Pierre Tour - Up in Heaven

Marcia Phillips, Nee Edmunds, lifted her champagne goblet and smiled at her husband of a day across from her at the festively set, white-linened table the headwaiter himself had set up for them in the living room of their bridal suite at the Waldorf-Astoria.

“To our marriage, darling,” she said in a soft, throaty voice that shook and spoke a quivering eager feminine curiosity and, above all, a candid sensuality.

Across from her, Max Phillips raised his glass to join in that toast, an appreciative smile curving his sensuous mouth.

“And-to ecstasy, my sweet,” he added, his smile deepening as a vivid flush stained the pale ivory of Marcia's satiny cheeks.

The marriage of Max Phillips and Marcia Edmunds had roused great social interest, both being drawn from New York's elite families. Max was black-haired, sleek, lean, and athletic of body- thirty-eight, in the very prime of life. Steel blue-gray eyes, aquiline nose, with perceptively thin nostrils, a full mouth that suggested his voluptuous temperament without equivocation, a strong chin and jaw and arching broad forehead, gave him the mien of a self-made individual, candid and ardent — which he indeed was. Inheriting the family fortune, he nonetheless had made one of his own through his importing firm, which had given him full opportunity to pursue his own pleasures by way of many trips to Europe on buying excursions.

As for Marcia Edmunds, she had been ranked, three years before, as one of the loveliest debutantes ever to be introduced to the Four Hundred. Her mother, a stern, matriarchal dowager whose type is now virtually extinct, was famous in her day as a toasted beauty in musical and charitable activities. Marcia was twenty-two, and it was plain that she had a noble heritage of beauty, and a very desirable one.

She was stunningly formed, 5 feet 7 inches in height-more than the average girl. This tallness was in no way suggestive of meagerness or artificial sveltness. Her body was that of a young Juno, with magnificent round jutting breasts superbly spaced, erect and crowned with voluptuously developed buds. Her hips were sensually rounded, vivaciously resilient, agilely full and ripely feminine, and the gradually swelling sleek curved calves completed a pair of the most beautiful legs in all New York-as some reverent columnists had remarked on the occasion of her costly debut at this same palatial hotel. Long, beautifully moulded arms, whose upper curves were mouthwatering, were temptingly firm and rounded in ivory-skinned velvety-fleshed charm and grace. Patrician wrists and delicate long fingers knew the art of caress, of evocation. The arching roundness of her throat might have inspired an ode.

As to features, they were provocative and alluring, as Max's approving eyes noted lingeringly now above the goblet of his own champagne.

Ovally set cheeks, high forehead, snowy and intelligent; green eyes of dark yet luminous depth and facet, fringed by a very long gossamer dark-brown lash, emphasized in allure by narrow, exquisitely curving brows. A small Grecian nose, subtly flaring, mercurial, evidencing a vivid nature. A curving full and sultry mouth, whose ripe upper lip betokened a flair for petulancy, would make quarrels exciting and reconciliation far more so. A dimpled rounded chin.

In a word, dazzling and desirable. Max silently envied his own good fortune, for this was his wedding night. They had been married at four o'clock that afternoon at Holy Trinity Church. It had been a lavish ceremony, with hosts of friends of both families. Max's father was dead these ten years, but his mother, a doughty outspoken woman whom he admired for her gusto, attended. She told all and sundry in her hearing that her son had won a prize, and he agreed with her.

He smiled, thinking of it. Yes, looking at his beautiful young wife across the table, amid the fabulous luxury of the bridal suite, he was certain of it.

He had wooed her for six months. She had been drawn to him by his wit, good humor, sophistry, and vast experience on the Continent and throughout America. He loved life. He was not, for all his dabblings in affairs and liaisons-and he had had many-blase in the least. Beside him, all her younger suitors palled. Then, too, his family was established, of traditional aristocracy. He was wealthy. These attributes added to his fascination for her and made him a perfect marital partner- in all save one respect. And that she would learn tonight.

He had told her the Waldorf-Astoria had sentimental attachments for him, and suggested that they spend their wedding night here in the lavish setting of great wealth. Here-where the sofa was gilded with costly ornamentation for all of its lush softness and yielding upholstery, where murals, tasteful and expensive, bedecked the walls, where a blue-tiled bathroom, large and superbly furnished, offered the most discreet privacy and luxury for the most intimate of functions, where the great canopied bed loomed in a vast room whose carpeting was of thick, soft blue velvet, into which the slippered or bare foot sank with elegance.

They had a rich and lengthy meal. A connoisseur of pleasures of the table as of the bed, he believed that savory food of superb cuisine with varied and appropriate wines was ideal preparation to passion. It was aphrodisiac far more suitable than the cantharide itself, too crude a symbol for the intellectual male.

And when intellect was combined with passion, it composed a rare lover. Marcia had sensed this, physical virgin though she was, in accepting this man over a dozen younger and easily as wealthy and patrician candidates.

The chimes of the silver clock above the mantelpiece rang. They had spent three hours at the wedding supper, lingering from course to course, pausing at each to whet the palate for the next good things to come. Already, he had marked her with approval as a bon vivant like himself. He admired her grace in pouring the wine with a gesture that unfurled the sleeve of her beautiful blue satin negligee. She had, with a teasing smile, excused herself after being carried across the threshold to change into the gown with its gold satin belt and dainty gold leather sandals with platform heels, a thong at the arch and open toes. She wore beneath the negligee a lacy black bra and brief panties of the same gossamer material-for now secretly she wished him to take the droit des noces, the right of the first night. Hence, she being virgin, the right to unveil her and the removal of the negligee would be too decisive to fan the flame of passion. Wise virgin indeed. Also, gun-metal gray chiffon hose, held up flawlessly on those sculptured legs with green crepe-satin rosettes, were part of the unexpected ceremony after being carried across the threshold of their suite.

They were to spend three days here, it was agreed, thence to Italy, Greece, and Sardinia. It was early June of 1938, the world, though uneasy, was not yet plunged into war, Hitler's putsch still another ten months away. They were lovers- or would be, when the ultimate ceremony of the wedding was attained. And for lovers, nothing save their love exists.

She smiled at him from across the table, setting down her emptied goblet.

“It seems incredible, Max darling,” she murmured, “a few hours ago I was a nervous bride on whom hundreds of eyes were fixed and now, my darling, you have only one pair of eyes to adore me with.”

She nodded, a fond smile curving naturally red lips, which needed only the whispered touch of lipstick. “Yes, I'm yours now, alone with you- your wife, your sweetheart. I'd rather be that, I think, than just the wife part.”

“Ah?”

“Oh, of course, darling. When we met I said to myself, “There's a handsome dog who is obviously the type to get a girl mad over him, till she has him.'”