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.
Immediately, and quite without either consideration or politeness (as Mr. Bowles was to say later), two laughing young gentlemen who were obviously in their cups surged through the opening, closely followed by a third, somewhat older man with a dark, boldly defined face and a saturnine look who could quite easily have been taken for one of the natives except for his modish and well-cut clothing. He gave the astonished Mr. Bowles a twist of his mouth and a rather resigned lift of his broad shoulders while his boisterous companions tried to outtalk each other with a mixture of questions and orders flung in Mr. Bowles’s direction.
“I say! When did Damiano get himself an English gatekeeper? Don’t dress like a gatekeeper, I must say. Have to tell him.”
“Used to go to school with Damiano. Promised to look him up. Want him to meet our friend—another Viscount. We’re all Viscounts! You are a Viscount, aren’t you, old man?”
“He won’t expect us to stand on ceremony, you know. Remember the way.”
“Thought we’d surprise him. No need to announce us. You’ll see to our horses?” A golden guinea tossed in Mr. Bowles’s direction bounced off his heaving shirtfront to lie in the pinkish dust.
By the time he had recovered his voice sufficiently to pronounce, “If I might just explain to your Lordships that a Mistake has been made,” the two younger gentlemen were already striding across the gently sloping grass lawns and up the steps leading up to the terrace that Mr. Bowles always called “the courtyard.”
“Your Lordships! A mistake...” He had begun to follow them when he noticed that their rather unsteady progress had been halted while their heads swiveled to watch Bridget, who ran with remarkable swiftness ahead of them with her apron clutched in her hands.
“Not at all old Damiano’s type, is she?”
“Maid perhaps. But didn’t you think she looked English too?”
“I should not be too alarmed, unless your master happens to be entertaining some of his older relatives.”
Until then Mr. Bowles had almost forgotten the presence of the third gentleman, who had remained behind, while he debated frantically as to what he should do to avert a terrible contretemps. And now Mr. Bowles turned to him with relief.
“Sir! I’m sorry, your Lordship. I beg you to... This is not the residence of whomever...”
“It is not the home of the Conte di Menotto, even though his family crest is prominently displayed everywhere?”
In his acute distress Mr. Bowles ignored the slight sting of sarcasm, almost wringing his hands as he stammered out, “But...but the Conte is not in residence at the moment. He has rented this villa to Sir John Travers, and Lady Travers, who...who would not—oh, definitely not, my lord—wish to be disturbed.”
“You did say Travers? Lately of the city of Colombo, in Ceylon?”
“Yes, that’s quite correct, your Lordship. And if you would please, your Lordship, be kind enough to...”
It was at that very moment, when Mr. Bowles had begun to wonder why this gentleman who spoke with an unfamiliar accent had suddenly begun to scowl in a very dangerous manner, that he now noticed with a sigh of relief that the two young Lords were now retracing their footsteps in a slower and more sober fashion than before. And it became apparent, as they drew closer, that their countenances, so much alike to look at, were quite flushed.
“Well? It seems your visit was so brief that I did not get my promised introduction to your friend.” Why, Mr. Bowles thought quite indignantly while his eyes traveled from one countenance to the other, one would think he had not heard a word I said—or believed me either!
“I...we... Sorry old chap, but I think we...”
“Committed & faux pas. Found...”
“Soon found we’d made a mistake. Eh, Roger? Saw no one, of course.”
“No. No! It was the—the maid. Told us Damiano has the house rented out for the month. Better go now, I suppose.”
“I suppose we had better, now that you have discovered you made a mistake. Our apologies, please, to your employers.”
I don’t know where he comes from, but he’s not English! Mr. Bowles thought as he bolted the gate again with noisy force. And I wouldn’t trust him either, for all that he dresses like a gentleman. There’s what he said at first, and the sudden way he changed about, with his voice sounding like a knife blade hidden under velvet. Dangerous, he is.
It was only after he had started back towards the welcome coolness of the house that Mr. Bowles began to wonder why the two younger gentlemen had returned so quickly and in such an abashed manner. Surely Bridget, who was only an Irish country girl after all, could not have turned them around in such a hurry? But the only other alternative that came to his mind made him shudder, especially when he tried to think of what he must tell his master.
“Bridget was such a heroine. You should have seen the way she dashed up all those steps and flung her apron over me as if it had been Sir Walter Raleigh’s cloak.”
“Gallant Bridget!”
Alexa had dallied in her scented oil bath for longer than usual; and to make up for it, she had decided to put the last touches to her evening toilette in Sir John’s room so that she could converse with him at the same time. Now she turned from the mirror to regard him with her clear, level eyes. “Are you angry? Because you must tell me if you are. Have I disgraced you, do you think? They did seem very much ashamed of themselves in the end; and they did promise—‘word of honor!’—that they would not breathe a word. They were really quite harmless and rather stupid young men, you know.”
“I think I recognize their nam
es,” Sir John said with a twinkle in his eye that made her relax immediately. “And I am sure your summing up was quite correct, my dear, except for your imagining that I might be either angry or disgraced. Please go on with your diverting story. You have me quite fascinated! So? Your gallant Bridget saves your modesty by flinging her apron over you as you lay sleeping as usual in the sun. And...?”
Alexa had begun to laugh by then. “I’m sure I do not deserve such a wonderful and understanding friend as you are. And how very much I love you and appreciate you.”
Her voice sounded light as she related the whole incident and made it all sound quite amusing and droll. But when she had been awakened by Bridget, panting and puffing as if she had been running for miles, and had had an apron of all things dropped on her... It was a small wonder that when she sat up to find what had caused such a commotion, her eyes had flashed with anger instead of amusement.
It was only when she saw those two faces that looked so similar as to be almost identical, gaping at her with popping blue eyes that seemed unable to believe what they saw... Only then had she remembered rather belatedly to snatch the apron up before her, hoping as she did that it covered as much of her body as possible.
“Good—God!” one of them said fervently.
“Say that again!” the other echoed in a rather fainter voice.
They were obviously brothers, alike enough to be twins. And obviously quite young as well. Sent down from Oxford, she guessed. But they were not so young that they had not yet discovered women; and that fact was quickly apparent to Alexa, who had learned to look for certain signs.
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