Free The Jewel Box by Anna Davis

about doing the right thing, that a little devil pops up in me and just won’t stay quiet. Now and then, every so often,up it comes to make trouble. And when it does, there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”
    Margaret seemed to consider this for a moment and nodded silently. Then she said, “I’ve read The Vision eight times. I’ve read everything Dexter O’Connell has ever written. His novels, his short stories and essays. I’ve heard him read aloud from his work on three occasions. If you’ll take me for a nice lunch at one o’clock, I’ll tell you everything I know.”

Six

    Piccadilly Herald

    Diamond Sharp Meets Dexter O’Connell

    April 25, 1927

    A Piccadilly Herald World Exclusive
    Every once in a while, I meet a man who is truly, head-turningly, staggeringly, and yes, mouthwateringly handsome. To all you girls who bit your nails to the quick and went goggle-eyed late into the night devouring The Vision a few years back, I now confirm that its infamous author, Dexter O’Connell, is one such marvel of American manhood. Yes, American is quite the right label here. For when did you last spot one of our nice English boys with shoulders and chest of such remarkable broadness? The body—dare one comment, even in these enlightened days, in print, on the body of a man?—well, the body is the sort one simply can’t ignore. Yes, it benefited from being clad in the very best of bespoke suits (a silk and cotton blend in a delicate dove-gray, no doubt from Savile Row, or whatever the New York equivalent calls itself), the kind of suit that would certainly make the best of any body, however run-of-the-mill, and disguiseits more saggy aspects with expensive cunning. But the sheer, tall, athletic overwhelmingness wasn’t due to the suit, I promise you, girls.
    This particular body, I would suggest, is the end result of all that sport they play in the American college education (O’Connell went to Yale). Also from a brief but physically demanding stint in the Ambulance Corps during the war (yes, he was one of those good eggs who came to Europe early on to do his bit alongside our men). And from a wholesome southern upbringing involving home-cooked foods with names like “grits” and “succotash” and “meat loaf” (how unappetizing they sound, but there must be something to it).
    One shouldn’t forget to mention the face, either. The easy smilingness of the mouth; the Roman fineness of the cheekbones and the nose. The flirtatious flyawayness of the fair hair; the clear, cold cleverness of those blue eyes that don’t seem to want to meet yours except when you’re doing your best to evade their glintingly perceptive gaze.
    Trouble is, I don’t much like good-looking men. I don’t trust ’em as far as I can throw ’em.
    He was seated at the best corner table—the table where he’d sat on the night she first met him. She spotted him a few seconds before he looked up and saw her. Just a very few seconds but it was long enough for her to compose herself and arrange her face into a suitably cool expression. Long enough, she felt, to give her the advantage in that instant of discovery—so that when he did look up, it was he and not she who seemed, albeit ever so fleetingly, unsettled.
    “Miss Sharp.” He’d stood up for her, and he took her hand and kissed it with a gallantry that struck her as ludicrous—then continued to stand there, sizing her up in an overtly maleway that made her sense the advantage sliding in his direction. Her dress—a loose chiffon number with floral print, ever so slightly transparent, hinting at the presence of the simple silk shift beneath—was too floaty for the occasion. If she’d had time to go home and change, she’d have put on her plain black Chanel suit and some chunky glass beads.
    “Good evening, Mr. O’Connell. I suppose I’m meant to feel flattered by all the subterfuge?”
    “Meaning that you don’t?”
    She sat down, and he did likewise.
    “You’ve