Beast
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BEAST
By
Judith Ivory
Contents
"NO ONE SHOULD MISS THIS ONE."
Pamela Morsi
THE BEAUTY
An exquisite American heiress, Louise Vandermeer is beautiful, brilliant… and bored—which is why she has agreed to a daring adventure: to travel across the ocean to marry an aristocrat abroad. Rumor has it her intended is hideous—a grim prospect that propels her into a passionate, reckless relationship with a compelling stranger she never sees in the light of day.
THE BEAST
Though scarred by a childhood illness, Charles d'Harcourt has successfully wooed Europe's most sophisticated beauties. For a lark, he contrived to travel incognito on his own fiancee's ship—and seduce the young chit in utter darkness. But the rake's prank backfired. It was he who was smitten while the hot-tempered Lulu, now his wife, loves only her shipboard lover, unaware it was d'Harcourt all the time!
And Charles will never have her heart—unless he can open her eyes to the prince who hides within.
"I LOVED IT. JUDITH IVORY
IS IRRESISTIBLE."
Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Other Avon Books by
Judith Ivory
The Indiscretion
The Proposition
Sleeping Beauty
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
AVON BOOKS
An Imprint
of HarperCollinsPublishers
10 East 53rd Street
New York, New York 10022-5299
Copyright © 1997 by Judy Cuevas
Inside cover author photo by Bobi Dimond
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-94952
ISBN: 0-380-78644-3
www.avonromance.com
First Avon Books printing: April 1997
Avon Trademark Reg. U.S. Pat. Off. and in Other Countries, Marca
Registrada, Hecho en U.S.A.
HarperCollins® is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
Printed in the U.S.A.
Acknowledgments
My thanks to Holly, Richard, and Helen of Keeble Travel for books, videos, whole trip itineraries, and especially this time around for getting me on the
QE2
for an explore (with additional gratitude to Cunard).
Gros bisons
and fat thank-yous to Lisa Middag, who encouraged this story in its earliest stages and invited me to Nice in the first place. Cyber-thanks and
I also would like to acknowledge people who were instrumental in previous work, who have been sorely neglected up to this point. They include: Dr. Carole Abbott, who has been willing to put many the character "on the couch" to help figure him or her out; friend and wise adult Ken Goode for arguments and insights into human motives, especially on
Dance;
sculptor Barbara Price for leading me into her knowledge and love of sculpture, a shared interest that became the book
Bliss;
sculptor Michael Flick for the details of repairing gesso. Also my heartfelt thanks to Harry Kramp for always being ready to consult on matters of science and how things work; to Jean Kramp for unflagging and very vocal belief in me—no matter how much I get wrong, she always sees the right. Gary, Mary, Chris, and Angela, thank you. I love you all dearly, everyone.
Last though far from least, a deep bow of appreciation to my agent, Steve Axelrod, and my editor, Carrie Feron, both of whom provide the miracle of enormous freedom combined with rock-solid support. Thank you both.
Come, my languid, sullen beast,
Come lie upon my heart…
Charles Baudelaire
of
Les Fleurs du Mal
DuJauc translation
Pease Press, London, 1889
The Joke
Your body bends and sways
Like a slender ship that plunges the waves,
Rolling from side to side till
The spray has soaked its spars in seawater
Like a flood swollen from
the melt of gnashing glaciers.
When the waters of your mouth
Rise to the edges of your teeth,
I taste a wanton wine,
My briny undoing
That liquefies the sky and
Stews my heart with stars!
Charles Baudelaire
29
of Les Fleurs du Mal
DuJauc translation
Pease Press, London, 1889
"You beast! Rotter, scum, swine!" Charles Harcourt slid his pillow out from under his head, using it to fend off slaps of open palms, a thrashing of naked arms. When the blows didn't stop, he rolled away through the dark, across the bed and out of reach. "I was going to tell you," he said as he swung his bare legs over the edge of the mattress.
"When? As you handed me the wedding invitation?" Pia took up her litany again. "Cow's hide, tripehead…"
Over this, the ship's engine—a compound steam engine of a steel twin-screw Atlantic liner—droned suddenly louder. Charles had to wait before he could tell her. "You're making too much of this."
"There's a wedding party on board, and it turns out
you're
the groom? And I'm not supposed to be upset?"
He tried to stand, got partway to his feet, saying, "Upset, yes. Hysterical, no—" The engine's reverberation drowned him out. The dark room tipped and lifted, a gyration that sat him suddenly back on the edge of the bed.
Over the past hour, the noise of the ship's engine had ebbed and flowed like this, giving audible rhythm to the liner's lunge and dive over the water. The ship, the
Concordia
out of New York, and its eleven hundred passengers were riding the high seas of an approaching storm.
"Sweet Mary," exclaimed Pia as the ship righted itself with a majestic roll—she complained about the roughness of the ocean, Charles thought. Then something hit him across the back of his shoulders—the neck pillow that had been under her belly just a moment ago. for he could feel the imprint of its lisle crochet.
"Stop it." he said, twisting his head and shoulders around.
He tried to find her across the bed, but the room, the bedchamber of his stateroom suite, was lit only by the glow of the ship's running lights peeking in and out of swaying curtains. He perceived her as an effluvium, a little miasma of rose geranium vapor (not his favorite perfume, but rather Roland's, her husband's) drifting along the far edge of the bed. He couldn't detect any more of her than this.
Charles grimaced. Locating his clothes, he thought, would be an easier matter to deal with.
He stood, successfully this time, the vibration of the ship's engine rumbling into his legs. Then a very different sensation: Something cold and wet flopped against the inside of his thigh. A sheath, still half on.