On the four day voyage south he had been consumed with the longing to see her again. She was at Sanfords and was waiting for him. A letter had gone astray, a message. God alone knew what had happened, but whatever it had been it had been a human error. Then he had arrived and she had been absent; wining and dining aboard Vere Winterton’s yacht … aboard the yacht that she had arrived on. And Winterton’s and her suite were adjoining. His restless dark eyes narrowed as he strode yet again on to the verandah and gazed down to where the Rosslyn’s party showed no signs of ending.
She had told him she had never had another lover. He had known that she had spoken the truth. Was it possible that once the barrier had been crossed she had rushed headlong from his arms into those of Winterton? Everything inside him cried out that it was impossible. She was not another Gloria; another Princess Marinsky; another bored society beauty seeking fun and titillation when her husband’s back was turned.
She was nakedly honest and she had brought him purity as well as passion. He breathed in the fragrant night air, and felt himself steady. He had been a fool, torturing himself unnecessarily. Travelling with Winterton had ensured that she reached Madeira in the fastest time possible and with the minimum of publicity. The New York Times had mentioned that Mrs Cameron was a passenger aboard the Mauretania. There had been nothing more; none of the London papers had picked up the story. In Madeira both of them would be safe from the sort of gossip Nancy so disliked. Zia autocratically barred any society columnist or photographer from Sanfords, no matter how illustrious their name. It was one of the few havens in the world where the rich and royal could disport themselves without forever looking over their shoulders. If they chose to be indiscreet, only their equals would know. Sanfords’ wild parties never made public headlines. Prime ministers could swim in the nude with impunity. Grand duchesses could drink till they tottered. No word would leak to the outside world.
He picked up a dripping bottle of Dom Perignon, wrapped it in a towel and, with a champagne glass in his other hand, walked out of his suite and along the deeply carpeted corridor and down the gilded staircase to the Garden Suite. A bellboy hurried in his wake and was speedily sent for the required key.
Ramon closed the door behind him, poured a glass of champagne and gazed around, a slight smile on his lips. Nancy’s occupancy had lasted only hours, yet already the room bore the imprint of her presence. Verity’s photograph smiled from an oval silver frame. Beside it, Chips O’Shaughnessy beamed broadly, a cigar wedged firmly between his teeth. There was no sign of a photograph of Jack Cameron or any other man. Ramon felt his certainty solidify. She was waiting for him. There could be no other reason for her presence. A slim volume of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese lay on her beside table. He picked it up, holding it reverently because she had so recently held it. A silk, lavisly lace-trimmed nightdress lay in a pretty swirl on the bed. The delicately scented sheets were turned down and ready for occupancy. On the dressing table a simple beaded rosary lay entwined with beautifully matched pearls. The faint odour of her perfume clung around him and as he sat in a pearl-pink velvet giltwood armchair, he dimmed the lights. In the moonlight a Matisse on the far wall shimmered and danced. He was burning as he poured another glass of champagne and settled down to wait for her. The fire that hadn’t been quenched since he had first taken her in his arms, began to rise and rage, consuming him until it was a physical pain. Soon, very soon, he would hold her again. He fastened his eyes on to the door and counted the minutes away.
‘I have often wanted to make your acquaintance, but you hide away like a butterfly in a chrysalis,’ Prince Nicholas said, as he waltzed Nancy around the edge of the Rosslyn’s pool, the stars brilliant above them.
Nancy laughed. ‘I haven’t hidden myself away at the Copley Plaza or the Waldorf.’
The prince pulled a face. ‘The new world. I have no time for it. It has no grace; no elegance, like the city of my youth.’
‘St Petersburg?’ Nancy asked.
He nodded, his arm holding her lightly and securely as the music changed smoothly from a waltz to a tango.
‘There have never been balls since to compete with the grandeur of those given by the dowager empress at the Anitchkov Palace: no parties as scintillating as those of the Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna: no magnificence like that of the Winter Palace: no thrill akin to that of riding down the Nevsky Prospect with a troop of Cossacks at your heels.’
His eyes glinted. ‘Some day we will return and that world will live again. The Russia of our fathers and our grandfathers will be restored to us.’
‘Do you really believe that?’
Beneath his carefully trimmed beard and moustache, his grin was almost elated. ‘I know it,’ he said, and spun her round so breathlessly and with such panache that Bobo and Costas applauded loudly.
Vere smiled in their direction but the smile did not reach his eyes. Nicky was extremely attractive to women and ever since dinner he had given Nancy the full benefit of his charm. His American girlfriend had seemed unperturbed and had danced and flirted with all the men present, with the exception of Sir Maxwell. Sir Maxwell would have been quite game for a flirtation but Lavinia Meade gave him no opportunity. Vere turned his attention back to Nicky’s girlfriend, who was leaning against the deck rail, a glass in one hand and her head thrown slightly back, pearly teeth gleaming as she laughed at one of Sonny’s more outrageous remarks.
She was a descendant of Elizabeth Winthrop, one of the first women to settle in New England. Elizabeth Winthrop had been a rebel, shunning the Puritan code that ruled the lives of the early settlers and suffering dearly for it in the process. Samantha Hedley had the same steel to her beauty that must have enabled her ancestor to endure the privations and hardships of seventeenth century American life. As he watched Nicky escort Nancy to the buffet where Lady Michaeljohn was still holding forth on the Prince of Wales’latest affair, he had the uncomfortable feeling that Nancy had made herself an enemy.
He moved across to them, hooking a proprietorial arm around Nancy’s shoulders and feeling gratified at her easy acceptance of his gesture.
‘How is dear Clarissa?’ Lady Michaeljohn asked as he approached, and then hiccoughed loudly. Vere’s champagne was always excellent and the stewards had topped her glass up regularly. Her husband’s attempts to freeze her with a look from below his bushy eyebrows were wasted.
‘She’s keeping very well,’ Vere said smoothly. ‘She’s in India, shooting.’
‘Tigers or elephants?’ Lord Michaeljohn asked. ‘I was on a damned good tiger shoot last year. Got five of the beggars.’
‘Tigers,’ Vere said pleasantly, and taking Nancy in his arms he danced her to the far side of the deck, his hand caressing the satin-softness of her back as he drew her so close that his lips brushed her cheek.
Nancy had felt his tenseness at Lady Michaeljohn’s questions. She would have liked to ask him more about Clarissa, but now was not the time or place. His lips were on her mouth and she did not pull away. She felt warm and relaxed: loving and alive. She wound her arms tightly around his neck and felt the spasm of his body as he pressed her to him. She needed to feel alive; to feel her blood running warmly through her veins. She had so much love in her and no one to give it to. Unless she gave it to Vere. Jack had no need of it. Ramon, leaving her bed within hours for that of her father’s wife, even less. There was no passion in her for Vere, but there was tenderness and affection and liking.
‘Let’s go,’ he said huskily, and she mutely agreed.
The stewards continued to ply the guests with champagne and caviar, lobster and quail. The band continued to play and the host and his hostess slipped away. Vere’s arm was around her shoulders, his mouth murmuring soft endearments in her ear as his chauffeur whisked them up the darkened roads to the softly-lit edifice of Sanfords.
As the night wind blew against her face, ruffling her hair, Nancy blinked back hot tears. She was with a man who loved her; who est
eemed and respected her. A knife twisted in her heart with longing for a man who had felt none of those things. She had never understood what the words ‘sexual power’meant, but she did now. It was the power Ramon exercised over her, and always would. The power that made her forget pride and dignity. That would make her plead for just one touch, one kiss.
‘I love you,’ Vere said, as he clasped her hand and led her down the rose-pink carpeted corridors to the splendour of the Garden Suite. Nancy, unable to speak for the tears that choked her throat, squeezed his hand silently and fought for control.
At the doorway he swept her up in his arms, carrying her across the threshhold as if she were his bride. She smiled and he was too intoxicated with his victory to see that it wavered tremulously at the corners of her mouth.
‘I dreamed of this, when I was a boy at Molesworth. When you were a bride and scarcely aware of my existence.’
‘I’m aware now,’ she said softly.
At the edge of the bed he set her gently on her feet. She stood passively, her face upturned and he showered it with kisses and then slipped the slender sequined straps off her shoulders and allowed the clinging, shimmering material to slide into a glittering pool on the floor.
‘God in heaven, but you’re beautiful,’ Vere Winterton said reverently as she stood in the full glory of her nakedness before him.
‘And virtually untouched by human hand,’ a throbbing voice said from the corner of the room.
Nancy screamed. Vere shouted and dived for the light switch. The room flooded with cruel light and Ramon remained seated in the deeply winged chair, a champagne glass in one hand, a Sobraine in the other. His voice was studiedly insolent. Only his eyes were out of control, glazed with an almost maniacal anger.
‘Or that is what she told me and what I so gullibly believed,’ he continued, leisurely stubbing out his cigarette and draining the contents of his glass. He rose to his feet and smiled across to where Nancy stood, rooted to the spot and spinning into regions of nightmare, her nakedness exposed so that she felt like a whore of Babylon; a weight on her chest so crushing that she could not move, could not speak.
‘It convinced me and I’m not a man to easily believe a woman’s lies, however practised the liar.’
‘No!’ It was a strangled sob. She had to move, had to reach him.
Indolently his dark eyes travelled from her face, moving slowly, almost lazily, over her rose-red nipples to the tight curly mass of her pubic hair. His mouth was a tight line of pain; his eyes those of a man who has seen an inner hell.
‘Have fun,’ he said carelessly and slammed the door shut behind him.
Vere yanked at the handle, cursing incoherently. Nancy threw herself at him, dragging on his arms.
‘No! Please! Oh God, no!’
‘I’ll kill him!’ Vere was trying to fend off Nancy’s restraining hold as she flung herself against the door, pressing her back against it, her eyes those of a madwoman.
‘No! No! Let him go! Oh please God, let him go!’
She was shaking convulsively, her face drained of blood, her eyes two dark pits in her whitened face. He was here. He had come to her room. He had been waiting for her and she had entered with another man. She had stood naked in front of him, her arms around his neck, her face receptive to his kisses.
‘Oh Jesus God,’ she moaned, sliding on to her knees. ‘Let me die. Now. Before morning. Before I have to face him again.’
Vere abandoned his intention of going after Sanford. He covered her with a negligée and stumbled into the bathroom for aspirin, sleeping tablets, anything. The shock to his system had robbed him of his usual savoir faire. Nancy’s distress was so extreme that it frightened him. He wished fervently that he had stayed aboard his yacht with his guests. He came back into the room with a glass of water and two sleeping tablets.
‘Take these,’ he said, physically raising her to her feet and putting her to bed.
Obediently she swallowed them. He had the unnerving sensation that she was completely unaware of him. Her reputation: he’d been a fool not to realize what it meant to her. Despite her flippant remarks, she was destined one day to be the First Lady of America. Even at this moment her husband was on his way here.
She lay still and quiet. She no longer needed him.
Much later, his nerves restored by several whiskies, it occurred to him to wonder what Ramon Sanford had been doing in Nancy’s room at three o’clock in the morning. It was a thought that robbed him of sleep for the rest of the night.
Shame and humiliation swept over Nancy in drowning waves. Till
the day she died she would remember the way he had looked at her – the contempt in his eyes. Eventually the sleeping tablets induced a kind of stupor and she lay staring at the ceiling as the room began to pale eerily with the first light of dawn. As morning broke anger began to take the place of shame.
Her behaviour was none of his affair. He had had no right to be in her room; no right to judge her morals. She wondered bitterly whose bed he had just left before making his night-time visit; whose bed he had returned to. As her father had pointed out, Ramon Sanford was no once-a-day man.
He had visited Sanfords and found her there and no doubt assumed he could entertain himself with her as he had done previously. Her head pounded and she wondered if aspirin on top of sleeping tablets would be harmful. She decided she didn’t care and went into the bathroom to find the pills.
His presence here was perfectly natural. After all, it was his hotel. He had told her that Madeira was out of limits until he married. She had been a fool to have believed anything he said. Unless a Mrs Sanford or prospective Mrs Sanford was accompanying him. Bile rose in her throat and she shuddered, gulping down iced water. Leaving a bride for a sortie into an ex-lover’s room would be normal behaviour for a man who thought nothing of making love to a woman and her stepmother in the same twenty-four hours. If Verity hadn’t been in Germany he would probably have made love to her as well. A sexual hat-trick to enliven his jaded palate.
Her anger gave her back her self-respect. She was thirty-five years old. If she wished to take a lover it was none of Ramon Sanford’s business. The only drawback to this sensible thinking was that she had no real desire to take Vere as a lover at all. Or anyone else: only Ramon.
‘Damn him,’ she said to her reflection in the mirror. ‘Damn him. Damn him. Damn him.’
She had breakfast in bed and when Maria entered to dress her there were blue, weary hollows beneath her eyes. Maria’s pretty little face tightened. Mrs Cameron’s world had turned upside down this last month and she would have given a lot to know the reason why. She was having her own troubles as well. The English valet who attended the duke seemed to think she was there for his convenience. He had trapped her outside the ironing room when she had been pressing one of Mrs Cameron’s cocktail dresses and this time sharp words and a box on his ears hadn’t been enough to deter him. He had pinned her against the wall, forcing greedy, hungry kisses on her, oblivious of Maria’s struggles and the precious dress crushed between them. He had been removed by a strong brown hand gripping his collar and nearly choking him. Then, as he struggled for air, a hefty kick in the seat of his pants had sent him stumbling ignominiously down the corridor.
‘Thank you.’ Maria scrambled on the floor for the dress, overcome with confusion. Her rescuer was tall and lithe and his dark good looks reminded Maria of Mr Sanford.
Luis Chavez shrugged and smiled. As swimming coach he usually exerted his not-inconsiderable charms on the female guests. Especially the older ones. They were so much more appreciative. He regarded maids as social inferiors. However, this one was remarkably pretty and there was a fire lurking in the depths of her honey-gold eyes that stimulated him.
‘Any time,’ he said easily, and smiled the devastating smile that had rendered duchesses helpless. ‘I’m Luis Chavez, the swimming coach.’ His manner inferred that the title should automatically impress.
‘Maria Saldhana,�
�� Maria said, recovering her composure and deciding that her rescuer had rather a high opinion of himself. ‘Mrs Cameron’s personal maid.’
Luis’dark eyebrows rose slightly in recognition. News of the dusky beauty accompanying Mrs Cameron had spread quickly along the hotel grapevine. He wondered if he had five minutes to spare in the pursuit of pleasure, and decided he had not. Viscountess Lothermere was waiting for him, and though she had so far shown not the slightest interest in flirting with her coach, Luis was impressed by her figure as well as her fortune and was determined to exert himself to the utmost.
Maria, well aware of some, though not all of Luis’thoughts, smoothed down Mrs Cameron’s dress and, with another polite ‘thank you’, walked away. He frowned as he watched her neat bottom sway towards the service stairs. He was supposed to have left her hoping the conversation would be continued. She had successfully given the impression that the reverse was true and that he, Luis Chavez, had been hanging around in the hope of deepening the acquaintance. He determined to treat her with cool indifference in the future until she had learned her lesson.
Maria, busying herself with Mrs Cameron’s toilette, found herself thinking more and more of the handsome Portuguese. He had far too high an opinion of himself. He was blatantly conceited. The gold chains around his neck, the carefully slicked hair, showed a vanity equal to that of a woman. Yet he was undeniably handsome. Portuguese men, Maria decided as she buffed Nancy’s nails to a pearly sheen, were decidedly sexy. Backstairs gossip had already informed her that Mr Sanford had arrived the previous evening and she wondered if that accounted for the lines of strain on Mrs Cameron’s face and if so, why? She was not going to be hurt by a man. Luis Chavez had the air of a man who found conquests easy. He would not find her so. But she would enjoy watching him try.
The Flower Garden Page 15