R Is for Rebel (28 page)

“You could say that.” Abby smiled as Sarah lifted the dress into place.

“The bra's got to come off.”

Abby looked down.

“Strapless,” Sarah elaborated.

Abigail took the bra off and set it on top of her skirt and turtleneck, which she'd laid on the rough floorboards.

Sarah stared at the tag on the bra. “Are you kidding me? Did Louise Feuillère make that bra for you?”

Giving a guilty shrug, Abigail said, “Well, Eliot did tell me to wear my
best
lingerie
.”

“I sort of hate you right now. Turn around and let me zip this up.” Sarah sighed with frustration. “I mean, of course the 1947 gown in a size negative four fits you perfectly. I wouldn't be able to get one boob in here.”

Abby looked over her shoulder at her gorgeous blond sister-in-law. “False modesty doesn't suit you, Sarah.”

“Oh, fine. I'll do, but this is…” She finished clasping the tiny hook and eye at the top of the zipper, then turned Abby to face her. “This is something else altogether. Really smashing, Abs.”

“So, what do I do? Just walk out there and do whatever Benjamin tells me to do?”

“Let me put a touch of makeup on you first… I know Eliot wants you all sooty-eyed and crazy-looking like all his models at the shows yesterday. Why didn't you come to the Danieli-Fauchard show, by the way?” Sarah applied makeup and waited for Abigail to reply.

“I don't really want to be seen with him until everything is taken care of with his, you know…” Her voice trailed off.

“Oh, god. I keep forgetting he's married.”

“Sarah!”

“Engaged, whatever. Sorry.” She was distracted, putting on some of her magical foundation and lightly powdering Abigail's skin. “Now for those diamond eyes of yours.” Keeping her eyes closed, Abby felt the light pressure and soft texture of Sarah's fingertip as she smudged the makeup to her satisfaction. “Okay. You're all set. I think. Let me look at you.”

Abigail opened her eyes. Luckily, there weren't any mirrors around so she didn't need to obsess about how ridiculous she must look in some crazy vintage ball gown in the middle of some ramshackle, falling-down building.

“Lipstick!” Sarah cried. “Come here.” She pulled two gold cylinders from her bag. “These will be perfect. Dark, bloody red—”

“Sarah—”

“Don't talk or I'll mess up, and this stuff stays on for
ever
. They were not kidding about that six-hour promise. I mean, seriously, you can do
anything
with this lipstick on.”

“You are seriously perverted.”

“Sure. You keep telling yourself that, Abs. You're not the least bit perverted.”

Abigail burst out laughing. “All right, all right. Let's go.”

“Shoes!”

“No. I'm sorry, that's where I draw the line. I refuse.”

Sarah narrowed her eyes, deciding whether or not to wage war on her sister-in-law for shoe heresy, then her face bloomed into a smile. “Now that I know about the lingerie situation, I'll let you off the hook this once.”

Shaking her head, Abigail turned and left the small dressing area.

“So? How do I look?”

Eliot was standing with his arms crossed, his back slightly turned to where Abigail was. Benjamin Willard saw her first and started snapping photographs immediately. Eliot was speechless.

“I know!” Abigail laughed. “I was speechless too when I saw it. Isn't it incredible?” She did a pirouette then turned slightly right and left, enjoying the movement of the layers and layers of lace as they floated around her hips and legs. She really did feel like a princess.

Eliot walked toward her in silence, her heart pounding harder and harder as he got closer and closer. She vaguely remembered the sound of the camera clicking-clicking-clicking while Eliot pulled her into his arms and twirled her around the abandoned space, and their laughter and joy as she flew into his arms. The music surrounded them. Her bare feet were a few inches off the ground one moment, then they were dancing the next, or he would stop to kiss her neck or dip her back to kiss her chest while her head lolled back and stretched until the crown of her head nearly touched the floor.

He battered her with all those too-strong words like
magnificent
and
splendid
and
perfect
and
miraculous
. At one point she felt tears, and he kissed those too, and they danced like that for what felt like hours but was really just fifteen or twenty minutes.

“Oh my god, Eliot.” She breathed into him, feeling winded, not so much from the physical activity as the crashing waves of all that love.

“I'll try not to kill you with it.”

“Okay. Love me in doses until I'm truly addicted and I've built up my tolerance.”

He smiled and kissed her one last time. “How did you like your first photo shoot?”

She laughed, ringing clear, turning to look at Benjamin Willard, and said, “Oh, is that what that was?”

He smiled and replied, “I'm not sure what to call it, but I think I captured it on film.”

“Thank you for that,” Abby added. “So now I just walk out of here in this priceless gown?”

“If you like, but I'm afraid you'll be furious with me if you ever find out how much it's worth. Probably better to put it back on the mannequin and I can have the museum people come retrieve it.”

Abby gulped. “The museum people?”

“Don't ask. Trust me on this one. You do not want to know.”

She turned and walked toward the changing area, where Sarah was watching her, and muttered, “I have fallen in love with a crazy person.”

“Haven't we all,” Sarah agreed as she began to help with the zipper and removing the dress from Abigail's flushed body.

***

Abigail spent the last few days in museums and parks, sometimes alone in cafés or, a few times, with her mother or Sarah. But for the most part, she meandered through the city as if it, too, was her lover. Eliot called her a
flaneuse
, whatever that meant. She wandered down small cobbled streets, and sighed at their ancient intimacy. She visited crowded tourist spots like Notre Dame and trailed her hand along the cool medieval stones and inhaled the evocative scent of incense and small memorial candles. She sat on benches alongside large, crowded avenues and watched normal people stroll or rush by, carrying bags or ambling alone, holding hands or chirping into a cell phone.

Normal people.

She no longer felt like a normal person. She felt like a new species altogether. She felt like she and Eliot had emigrated to another country. She spent the nights in his arms or taking him into hers, his every nocturnal whisper binding her tighter and tighter to him. She spent her days reliving the exquisite delight of each gentle or fierce touch.

By the time she got back to London Sunday night and faced the prospect of spending the night alone in her own bed, the whole idea of Eliot not being there was quite unacceptable. She picked up her phone and dialed his cell.

Before he had a chance to say hello, she snapped, “How is it that I am staring at an empty bed right now?”

“I told you to move to Geneva a year ago. I have no idea what you're doing in that dismal, gray city. I seem to recall some discussion about real life and responsibilities… something vague and meaningless like that.”

Abigail smiled into the phone and flopped down onto her bed. If she closed her eyes, the sound of his voice was a pretty good approximation of his touch. He had spent the past week talking softly into her ear while touching her body, and the voice and the touch were permanently imprinted on to her. Into her.

“You are humming, my dear. Is this going to turn into some perverted phone sex?”

“Did someone say
perverted
?” Abigail asked optimistically. Her hand reached for her breast before she had time to even give it a thought. She bit down on her lower lip, closing her eyes and tugging at her nipple, just as Eliot had done earlier that morning when she screamed through the peak of another glorious orgasm.

“What are you doing, damn it?” His voice was adamant. “This is cruel. I'm standing in the middle of the Malpensa Airport. You're going to get me arrested.”

“Just talk to me. You know.” She moaned involuntarily as she continued to tease her nipples and think of his tongue on her. “Like normal.”

“Abigail,” he growled.

“Yes, just like that, like you need to…” She gasped at the memory from yesterday when he had taken her from behind. “…Like you need to have me right now…”

“Stop it this instant!”

An elderly Italian woman who was waiting for her luggage looked up at his rude tone and shook her head in disgust. She obviously thought he was a despicable, controlling man. What a travesty of the truth: Abigail controlled his every waking moment.

Abigail's breathing was starting to fracture. She switched her phone to speaker and set it on the pillow next to her. “Eliot,” she whispered into the phone, “it's Pavlovian, darling. You come to me at night. It's just how it is. I can't help thinking of you now.” Her back arched to force her moist center more firmly into her own palm, and she whimpered her pleasure. “I'm sorry to be so selfish, but please talk to me,” she begged.

His angry breathing was crackling through the ether. He sighed then. “Oh, all right, let me move off to a quiet corner at least. But you are asking a lot and I plan to be properly compensated at a later date.” She could hear the background noises changing and then he must have settled himself. “Tell me where you are. Where are your hands?” he demanded.

“I'm on my bed and I have one hand, you know, and the other at my breast.”

“Okay. First of all, there can be none of this
you-know
business. I want to hear exactly where your hands are and what your fingers are doing.” His voice rasped against her, like a brutal, knowing touch.

“Mmmmm, Eliot, keep talking like that. Your voice is so damned sexy.” She let her finger dip into her slick folds, and cupped one heavy breast. “One finger just slid into my wet… pussy, the other”—she twisted her nipple methodically while pressing into her needy breast—“mmmm, the other is toying with my nipple… like you did… like I want you to… I need more hands…”

“Oh. Good. God. I don't think I can do this. Seriously, Abigail, I'm going to get put in jail for lewd and lascivious behavior in a public place. I'm so hard for you right now.” He could hear her breathing accelerating in that familiar way, toward her release. “Do you like that idea? Of my hard cock wanting to be inside you so badly that I am going to have to go into a fucking public bathroom stall and pull it out?”

“Yes…” Her breathing was a mix of whimpers and desperate, encouraging inhales.

“And I'm going to take a few long, hard pulls with my hand—” Her sharp intake of breath told him that was exactly the idea. He was still whispering into the phone, one hand covering his mouth to ensure no one else could hear him. “And I am going to think of your taut, hard, willing body taking me… taking me everywhere, Abigail. Now. Come for me now, Abigail.”

She screamed his name into the empty bedroom, into the red flash behind her eyelids, into him: he was so close, right there, in her mind. “Oh, dear god. Eliot,” she panted out the words.

He sat in the corner of the airport and softly cursed every possible, vile deprecation he could think of. “I'm glad one of us is satisfied,” he bit out. “You need to get your ass to Geneva. Right. Now. Or I need to move there. I don't care which, but we need to deal with this immediately. I'm not going to be alone and harder than a brick—did I mention how alone I am?—for any longer than absolutely necessary. Decide where you want to live and let's be done with it, Abigail.”

Click.

Abigail's lolling head stared at the small phone, propped on the pillow by her head like a little hotel mint. He was right, of course, but she still didn't want to think about the realities of all that. She groaned at the prospect of real life encroaching on her small, private dream life with Eliot. He was going to have to extricate himself from his engagement. Abigail was going to have to decide whether staying in London was truly important. He was willing to throw it all over for her. His company. The beautiful house in Versoix he had described in loving detail. She tried to fight him on those points, claiming he didn't know what he was saying or hadn't thought it all the way through.

But he looked more angry and intractable at those moments than ever. Their conversation on the last night in their room at the Ritz had been one of many that week that always ended at the same impasse.

“I have had a lifetime to contemplate what I am and am not willing to do or not do, and a year on top of that where you're concerned, Lady Abigail Heyworth. I am not going to settle. I want you. Unequivocally. All of you. All the time. I don't care for those British ideas of absentee spouses—”

“That's not fair! Bronte and Max are not absentee spouses—”

“Exactly. They live together. In the same country, in the same city, in the same bed! We have already squandered entire lifetimes
not
being together. I'm done with that.”

“I suppose you're going to want to get married and all that.”

“I don't give a crap about that and you know it. You're mine. I'm yours. Nothing will change that.” He was looking out the window at the Place Vendôme, quiet and glistening in the middle of the night. He turned back to face her where she was sitting cross-legged on the bed with the sheets pulled up loosely onto her lap. “Nothing.” He stalked, naked, as usual, back to the bed and sat in front of her. “This is totally unconditional for me, Abigail. I don't know why. It's not like me to be so completely unanalytical, but I have no desire to parse it any further. I spent the last year trying to figure out what went wrong, and you know why it was such a mind bender? Because
nothing
was wrong. It was always right between us, but we were too”—he waved his hand in her general direction—“something… to see it. You were scared. I was demanding. I don't know. After a while, though, I think people start to recognize when life presents them with a truly unique opportunity. I think I knew it the minute I saw you. What we have is indisputable. Immoveable.”