with the sun still pouring its hot gold honey over her as she lifted herself out of the coolness of the water and lay back again for the sun to dry.
“I do hope, Alexa dear, that you are not practicing how to fall asleep standing up?”
Opening her eyes, she straightened up and stretched her arms widely. “I was imagining myself a pagan sacrifice to the sun god and wishing I could take all of my clothes off!”
Sir John gave one of his short laughs. “You can and should do anything you wish to, my dear, as long as you remember that you have promised to see me through dinner this evening. But as a favor to my old ears, I wish that you would throw that poor young man who is serenading you in such a loud voice a flower or some such thing to render him soundless with happiness.”
Chapter 24
Later, those slow-moving, drowsy days in Naples were remembered by Alexa as her “golden days”—lying naked under the sun with her body gleaming with sesame oil that had been perfumed with Attar of Roses until her skin became almost as bronzed as her hair with the gold laced through it. She and Sir John saw no one and entertained no one and talked to each other a great deal.
“Why, I do believe that she’s really in love with Sir John after all,” Bridget told Mr. Bowles when he had gallantly offered to take her for a stroll in the garden. “And he’s a fine man, don’t you think I can’t see that,” she added quickly before she was misunderstood. “It’s just that I thought, what with her being so young and all and so pretty too, that well, maybe it was something fixed up between families, like they do among the gentry. But the more I see them together and the easy way they’ll be talking to each other and laughing, well, I... Well, that’s why I think what I just said I thought!” she finished triumphantly.
“I’m sure I—er—quite take your meaning,” Mr. Bowles said after a slight pause. Reaching the edge of the rather overgrown rose garden, he turned back majestically, steering a rather disappointed Bridget with him. “However,” he added after another pause during which he cleared his throat emphatically, “however, Miss Culligan, I must say that I do think a certain degree of—er— restraint might... Those fishermen keep singing
their songs so loudly! And the gardeners keep carrying those very large pottery urns back and forth from the garden to the courtyard. The blighters always pretend they can’t understand me when I try to tell them they are dismissed.”
“Oh! You mean when the madam is swimming to get herself cool from that hot sun?” Bridget was now no longer shocked by anything at all, although she sometimes wondered what it all meant. Her voice sounded cheerfully unconcerned, almost shocking Mr. Bowles into stopping in mid-stride to stare at her. “Well, as to that now,” Bridget continued in the same tone, “I suppose she knows very well what’s going on and doesn’t care and neither does Sir John—so I’ve always thought that it’s no one’s business but theirs. You’ll be agreeing with me, Mr. Bowles?”
“All I can say is,” he uttered rather frostily, “that I, for one, am quite relieved to be leaving for Rome tomorrow. They are a little more civilized there, I understand.”
The silly, obtuse woman! he had begun to think with annoyance until to his further annoyance his thought was interrupted by a loud thumping at the wooden gate that was set in the imposing archway they had just drawn abreast of. “Now who, I wonder, can that be—making such a racket so late in the afternoon? It had better not be that persistent fisherman fellow with another of those ugly sea creatures that look all legs.”
“At the front entrance?” Bridget breathed, looking quite awed. “Why even he wouldn’t dare to do such a thing, the poor young lad. Perhaps it’s the Count who’s the owner of this place come back?”
As the thumping on the gate was followed by loud and obviously drunken voices that threatened to get louder and ruder by the second, Mr. Bowles disengaged his arm firmly from Bridget’s nervous clasp.
“Miss Culligan, if you will excuse me. I suppose that since I am here and that lazy gatekeeper is probably asleep somewhere, it is left to me to take care of this unwarranted intrusion into our privacy.”
Leaving Bridget round-eyed and openmouthed by his vocabulary, Mr. Bowles strode purposefully towards the massive wooden gate that had now actually begun to shake from the force of the kicks that assaulted it from the outside.
“There is no need for such a violent announcement, gentlemen—or whoever you might be! I am here.” When Mr. Bowles’s loud pronouncement brought a sudden silence, he nodded in a satisfied manner and slid back the long and heavy metal bolt that locked the two halves of the gate together.
