No Time For Love (Bantam Series No. 40) by Barbara Cartland Page B

soufflé surprise.
    Having been amused by women of many nations, Wynstan found the French more sophisticated and more civilised in their attitude to love than any others.
    They approached it like an epicurean discovering a new and strange dish, savoured it carefully and without hurry so that the full flavour, the underlying succulent taste, was fully appreciated.
    English women, Wynstan thought, were always so deadly serious in their love affairs. It was invariably a case of ‘Will you love me for ever?’ ‘Is this the first time you have felt as you do now?’
    There was always at the back of their minds the idea that love must be a permanency rather than just a ‘will o’ the wisp’ which could fly away overnight but which nevertheless was an enchantment for the moment.
    Yvette Glencairn was experienced in the ancient science of fascinating a man, and Wynstan, who thought he knew every move in the game, was entranced to find that there were some new moves which definitely added to his education.
    Because she was French and clever at keeping not one man but many under her spell, Yvette was always charming to her husband, which so often the English forgot was important when the other man was only a case of pour passer le temps.
    The Earl hailed Wynstan with pleasure and talked to him of horses and the days when he had been Master of Hounds.
    They speculated and argued as to who was likely to win the Derby and the other classic races in England that Season.
    Wynstan had sat with the Glencairns at meals, and they had often come to his cabin after luncheon or dinner was over.
    But when the Earl had retired to bed and the rest of the ship’s passengers were settling down for the night, it was then that Yvette, in a diaphanous and very revealing rest - gown, would open the door of Wynstan’s cabin to find him waiting for her.
    She was enticing, exciting and very satisfying, and when she pleaded with him to stay with them in Paris, he had been sorely tempted to postpone his journey to Sorrento for several days.
    He was well aware how many friends he would find in Paris at this time of the year.
    The chestnuts would be coming out in the Champs Elysees, the flower-sellers’ baskets would be filled with parma violets, there would be the smell of spring in the air, and Maxim’s would be gayer than ever.
    As his mother had found out by some mysterious means of her own, he had when he was last in Paris, spent a considerable amount of time with the successor of the grandes cocottes Parisiennes of the ’90s, the glamorous Gaby Deslys.
    She was the theatrical figure of whom all Paris was talking and it was obvious to Wynstan, as it was to all her other admirers, that her success would be phenomenal.
    She had none of the beauty which Wynstan usually sought in women. But her cherubic face, her eyes warm and enticing beneath their heavy lids, her crimson lips that were always parted in a smile which revealed sensuality, gaiety and good nature, made her somehow different from anyone else.
    She was audacious, bizarre, at times vulgar, and she looked like a bird of Paradise—not only on the stage, when she wore very little except feathers and pearls but in the restaurants, and also by some mysterious chemistry of her own in bed!
    She had a vitality which made everything she did seem sensual, and yet the more luxurious and the more scandalous she was the more people loved her.
    From the very moment she appeared she seemed to personify Paris itself, and when she had acted in London the previous year, the newspapers wrote of her as being ‘ la Vie Parisienne ,’ and meant it!
    It would be amusing to see Gaby again, Wynstan told himself, and there were a great many other friends he knew would welcome him with open arms. But he had promised Harvey he would keep Larina Milton from making trouble and already the election in America was gathering momentum.
    The ‘ Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse ’ had not equalled her regular run from New York