swallowed hard. “No, sugar. You take as long as you need.” His eyes flashing with expectation, he reached for a chair, turned it around so that it faced the screen and quickly sat down.
Marietta knew exactly what she was doing. She would, on this festive evening, provide her middle-aged benefactor with a few memorable thrills. And she would do so without actually showing him anything or compromising herself.
She knew how it would excite him to know that she was stripping behind the screen. So Marietta stepped out of the turquoise costume and draped it over the screen.
She paused, rested her arms atop the screen and said, “I’m just dewy with perspiration from my strenuous performance.”
“Are you, sugar?” Maltese managed to say, his wide-eyed gaze resting on her pale shoulders. “Did you want to go up to your quarters and take a bath before dinner?”
Marietta pretended to be thinking it over. “No, tell you what, Sophia was so thoughtful, she placed a basin of water here behind the screen. I’ll just strip off everything and take a little sponge bath. If that’s all right with you?”
Maltese was now practically speechless with excitement. He nodded his silver head vigorously and gestured with trembling hands.
“Does that mean yes?” she asked in a honeyed voice.
“Y-yes,” he finally croaked. “Yes, absolutely.”
“Good. I declare, I’m just so hot and sticky.”
Marietta sensuously wiggled free of her lacy petticoats and tossed them atop the discarded costume.
“These tiny little hooks on my camisole are hard to manage,” she informed him, her face screwed up in concentration as she worked at undoing the minuscule fasteners. She laughed then, and added, “If I can’t get these little devils open, I may have to enlist your help.”
Maltese’s breathing grew labored and shallow at the exciting prospect. He watched with growing anticipation.
“Ah, there!” she said after a moment. “Finally got the last one.”
“That’s nice,” he said, a cloud of disappointment crossing his perspiring face. But the disappointment evaporated as the lace straps of the camisole slipped down her shoulders. The frothy undergarment was soon draped across the screen’s top and Maltese felt his heart hammer in his chest. His beloved—standing not six feet from him—was now bare to the waist.
He began to pant when Marietta lifted her arms, swept her long red-gold hair atop her head and pinned it there. The movement caused her shoulders to lift, the swell of her full, bare breasts to rise dangerously close to the top border of the screen.
Maltese anxiously licked his dry lips. He gripped his trousered knees with dampened hands; hands that itched to touch the beautiful woman who so tempted him. He could almost feel the warm heaviness of her white breasts in his palms.
Marietta, knowing what was going through his mind, chattered gaily as if nothing unusual were taking place, continuing to thrill her suitor without really giving him anything. When she slithered out of her lace-trimmed pantalets and tossed them over the screen, she sighed as if with great relief.
Maltese, red-faced now, pulse pounding in his ears, squirmed on his chair as she noisily kicked off her shoes, then peeled her silk stockings down and tossed them over the screen.
“Ah, there,” she sighed, “everything’s off and I’m as bare as a newborn babe. It feels sooo good. Sometimes I wonder why we must wear such hot, heavy underclothing.” She laughed musically then and added, “Sometimes I wonder why we must wear any clothes at all, don’t you, Maltese?”
“Y-yes, oh, yes,” he groaned as his heart tried to beat its way out of his chest.
Just then a strong night breeze stirred the sheer window curtains. The candle flame danced wildly. The quick surge of light outlined—for a fleeting instant—Marietta’s bare silhouette against the dressing screen. Maltese quickly put a hand to his mouth to stifle his rising moan of joy. Such undraped perfection! Such purity! And it was his, all his.
Light-headed, dizzy, Maltese felt his brain pounding out the message, “My darling Marietta is naked. Totally, gloriously naked. She is bare. Not wearing a stitch. And there’s only a silk screen between us.”
Marietta began to hum as she dipped a sponge into the basin of water and pressed it to her throat, then let it slide slowly down her chest until it disappeared behind the screen. Maltese had never known such sweet agony. He watched, entranced, as his naughty Marietta sponged off her entire body. He could see nothing, but he imagined that he could. He wished that she would announce which part of her lovely body she was presently washing. But, of course, she wouldn’t. She was too much of a lady.
Maltese held his breath, hoping against hope that the candle would flare again. His chest tightened as he pondered whether or not she had reached the nether region between her long slender legs. God, he wished that she would tell him.
Marietta revealed nothing, just continued to hum.
Still, being afforded the opportunity to share this intimate bathing exercise with her was incredibly pleasurable and highly arousing. He could, if asked, truthfully brag that he had watched Marietta take a bath. But that would be raffish behavior.
Nevertheless, Maltese had high hopes that one day Marietta would be naked in a candlelit room with him and there would be no screen between them. He would be the one helping press the dampened sponge to her heated body.
This pleasant fantasy continued as Marietta finished her bath and got dressed. When she stepped out from behind the screen, she was fully clothed and fully aware that she had given her aging caller all the excitement he could handle for one evening. Nothing more would be required of her. A sumptuous dinner at the Castle Top and then a good-night peck on the cheek.
Maltese would leave her a happy man.
Six
Cole joined the departing crowd.
He left the opera house, but he did not immediately go to the hotel. Crossing the street, he approached a false-fronted business, now darkened and closed for the night. He stepped into the shadows of the roof’s low overhang, turned and leaned back against the building. Arms crossed, Cole stood looking up at the top floor of the opera house.
Marietta’s private quarters.
Cole wondered if she was up there now, entertaining her aging Romeo. He recoiled at the thought and quickly looked away.
From where he stood, he could see down the alley directly beside the opera house. The tall, spare man he’d observed in Maltese’s private box was posted there by a side door near the back of the building.
Cole watched him for a moment, then looked back to the front of the theater. The crowd had thinned dramatically. Only a few stragglers remained on the sidewalk, talking, getting into carriages. Two men stood out—both were big, burly fellows dressed in work shirts and buckskins. Undoubtedly, the Burnett brothers that Harry the barkeep had told him about. Cole studied the brothers for a while, sizing them up, wondering how he was ever going to slip Marietta past them.
His attention was drawn once more down the side alley, when the door opened and out into the mountain moonlight stepped Marietta and her middle-aged lover.
Cole sank farther back into the shadows. He watched as the couple came up the alley toward the street. They turned onto the sidewalk and into the glow of the gaslights lining the avenue.
Again Cole was struck by Marietta’s incredible beauty and for a moment he sorely envied the silver-haired man with whom she shared her time and her charms.
Cole’s jaw tightened.
He continued to watch as the couple, arm in arm, strolled up the street. The scar-faced bodyguard called Lightnin’ followed a few paces behind. Marietta and Maltese soon entered the