The Last Match Read Online Free Page B

Women have always made things too easy for you. What you need is the challenge of adversity. It would strengthen your character.”
    “If you say so, ma’am. You’re paying the check.”
    In the moonlight she managed to look down her nose at me, although it’s difficult to do when you’re half a foot shorter than the person you’re looking down on. “You should be ashamed of that, too.”
    “I am,” I said. “And if I weren’t, you’d sure arrange to make me feel that way, wouldn’t you? Let’s go in and drink up some more of your money.”
    She really made me sore. Here I’d been thinking all evening of ways to do something nice for her, and all she wanted to do was throw darts.
    It was around four A . M . when I took her back to her hotel. The chauffeur had been hired for the night, but I paid him off, told him to park the car and blow. My pension was within walking distance. Then I took Reggie to her room, said good night, thanked her for a lovely evening at her door and was ready to trundle off to beddy-bye when she said crossly, “Oh, come in, do! It’s still early.”
    I should have backed off and run for the fire escape right there. But I was tired, full of champagne and slow on the uptake. Also, as she had said, women had always made it too easy for me. I’d been invited into ladies’ bedrooms before then and come out of them without serious scarring. I didn’t think for a minute that she was inviting me in for the reason some ladies invite gentlemen into their bedrooms at 4 A.M. If I had just clung to that conviction, which was one hundred percent correct, I’d have been better off.
    It wasn’t a room but a suite, and elegant. A little balcony outside the windows of the sitting room overlooked the Croisette, with the empty beach and sea beyond. The big moon was farther over now, on the declining side, and spread a glittering moontrack across the water. The night was quiet, warm, and peaceful. A night for love, you might say, although I didn’t say it. Not even when she came to stand beside me where
    I was leaning on the rail of the balcony looking at the moon.
    She brought two fines with her. Damn fine fines they were, too, as I could tell by smelling mine when she handed it to me.
    “A nightcap,” she said. “At the end of a pleasant evening.”
    “A la vôtre,” I said, and put mine away at a gulp. It’s not the way to drink a true fine, which calls for sipping, but it is the way to drink a toast.
    I suppose the slug of good brandy on top of all the good wine could have made me a little foolhardy. That, and the moon, and the Mediterranean night, and the faint sweet lavender scent she wore, and the fact that I had been holding her in my arms most of the evening without argument while thinking chivalrous thoughts. I don’t remember having any further thoughts, chivalrous or otherwise, there on the balcony. I can’t even remember what happened to the brandy glasses, when I reached once again to take the Honorable Regina Forbes-Jones around the waist and pull her toward me with a gentle tug. She came easily and gracefully, unresisting, and I held her in my arms as I had held her at the ball. Only we weren’t dancing now. We were looking at each other’s face and eyes in the moonlight. I for one liked what I saw, all of a sudden. It must have been the booze.
    I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything I knew how to say. When I kissed her she still didn’t resist. She didn’t kiss me back, but she didn’t bite a chunk out of my lip, as she might have, or put up a struggle. She held still until I let her go. Then—wham!
    It wasn’t any ladylike slap, either. She doubled her fist and let me have it right on the doorbell. I had my mouth half open. I think I was going to try to say something then of what I felt for her, and the punch made me bite my tongue. It also lit up the night sky for a moment with more than a normal number of stars. When my ears stopped ringing she was saying