What the devil was Teddy talking about? James shook his head. “Lord,” he muttered. He took his friend’s arm. “Let me get you a hansom, before you ruin yourself here.”
Teddy lifted his arm up and away, however, as oblivious as an overexcited child. “No, no,” he insisted. “You have to meet her, James. Or at least see her. God, she’s gorgeous. And so nice. You just wouldn’t imagine. Look.”
Teddy pointed, none too politely, toward the other end of the ballroom again. “Over there, just past Lady Motmarche and the Bishop’s wife.” He apparently saw his target, because he crooned a soft sigh. “Jesus, she’s mythic. I’m in love. Look.”
James tried to. Briefly. There were about a hundred women standing or dancing between him and the far end of the room.
Teddy continued. “She’s not like those others, not like that bloody tightrope walker who wiggles her hips or those two actresses who pretend to have a career on the stage. Nothing so vulgar. She’s intelligent and cultured. You should hear her talk. Like that Madame Valtess de la Bigne with the mansion on the Boulevard Males-herbes.
Une grande cocotte
. From Paris, James. About the classiest bit of skirt you’re ever likely to meet. Jesus, how much do you think she is? Do you think she has a nightly rate, or do you suppose you can only
…you know, if you buy her a house and keep her for a while?”
Now James
was
curious. After casting a glance at the preoccupied Bishop, he took an earnest look toward where Teddy pointed. He shifted once, twice to see between heads. On the far side of the room, between waltzing couples, he caught a glimpse of an attractive woman just getting up to dance, then another sitting in a flowing red gown that spread up and over the arms of her chair.
“No, no, not either of those,” Teddy said. “To the right a little. The woman standing with her back to us. There! See? The one in the white, well, not white exactly, the steel-colored satin. Silver-white. Ooh, I bet there are some men feeling a bit hot in their shirt studs tonight. Her door in Paris was said to be the one most likely to see enter a misbehaving Englishman who wanted, above all, discretion. And some of those weren’t so discreet. Rumor has it that when Prince Edward turned sixteen, some of his cronies got together: she was his present.”
James’s curiosity increased. He stared between heads, hoping for a better look at the woman in silver-white, when quite suddenly, people moved and momentarily, he had a clear view.
He laughed. “No.” He shook his head. “You are quite drunk, my friend.”
“Isn’t she gorgeous?”
She was that. James adjusted his stance now, keeping sight of her as much as possible: it was Mrs. Wild from the dentist’s office. “Yes, she is. And I know that woman. You are quite wrong: she’s delightful.”
Teddy said nothing. When James looked at him,
his friend was giving him his full inquisitive attention. “You
know
her? How, Jamie? Where? Oh, do tell, old man. ’Cuz, I’m not wrong. Jamie, Jamie, Jamie. I say, still waters and all that. Don’t you have a surprise or two the Vice-Chancellor doesn’t suspect—”
“You’re mistaken. That woman is the widow of an Englishman. Her name is Wild, Mrs. Wild.”
“Ha-
ha!
” Teddy exclaimed, as if this proved his point. “Right-o. Nicole Villars Wild. Married a doddering old retired admiral of the Royal Navy when Louis-Napoleon’s empire collapsed, lots of money. Lived with her admiral in Italy somewhere till the fellow died and left her even more filthy rich than before. That’s the one,. James. Coco Wild to her friends. The one. The only.”
James glanced at Teddy, who, even sober, frequently got his facts confused. He stared back at Mrs. Wild. She was lovely; there was no doubt. Petite, feminine; stylish, smiling. That she should be…well, anything other than what she seemed was impossible. Unthinkable. “You’re wrong,” he said flatly.
“All right. Explain all her money. And why men give her houses.”
Across the room, Mrs. Wild accepted a champagne glass from a barrel-chested man in a natty evening suit, his white silk scarf still over his shoulders. Their party must have just arrived.
Teddy slouched toward James, reaching up to sling his arm around James’s shoulder. “Here’s what I’ve heard.” His voice dropped to the whisper of shared, delectable secrets. “Prince Napoleon, the emperor’s cousin, built her an astonishing house.
Huge. Marble staircases, an onyx tub the size of a small pond, with jeweled faucets. Legend has it he filled it with champagne and she bathed in it nude for him. Then later some eastern shah or other filled it with orchids and had her picture painted in it, up to her naked shoulders in fat purple orchids. She has another house here. No one is willing to speculate who paid for it. The money came through a small private banking house. She’s terribly discreet. And has a bevy of smaller properties in England and on the Continent, a regular real estate tycoon over the last decade.”
James tried to imagine what a woman could do to merit such gifts. A woman other than one’s wife.
A wicked woman.
Wicked
. He ran his mind around the word, caressing it. While he stared at the very nice woman from the dentist’s office. From across the room, he watched her wide, mobile mouth, red and smiling. She didn’t look wicked. She looked human, warm in her demeanor. And genuine. There was no pretense to her interest in those around her, in her easy composure. She chatted, laughed with her companions—three men and two women of whom James knew only one, a showy, abrasive American he’d met once and didn’t much like; he couldn’t remember his name.
“Who is her ‘protector’ now?” James asked.
Teddy shrugged, his slung arm sliding along James’s shoulder. “No one, I suppose. That’s the rub. Giving a woman all that money, so many things. Well, she simply doesn’t need a man any longer, does she?”
The question went unanswered, for Athers sud
denly cut between James and Teddy and the rest of the room. The man was moving at a clip, on a mission.
James watched him head through the crowd directly toward Phillip Dunne, the Vice-Chancellor. Phillip would soothe whatever was wrong, James didn’t doubt. But James was fascinated to understand so clearly that soothing was necessary. Athers spoke heatedly to the Vice-Chancellor for perhaps a minute. Phillip nodded. The Bishop spoke some more. More nodding, an exchange, then some sort of agreement. The two of them signaled someone across the room. The majordomo. Before the chief steward could get over to the men, however, Athers’s wife had joined the group. She spoke intently, mostly to her husband, all the while smoothing the front of her gown, one gloved hand down her skirt, once, twice, and again. As if she could smooth out her own agitation: she too displayed an inappropriate choler.
The majordomo arrived, after which a quiet, though heated, discussion ensued.
James frowned at the foursome. Phillip, he imagined, was constrained to accommodate his new and temperamental ally, who, in turn, seemed to be trying to calm his wife. Mrs. Athers gesticulated, arm extended, finger pointing—in the direction of the hapless Mrs. Wild. A little stab of fear ran through James.
“They’re going to throw her out,” he murmured more to himself than his friend.
Without thinking further, he set off straight across the dance floor, weaving his way through the crowd. As he walked purposefully, Mrs. Wild—Ni
cole, he reminded himself, Coco—bobbed in and out of view, between heads and swirling bodies.
He glimpsed her speaking to her companions, her dark eyes animated. The group laughed as she spoke. She looked intelligent, interested and involved in the conversation. If she were a trifle too vivacious, too flirtatious, well, she was French after all. Her mien was continental, her energy Parisian. She had the air of a hostess of a literary salon—
Or a Greek hetaera, he told himself as he watched her. Aspasia among the friends of Pericles. She could be…. It seemed possible for a moment. Then not possible.
Still surely such things existed as courtesans bred to cater to the powerful, the educated, men who had the taste and money for something better than what was found at Piccadilly or Pigalle.
No. No, no. As James navigated closer, it seemed more and more unlikely that this lovely woman could be, well…She was too…beautiful. More than beautiful. Gracious. Her manner was kind and inviting. There was a high style to her that was both marvelously elegant and totally unintimidating. Perfectly lovely. The way a well-stocked, well-laid-out library invited you to take down and use its embossed, illuminated, gilt-edged books, to slouch into its soft crushed leather chairs—
James collided into a dancing couple, then watched spinning feet as he sorted himself out again, lost in the in-and-out movement, having disconcerted himself. That he should liken a decent woman to a library, a place where lots and lots of men could visit…use a book, put it back, then
return and use it again…. How very ungentlemanly.
Yet, when he looked up and got another unobstructed view of Mrs. Wild, James couldn’t help but think (loving good libraries as he did), Here stood a well-stocked, well-laid-out woman. She was slightly long-waisted, small yet willowy, narrow in the right places, full where she caught a man’s eye, and divinely dressed tonight in silver satin that rose and dove in a kind of heartshaped neckline across her bosom, rounding over each breast, plunging between, yet somehow modest. Her shoulders themselves were all but bare, swathed in organdy so sheer it was like silver air. Her dress was proper, not too tight, not a moment’s criticism, yet it left nothing to the imagination when it came to where and how the perfections of her figure lay.
She was stunning. Whether or not she had made a fortune off her charm, she
could
have.
Out the corner of his eye, James caught sight of the majordomo cutting his own path toward her, walking briskly. James sped up the last few yards, sure he could avert an embarrassment for everyone.
He came up to her group, behind her, with her in quarter profile. He touched her arm, and a thousand details seemed to assail him. Everything about her suddenly seemed erotic. Intentionally erotic. Her long gloves up her arms. The way she held her fan. Her dark, shining hair caught at her nape in a silvery net dotted with silvery beads. Her necklace of cut garnets, blood red, sparkling in a delicate display of bits and drops against her ivory throat. And her perfume, not heavy, hardly that of a trollop, but faint and fragrant in a way that invited you closer.
Breathing it was like wanting to stick your nose—lose your face—down into the center of a flower.
His exchange with Teddy was suddenly vivid again.
Who is her “protector”?
No one, these days. Giving a woman all that money, so many things…well, she simply doesn’t need a man any longer, does she?
James’s heart skipped, then raced into a hard rhythm. “Mrs. Wild,” he said.
And as the name came out his mouth, a reply to Teddy’s question sprang to mind, fully formed:
not necessarily
, James thought.
That would depend on what the woman wanted these days
.
C
oco Wild had arrived at Buckingham Palace that evening with Jay Levanthal, a witty, brash fellow out of San Francisco with a Harvard education he had parlayed into a bank charter and a number of prudent investments. He, Coco, and two of his visiting partners and their wives had dined out tonight, then come here. Levanthal had dragged her and the others along as a blind, so to speak, in order to get a clear shot at a duck whose money he wanted for his latest investment scheme. If the duck were smart, Coco thought, he’d give all his money over to the American. She herself had made a sizable piece of cash by investing with him.
“Mrs. Wild.”
Coco turned, then laughed, astonished. “Why, what a surprise!” It was the young man from the dentist’s parlor.
Mr. Stoker looked splendid in evening clothes—crisply pleated white against black. He was taller than she recalled, the set of his shoulders wider, his stance more square and straight. Perhaps it was the neat upperclass cut of his evening suit. In any event,
his beaming smile was exactly as she remembered—as cocky as a new rooster in the yard. Something about him, possibly his energy, amused her afresh: he conveyed a vigor, an impetus she no longer possessed. A verve for life. He wanted things. And believed he could have them.
“Jay,” she said, reaching back. “You have to meet—”
Jay wasn’t immediately behind her where he’d been a moment ago. Coco let him be, since he seemed to be talking to a man who had just come up, an official of some sort. Good. He loved officials.
To Mr. Stoker, she said, “And this is your party?”
“Indeed.”
The American’s voice grew loud all at once, making both her and Mr. Stoker turn. “But I’m telling you,” he said, “I
have
a damned invitation, and the lady is here as my evening’s companion.”
The official said, “Nonetheless, sir, you and the lady will have to leave.”
The man blew angry air through his lips as he reached into his inside coat pocket. “I can show you the damned invitation—”
From behind her, Coco heard Mr. Stoker say, “I would like them to stay. As my guests.”
Stay. Go
. She frowned and looked from one man to the other.
The official scowled at Mr. Stoker. Jay glowered at both of them. While Mr. Stoker kept his eyes fixed on Coco. His smile was radiant. She stared for a moment into a handsome, young face so full of pure, guileless goodwill it was hard to look away.
Their gazes held for just a dash longer than seemed quite normal, till his interest seemed…complicated somehow, disconcertingly frank. Reflexively, Coco smiled, a warm, lively social mechanism. “Jay,” she said, “this is the young man from this morning, the one I was telling you about.”
Mr. Stoker nodded in acknowledgment, but his attention remained immovable—so insistently upon her that Coco began to feel as if…as if her dress were ripped or her hair coming down or her necklace come undone. Her smile wavered; she put her hand to her throat, raising her brow in bemused query:
What?