Chapter 2
Chapter Two
One of the other women lay on the chaise in an attitude of sleep, head resting on her arms, golden curls spilling behind her.
Her arms and legs were almost entirely bare, as was part of her breast. The sheet trailed over her waist as if it might, at any moment, slide off and reveal more.
The sensuality of the scene bound Jay to his chair as much the curiosity of wanting to know what would happen next.
Whispers came from edge of the curtain, where the other three woman stood. “I’m afraid I’ll burn her.”
Another of the younger women, with glossy black hair and dark skin, passed a candle in its broad holder to the woman who’d played the lyre.
The singer was slightly taller than the others.
The candlelight picked out bronze tints in her brown mane, the warm tones of her skin.
One lock fell from her bandeau and brushed the curve of her shoulder, where a golden clasp held her chiton in place.
How very easy it would be to undo that clasp and watch the fabric fall.
“Your candlewax.” The matron held out a small pot of paint. The singer dipped her fingertip.
The other two moved to the edges of the alcove and took up a quiet song, their voices blending sad and sweet.
Tell me, where is fancy bred?
In the heart, or in the head?
The singer moved forward, her footsteps soundless on the patterned carpet. She looked upon the sleeping girl as if she beheld an angel. She lifted the candle into the air so it cast a glow over the sleeper’s face. She gave a small gasp, one hand extended as if she wished to touch but did not dare.
Jay shifted in his chair. The scene was so damned intimate.
He had never before beheld a woman in sleep, save for a few times as a child when, during a phase when he’d believed the village rumors that his house was haunted, he’d mistaken the sighing of the wind and the crying of the seals for ghostly voices and had crept with his candlestick to the bedchamber his parents shared.
He’d never passed a night with a lover, not even a mistress; he preferred to visit, conduct his business, and then amicably depart to his own rooms and his quiet bed.
He had certainly never gazed upon a slumbering beloved, and yet the attitude of the watching woman conveyed a raptness, a breathlessness that made Jay realize he, too, was holding his breath.
He recalled how the nymph on the beach that afternoon, with dancing eyes, had shown him her prize of seaweed, the way her mouth parted when she thought he’d said something inspirational.
That sense of discovery, of wonder, of reaching for the marvelous. He wanted to feel that, for once.
The watcher turned her hand and a small drip of golden paint fell from her finger onto the sleeper’s shoulder.
The other girl’s eyes flew open and she half-rose, the sheet falling away.
But, instead of leaping up, she held out one slender arm in invitation, her lips curving in a sweet smile.
The watcher bent forward as if for a kiss, smiling back, and Jay could not look away from her mouth.
“Cupid and Psyche!” the other gentleman spectator stuttered. He gripped the arms of his chair as if keeping himself from leaping into the scene.
The watcher turned and bowed, holding her candlestick at a safe distance from her. The light carved out the shape of her limbs, visible beneath the gown. The golden-haired girl on the chaise drew the sheet to her bosom and dipped her chin in acknowledgement.
“You oughtn’t have stopped it,” the woman spectator complained.
Jay wouldn’t move now for a hundred guineas. He wouldn’t move for a commission from the King. The sensuality was one part of it, the anticipation another. But he wanted to know what it meant. Why this story. Why they chose this reenactment. He was a builder; he knew the foundation made the whole.
“I thought Cupid ran away when she discovered him,” Jay said, reaching back to school days reading Ovid and whatever other licentious literature his friends could get their hands on. “She was forbidden to look upon her husband’s face.”
“Will you shush,” the seated woman snapped.
He was missing something here, and Jay was as aroused by the mystery as much as the women’s bodies.
They acknowledged their spectators, yet he sensed they would be playing the same scenes even without an audience.
They were performing purely for their own pleasure, and that knowledge, of being utterly accessory, gave him permission to look as greedily as he liked.
The only way he’d be leaving now was if the candle tipped over and the room lit on fire.
The next scene was Andromeda in chains, played by the matron, her bosom still bare, her skirt hiked into her girdle at one side to reveal part of a plump leg.
Her head fell to one side in a pose that could be dejection but looked remarkably like a woman reaching the height of sexual pleasure.
His singer stood on the edges of the scene this time, making noises that suggested crashing waves, while the dark-haired one growled and hissed as if representing the monster offstage.
The golden-haired girl paced onto the scene, dressed like a warrior in a silver helmet with its high plume.
Her breastplate carved a musculature that made her torso look more like Jay’s than her own.
A leather skirt left her thighs bare, though her leather boots came up to the knee.
Her golden curls poured down her back, the softness incongruous with her manner, that of the hero approaching the monster, or the hunter stalking his prey.
The woman spectator beside him leaned forward with a small whimper. Jay, too, couldn’t tear his eyes away. He didn’t want to call out and stop the scene; he wanted to know what they would do. Would the hero have to fight for his lady?
The girls hissed as the hero approached, but when she put up her spear, blade pointed toward the ceiling, they quieted.
His singer took the weapon. Jay wondered if it were real.
The hero reached out and, with tenderness, undid the cloth bindings at Andromeda’s wrists.
The golden-haired one held out her palm, and the other, the freed prisoner, placed her hand in her rescuer’s.
There was such a planned deliberation and a kindness to their movements that Jay knew the gesture meant something important.
The woman in the seat before Jay pressed a hand to her breast, moaning in delight, while the gentleman squirmed in his chair. “Perseus saving Andromeda!” he shouted, beyond his power to restrain himself any longer.
The players bowed, and Jay swallowed. He could have called the scene himself, save that his throat was too dry to speak.
The next scene assembled quickly, with some giggles and whispers issuing from behind the red damask curtain as the players prepared.
The golden-haired girl stalked out first, still bearing her armor and spear, but without helmet, though the mask shielded her eyes.
The matron stepped out, her gown now clasped at one shoulder, one full breast still on display.
She held a bow. So did the dark-haired girl who came next, her skirt shortened to mid-thigh, a leather skirt over, an arrow in her other hand.
His singer stepped out last, wearing the helmet over her mask.
The plume rippled as she moved, head held high.
Her robe fell to her ankles, but she wore sandals and a quiver of arrows, the leather straps outlining her unbound breasts.
She carried, not a small horse bow like the others, but a longbow, holding it with confident familiarity.
The four of them fell into their places, turning as a group toward the far end of the room and raising their weapons as if they anticipated attack.
Jay watched the singer, the grace and ease with which she nocked her arrow and drew back her bow, fingers touching that smooth cheek.
Her breasts rose with her breath. The one stray lock of hair tangled in the fletching on the arrows in her quiver.
Her eyes gleamed behind her mask, fierce and eager.
Jay curled his hands around the arm of his chair. He knew the rules of the tableau, and they were not to touch. He was not allowed to seize this archer and carry her away.
“Diana surprised by Actaeon?” The other gentleman sounded uncertain.
“This is Greece, you dolt,” the seated woman snapped. “It would be Artemis at the hunt.”
The tableau held, the women still and waiting. Jay watched the curve of muscle in the arm of his singer, smooth and strong. She was a woman accustomed to activity. She had held a bow before, many times.
Jay cleared his throat, his voice scratching.
Gods, watching this woman was more arousing than the opera dancers at a play.
It was more arousing than thumbing through erotic prints.
This was an erotic print brought to life, but the titillation of the viewer was ancillary; they were wholly absorbed in their own act.
“The Amazons,” Jay said. “But which is Hippolyta?”
The woman with the longbow turned to him and bowed. Her mouth drew into a half-smile with a deep dimple at the corner. Jay’s heart stopped mid-thump.
Was it possible—? No, it was not, he reminded himself.
The well-bred girl from the beach would not be at a pleasure club, clad in next to nothing, unfazed by nudity, acting out mythical scenarios that pulsed with erotic undertones.
His nymph was a being of sea and air, entranced by a limpet on a stalk of kelp, weaving fancies about the stones that made the bones of the earth.