He vanquished her with one final, brutal thrust.
She sagged in his arms and he held her close a moment before releasing her to stand unsteadily on her feet.
"Rest now, my lady nymph," he said, gently pushing her to her knees again. He touched her eyelids like he was bewitching them. Or perhaps, instead, blessing them.
She stretched out on her side on a blanket of gauzy pink and yellow, blue and white. The dance continued around her. Malcolm gave chase to the girls as the music played on. Mona couldn't look away from the sport, even though her body ached for sleep. The nymphs, lush and lovely, were shameless in their nakedness. Malcolm-hard still or hard again, she didn't know-caught one in flight. The girl squealed and laughed as he laid her over the throne arms and coupled with her. She wriggled away from his grasp and once free, turned on him and chased him. One minute he was the pursuer, the conqueror, the ravisher of innocent nymphs. The next moment he was the hare in the field, and the nymphs all red and hungry wolves. It was an orgy of laughter, sensual and innocent and erotic all at once. How had he done it? Who were these beautiful girls? As she watched them fight and copulate, dance and kiss, she loved them all. They were finches. They were foxes. They were fools. And she was one of them. A nymph in a moon-white gown. A creature of myth and mist. A girl kissed by goddesses and mated by satyrs.
Until she woke up the next morning in the bed of the back room, that was.
The sacred grove was gone. The nymphs were gone. Malcolm was gone.
And she was merely Mona again.
A Portrait of a Gentleman
The only explanation Mona could conjure up to explain the events of that night with the nymphs was that Malcolm was a very wealthy man indeed-which she'd already deduced. Only money could buy the necessary "magic" to turn the back room of an art gallery into a small grove and populate it with nubile young women willing and able to sexually service a man dressed as a satyr. She would have guessed he'd drugged her, but there was no drug in the world that caused hallucinations so vivid and solid that also left the taker of the drug feeling better the next day, not worse. The morning after she'd been sore from the dancing, tender from the intercourse, but invigorated like she'd swam naked in a cool clear blue spring on a burning red August day.
It wasn't easy returning to the real world after her night in the grove. But she did because the real world demanded it of her. Malcolm paid her for her night with the satyr and he paid her well. The payment came in the form of a painted miniature of Queen Victoria, which he'd left on her pillow. It was appraised for another fifty thousand dollars. She was tempted to try to sell it at auction, but knew it would fetch a far better price once she could provide Malcolm's promised unimpeachable provenance.
If that day ever came.
The weeks passed by in a crawl. The gallery kept her busy with shows and launches. A writer of erotic books came and did a reading, which allowed Mona to display many of her mother's strange pornographic paintings out in the open. She sold two of them. It would have done her mother's boho heart good to see the pleasure her collection brought to a younger generation.
All that time Mona couldn't stop thinking of Malcolm. Who was he? Why had he picked her? Why did so much time pass between their assignations? What did he have planned for her next? More nymphs? More auctions? More whoring?
All of the above?
At first he'd come to her once a month, but two months had already passed since the night she played a nymph for him. He'd warned her not to expect him to come often. He didn't seem a capricious man, but he had said the liaisons took much out of him. She imagined him in England with a wife and children he could rarely escape. He paid for women because he wanted a sort of sex he couldn't have in his respectable marriage. It explained why he wasn't ready to give her his last name yet, why so much time passed between dalliances, and why every night they spent together was such a production and lasted for hours and hours.
And hours.
After two long months, however, she wondered if she would ever see him again. But in mid-October, when the leaves turned bright orange and rusty red and the temperature demanded sweaters with skirts and stockings on bare legs, she entered her office to find a book on her desk, the red velvet choker marking the page again.
She smiled. It was about damn time.
This time Malcolm hadn't marked a page in the big white book of art history. The book on her desk was the most recent auction catalog from London. She turned to the page he'd marked and saw what there was to see … and what there was to see was a late eighteenth century portrait from English Catholic artist James Sharples.
Portrait of a Gentleman, Small, Three-Quarter Length, Seated on a Chair, In Hunting Attire, A Riding Crop in His Right Hand.