Orchestrated Death by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

Author:Cynthia Harrod-Eagles [Harrod-Eagles, Cynthia]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯), Fiction, Mystery & Detective
ISBN: 9780748133185
Google: Xz6nnAkPLj0C
Amazon: B005HVU70A
Publisher: Hachette Digital
Published: 2011-09-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

Miss World and Montezuma

‘Hey,’ said Joanna, sitting up and looking down at him in the leaping firelight.

‘Hmm?’ One side of his body was too hot, the other icy from the draught under the sitting-room door; the floor was hard under his shoulder blades, the rug itchy under his buttocks. All the same, he would have preferred not to have to move for several more hours. Sleep had been in short supply lately.

‘You sleep on your own penny,’ she said. ‘You’re supposed to be amusing me.’

‘I just did,’ he murmured without opening his eyes. He felt the roughness of her hair and a brief pressure on his penis as she bent to kiss it.

‘Sex is all very well, but I want you to talk to me as well.’

He groaned and rolled onto his side, and propped his head minimally with hand and elbow. ‘What?’ he said.

‘You look so sweet and ruffled,’ she grinned at him. ‘Innocent.’

‘You look like a dangerous wild animal,’ he said. ‘Most people look vulnerable when they take their clothes off, but you’re just the opposite. You look as though you might eat me.’

‘I will if you like,’ she offered equably.

‘A drink first. All very well for you women – it takes it out of us men.’

‘You women! Spoken from the depths of your vast experience, I suppose!’

‘You don’t have to have a baby to be a gynaecologist,’ he said with dignity.

She rose fluidly to her feet. ‘Can you drink gin and tonic?’

‘Does a monkey eat nuts?’

Left alone, he sat up and turned his other side to the fire. He looked around him and wondered at the sense of peace and comfort that this room gave him. He had never, to his memory, sat on the floor in his own house, though he used to in the early days of his marriage when he and Irene had had their little flat. But at home he couldn’t in any case have sat on the floor by the fire, since there was neither fireplace nor chimney. This room was neither smart nor elegant, nor even particularly clean, but it was a place where you could do nothing in perfect peace, a room that demanded nothing of you, imposed nothing on you.

A clinking sound heralded Joanna with a large glass in each hand. Ice cubes floated and bumped like miniature icebergs, lemon moons hung suspended, beaded with silver bubbles, and the liquid gleamed with the delicate blue sheen of a bloody large gin. The aromatic scent of it wafted sweetly to his nostrils.

‘Lovely,’ he said inadequately. She folded down beside him, and held her glass at eye level.

‘Aesthetically pleasing,’ she acknowledged.

‘You’re such an animal. It’s all pleasure with you – pleasure and comfort.’

‘Any fool can be uncomfortable.’

‘But what about duty and responsibility?’

She turned her head to rub an itch on her nose against her shoulder, something he couldn’t imagine Irene ever doing.

‘Those too. One fits them in, you know. But one’s first duty is to oneself.’

‘All right for you. You don’t have a wife and children.

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