Читать книгу The Light of Paris - Eleanor Brown, Элеонора Браун - Страница 8

My grandmother Margaret (Margie) Pearce was first and foremost a daydreamer, and as soon as she was old enough to write, she began to record the stories she told herself. They were adventure stories sometimes, love stories often. They were stories of escape, of romance, of the future she thought she might have, of the life she wished to live.

And in the same way I thought my life would begin with my wedding, my grandmother thought hers would begin with her debut. She believed her life had been a closed bud until that moment, waiting politely until that rite of passage came to bloom, to bring her all the things she dreamed about—romance and beauty and adventure and art—with the certain cultivated wildness of a rose.

Of course that wasn’t the way it worked out. In fact, if Grandmother and I had given it any thought at all, we would have realized debutante balls and weddings were the precise opposite of freedom: a courtly cementing of our futures into the concrete of the families and society in which we had been raised. But at the time, they seemed nothing more than a chance, for once, to be beautiful, and how could either of us turn that away?

Margie made her debut on a blustery, icy December day in Washington, D.C. It was so cold the clouds had been chased away, leaving a clear sky, bright with stars against the darkness. The week before, she had come home from her first semester of college, the months of classes a blur as she dreamed of the moment when she would finally descend the hotel’s staircase and make her grand curtsy, when everything would change, everything would begin.

Margie’s appetite had all but disappeared in the excitement, so her collarbones stuck out prettily, her cheekbones high, her face flushed. She tried to read, to sew, anything to pass the hours, but she couldn’t sit still. Instead, she found herself running to the window again and again, watching people stepping quickly along the sidewalk, their heads bent to break the wind. The weather made everyone hurry, rushing to get back inside, so it looked as though the entire scene had been sped up, the cars hurtling down the street, the tram at the corner buzzing recklessly by. But when she stepped away from the window and looked at the clock again, time had barely moved.

When five o’clock finally came, she rushed upstairs to her room and was already stripping off her day dress and putting on her own corset and petticoat by the time Nellie, the maid, came in.

The gown fell over her head in a rush of silk and the scent of flowers. Nellie had placed rose petals inside the dress while it was hanging, and a few of them fluttered to the floor when Margie slipped her arms into the sleeves. The gown was made with the palest cream silk and had a wide V-neckline. Despite the season, the sleeves were short, and she had a pair of long white gloves sure to make her hands sweat. But the dress’s loveliest feature was the delicate pink silk roses crossing the bodice and trailing their way down the skirt, tiny buds of spring pink with green leaves set behind them. To Margie, it looked like a garden come to life.

Other girls, in high school and in college, had suitors, even beaux, though Margie had never thought of such a thing for herself. Her parents would have forbidden it, for one, and for two, who would look at her, with her fat ankles and her broad shoulders, when there were girls like Elizabeth Tabb or Lucinda Spencer around, delicate little things with the girlish smile of Mary Pickford and dramatic eyes like Gloria Swanson? But that night, listening to the rustle of the silk against her petticoat as she walked slowly down the stairs, her head held high under the unfamiliar weight of a tiara, she thought she might, for once, be worth looking at. This was it, she thought. This was the night her life would begin.

At the hotel, the debutantes waited in an anteroom. Some of their dresses, Margie thought as she looked around, were shockingly modern—casual, even, a loose flow of fabric draping over their bodies without pause, making them look elegantly boyish and square. The dressmaker had offered Margie a similar gown. “It’s the newest fashion,” the woman had said, showing a dress of thin satin with a lace overlay, loose and flowing.

Margie’s mother had been horrified. “You can’t even wear a corset under that!”

About the corset, Margie didn’t mind, as she was rather fond of breathing, but she did mind that tender afterthought of a dress. It looked so plain compared to the gown she had imagined. And it was all well and good for someone who looked chic in dresses like the one the pleading designer was holding out to her. Those women didn’t have broad shoulders or large bosoms or muscular calves like she did. Margie knew well what she would look like in that kind of dress.

But clearly a number of the other girls had been brave enough to take the plunge. Anne Dulaney and Elsie Mills, who had been the first to bob their hair (to their mothers’ fury and everyone else’s shock), were, of course, wearing those dresses and, of course, being tall and so slender, looked stunning. They were lounging on a pair of fainting couches as though the very thought of the evening exhausted them. Two other girls in shorter dresses huddled together by an open window, smoking (and she was fairly sure the flask they were sharing wasn’t lemonade), and another cluster of girls in more traditional gowns stood at the opposite end of the room, pretending to talk while catching admiring glimpses of themselves in the mirror above the fireplace.

Feeling desperate, Margie kept looking for someone she knew well enough to sit with, until she spied Grace Scott and Emily Harrison Palmer, with whom she had gone to school until the ninth grade, when she had left for Abbott Academy and they for Miss Porter’s. Their dresses were as formal and old-fashioned as hers, and she felt a sense of relief as she settled down on a sofa beside them, the slight and familiar tremor she had felt upon comparing herself to the others, girls who would always be more beautiful, more fashionable, more right than she was, fading.

“Who are they?” Margie whispered, leaning forward and cocking her head toward the smokers.

“Southern,” Emily Harrison said, with a touch of haughty contempt, which was rich, considering her parents had come to Washington from Atlanta and her mother had an accent so thick you could have spread it on toast. “But those girls,” she said, nodding toward the group at the fireplace, “are European royals. Can you believe it? Minor, of course. Rumor has it they’re making the rounds looking for husbands here because their parents are flat broke.”

“Don’t gossip, Emily Harrison,” Grace scolded. Grace had always been overly kind, the sort of girl teachers selected to pal around with the new student, and prone to fits of tears over the tiniest of disappointments. “I’m sure they’re perfectly nice.”

“I didn’t say they weren’t perfectly nice, I said they were perfectly broke,” Emily Harrison said. She lifted her hands and examined her fingernails. “Everyone in Europe is broke. Everyone here, too, it seems. My mother says there never would have been a ball with this many debutantes in her day.”

“They’re so glamorous,” Margie said dreamily, looking at the Europeans. They faced away from her, a few of them with dresses cut low enough on their backs to reveal skin luminous as snow. Were they princesses? Margie wondered. Two of them wore tiaras, sparkling in the firelight, but Margie wore one herself and she was hardly a princess. It was just that they seemed so graceful, so perfect, every movement of their hands expressive as ballerinas, the curves of their throats, the bones of their faces as though they had been carved from marble. Their spines were stiff, their shoulders straight, and Margie self-consciously pulled herself back from slouching. Even if they weren’t princesses, they were royalty, and they would be walking down the steps with her.

“Isn’t it exciting?” Margie asked. She couldn’t contain herself. She supposed she ought to be blasé, like Anne and Elsie, so languidly aloof on their fainting couches, but she couldn’t. The night lay in front of them like a glittering promise, the sparkle of it, the elegance, the mystery of the excitement to come. Oh, Anne and Elsie were old poops, that’s all there was to it. She was going to dance with Robert Walsh, the terribly handsome friend of the family who was to be her escort, and drink champagne even if her parents didn’t approve, and she was going to enjoy every moment.

“Dreadfully exciting,” Grace said, and the sparkle in her eyes matched Margie’s, even though Grace was assured of marrying Theo Halloway—their families had arranged it long ago—and might not have bothered coming out at all if her mother hadn’t practically run Washington society. “I saw the ballroom on the way in, Margie. It’s simply gorgeous. And your gown is really stunning. You look lovely.”

“Thank you,” Margie said demurely, though inside she fluttered at the compliment.

Her father had said, “You look pretty, kitten,” but that was his job, and her mother had said, “Your tiara’s on crooked,” and then, after she had fixed it, “Nellie didn’t do a horrible job with your hair,” which was the closest thing to praise Margie had ever gotten from her mother, a tiny, precise woman who had never understood the starry-eyed, lead-footed daughter she had managed to produce.

“You look pretty too,” she said to Grace. Under normal circumstances that might have been an exaggeration—it was a good thing Grace was so kind and her parents were so wealthy, because Grace was so plain—but not that night. Grace was dark and the pale yellow of her gown glowed against her skin, and she looked happy, and Margie felt a little rush of sentimental nostalgia for the girls they had once been and the women they were becoming.

“Ladies.” Grace’s mother, Mrs. Scott, appeared at the doorway. The Southern girls quickly pitched their cigarette ends out the window and Margie saw the flask of not-lemonade disappear into one of their skirts. Mrs. Scott sniffed the air and looked at them disapprovingly. “We are ready to begin.”

Margie’s last name, Pearce, put her solidly in the middle of the line, right behind Emily Harrison Palmer, but that night she wished it were Robertson, or better yet, Zeigler, so she could savor the anticipation, the shiver in her stomach, the heat in her face. At first all she could see was the hallway and the line of debutantes in front of her, but as Emily Harrison began her slow descent, Margie saw it all laid out before her: the chandelier brilliant above, the pale glow of the girls’ dresses, light sparking prisms off hundreds of diamonds, setting the hall aglow. Her breath caught hard in her chest and she didn’t breathe, didn’t move, holding the moment in her hand like crystal, like snow, terrified it might disappear, shatter and whirl away in the air.

She promised herself she would remember it all, hold on to every moment. But as soon as she set one satin-slippered foot on the stairs, it became nothing more than a lovely blur. She stored away memories of everything she could—the plush carpet beneath her shoes, Robert’s hand under hers, the fall of her dress around her knees when she executed her curtsy, graceful and slow as a dancer’s plié. The sparkle of champagne on her tongue, and Robert standing beside her, stiff and formal in his white tie, and the kiss her father dropped on her forehead as they waltzed, and the sight of all the debutantes with their escorts, swirling around the enormous dance floor like flowers, like snowdrops, like everything beautiful and bright and enchanted.

When the night was coming to an end, when the tables had been cleared and most of the fathers had left to smoke in the billiard room and the mothers were fluttering around the ballroom, chatting or passing gossip, or sitting at the tables, listening to the orchestra and remembering their own debuts in a more elegant time, a time when there was not so much sadness, when so many young men had not been lost and so many young women were not so bold and strange and unsatisfied, Emily Harrison came to fetch Margie and Grace. They had been standing alone at the edge of the empty dance floor, sighing happily at the music. “Come upstairs,” Emily Harrison said. “There’s a party.”

“This is a party,” Margie said, confused. She realized, with a little surprise, that she was somewhat drunk, and with even more surprise, that she rather liked it.

Emily Harrison rolled her eyes. “Not like this. A real party. One of the Europeans has a suite upstairs. Everyone else is gone, didn’t you notice? Come on.” Margie looked around to see the three of them were the only debutantes left in the ballroom. The rest of the girls had disappeared, as had their escorts. They were, in fact, the youngest women in the room by a good twenty years.

“Oh, I couldn’t,” Grace demurred, and Emily Harrison huffed impatiently.

“Of course not. Perfect Grace. What about you?” she asked, turning toward Margie, who took a surprised step back. A real party? She didn’t know what that meant, but she was sure she’d never been to anything Emily Harrison, who had a tendency to wildness, would have called a real party. But the night was magic and she didn’t want it to end. Why shouldn’t she go?

“I have to tell my parents,” Margie said. “They’ll be leaving soon.”

“Tell them you’re coming home with me. Hurry up already.”

Margie found her mother sitting at a table with Anne’s and Grace’s mothers, their heads bent so close together it looked as though they were eating from a single plate. When Margie approached, they separated slowly, their conversation holding them together like sticky toffee. “Your tiara’s crooked again,” her mother said. She was wearing a gown of heavy blue velvet that made her eyes burn like sapphires.

Pushing a careless hand up toward her tiara, which didn’t feel crooked in the slightest, Margie told her mother she and some of the other girls were going to Emily Harrison’s, and she might stay the night there, if that was all right.

It was the biggest lie she had ever told, and she thought, for a moment, as her mother looked piercingly at her, that she had been found out, until her mother’s gaze flicked back to Mrs. Dulaney and Mrs. Scott, who hadn’t bothered to stop talking for one moment, and she waved Margie off, telling her not to ruin her gown, for goodness’ sake, to get Emily Harrison’s maid to take care of it and not to forget to pick up the fur she had borrowed from her mother and left at the coat check. Margie promised all these things, and her mother let her go.

Could it have been so simple all along? No wonder girls like Anne and Elsie and Emily Harrison were so wild. How easy it was to slip out from under someone’s thumb, if the conditions were right.

The girls left Grace swaying contentedly by herself by the dance floor, like a lily of the valley in a breeze. They took the elevator to the top floor and swished down the hall to a suite whose door was propped open slightly, letting out the sound of music. As Emily Harrison put her hand on the doorknob, there was a shout and a burst of raucous male laughter, and Margie jumped back slightly. She felt a little less drunk now, away from the orchestra and the sparkle of the ballroom, and a little more scared, but Emily Harrison simply hissed at her to come on.

Inside, Margie stood by the door, both terrified and fascinated. Someone put a glass of champagne in her hand and she drank it quickly, the pleasant light-headedness she had felt before rising up again.

One of the Southern girls sat on the sofa, a cigarette burning in one hand and what looked suspiciously like a tumbler of gin in the other. She had taken off the lace overlay of her dress—Margie could see it draped carelessly over the back of a nearby chair—and was sitting there only in the satin chemise, and Margie was certain she didn’t have anything on underneath it. A man sat on either side of her, one of them also smoking. Ash had fallen onto the cushions of the cream sofa between them.

In the corner, a phonograph played Al Jolson, and a few of the European girls (and, Margie was shocked to see, Elsie Mills) were dancing with their escorts, who had taken off their ties and tails. It wasn’t dancing of the sort she’d learned at cotillion; their bodies were pressed so close together Margie couldn’t have gotten a hand in between them. One of the men had dropped cigarette ash on the tallest European’s beautiful gown, but no one seemed to notice or care. Elsie and her escort, their eyes half closed, from attraction or liquor, moved more and more slowly, their heads drifting together, and then they began to kiss, at first gently, and then passionately. Margie stared—she had rarely seen anyone kiss, and certainly not with such hunger—and when she finally turned away, her face burned with shame and envy.

The air was hazy with smoke—in addition to the cigarette smokers, a group of escorts was playing cards and smoking cigars in a dining room off the front room. Emily Harrison had disappeared, and Margie felt immediately self-conscious and overheated, her corset pressing too tightly into her stomach. She walked quickly through the room to one of the side doors—This suite must take the whole floor, she thought—and opened it to find a couple engaged amorously on a bed. Slamming the door shut, she pressed her hand to her chest. Was this what everyone else had been doing while she and Grace were visiting and performing little plays together or reading on Friday nights? Had this been happening all around her and she had just never been invited until now? Or was this part of the new world that seemed to be trembling around them, ready to break open and swallow them all whole?

She didn’t belong here, she thought. But what could she do? She couldn’t leave now. Her mother thought she was spending the night at Emily Harrison’s, and she didn’t even have cab fare.

Taking another few steps away from the blur of the living room, Margie found herself in a hallway lined with rich damask wallpaper in cream and silver. Suddenly, one of the other doors opened, and her escort, Robert Walsh, emerged, straightening his vest, an unlit cigar clamped between his teeth, and she blushed. Margie had always had the worst habit of blushing anytime she was in the company of any boy—or now, man—near her age, especially if he was at all good-looking, which Robert Walsh definitely was. Hearing the sound of a commode flushing behind him, she burned even hotter. “Hey there, are you all right?” he asked. Unable to look at him, she nodded.

“Party rather too much for you, eh?” he asked, and then, accepting her apparently stunned look as a reply, took her by the elbow and steered her away from the living room. “Come on. Let’s get you a little fresh air.” He led her down the hall to the last door, which opened into an enormous, and blessedly uninhabited, bedroom. Guiding her inside, he closed the door behind them and walked over to a long wall, tugging aside a curtain to reveal a pair of French doors. Margie stepped outside gratefully when he opened them.

The air was icy against her skin, and Margie wished she had gotten her coat from the check after all. Her mother would be furious if she forgot it, especially after she had been reminded. She always complained that Margie was irresponsible and flighty and addle-minded, and most of the time, Margie had to admit, it was true. It was just so easy to get lost in her thoughts, or in a book, or in a story she was writing.

Breathing the air in deep, grateful gulps, Margie felt her heart slowing and the flush fading from her cheeks.

“Damn, it’s freezing out here,” Robert said mildly. He shook off his jacket and brought it over to Margie, settling it around her shoulders. She pulled it closer around herself, inhaling the smell of him on the fabric—soap and Brilliantine and unlit tobacco.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, when the air had done its job. She had begun to shiver, but she didn’t want to move just yet. The champagne giddiness had gone, replaced by a different pleasure. Above them, the stars were sharp and lustrous, and she liked the steady comfort of Robert beside her.

He was handsome in a careless way, and though he had been raised to be polite, there was something of a rake about him. He drove a sporty Monroe roadster and though he was older than she, almost twenty-five, he didn’t seem to be in any rush to settle down and get married, or even work for a living. She always heard him talking about one party or another, or a trip he had taken to Atlantic City, or Boston, or New York.

Her parents had selected him to be her escort, and his parents had probably agreed for him. Yet here they were now, alone, and he didn’t seem to want to be part of what was happening out in the party any more than she did. Could it be that he was like her, maybe a little shy, a little dreamy? Maybe he had been misunderstood all this time and all he needed was someone who would allow him to be himself, and he would see that in her and she would look up at him with dewy eyes, her heart pounding, and …

“No need to apologize,” Robert said. “Your teeth are chattering—you must be frozen. Are you feeling better? Should we go back inside?”

Startled, Margie nodded, and he gestured politely for her to go in first. He closed the doors behind them, but the chill remained in the air, so Robert strode over to the fireplace, taking the match holder from the mantel and lighting the fire that had been laid there. “Have a seat,” he said, gesturing toward the sofa closest to the fireplace. She settled into the cushions, sliding out of his jacket as he brought over the coverlet from the bed and tucked her in, grinning and winking at her as though they shared a secret. Margie felt the heat in her face again.

“Thank you,” she said after a few moments, when she was warm again. “I don’t know what came over me.”

Robert shrugged. He sat down in an armchair by the fireplace, resting one foot on the opposite knee. He took the still-unlit cigar out of his mouth and set it in a large crystal ashtray on the tiny, spindly end table. “You’ve had quite an evening. And this party did go from amusing to outrageous rather quickly.”

Margie’s heart quickened again, thinking of Elsie and that man kissing passionately, of the couple in the bedroom, a flash of bare arms and legs entwined before she had closed the door. “I hear Europeans are scandalously free these days,” she said, trying to sound worldly, like she went to parties like this all the time, as he apparently did.

Instead of laughing at her, Robert simply nodded. “They are. But you can’t blame them. They’ve been through a lot. It’s a miracle there’s anyone left, isn’t it? Between the war and the ’flu?”

“Why didn’t you go?” Margie asked tentatively. “To the war?”

Instead of answering, he stared into the fire silently for a few moments. “Money,” he said finally, “has all sorts of privileges. My father bought my way out.”

“Oh.” The idea that he had avoided service on purpose made her feel embarrassed for him. She scrambled for a conciliatory remark. “Of course you’re important to the company. It’s right you should have stayed home, or who would take over the business from your father if you …” she trailed off, realizing she was about to suggest Robert’s tragic demise.

He didn’t seem to notice. He was still watching the fire, and then, abruptly, he pulled himself out of his trance and slipped a hearty smile back onto his face. “Quite right, quite right. Shall I get us a drink?” he asked, but didn’t wait for a reply. He pushed himself up from the chair and was out of the room before Margie could say anything.

It wasn’t until he was gone that she really took in that she was sitting alone in a bedroom with a man. She’d never been in such a circumstance before, hadn’t even countenanced the idea that it might happen before she was married. Was it terrible she didn’t feel it was so wrong?

She knew what she should do, of course. She should leave this party and all its shocking business behind and go downstairs and get her coat from the check before it closed and her mother’s fur went into whatever purgatorial limbo happened to coats in the coat check past closing time. The hotel doorman would get her a taxicab and she would say her address loudly and confidently, as if she traveled by herself in the middle of the night all the time, “3241 R Street,” and she’d go home and ring the bell and her father would pay the taxi and she could be safe in her own bed in an hour, her dress hanging on the wardrobe door and this night nothing more than a beautiful dream with a queer ending.

But she didn’t. She sat by the fire wrapped in the coverlet, and in a few moments Robert came back carrying a champagne bucket in one hand and a pair of glasses between his fingers. She heard a rush of music and conversation when the door opened, which stilled again when he closed it.

“I hope you like champagne. There’s gin, but that’s an acquired taste.” He put the champagne bucket on the end table and pulled out the bottle, sweating and chilled from its ice bath, and used a napkin to gently tug out the cork. It sprang free with a sharp pop, and Margie could hear the fizz as he poured her a glass.

“I do like champagne,” Margie said, although she felt sure she had been on a roller coaster of it all night and it was long past time for her to get off. Still, when he handed it to her, she took it, sipping at it gently, letting the bubbles pop against the roof of her mouth, savoring the sweetness on her tongue.

“You don’t want to be out there? At the party?” she asked. Robert poured himself a drink and then, to her surprise, clinked his glass against hers as he sat down on the sofa, so close she could feel the warmth of him. Though she had touched him a dozen times that night—when he had walked her down the stairs, when they had danced, his hand against the small of her back—this felt blushingly intimate.

“Not tonight. Those girls are tiring. All they do is gossip and talk about dresses and marriage. I’d rather talk to you, Margie.”

“Thank you,” Margie said, dazzled by the compliment, small as it was.

“So did you enjoy the ball?”

“Very much so,” Margie said with a smile, and it all came back to her. The discomfort she had felt at the shock of the party had faded, the light-headedness from the alcohol was blurring into something quieter, a buoyant contentment, and when she stretched her feet out, she could see the roses marching down the front of her dress and the toes of her pretty satin slippers. And even if Robert were simply biding his time with her, she could pretend it was something else, and no one would ever have to know.

“When do you go back to school?”

“Not for ages and ages,” Margie said. She lifted her arms over her head and stretched. The fire and the champagne were making her toasty, and she let the coverlet slip down into her lap.

“I’m leaving for Europe right after the New Year.”

“Oh? Is it for work?”

“God, no,” Robert said, and took an enormous slug of his drink. “I am on a quest, Margie, to avoid that particular responsibility for as long as possible.”

“You don’t want to take over the business?”

“Not even a little bit. What about you? You aren’t in some God-awful rush to get married and start popping out children and turn into your mother, are you?”

“Goodness, no,” Margie said with a shudder, and took a large swig of her champagne in imitation of Robert, who laughed charmingly. “My mother is the last person I want to turn into.” And then, a little ashamed of herself for speaking ill of her mother aloud, she turned to him frantically. “You won’t tell her I said that, will you?”

He smiled, his teeth blindingly white, and gave her a slow, raffish wink. “Not as long as you promise not to tell my father I’d rather die than take over the helm of Walsh Shipping. Right now they’re so grateful I’m not pushing up poppies in Flanders Fields, they’re letting it lie, as long as I do little services like this and keep the family name clean. But eventually they’ll ask, Margie. Eventually they’ll demand it.” He was growing sadder and more morose as he talked. “We’re doomed, you know. Doomed to turn into our parents.”

“No!” Margie stood up, throwing off the coverlet and stamping her foot. “I won’t do it. I’m going to be different, you’ll see. I’m going to be a writer, and I’m going to live in Europe, and I’m never going to get married—I’m going to fall in love again and again, and no one can stop me.”

Robert looked up at her as though he were deciding something, and then he drained his own drink, stood up, and, to Margie’s complete surprise, slipped his arms around her as though they were going to begin a waltz. “Of course you are,” he said, and the sadness in his face was gone again, so far gone Margie wondered if she had only imagined his gloomy prophecies. “You’re going to live in Paris and drink champagne from a shoe and write books like no one has ever read before,” he said, and he swept her around the room as though they were back on the ballroom floor, guiding her expertly between the furniture without even seeming to look at it. Margie laughed, tilting her head back and watching the ceiling spin above her as they danced in the quiet room, the crackle of the fire and the pale thumps of the party outside their only music. “And I’m going to go to Italy and live as a marquis, and never, ever think about cargo or shipping or tariffs or any kind of freight at all.” Margie laughed again, and then he abruptly spun to a stop.

“Whoops!” She was still laughing, her eyes closed. When she opened them, Robert was looking at her intently, searching her face for something.

“Margie,” he said, low and quiet.

“Yes?”

He didn’t say anything; he simply pulled his hand from hers where their arms had been extended and slipped it around her waist, pulling her close, far closer than they had been on the dance floor, as close as the dancers had been in the living room of the suite, the roses of her gown crushed against his stiff white vest, and then, as though she had been doing it all her life and knew what was coming, her eyes fluttered closed as he kissed her.

It seemed impossible someone else’s lips could be so soft, and she wondered at so many sensations at once, at the smell of him, the warmth of his body against hers, his hands firm and strong against her back, the quiet movements of his mouth and then his tongue, at first shocking and then, when she opened her lips, both natural and incredibly arousing. Her body rose to meet his, and when he moved his mouth from hers and trailed a line of kisses down her neck, breathing in the scent of her perfume and her skin, one hand moving up, his fingers playing dangerously at the edge of her neckline, she didn’t stop him, didn’t want to stop him, because the voice inside her telling her she shouldn’t, this wasn’t something a lady, a proper girl, did, that voice belonged to her mother and this night was hers and hers alone, to do with as she wished.

They kissed until her lips were swollen and the dizziness of the champagne had been exchanged for the dizziness of desire, and they lay down on the bed together and they didn’t stop kissing, and her hands were as bold on him as his were on her. They fell asleep together, their mouths close, hands claiming a confident intimacy, his body warming hers, her mind whirling with the fulfillment of all her romantic fantasies.

In the morning when she woke, the dream was over. He was gone, and she didn’t see Robert Walsh again for almost five years.