Unraveled by Her

by Wendy Leigh

  “Sweetie, there’s no point in me beating about the bush. While you were in Geneva on your romantic interlude with my husband, Gigi alerted me and Tammy that he had suddenly and inexplicably fallen in thrall to you and that your budding love affair needed to be curtailed. Together we arranged for Hartwell Castle to be bugged in readiness for your return. Consequently, we were able to listen to the story Robert told you about the circumstances of our first meeting, how he lost me and was reunited with me. But I’m sorry to disillusion you; the entire saga that he relayed to you is a complete and utter fabrication.”

  “I don’t believe you, Georgiana. Robert isn’t a liar! But you are. The biggest liar that ever lived!”

  “That may be so, Miranda, but this once, I am telling you the truth. And I swear it on the life of my daughter,” she says, and while I digest the words “my daughter,” she goes on, her voice suddenly husky with emotion. “And I want you to convey exactly what I tell you to Robert via my book, so that he will finally understand the trials and tribulations I endured and how everything between us really unfolded.”

  I bite my tongue.

  Then she goes on, “This is not to say that I didn’t adore the way in which Robert characterized our first meeting to you, and the way in which we lost each other and found each other again, because he really is a masterful storyteller, don’t you think?”

  Speechless, I just nod.

  “In my opinion, Robert ought to know how to tell a good story, don’t you agree, cupcake?” she says.

  Before I can come up with a suitable reaction, she just sails on. “After all, he once wrote for his own newspapers on a regular basis. And he is, indeed, a spellbinding storyteller, just as he is a spellbinding dominant, don’t you think?”

  I can feel myself turn white.

  “Switch off the tape recorder,” she says abruptly. “Apologies, cupcake, but neither of us can deny that Robert is spectacular in bed. The greatest lover I’ve ever had. And he writes such touching and evocative love letters, doesn’t he? I still have every single one of them in my possession. Which, of course, is why I was able to forge his handwriting so accurately in the note that summoned you to the Carlyle,” she says.

  And I sit there, sick to my stomach that he wrote her love letters but never wrote one to me.

  I want to kill her for that, and for rubbing in my face that she and I have both been his lovers. And that she was once his wife. Is his wife. But despite that, and despite whatever happens next, I know in my heart that I’ll always be the woman he loves above all others. Especially Georgiana, my jailer, the woman who trapped, then blackmailed, him.

  But when I force myself to face the fact that Robert made passionate and sincere love to her, not once but many times, and even wrote her love letters, I can’t endure it. Tears spring to my eyes. But then, with an almighty effort, I choke them back because I don’t want to give Georgiana the satisfaction of knowing that she has scored a bull’s-eye straight into the ventricles of my heart.

  She retouches her lipstick, switches the tape recorder on again, and continues, “You see, Miranda, Robert didn’t knowingly lie to you at all. He told you the story of our relationship exactly as he experienced and understood it. But his version is far from the real truth. A truth I am about to share with you, so that you can then enlighten him via my book,” she says, then pauses for dramatic effect.

  But there is no need for that, as she already has my full attention.

  “Let me rip away the first of my seven veils, Miranda, and tell you the true story of how Robert and I really came to meet—not the fanciful yarn spun to him with great panache by Murray,” she says, and my stomach lurches at the thought of Robert ensnared in some kind of plot conceived by the sinister co-owner of Le Château.

  “After everything I went through—the loss of my family’s fortune, which left me penniless, disgraced, and alone; the rape; the birth of my child—I found myself friendless in Manhattan, desperate to survive, to support my daughter, to make sure she was safe, happy, and cared for,” she says, and for once she seems sincere.

  “So here I was, Lady Georgiana Lacely, alone in a foreign land, with a young child with severe health problems, and unable to support myself and her,” she says, then stuns me by lighting the first cigarette I’ve ever seen her smoke, a Russian cigarette almost the same color as her eyes.

  “I may not have told you this already, Miranda, but as Robert knows only too well, and as I intend you to stress in my book, I’ve always been an adventuress with a rich fantasy life, a passion for any and every kind of sexual permutation, and it was only natural that I dreamed of exploring the far side of dominance and submission.

  “I was virtually penniless, without a green card, and unable to work at even the most menial job, so imagine my excitement when Tammy confessed her secret to me that right after she left Les Orchidées, she had become a professional dominatrix, and was now the co-owner of a Manhattan S&M fantasy parlor: Le Château.

  “From that time on, my dreams and my fantasies were filled with nothing but erotic thoughts about Le Château, where she worked, and consumed by fevered imaginings about what life there must be like.

  “Tammy, of course, knew the extent of my obsession and nurtured it. But I can’t blame her for what I did next, and nor should Robert. I did what I did because I was broke, and desperate to help my beloved little daughter. At the same time, my dire situation also enabled me to use my very destitution as an excuse to plumb the depths of my sexuality,” she says.

  “But now on to the story of my romantic first meeting with Robert. A meeting as romantic as that between the two lovers of And Now My Love. I’m quite sure that you remember that movie and its potent message in every single detail . . .”

  It’s all I can do to steel myself against her inevitable gush of passion for Robert and—much as I am loath to admit it—his for her, which she is about to impart to me with so much glee. And I hate her for it.

  Chapter Twenty

  Georgiana is on a roll now, and I have no alternative but to sit here and listen to her.

  “Before I presented myself at Le Château for my interview with Murray, the co-owner who was in charge of hiring and firing the girls, Tammy coached me on what to tell him about myself and my supposed track record as a dominatrix.

  “On the day of my interview, I wore my natural blonde hair piled on top of my head, a black corset, seamed black fishnet stockings, and black high heels, and was thoroughly convinced that I looked the epitome of a high-class dominatrix.”

  “But I thought you worked at Le Château as a submissive called Pamela?” I can’t help but cut in and say.

  “Patience isn’t your strong suit, is it?” she says, and I can’t deny that she’s right.

  Then she goes on, “When I got to Le Château and introduced myself to Murray as Countess Suzanne von Stern, he took me into one of the dungeons and said, ‘Get comfortable, Suzanne.’ I looked around the dungeon, couldn’t see any easy chairs, and so gave him a blank look.

  “ ‘Get comfortable, Suzanne,’ he said again, and it dawned on me: in Murray’s world, ‘comfortable’ was just another way of saying ‘naked.’

  “So I stripped off and, in a scene from a classic S&M fantasy, Murray inspected me from head to foot. I don’t mean he touched me,” she adds hastily. “He was far too professional for that.”

  Yeah, so fucking professional that he blackmails his clients, I thought, but didn’t say so out loud.

  “So what happened next?”

  “I put my clothes back on, not in the least bit embarrassed, because Murray’s inspection of my naked body that day really felt as if it were merely a medical examination conducted by my doctor.

  “ ‘So when may I start, Murray?’ I said, confident that I had sailed through the interview and that he had decided to hire me forthwith.

  “ ‘How about in a
n hour, Suzy?’ he said.

  “ ‘Countess Suzanne von Stern,’ I reminded him indignantly.

  “ ‘Great accent, babe. But you got to forget about Countess Suzanne. Mistresses around here are a dime a dozen. Come work here as Suzy, the Submissive Slut from England, I’ll charge double for you, the tips will roll in, and you’ll make a fortune,’ he said.

  “I stared at him, furious that he planned to derail my carefully crafted plans. When I’d first made the momentous decision to throw caution to the wind and work at Le Château I’d dedicated countless hours to fashioning my persona as Countess Suzanne von Stern—with its aura of aristocratic severity, along with a soupçon of class—to suit me. So to me, the concept of Suzy, the Submissive Slut from England, was downright sleazy, and I just couldn’t come to terms with it. So, in the most polite terms possible, I advised Murray to hire someone else to play the part of Suzy, just not me,” she says.

  “Then I flounced out of the dungeon without another word. Once in the street, I was confronted by the unpleasant realization that I couldn’t afford another cab. So I trudged toward the subway feeling dispirited and alone, when the call came with the terrible news that was to change my life forever. My little girl, Charlotte, had had a second, almost-fatal seizure. And there was no way in which I could take care of her anymore. There was no alternative for me but to institutionalize her,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

  “I swore to raise the money to send her to the best in the country, no matter what. Which is why, half an hour later, I, Lady Georgiana Lacely, arrived at the distasteful decision to become Suzy, the Submissive Slut from England and make my fortune, as Murray had promised I would.

  “Thus it was that took my place in an S&M fantasy parlor lineup along with six other girls, primed to be given the once-over by a client who wanted to select one of us to submit to him that day.

  “And then the client went down the line, past Patti, the blonde submissive from Chicago; Justine, the African-American from Crown Heights; and Helga, the brunette from Germany, who whispered to me that she was only doing this to pay the bill for her mother’s cancer surgery.

  “Finally, after he inspected Laurie, a tall, willowy blonde, a chorus girl by night who only did sessions at Le Château by day, and whom he asked to turn around for him so he could evaluate her ass, he moved on to me.

  “Suzy, the Submissive Slut from England. Perfect,” he said, and ran his eyes over my body while I focused resolutely on my posture and tried to project a sweet and compliant nature, though inside I was a miasma of raging emotions.

  “Then he took Murray aside and informed him that he had made his choice. He picked me, Suzy the Slut.”

  “How did you feel, Georgiana?” I say.

  And she laughs her tinkling laugh.

  “Just exhilarated. Of course, when Robert reads my book, the main point I want to convey to him is that Lady Georgiana Lacely only became a professional submissive through sheer necessity, because of my desperation to secure my poor, mentally disabled daughter’s future.

  “But to tell you the truth, Miranda, each day at Le Château was more exciting than the last. Every morning, I raced down to Wall Street in a cab, and the closer we got, the wetter I became,” she says.

  The thought of ice queen Georgiana getting wet is almost too much for me to countenance. I struggle to keep my cool and remind myself that I need to spin out these interviews so as to give Robert the maximum time to come and find me. So I continue in my guise of ghostwriter, eager to listen to her subject’s story in every intricate detail.

  “Tell me about that first session,” I say.

  “My first time as a professional submissive and I go in at the deep end, because in retrospect, my first client was probably one of the most sadistic men I ever knew,” she says.

  “And?”

  “Switch off the tape recorder for a minute,” she says, and I do.

  “I don’t want Robert to learn of my virtually unlimited capacity to submit to a variety of men in a professional capacity, or how much I enjoyed every single session, otherwise he might become unutterably disillusioned with me,” she says.

  But you blackmailed him! How the hell could you ever disillusion him!

  “I understand, Georgiana,” I say, and then move on to the next question: “So what happened to your plan to be a dominatrix?”

  “I was still determined to do sessions at Le Château in my role of Countess Suzanne von Stern, but Murray categorically refused to let me, and no matter what, I was unable to budge him,” she says.

  “But why did you have to listen to him, Georgiana?”

  “Because he was the boss, of course!” she snaps.

  “But you could have worked somewhere else!”

  “Don’t be so stupid, Miranda. I would never have felt as safe anywhere else. I only felt safe at Le Château because Tammy was there all the time,” she says.

  “But I thought that soon after she and Murray founded Le Château together, way back when, she sold her shares in the place to him, stopped working there, and became a freelance dominatrix instead?”

  “That’s just the story Murray cooked up for your precious Robert,” she says.

  Bitch! Don’t dwell on that, though. Carry on feeding her need to talk, just to give Robert more time . . . time to get here. And time for him to learn the truth. . . .

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “So how long did you work at Le Château, Georgiana?”

  “As Suzy? Just for one summer. But only during the day. And every day, Miranda, every single day, I took home at least a thousand dollars. But I couldn’t work nights because until I could afford to place her in the institution, I wanted to be by Charlotte’s side in case she woke up in the dark, lost and afraid,” she says.

  And for that moment, at least, the monstrous Queen of Evil that Georgiana undoubtedly is suddenly seems human, at last.

  But the warmth I feel for her instantly evaporates when she grabs my hands, leans close to me, and says, “Now it’s time for you to learn the real truth about how I met Robert. And once he reads your immortal words as enshrined in my book, he’ll give me a clean slate and our love will be reborn,” she says.

  If I have to listen to much more of this, I think I’ll explode. I just can’t take it. Not this minute. Not right now.

  “So you spent a summer as a professional submissive at Le Château, Georgiana. I think that’s fascinating. Would you mind telling me a little more about it before we go into your romantic first meeting with Robert and everything else that ensued?” I say, playing for time before she subjects me to her sick and deluded version of her supposed romance with Robert.

  Then I remember Sun Tzu’s advice that if you want to conquer an enemy, it’s crucial that he feel you are inferior to him. So I open my eyes very wide and say, “To tell you the truth—and I feel really stupid telling you this, but I was wondering if you could tell me anything at all that you discovered about submission while you worked at Le Château, so that I can learn from it and enhance my ability to submit . . .” and her eyes light up with malice.

  “Oh, my poor dear little cupcake! Here you are, the so-called great love of Robert Hartwell, the king of dominants, and you are asking me for advice on how to submit to him properly!” she says.

  And I hang my head in feigned shame.

  “I guess so. I was just hoping that I could learn something from you,” I say, and however glad I am that my flattery has had the desired result, I still hate myself, and her, for having said it.

  She gets up, sprays herself with Georgiana Royale, and then sits down on the couch next to me.

  “I don’t intend to waste too much time on this, because my purpose is to write my autobiography, not give you advice on submission,” she says.

  “I understand,” I say in a small voice, praying that I can string this ou
t for as long as possible.

  “Very well, Miranda, since you appear to be learning your place at last, you may have the benefit of my advice,” she says.

  I fight to keep a straight face and not laugh at her vanity.

  “The main thing you need to understand about professional submissives is that, like me, a good professional submissive must always have a tremendous amount of acting ability. Not just so that she can role-play with a client—and role play is the number one request made of submissives in most S&M fantasy parlors—but so that she can make the dominant feel as if she is genuinely aroused by him and is completely immersed in the entire scene,” she says.

  Much against my will, I’m interested in what she is saying.

  “So do you mean that a professional submissive needs to learn how to fake convincingly?” I ask.

  “You are so naive, Miranda,” she says. “Fifty percent of the dominant clients don’t come during a session, and they certainly don’t need the girls to, either. All they care about is dominating a submissive girl. Giving her an orgasm really isn’t part of the deal. Unless, of course, they are into orgasm control.”

  “Orgasm control?”

  “Ask your precious Robert,” she says.

  “Give me the phone and I will,” I say.

  “Glad you’ve got time to be funny, but I haven’t,” she says sharply.

  Then I brace myself to listen to the twisted saga of Robert and Georgiana, as told by her, his wife, a woman so crazed, so malevolent, that I can’t believe how much I hate her.

  “Everything that unfolded between me and Robert would never have done so had it not been for Murray,” Georgiana begins, then goes on to explain that through years of running an S&M fantasy parlor and catering to the deepest, darkest desires of his fellow men, Murray comprehended human nature in all its myriad shades of darkness and light.

  “Once Robert revealed his desire to find a born submissive, Murray—like all great Hollywood impresarios who cleverly gave fans only limited access to great stars, and like the owners of Studio 54, who only permitted a select number of clubbers to enter its hallowed doors—understood instinctively that Robert would only be captivated by the woman he found for him if he painted her as rare, exotic, exclusive, and unobtainable.