When I finally got back to the Grand Palais, though, I learned that my revenge would have to be delayed. Snoopleigh had checked out. He’d left, and the Countess Denise La Roche had gone with him.
It was almost dawn now, but the night staff of the hotel was buzzing with gossip about what had happened. Count La Roche, it seems, had been playing chess when his wife and Snoopleigh cut out. On her instructions, a note had been handed to him about an hour after they left. However, engrossed in his game, he had opened it only a few moments before my return. He’d been so upset by the news that his wife was leaving him to join a harem that he’d forgotten to guard his king’s bishop’s pawn and had been mated in three.
I went up to my room. The sun was up now. I decided that what I needed to wash away the grime of my ordeal was an early morning dip. I put on bathing trunks, threw a robe over them, and headed for the beach.
En route, I walked across the hotel patio. Count La Roche was sitting there playing chess with the same man he’d been playing with the day before. An auburn-haired girl wearing an evening gown was sitting at the table with them. Her eyes were tired and she looked bored, but there was something about the way she held her small, shapely body that bespoke an excess of energy and vivacity. She rose to intercept me as I walked past.
“Pardon, M’sieur, but you are going swimming, no?”
“Why, yes. I am.”
“We have not been introduced.” She stood barring my path. “I am the Baroness Corinne de Lorraine, and this is my husband.” She indicated the man playing chess with Count La Roche.
“How do you do. I’m Steve Victor.” I identified myself.
“It is a pleasure to know you, Mr. Victor.” The Baroness took my hand. Her husband grunted something by way of acknowledging the introduction and sniffed aristocratically as La Roche removed his queen’s knight from the board.
He was younger than La Roche, closer to his wife’s age, which must have been somewhere in the mid-twenties. He paid no attention to her, however, as she explained her reason for accosting me.
“I would like to take a swim now, while it’s still early,” she explained. “But I am hesitant to go by myself. It’s silly, I know, but I’m nervous to swim alone. Would it be a terrible imposition if I were to accompany you, Mr. Victor?”
I assured her that I’d be honored. She went to her room to change, and I agreed to wait for her on the beach. As I sat there soaking up the early morning sun, I congratulated myself on the fact that not all of my luck was bad. The Baroness Corinne de Lorraine was another of the three possibilities I’d staked out on my arrival. If, like the Countess La Roche, she was a chess widow, then I might yet even up the advantage Snoopleigh had attained.
But the situation wasn’t quite the same. I found that out when she joined me on the beach. Watching her approach, I wondered how her husband could so casually agree to her going off alone to swim with a strange man.
Her bikini was a knockout! Nothing frilly or fancy, just two wisps of white silk that concealed about as much as a pair of kleenex tissues. They were lost in a sea of golden tan. Short-cropped brownish-red hair and blue eyes topped a body that was small, but perfectly proportioned. All the parts moved smoothly as she strolled toward me. It was like watching a perfectly synchronized and highly erotic clockworks. Slender legs, smoothly swaying hips, flat belly, small, high breasts rippling deliciously over the top of the bikini—it was a welcome change from the picture which had confronted me by candlelight a few hours before.
“My compliments.” I greeted her. “That’s a very becoming swimsuit.”
“Thank you.” She didn’t blush. Her blue eyes looked at me directly. They said she knew damn well I’d been ad- miring her body. “Shall we have a cigarette before we go in?” She sat down beside me.
“Of course.” I gave her a light and then lit up myself.
“Your husband is addicted to chess?” I asked idly.
“Not really. Why do you think so?”
“Well, if I were he, I should prefer to be here swimming with you,” I told her boldly.
“My husband doesn’t swim. He has a very severe heart condition. He must avoid all undue exertion.”
“All?” I lifted an eyebrow.
“All!” The Baroness said it in a way that left no doubt that sex was included.
“How sad for him.” I clucked sympathetically. “And for you,” I added.
“Also,” she explained, “he is playing chess at this particular time because he has a very strict code of behavior-—his aristocratic background, I suppose. You see, he felt he won by unfair advantage earlier. You’ve heard about the distressing news received by the Count La Roche?”
“Yes.”
“Well, my husband insisted on giving him a return game because he felt that in his distress the Count made foolish moves he would not otherwise have made. It is a special situation. As a rule, my husband does not neglect me for chess.”
“Still, his heart condition . . .” I pushed the point.
“That can’t be helped. But my husband is not a selfish man. He would never stoop to jealousy. He recognizes that I am a young woman with certain biological necessities. If circumstances force him to neglect me in the matter of his marital duties, then still, for the five years we have been married, he has never interfered with my fulfilling these needs.” She stood up and stretched voluptuously. Then she looked down at me as if to make sure I hadn’t missed the point. “Let’s swim out to the float,” she said.
The Baroness was an excellent swimmer. I told her so when I joined her on the float.
“Oh, I am completely at home in the water,” she replied. “I do a lot of skin diving, you know. Denise—the Countess La Roche—-and I used to explore the underwater reefs every day. I shall miss her.”
Skin diving! It was looking better and better! The red-haired Baroness Corinne de Lorraine fit every one of Ali Khat’s specifications to perfection!
“I like to get tanned evenly all over,” she informed me. “Will it bother you if I take off my bikini?”
“It won’t bother me, but it sure will excite me,” I told her frankly.
“We shall see.” She laughed. Then she stood up, reached behind her, pulled a string, and lowered the top of the bikini provocatively. She stretched deliberately, making sure that I got an eyeful of her small perfectly formed breasts. They were high and pointy, with delicate pink nipples surrounded by aureoles of the same shade that looked soft as butter. Then she pulled another string at her hip and the bottom of the bikini fell away. Her plump mound of Venus was clearly visible under the light triangle of auburn hair beneath her flat belly.
I didn’t bother to hide my arousal.
“You were right.” She stretched out beside me. “I have excited you. But surely that wet bathing suit must be uncomfortable. It looks so very tight under the circumstances. Why don’t you remove it?”
I removed it. The early morning sun was unexpectedly warm on my naked genitals. I reacted even more to the heat.
“You Americans.” There was both teasing and awe in the way she said it. “Really, Steve! You are shameless!”
“You French!” I echoed her. “Really, Corinne! You are desirable!”
I kissed her, cutting off any reply she might have made. Her lips were warm, soft, sensually active. Her sun-warmed flesh undulated at my touch, hips rotating, breasts filling with air and grinding against my chest. As our tongues entwined, she gave a little gasp and her hand groped up the back of my leg and then between my thighs until it found what it was seeking. She grasped me, then released me and let her fingers scramble wildly all over the sensitive area until I thought the tickling sensation would drive me mad.