I thought she was dreadful-looking, a complete harpy, and with a figure as bad as hers, she should never have attempted to wear that dress. I can't imagine what Orlovsky was thinking when he brought her!” They both laughed at his extricating himself from his wife's question, and they both knew that she had been a striking beauty and more than a trifle racy. But Robert Marks had never had any interest whatsoever in any woman other than his pretty wife, and it didn't matter a fig to him that she couldn't have children. He adored her. And his only interest now was in getting her upstairs to their bedroom. He didn't give a damn about Orlovsky's new mistress.
But the same was not quite so true for John Harrison, who was engaged in a similar, though far more heated, conversation with Eloise in their bedroom.
“For God's sake, why didn't you just take her dress off?” Eloise said tartly. He had danced repeatedly with the much-discussed English girl in the skintight beige satin dress, and his amorous dances with her had not gone unnoticed, either by Eloise or Prince Orlovsky.
“For chrissake, Eloise, I was just being polite. She'd had a lot to drink and didn't know what she was doing.”
“How convenient for you,” Eloise said coldly. “I suppose when her strap slipped off her shoulder, and her breast was exposed, it was entirely an accident that you were practically kissing her at the time.” She was pacing around the room, smoking, and they'd both been drinking heavily all evening.
“I wasn't kissing her and you know it. We were dancing.”
“You were nearly making love to her, right there on the dance floor. You humiliated me in front of our friends.” And as far as she was concerned, he needed to be punished for it.
“Maybe if you were more interested in sleeping with me, Eloise, I wouldn't need to dance that way with a total stranger.” Not that he cared anymore. How could he after what he'd seen her do to Gabriella? He was standing over Eloise, and their voices were raised, but for once Gabriella couldn't hear them. She was sound asleep in her bedroom. The last guest had left at two o'clock, and it was nearly three o'clock in the morning as her parents argued. They had been at it ever since the party had ended, and their words were getting more and more heated, as were their tempers.
“You're disgusting,” Eloise said, standing as close to him as she dared. They both looked enraged, and the truth was that he would have loved to have taken the girl from Vladimir Orlovsky, and might still do it. His fidelity to, and his feelings for, Eloise had disappeared years before. As far as he was concerned, cruel as she was to their child, and cold as she was with him, she deserved it and he owed her nothing. “You're a bastard, and she's a whore!” Eloise said, wanting to humiliate him and to hurt him, but she couldn't. He didn't care what she thought anymore, or what she said. He hated everything about her, and she knew it.
“And you're a bitch, Eloise. It's no secret anymore. Everyone knows it. There isn't a man worth a damn in this town who'd want you.” She didn't answer him with words this time, but reached back and slapped him as hard as she could, almost as hard as she might have hit their daughter.
“Don't waste your energy. I'm not Gabriella,” he said, giving her a furious shove as she fell backward against a chair and knocked it over. She was still picking herself up off the floor as he strode out of the room, and slammed the door behind him. He never looked back, he didn't care, and for a crazed moment he almost hoped that he had hurt her. She deserved it, she had inflicted so much pain on him, and their little girl, she deserved to get some of it back. He didn't know where he was going that night, and he didn't care. He knew that the English girl would be in bed with Orlovsky by then, so he couldn't go to her, although he knew where she lived. But there were plenty of others, girls he called from time to time, professionals he used, or married women who were happy to spend an afternoon with him, or single ones who deluded themselves he might leave Eloise one day, and didn't care how