The Casanova Embrace Read Online Free

in emotional terms.
Guard yourself, he had warned. You might be speaking English, but you are
thinking in French and he is thinking in his own language.
    "We are revolution-happy," he said, smiling. Then
the lightning came again and the smile faded. "Ours was the only real
revolution since the conquistadors were thrown out. Sooner or later, we will
win. We have just lost the first round." She noticed that his hands had
balled into fists and he seemed to be wrestling internally with his rage.
    She was fascinated, she admitted to herself, but she had no
desire to hear his story now. It was inappropriate to be heavy in an event like
this. Diplomatic receptions were essentially for surface talk. One nibbled at
the leaves and left the roots alone.
    "And you, Madame LaFarge?" he asked, unwinding,
his anger fading.
    "I am a diplomatic wife. We have spent the last
fifteen years roaming the world. West Germany. Canada. Hungary. Cambodia."
    She noticed that guests were beginning to leave and that
Claude had glanced her way, nodding, the thin smile a harbinger of what she
might expect later. This man was monopolizing her attention and it was getting
obvious. She must excuse herself and reach her husband's side, a diplomatic
maneuver. She held out her hand.
    "It was so nice to meet you, Mr. Palmero," she
said. He took her hand in his and she felt the power and electricity of his
touch, an unmistakable surge of sexuality. This is absurd, she told herself.
But her knees did shake and she could not deny the flow of her juices. What is
it, she wondered, a wave of confusion breaking in her mind.
    "We must meet again," he said, holding her hand
and looking into her eyes, the invitation blatant. It was the moment to deny
it, to exercise deliberate indifference, to pour water on the hot coals.
    "Yes, we must," she responded, knowing that she
had exposed her essence. It was a totally new sensation, an enigma. My God, is
this me, she wondered, withdrawing her hand and moving across the room to her
husband's side. He introduced her to his companions while she watched Eduardo
Palmero cross the room, graceful and confident, hardly the defeated exile that
he wished to portray.
    Later, when they arrived home, Claude admonished her
playfully for her flirtatiousness. But he was secretly proud, she knew.
Luckily, he had not taken much liquor.
    "Who was that fellow?" he asked.
    "Some South American," she said with feigned
indifference.
    Claude took her in his arms and pressed his pelvis against
hers. She felt his hardness and she was imagining that it was Eduardo, and
there was, she knew, more feeling in her response. Despite this, she remained
unmoved.
    Weeks passed and it still would not go away. She performed
her daily tasks by rote, her mind fogged. The children were cared for and
fussed over, suitably swathed in what she imagined was motherly love,
disciplined, and otherwise parented. At times, they must have sensed her
strangeness.
    "What is it, Mommy?" Susan, her ten-year-old,
would ask.
    "It?"
    "You have hung my skirt in Henry's closet."
    "I can't imagine what I was thinking."
    But she knew what she was thinking since she carried in her
head always the graceful image of Eduardo Palmero, probing the message that he
carried in his gray eyes with their flashes of silver. At times, when she was
not pursuing some task, his image would become more animated as if he were
calling to her from somewhere inside her brain. I am thirty-five years old, she
would tell herself, not some dumb teen-aged ninny. I am a woman of the world,
she assured herself, although secretly she knew that she had remained an
innocent. Claude LaFarge had not been her childhood sweetheart. Actually, she
had considered herself quite experienced with men by the time she had met him.
She was a student at the Sorbonne, living with her parents in their big house
on Rue de Lyon. Her father was a prosperous surgeon. Her mother was totally
devoted to him. They entertained frequently and