Dangerous Obsession

by Natasha Peters

  I held him tight and said firmly, “Don’t you dare apologize or act like a gentleman!”

  He grinned and relaxed. “You’re right,” he said, kissing me. “I’m a damned fool. I’ve been undressing you in my mind for five days, telling myself to control my baser appetites, and cursing myself every night before I went to sleep for answering the King’s summons and going to Munich.”

  “I understand,” I said. “I don’t blame you. You think I’m a whore and a wanton and—”

  “Be quiet and listen to me for a minute,” he said, covering my mouth with his fingertips. “I do not, repeat, do not believe anything I heard about you in Munich other than what the King told me. I know you’re no Gypsy witch; and you’re not the Ice Maiden of the Rhineland, either. You’re a warm, wonderful woman who was badly used by a man who had no more soul than a—coal scuttle. I hate him, because he hurt you and caused you pain. But I could never think less of you because of it. You are yourself, Rhawnie. Wonderfully, beautifully yourself. I don’t blame Ludwig for giving up his throne for you.”

  “Thank you for that,” I said, kissing him. “Did the King tell you about how things were between us?”

  “Yes.” Steven looked serious. “He told me about his—problem. And about what a comfort you were to him. And about how virtuous you were.”

  Good old Ludwig. I sighed and said, “Let’s go to bed.” We crawled between the warmed sheets and slept, entwined in each other’s arms. We were both quite weary, having ridden hard for the past four days. But now we were safe and warm and happy. The urgency had gone out of our flight, for we had found something beautiful, and unexpected.

  It must have been midmorning before I awoke. Steven was gone. I felt a stab of fear and sat up quickly. He was standing at the window.

  “Ah! Good morning, Monsieur S!” I said in my husky morning voice. I lifted my arms to stretch. Steven grinned at me. He was naked, hard and lean and smooth. “You look like the Apollo Belvedere,” I sighed. “You are beautiful.”

  “So are you,” he laughed. “I’ve never seen a lovelier sight: Venus rising from the bedsheets.”

  I stretched out my arms to him. “Come to me,” I said. “I want you.”

  Steven looked down at himself and said ruefully, “It’s rather obvious that I want you. I’ve been waiting for you to wake up. I didn’t want to bother you, but I couldn’t stand being so close—you’d think I hadn’t had a woman in seven years.”

  I welcomed him with a long kiss. Our desperation had gone, and our love that morning was leisured and languorous. We explored each other’s bodies with our mouths and hands.

  “The King is an old Pandarus,” I said. “He knew this would happen.”

  “He should have told me,” Steven grumbled. “I wouldn’t have wasted the past four days. In fact, I would have gotten you away from Munich much sooner.”

  “He was so wise,” I reflected. “He knew what the Baron was plotting. He always knew what would happen, but he didn’t try to stop it.”

  “I think he was tired of being King,” Steven said. “Ah, my mother would be delighted to know that her bed was being put to such good use.”

  “Tell me about your wife, Steven.”

  He put his arms behind his head and smiled reminiscently. “She was small and dark and exquisite, like a doll. But she was kind and selfless, and she devoted herself to me and my children. We were the center of her life. She was always there when someone was hurt, when I was angry or upset. I still miss her. I’d come to her with some absurd problem, raving like a bull because this man was an idiot or that one was a moron, and she’d look thoughtful and say, ‘Well, Steven, they can’t all be as smart as you. You’ll just have to accept that.”

  “How happy you must have been with her,” I said. “I’m glad.”

  “You’re very different, you know. Julie was quiet and a little shy. Like a doe. You’re a lioness. You devour life and you revel in the things life has to give, happiness and sorrow and even danger. You would have overshadowed her in public. But she would have liked you. She was a very shrewd judge of people.”

  “You are very good,” I said admiringly. “Kiss me again. Maybe some of your goodness will rub off on me.”

  “If I were as good as you think,” he said, “I wouldn’t have acted like such a boor and a prig.”

  “You didn’t,” I said generously. “You were just afraid of your feelings, that’s all. But to be honest, from the very first minute I saw you, I wanted you. I tried and tried to seduce you, but you were a hard case, Steven. I really thought I was doomed to failure.”

  The only people we saw that day were the old caretaker and his wife. They brought plates of hot food and bottles of wine from the cellars. In the afternoon the skies clouded over and it started to rain heavily.

  “Good,” said Steven. The roads around here are impassible in the rain. We could be trapped here for weeks.”

  “Anna would become distraught,” I said sensibly. “And what about your business in Paris? Surely you have things to do besides rescuing me.”

  “Boring nonsense about trade agreements,” he said casually. “And I don’t have to be back in Paris until next week.”

  I was silent for a moment, then I sighed. “I’m such a fool to think of him now, when I feel happy. If only I could forget him! But he haunts me, Steven. I was his puppet, his toy. He thought I was imperfect, and he kept trying to hammer the dents out. I hated him! No, I didn’t hate him. I loved him, and it broke my heart when he left me.” Steven held me close and said my name, and I hid my face in his neck.

  “You are different, Steven,” I said. “I don’t get stiff and silent when you come into the room. I don’t flinch when you touch me or hate myself for wanting you. Desire is a fine and beautiful thing, and with you it is never degrading. I can talk to you, like a friend, and you never sneer at me or mock me or hurt my feelings. You don’t want to break my spirit. You don’t want to rule me.”

  He said, “Come to Paris with me.”

  I lifted my face. His eyes were tender. “I can’t,” I said. “Can you understand? I can’t.”

  “If you’re afraid of the King’s men and that duelling business, don’t be. King Louis Philippe has been deposed. Another revolution. France has a new king now.”

  “The world has gone mad,” I smiled. “But it’s not the duelling. Oh, this time with you has been perfect, like a jewel. I shall remember these hours always. You are very good. But I am still married to him. Let’s not talk about it any more. Please, Steven.”

  The rain stopped in the middle of the night. Both of us were disappointed.

  “Our time together is almost over,” I said. “Tomorrow I will ride to Le Havre alone. It will be quite safe. And you will return to Paris.”

  “No. At least let me ride with you as far as Honfleur. To be sure you’re all right and that they’re not watching the ports. Don’t give me an argument: I promised the King to take care of you.”

  We rode in silence all the way to Honfleur. I would take the little ferry across the harbor to Le Havre to meet Anna, who was staying in a hotel that Steven knew.

  We stood on the dock. We had ten minutes before the ferry left.

  “Take care of yourself, Steven,” I said lamely. “And when you get home to America, thank your wonderful mother for me and kiss all your dear children. Ah, it’s starting to rain. I’m glad.” I made a swipe at my eyes with my sleeve.

  “Won’t you change your mind? About Paris?”

  “No, no,” I said quickly. “I feel that it would be wrong for me to go back there with you. I am not the woman I was then. I want to make a whole new life for myself. But we might meet again someday.”

  “I hope so. I truly hope so.” He held my hands.

  “I’ll give you a reading,” I said, turning over his palm, “For free! Ah, I see travel and good fortune,” I said glibly. “You will make a lot of money soon. But beware! There is a dark-haired woman in your future!”


  “My daughter,” he laughed.

  “You will marry again,” I said slowly, “but not very soon. You will have a long life and you will be happy with your children. Your friends will be true, and your enemies will drown in the sea of their own evil.” A warning whistle blew and I looked up. “That is what I see for you,” I whispered, “and what I wish for you. Good-bye, Steven! Think of your Gypsy Baroness from time to time. She will be thinking of you.”

  The boat slid away from the dock and Honfleur was quickly absorbed in a rising mist.

  Six weeks later the U.S.S Thomas Jefferson docked in New York. Decked out in my brightest finery, I strode down the gangplank. Anna followed at a slower pace. We were both still pea-green from the experience, but I had assured her that a few minutes on dry land would dispel the sickness.

  I hired a porter to look after my trunks, which had arrived in Le Havre a few days before I sailed. They showed evidences of having been searched. Then I got a cab and told the driver to take us to the best hotel in the city. Half an hour later Anna and I stepped into the Plymouth Hotel on lower Broadway. I informed the management— not merely the clerk at the desk—that I was the Baroness of Ravensfield (perhaps he had heard of me?) and that I had had to flee for my life from Bavarian soldiers. All I wanted now was peace and quiet.

  “I require absolute privacy,” I said. "And please make sure that my room has a piano.”

  Within the hour a half-dozen reporters were clustered around me in the sitting room of my suite. I wore a lavender dressing gown with trailing ribbons and matching slippers. Diamond pendants hung from my ears, and I wore diamond bracelets over the scars on my wrists.

  "It was a perfectly dreadful experience!” I told them in my strongly accented English. "The screaming mob surrounded my house! They were shouting and throwing things, and there I was, alone inside, with only my faithful Anna here.”

  In the background Anna busied herself with tea. Baskets of flowers were starting to arrive from various impresarios and producers of Public Spectacles, and she was trying her best to indicate to the delivery boys that they were to be taken away and given to sick people in hospitals. Such bad luck, cut flowers. I had permitted Jules to put them in my room at the Rue de Montmorency, and look what happened.

  I knew those skeptics wouldn’t believe my story, but I didn’t mind. I could see the doubt written all over their faces when I simpered and said that King Ludwig and I were “just good friends." Whatever they wrote for their newspapers would be good for business: more people would attend a concert to see the ex-mistress of a deposed monarch than would come to hear just another immigrant soprano.

  “They say the King built you an opera house," one of the reporters said.

  “He built a new opera house when I was there, and I had the good fortune to sing in it," I corrected him. “The city needed a new opera house anyway."

  “But it might not have gotten one if the King hadn’t had special reasons for wanting to build one," said the man from the Daily Letter with a trace of a sneer in his voice. I said nothing and smiled enigmatically. The reporters moistened their pencils with their tongues and scribbled madly.

  “They say that you rode a white horse through the streets of Munich and that you whipped anyone who got in your way," said another man eagerly.

  “My horse was black, not white," I purred, “and I permit no man to stand in my way—at any time."

  When I felt that I had doled out just enough tantalizing tidbits, I declared that I had a terrible headache and I dismissed them. When Anna had ushered the last one out the door I jumped up and clapped my hands.

  “I am a genius!" I crowed. “That interview should sell at least a thousand tickets! Now tomorrow I will hire a pianist—the best I can find. What a shame Liszt isn’t touring the country: what a show that would be!"

  There was another knock at the door. Anna brought me an engraved business card.

  “Mister Ralph Edgar Flood, Esquire,” I read with difficulty. Thanks to Ludwig I could read German fairly well, but my command of written English was still poor.

  “ ‘Theatrical Consultant.’ Hmm. Show him in, Anna.” Ralph Edgar Flood, I learned later, considered himself a “showman.” He modelled himself on P. T. Barnum, but he had none of Barnum’s wit or imagination.

  “How are ya, Baroness!” he boomed, coming into the room with hands outstretched. “I sure am glad to see you in this country at last. We poor folks here in America have been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to hear your glorious voice.”

  “Then why don’t you buy a ticket to my concert, Mr. Esquire?” I suggested, ignoring his hand. “I know you will enjoy it.”

  “Ha, ha. The name is Flood, ma’am. The Esquire is just an honorary title, like Baroness.” He plopped himself into a chair uninvited while I remained standing. “I wanted to talk to you about a concert, Baroness. It wouldn’t be right for a little lady like yourself—”

  I laughed. “Come, come, Mr. Flood. A lady I may be, but little—! Never. State your business.”

  Mr. Flood did so. He wanted to arrange my first concert appearance at the Lyceum Theater, the biggest in New York. I nodded, absorbing this information. He promised me fifty percent of the profits over the gross receipts.

  “And what kind of receipts are those, the gross ones?” I asked.

  He chuckled indulgently. “Everything that’s left after the expenses are taken care of,” he explained. “There’s the hall to hire—that’s about two thousand dollars right there. The program to print, a piano-player to hire, costumes. The folks here like to see lots of fancy dress.”

  “Is that so? I have seen the great Franz Liszt play, and as I recall, he doesn’t even change his clothes in the middle of the performance.”

  Flood laughed and blustered.

  “But tell me more about what you can do for me, Mr. Flood,” I urged him. “For example, where will you find my accompanist?”

  "I'd go straight to Taylor’s Theatricals, ma’am,” he said. “The agency on Fourth Street. They have the best musicians in town, for all the best spectacles. Jenny Lind. The circus.”

  “Excellent. Thank you very much for coming, Mr. Flood. I will consider your offer and let you know. Good day.”

  Feeling somewhat thwarted and confused, Mr. Flood permitted Anna to show him to the door.

  “Tomorrow, after I have told the Taylor Agency what I want,” I told Anna when she came back, “I shall go to the Lyceum Theather, I think. I like this country, Anna. They say that in America a man can start with nothing and become rich overnight. Now I can’t say that I have nothing—I have my petticoat!—but I should confess that the prospect of great wealth appeals to me. I’m afraid I have developed a taste for riches, Anna. It would be a shame not to indulge this taste, don’t you agree?” Anna grinned and nodded. I took a long breath and sang a dazzling coloratura obligato. “Ah, the voice is very rusty! It will take me at least a month to get it into shape. There is so much to do, Anna! Push that button and when the boy comes tell him I want some champagne. We have a lot to celebrate!”

  Anna successfully mimed "champagne" for the startled bellboy: she popped an imaginary cork and watched it hit the ceiling, then caught the spilling foam in a glass, twitched her nose at the bubbles, and toasted the boy. Soon we were both sipping sparkling wine.

  I looked around. “Drab. Much too tasteful for a Russian Gypsy singer. Some day I shall have my own house, Anna. And I shall decorate it like the inside of a Gypsy caravan! Lots of colors, lots of cushions, and a steaming samovar, always ready with hot tea. But I shall buy a samovar tomorrow, as my first purchase in the new world. Ah, aren’t you excited, Anna? Do you miss Europe?”

  Anna shrugged.

  “Neither do I. I don’t miss it at all. This is a new life, Anna. I am free! For the first time in my life, I don’t have to answer to anybody! Free, free, freer than a Gypsy! I have a new career, a new future, a new land to conquer, just as Ludwig said! Let us drink—to America!”

&
nbsp; Of all the applicants I interviewed for accompanist, the only one who showed exceptional promise was a consumptive-looking young man named David Thatcher. His clothes bagged on his thin frame, his complexion was sallow, he had no small talk. But he played the piano like a fiend. I soon discovered that the object of our interview was not to determine if I wanted him to play for me, but if David wanted to.

  I handed him a copy of “Five Gypsy Songs.”

  “See what you can do with these,” I said. “Franz Liszt wrote them for me.”

  He was unimpressed. “Yes, I studied with Liszt in Berlin.” He carried them to the piano and sight-read them perfectly, the first time. “Not his greatest work,” he pronounced, “but nice enough, I suppose.”

  “Oh, you suppose!” I said coolly.

  “Now perhaps you would be good enough to sing, Baroness,” he said. “I want to hear how you sound.”

  “You—want to hear how I sound!” I exclaimed. “You are rather impudent, young man!”

  He squinted at me through his thick glasses. “Why do you say that? I certainly can’t play for you if I can’t bear to listen to you.” He thumbed through a pile of music and pulled out a killing aria by Mozart. “Try this.”

  I sang it through. He played beautifully, without even looking at the music. In fact, he had his eyes closed!

  “Not bad,” he said glumly. Not bad! “Your top is a little shrill.” Shrill! “And you lost control on some of that coloratura stuff.” Lost control!

  “You didn’t tell me that you were a vocal coach as well as a pianist,” I said coldly.

  "Didn’t I? I coached Lind for her performances in Vienna in ’46 and ’47. She made a lot of progress.”

  “Did she!” My eyebrows couldn’t go up any higher. Well, what are you doing in New York, if I may ask? Waiting for the Taylor Agency to find you a job?”