Cynthia Bailey Pratt

by Splendid You

  “I—I hardly know.” His half-formed feelings and designs were definitely not the sort of thing a man discusses with his mother. He struck upon an answer sure to satisfy her. “I believe we are becoming fast friends.”

  “If you will be guided by my advice, you will marry her.”

  “Mother, we only met yesterday!”

  “But you have been corresponding for so much longer than that. There is no better way to truly know someone, through and through, than a long exchange of letters. I wish Lucy and dear Robert Winslow had agreed to write one another when he was away doing his duty.”

  “Be that as it may. Mother, I can’t marry the girl out of hand!”

  “I don’t know why not. If heaven had designed a bride for you, it would be someone just like dear Julia. Isn’t she interested in Egypt, just as you are? And if she isn’t nearly beautiful enough for my splendid son, I think she has a very pleasing countenance. Girls who are too beautiful are never very restful to live with, it seems.”

  “Mother, Julia is a very sweet girl, but I have no thoughts of marrying anyone at present. Besides, her father would never agree. I’m not a pauper, thank God, but he’s certain to think I’m only interested in her fortune.”

  “But you aren’t, so what difference does it make? As for her fortune, such things are not to be despised. Certainly no other young lady has even come near to having so many good qualities. As I say, if heaven itself had set out to create a daughter-in-law for me, I should have ordered one just like her.”

  “I agree that Julia has most of the qualities I would look for in a bride, if I were looking for one. But I’m not and she knows that. Please don’t talk to her this way. She’d be very embarrassed.”

  Mrs. Archer folded her hands at her waist and put on her most earnest expression. Alarmed at these symptoms of something even more serious in the wind, Simon put his hand over hers and asked, “What is troubling you? It isn’t really Julia, is it?”

  “No, Simon. It’s you.”

  “I?” His alarm increased when he saw how tense she was, her brow creased red beneath her charming cap, her eyes tearing. “I’m well, perfectly well. Never worry about me.”

  She sighed tearily. “But, son, I’m afraid ... oh, I don’t know how to say it. You’re thirty-three, after all, and in all that time you haven’t had even one passage d’amour. Not even one!” It was a cry from the heart.

  “Mother, as a gentleman ...”

  He saw her gather her courage, taking a deep breath as she straightened her back. “Son, I will love you no matter what depraved taste you may indulge, but I must know the truth! Do you ... are you ... in short, do you like girls?”

  Simon’s laughter was partly because of her dear earnestness, partly because of the follies of time. She would wait to spring this issue on him on the very evening he’d been plotting, if only capriciously, the seduction of a girl beneath her very roof.

  He put his arm about his mother and gave her a reassuring squeeze. “Yes, I’m very fond of girls. Always have been and I foresee no changes to my opinion in the future. I may not always understand women—you at this moment have me utterly befuddled—but I find them always and endlessly fascinating.”

  Her smile was one of damp relief. “Oh, I wasn’t sure. Sometimes it seems the only ones who interest you have been dead for a thousand years, and that’s not the way to bring me grandchildren.”

  “Mother!”

  She stamped her foot, a girlish habit she’d never outgrown. “I’m sorry, Simon, but when I hear dreadful, vulgar creatures like that Agapantha Pertwee—

  “I thought she was your bosom beau?”

  “Not any longer. She came to call yesterday and once again she went on and on about her horrible son, Jeremiah, getting himself entangled with some tawdry creature out of the chorus at some music hall. Oh, she pretended to be shocked, but underneath she was all puffed up with pride that he’s such a devil of a fellow with the girls.”

  “Mother!” Simon said again, suffering more shocks in this five-minute conversation with her than she’d given him in years.

  “And you, so handsome and strong, a thousand times more a man than her spindly son, never giving me a moment’s worry that you’d bring home some dreadful, low creature like that! But never bringing home anybody else, either! Then you arrived on the doorstep with Julia so very late last night, sitting up with her ‘til all hours, and I didn’t know what to think. I’ve told her how sorry I am if I was rude.”

  She leaned closer and said, “I told her I’m always out of sorts if awakened in the middle of the night. And then that cat appearing out of nowhere ...” She shuddered delicately.

  “Poor Mother.”

  “Never mind. Are you sure you won’t marry Julia?” She instantly retreated, saying quickly, “No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to force you into saying a yea or a nay that might bind you later.”

  “I can’t promise to marry anyone immediately.” He imitated the way she leaned to one side when imparting secrets. “Though I shouldn’t say anything of it as a gentleman, I feel I should relieve your mind thus much. I have had, as you put it more than one passage d’amour in my adult life.”

  He’d never seen his mother smile so expansively, not even in the happy days before his father had died. She closed her eyes and seemed to whisper a prayer. Then one eye snapped open. “Out in Egypt, was it?”

  “Actually, Mother, mostly right here in London. I would have thought you knew everything about them, right down to their addresses, through some crony or other.”

  “No, I never like to pry into my children’s personal lives.”

  “Of course not. Of whom could I have been thinking?”

  He kissed her. “All right now?”

  Her sigh was happy. “Yes, though I’m still impatient for grandchildren.”

  “I’ll see what can be done. Do you suppose someone in this vast city rents them by the hour?” A disturbing thought occurred to him suddenly. “Mother, wasn’t it Mrs. Pertwee who first introduced you to Dr. Mystery’s seances?”

  Her discomfort returned. “I—I believe it was,” she said, unable to meet his eye. “It’s just like her to do such a thing. Always chasing the latest fad.”

  “I never asked you why you went. I assumed you wanted to contact Father because you missed him so.”

  “Oh, I do. I do miss him. He was always such a rock!”

  “Why else? Did you want to ask him about... me?”

  Biting her lip, she nodded. “But it seemed so vulgar to ask such a personal question in front of all those people! I never thought that there’d be others present. I thought it would be just me, Dr. Mystery, and him. But the company was very mixed. I only went a few times and there never was an opportunity to speak to him alone. I’ve come to the conclusion that you are entirely right. Dr. Mystery was a fraud. It’s sad to think that there is so much wickedness in the world.”

  “Thank you, Mother. You don’t know how you relieve my mind.” At least he didn’t have to face blackmail from Dr. Mystery. People already looked askance at him at times because he was so often out of the country. It had even been suggested jokingly in the press that he kept a harem at his camp.

  When Julia finally escaped from the drawing room, she found Simon in his study. He’d taken off his long, black coat and roiled up his sleeves, exposing brown forearms covered with sun-bleached hair. His cravat lay on his desk with his collar. She tore her gaze away from the sight of his chest, glimpsed through the undoing of several buttons on his shirt. His waist was trim, seen without a concealed knee-length coat, his hips narrow but with thighs that looked strong and very male.

  “Have they talked you into painting the house yet?”

  “Not yet,” she answered gaily. “But I expect I will if they ask me to.”

  He picked up a pry-bar and twirled it between his fingers as though it were a reed. Putting his foot on the end of the crate, he asked, “Ready to get started?”

  “I c
an’t wait.”

  He put the narrow end under the nailed-down lid and rocked the bar. “Safir doesn’t trust the postal services, or it could be that he doesn’t trust the postal workers. He always nails down these lids as if he’s shipping diamonds.”

  Julia nodded, but she was paying more attention to the flexing muscles of his arms than to what he was saying. His shirt clung intriguingly to his back, draping his sides with an almost Grecian elegance. Julia had to close her eyes and lean against the edge of the bookcase because there suddenly didn’t seem to be quite enough air in the room.

  “You can open your eyes now.”

  He’d pulled on a pair of gloves and cradled in his hands a bluish statue, four or five inches long from flat feet to truly ugly face. Lines and drawings highlighted the bashed nose and fat belly. She came two slow steps closer. “Bes?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why are you wearing the gloves?”

  “I find that the oils on your hands can do damage, especially to gold and papyrus. I always wear gloves when I handle the artifacts.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “There are gloves in the top drawer, if you’d like to hold it.”

  “May I?” she whispered.

  Julia received it into her hands. She’d seen and touched the massive statues, admired the works done for pharaohs, gods of their place and time, and read the words of mighty men written in the hands of slaves. But nothing had ever sent such an electric thrill surging up her spine as this model of the dwarfish, ugly god Bes.

  For he had not ruled the Underworld, nor held up the sky, nor strode like vengeance made flesh over a cowering world. He was the god of household things who kept sickness from the door and brought happiness to the hearts of the common people. This little statue had probably been a cherished possession of someone not so different from herself. The centuries between the making of this statue and its emergence into a gentleman’s study of the mid-nineteenth century seemed to collapse, so that then and now were but two sides of the same page.

  “He reminds me of my father, a little. Is it very rare?”

  “No. It’s a nice enough piece of faience, but nothing too unusual. It must have been part of this job lot Safir writes that he bought cheaply. There were a few outstanding pieces thrown in among the junk. Unfortunately, he writes that he wasn’t permitted to send them out of the country just yet.”

  Julia only nodded at this hint of trouble. “May I keep this, then? I know it’s asking a great deal of your principles.”

  He looked at her as though he understood. “I don’t think history will miss it. If you want it so much, of course you may have it.”

  ‘Thank you, Simon. I shall treasure it forever.”

  He lifted his hands as though he’d reach for her but instead wheeled abruptly and returned to the crate. Soon curly ribbons of excelsior littered the floor together with sheets of slick Cairo newsprint. Julia was delighted by everything that emerged from the crate—beads, scrolls, a painted face from the late Ptolemic period, figurines.

  Simon, however, fished about in the bottom of the crate as though expecting more. She sat back on her haunches.

  for she’d long since come to sit on the floor to be closer to the treasures revealed. “Didn’t Father Christmas bring you want you wanted?”

  “I hoped that Safir would be able to send me those outstanding pieces he mentioned. This letter might have been a blind. But he writes that the Egyptian authorities are becoming more strict about what they’ll permit to leave. The present viceroy is a forward-thinking fellow who wants to protect what he can. But the Institut d’Egypte is hardly worthy yet of the name ‘museum.’ Everything is jumbled together, so they don’t know what they own, and anyone who wished could walk off with the entire place. They must find someone who understands classification.”

  “Why don’t you volunteer?”

  “I can’t afford to. Besides,” he added, “my love is excavation. I’d be miserable without the thrill of the dig.”

  She rubbed the round belly of the little god. “I’d give anything to be a man like you.”

  “Men don’t have things as easy as women like to think.” He stripped off his gloves, sticking them in his trouser’s pocket.

  Julia said, “I suppose one sex can never truly see the world as if belonging to the other. For instance, I believe that if I were only a man I could do what I pleased with my life. Travel, adventure, scholarship. If I had enough will, then I could do it all, regardless of my birth or my status.”

  “And as a woman?” He sank onto the floor beside her, and idly brushed a shaving from her skirt.

  Looking off into the middle distance at nothing, Julia sighed both at the beauty of her visions and the narrowness of her reality. “As a woman, I am not supposed to have a will of my own. I’m supposed to be obedient to my parents, until at last the master hand of a husband comes to mold me into a final form of a meek and still obedient wife. Read the marriage vows for women one day if you want more proof.”

  “It’s not so easy being a man, Julia. If one is any kind of man at all, one is bound by rules of conduct as rigid as anything society inflicts on women.”

  “I can’t see it.”

  “No?” His breath stirred the lovelocks beside her ear. She turned her head. She had not realized he’d come so close. All she would have to do would be to move her little finger over and she could have touched him with it.

  “Give me an example,” she said, scarcely daring to speak.

  He ran his gaze over every inch of her body, from the ankle that peeked out beneath the sweep of her skirt, over her legs, and higher. Julia felt his gaze like a hand drawn lightly over her naked skin. He hadn’t even touched her and she was already trembling.

  “I want you,” he said, and his desire was in his eyes as bold as if some piratical ancestor had taken him over. Her breath came fast, but not with fear.

  “Yes,” she said, keeping her eyes open with great effort. She longed to close them, to forget everything except Simon. She waited for him to repeat the kiss he’d given her before. This time, she would not be taken by surprise.

  “As a gentleman, however, the rules of conduct forbid my taking advantage of a young woman living in my house. Strictly speaking, I should not have said even that much. Please pretend I said it only as the example you requested.”

  Julia said, more vehemently than she’d intended, “But many governesses and maids are seduced by the men of households every year.”

  “Then they’re not gentlemen. Nobility, perhaps, but not gentlemen.” He gathered himself together as if to rise.

  Lifting up to her knees, Julia clutched his bare arm to stay him. “Doesn’t the young lady have anything to say about it? Or is this another instance in which a man declares that he alone knows what is wisest and best?”

  She did not have time to be subtle or seductive. Seizing his shoulders for balance, she leaned over and kissed him. She knew she did it badly, awkwardly falling forward so that she had pitched herself practically into his lap. But she felt his body rise against her as his hands came up to cup her face.

  The moment Julia touched his arm, Simon knew that all the rules he’d just attempted to explain were nothing more or less than pure bunkum. Chivalry might work to restrain a man who never met any but weak and silly women, but it proved a paltry defense against a woman who knew exactly what or who she wanted.

  And when she kissed him, inexpertly pressing her sweet lips to his, Simon knew that civilization was a thin shell covering the brute being who acted instantly on every desire. Right then, all his desires were concentrated on the woman in his arms.

  He needed to exert no strength at all to pull her onto his lap so that she straddled him, her full skirt spreading out to either side of his legs. She followed his lead as effortlessly as though he were dreaming her response. Leaning back, he reached up to slide his fingers into her hair, then brought her face down to his. He plundered her mouth re
cklessly, only to find that she took just as much from him.

  He knew he was driving her too fast, taking her immediately to a level that should have been achieved in deliberate stages, allowing her to become used to each step before going on to the next. She learned the ways of passion instantly and applied the lesson at once. Realizing this, he tried to catch his breath, to recapture his savoir faire, but the impact of her body on his senses overwhelmed him anew.

  The instant he paused, Julia took over the pace, pressing such kisses to his mouth and to the sides of his neck that he could feel the prickling touch of her teeth. Had she learned that from him? He could not analyze their progress now.

  She was saying his name over and over. He felt as though he’d waited an eternity to hear just that note of passionate pleading from her, remembering only dimly that he’d never heard her voice before yesterday. Then he realized that he was begging her to touch him. Had it been he or she who had pulled his shirt free of his waistband?

  He seized her hands, desperate to regain some sanity before the demands of his body completely deafened his common sense. Until that instant, he hadn’t known she still wore her white gloves. Looking into her eyes, he smiled. Here, too, her response was perfection, for she gave a surprised laugh. He watched her face change, however, when he took the hem of one glove between his teeth and tore it off. Then he did the same with the other hand, pausing to bite, lightly, the raised mound at the base of her thumb. His name had never sounded better than on her lips as she twisted against him.

  He could not resist his need to have her hands on his body, just this once. But as each desire was satisfied, another surged in to take its place, as waves never cease driving each other toward shore.

  Simon glided his hand up the length of her leg, the silken stocking aiding him, leading him higher to where the garter divided silk from skin. He toyed there a moment, vaguely astonished that there should be so little difference. Then he touched her higher still, finding the heart of her warmth.

  “Simon?”