Lola Montez Conquers the Spaniards Read Online Free

to unlace me. At every step of the unlacing, he murmured his admiration and kissed each new piece of me. It was really quite endearing. As I stepped out of my dress, like Aphrodite upon her clamshell, he stood still as a statue, drinking me in.
    And then things sped up. Although rather stout, Howard could fling his clothes off with remarkable alacrity, and he took such noisy enjoyment in all the various remaining stages of necktie loosening, breeches unraveling, boot unscrambling, and so on that he had me laughing long before he lay me back on the bed. I find laughter a wonderful tonic in the bedchamber, and luckily he did too. It had been such a long time since I’d been with a man (all of the six lonely months I’d endured in Edinburgh) that I was soon energetically enthusiastic. Never mind the pretense of modesty, and real skittishness, that I’d begun with. I enjoyed the honesty of his protruding tummy, like that of a two-year-old playing in his washtub. Howard was a man well past the point of holding back because of some self-imposed vanity. He let himself be exactly who he was, running my dark hair through his hands and burying his nose in the scented locks, tickling my skin with the tips of his fingers, letting loose a yelp of joy when he experienced his pleasure, then holding me in his arms for a little sleep afterward, which he seemed to need and treasure. I found it all interesting and different; I was aroused, certainly, but not in the feverish way that George had incited. I wasn’t called upon to race to a swift conclusion, as such—and so, in the contradictory way of these things, I enjoyed a lovely pleasure of my own, which reduced my jitters marvelously. And I adored the necklace, which he introduced with a flourish once we awoke from our nap. He asked me to sit up—I was still stark naked—and he reached to the bedside table, opening a velvet box. My first diamonds! He laid them carefully against my skin and did up the clasp. They were very cold, and then all at once as warm as my blood. I fell in love then and there; I never wanted to take them off. It turned out he had earrings to match, and before the end of that first evening I had them as well.
    The next six weeks were busy. My trial date was set for August; Thomas was actually going through with the divorce. I could hardlycredit it and was saddened when I considered that he really must have hated me. The earl remained obsessively discreet, so most of our subsequent meetings took place in my lodgings. He’d have large baskets of food and drink sent over beforehand; he would arrive after dark, trailing the night air and his sense of boyish pleasure in being bad.
    And my days were full of Miss Kelly’s bossiness. I’d had no idea that trying to become an actress was going to be such hard and tedious work. The lessons took place in her large, airy workroom, high above the street, with plenty of windows and a lovely smooth wooden floor. She was always carefully dressed, and so was I—as well as I could manage, that is. Some of my dresses were terribly out of date, since India has always been interminably behind the times when it comes to fashion, and my stepfather’s Scottish relatives had done little to mitigate this situation on my behalf. This was an ongoing embarrassment to me, and several times I caught Miss Kelly looking me up and down with a Londoner’s disdain.
    Her favourite teaching tool was the work of Congreve, particularly The Way of the World. She was greatly enamoured of the fan.
    â€œThe women duel, too, Miss Gilbert, but verbally. Feel the thrust and parry of the words, and the literal pointing up—often with the fan—of the wit.”
    When I thought of fighting a duel, however, my body couldn’t help but tense and long to physically rush about. “No!” she would cry. “Ladylike, ladylike! Far too much physicality.”
    â€œBut what the character wants is