Free The Debutante by Kathleen Tessaro Page A

window, naked.
    Unguarded and unaware, she stretched her arms above her head, arching her back. Her skin was creamy, her hair white in the sun.
    He knew he should look away.
    She turned. Her breasts were small, with surprisingly large nipples. They were the same colour as her lips, swollen and pink.
    Then she disappeared again, like a fleeting apparition.
    She hadn’t seen him.
    Her body was different to what he’d imagined; the vague classical ideal of beauty he’d assigned her without even knowing it. Her nipples, swollen and erect from the heat, were instantly erotic. His chaste, romantic vision was corrupted by pornographic longings — licking, sucking …
    Turning his back on the house, he forced himself across the lawn where the road joined a field filled with sheep. It was picturesque; the sky a faultless duck-egg blue above a silver strip of sea.
    She’d done it again — knocked him sideways as completely as if she’d kicked his chair out from under him. He was left reeling, grappling with desires that had long been dormant. And he resented it. As much as he loathed the numb monotony of his existence since his wife’s death, he hated the effect she had on him; it was narcotic, addictive. She left him longing for more of what he couldn’t have inthe first place. For a moment he considered the possibility that she knew he was standing there; that she’d deliberately paraded herself in front of him.
    Of course that was stupid.
    Still, images piled up on themselves.
    Stare at the sheep, dammit!
    This is a job, he reminded himself, draining his coffee. Tomorrow it ended and then they would go back to London. Most likely she’d end up heading back to New York to that rich lover of hers.
    The memory of her, naked and unaware, flashed up again. He pushed it firmly out of his mind.
    He couldn’t even trust her.
    This girl had no place in his life.

     

5 St James’s Square
London
12 September 1926
My darling, dearest Wren,
I am so, so grateful for your wonderful news and most of all that you have forgiven me! I couldn’t have lived knowing I’d caused you pain and now to hear that you are engaged is too, too thrilling! A sapphire ring surrounded by diamonds! I cannot wait to see it! And Muv must be so relieved. But my, you are a dark horse! What became of your shy Baronet? Were you using him as a screen to hide another love? You really have managed the whole thing in record time. Did he go down on one knee? Did he kiss you? I imagine the dampness is less distracting if you are kissing a man you love. How many times? Are you in love with him? You must tell me how Scotland is and his family; if they are terribly grand and if Muv is doing or saying anything ridiculous. (Details, please.) I hope they have given you a decent bedroom and that his mother is kind to you.
I’m so sorry to have missed you, but not the Holy. It’s bad enough having to be back in St James’s Square with the Consort on my own. All he does is stomp around glowering at me and lecturing from a book called The Great Threat, which claims the lower classes are poised to take over civilisation and thus end it through a combination of rapid interbreeding and sheer bad manners. It was probably a mistake to tell him I thought civilisation was overrated anyway, as the poor dear seems to take these things very seriously. (There’s a single vein on his forehead that throbs violently when he’s experiencing an emotion. It turned positively purple.) He called me ‘a Bad Seed’ and left for his club, taking his precious book with him and muttering furiously. I imagine supper will be unbearable.
Oh my darling! I have a shameful confession … Do you recall that Muv employed the Consort’s son Nick to bring me home from Paris? Well, he did. And he is neither fat nor old nor anything like the Consort at all. In fact, he’s surprisingly handsome and charming — so much so that when he approached me in the lobby of the Bristol Hotel, it didn’t occur