The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [151]
On the last night before the ship docked at Cherbourg, she dressed in the red taffeta she had worn when he asked her to marry him, and for the first time she wore the Arnhaldt heirloom rubies and diamonds. She lifted her head proudly as she strode down the steps, searching the sea of faces turned toward her until she found Gretel von Dussman’s malicious smile. She smiled back sweetly as she took her seat at the table: She knew the big, overblown blonde could not hold a candle to her tonight. Elise had given her a good grounding in how to hold an audience, and Ziegfeld had taught her well. Even Eddie could not keep his eyes off her tonight. Every time she glanced up he was staring at her.
He walked quietly back with her to their suite, opening the door to let her pass, following her in, pulling off his tie and jacket and ripping off his shirt like a madman. Then naked, he came toward her. She stood silently, terrified of the brutal look on his face. After turning her around in his arms, he unbuttoned the taffeta dress, letting it slide to the ground with a silken rustle. Slowly he removed her chemise, running his hands across her breasts while she gazed at him with fear in her eyes. He removed the rest of her undergarments, leaving her naked and shy, except for her stockings and the brilliant fire of the rubies.
She kept her eyes on his face, afraid to look at what was happening to him, terrified of what he was going to do.
Cursing angrily in German, he suddenly pushed her from him, sending her reeling across the room. “You stupid little milk-fed child,” he said with a snarl, his passion subsiding as he threw on his clothes. “Have you no idea at all what excites a man? Don’t they teach you these things at the New Amsterdam Theater? Why, even the meanest girl on the streets understands a man’s passions better than you.”
He stood looking at her, fully dressed, smoothing back his blond hair. “Put your clothes on, for God’s sake,” he said contemptuously. “One day I’m going to show you how not to be a lady in bed. But tonight I’ve got better things to do.” And with that, he turned on his heel and stalked from the room, slamming the door behind him.
Much later, she heard him return. She could hear the clinking of glasses and the sound of a woman’s laughter and then later, their animal groans of passion, the cries and commands as the woman goaded him on. Missie buried her head in her pillow, shutting out what she knew only too well was happening next door. Gretel von Dussman was satisfying her husband in a way she never could.
She was up early, waiting on deck as the Majestic docked at Cherbourg, and she stared at Eddie as he sauntered toward her. He was immaculately dressed as always, and she wondered how it was that his saturnine, freshly shaved face showed no marks of the previous night’s activities. Eddie, clothed and a gentleman, was a different man from Eddie, naked and brutal with passion.
He said abruptly, “I have decided that we shall not visit Paris after all. I have canceled our reservations at the Hotel Bristol and we shall go directly to Germany.”
Azaylee’s face fell and he put his arm around her shoulders. “Don’t you want to see Haus Arnhaldt?” he asked, smiling. “Your new home?”
“Oh, yes, yes, of course,” she replied excitedly.
He shrugged. “Then Paris will wait until you are a little older.”
The journey by train and automobile was a long one, and Missie was exhausted when the car finally turned into a long road that wound its way between dense, gloomy woodlands, emerging at last at a series of formal landscapes of box hedge and gravel, with not a flower in sight. She stared in dismay at the forbidding gray house. As she watched the big doors were flung open and a butler appeared on the steps, marshalling a troop of household servants into line to receive their master and his new bride.
The butler hurried to open the door, clicking his heels and bowing, introducing himself as Manfred, and Missie walked down the line of servants, smiling and saying hello as each girl bobbed a curtsey