A DANGEROUS LIAISON

A real-life Beauty and the Beast. Only in de Borchgrave's breathless memoir, the male lead isn't a monster with a noble soul but a nobleman with a monstrous soul—and the love scenes are strictly adults-only. In 1977, the author (nÇe Heller), a young Barnard graduate living a ``fast-track'' life in Manhattan, falls into a gothic romance: ``I was aware of the tall, handsome man in the [airplane] seat next to me...telling me that he was Jacques de Borchgrave''- -a.k.a. Baron de Borchgrave, son of one of Belgium's noblest families. Before long, Sheri is sharing the baron's suite in St. Tropez, succumbing to his sweet nothings: ``Now that I've seen your body on the beach, your soft curves...I want to caress those curves...Sheri, I desire you furiously.'' The castles and a life of indolent luxury don't turn off Sheri, either, and soon she's tying the knot, despite reservations—especially about the breast- enlargement surgery that Jacques insists she have. When Sheri postpones the surgery, the baron explodes in a rage, but calms down long enough for her to learn that she's only the latest of several women he's planned to mutate into a Stepford wife. It takes months longer to learn of his yen for sex games—revealed as Sheri watches a nude swimming party devolve into an orgy; catches the baron in bed with his sister; and is coerced into having sex with three women at once. But Jacques has such impeccable manners (``His expertise and elegance in handling utensils was like great theater'') that it's going to take more—like rages that verge on homicidal mania—for her to split. Ironically, the baron puts a bullet into his head before a divorce comes through, and now Sheri is a baroness for life. For a blue-blooded bodice-ripping morality tale, this isn't half bad. (Photos—not seen)