‘Where’s the fire?’ he asked with lazy amusement, as she attempted to control her breathing.
‘I’m late.’ She felt as if she had just run an Olympic mile.
‘It’s your privilege,’ he said easily. His dark eyes appraised her. ‘You look incredible. Shall we desert our guests and lock ourselves in with a bottle of champagne?’
‘Later,’ she was managing to smile. His hold on her wrist felt like a burning brand.
‘I take it this afternoon was not as bad as you anticipated?’
‘No.’ The words were strangled in her throat.
He didn’t notice. The near-black eyes, so piercing that nothing missed their gaze, were untroubled. He slipped his arm around her waist and kissed her behind her ear.
‘I’ll give myself only another ten seconds of self-control. If we are not in the Orchid Room by then I shall make love to you where we stand.’
She felt faint. His touch seared her because she knew it was the last time they would ever walk together, his arm around her waist, two people with an evening of good food and wine and conversation ahead of them. With the prospect of dancing in a fairytale, chandelier-lit ballroom and later on a deserted, moonlit, fragrant-scented terrace. With whispered words of love heightening the anticipation of the moment when they would at last be alone: when the music would fade and the laughter recede and they would make love with a fusion of body and spirit that transcended anything either had ever experienced of earthly happiness.
Incredibly, she managed to smile and even whisper an impish: ‘You’re a second too late’, as the great gold-embossed doors were flung wide and they made their entrance. She had made her decision and it was to ensure that the evening and night ahead would contain enough happiness and joy to last her for the rest of her life. Her senses were heightened to a pitch that bordered on intoxication.
They parted and circulated, her eyes constantly leaving those of her guests to watch him, to imprint his every gesture indelibly on her mind. He moved with the lean grace of the jungle cat he was nicknamed after. She saw the expression in the women’s eyes as he greeted them, and knew the emotions he was arousing as he smiled his devastating smile. Then, like her, his glance would leave his guests. Their eyes would meet and his expression was bold and black and blatantly erotic. She felt shameless, her thighs damp with longing. She didn’t see the hand-stitched, faultless cut of his white dinner jacket, or the exquisite lace of his evening shirt. She saw only his naked body: a body she knew as intimately as she did her own, the ripple of his muscles in moonlight, lamplight and sunlight. The curling pelt of the hair on his chest, wet and tasting of salt when he emerged from the sea, damp and delicious beneath her fingertips in the aftermath of lovemaking. His skin, honey gold, darkening through tones of olive as it merged into the magnificent mass of his pubic hair.
They were separated by laughing groups, each the centre of a chattering, star-studded coterie that would have warmed the heart of any gossip columnist.
‘He’s as handsome as a blooded stallion and twice as dangerous,’ Bobo was saying to an Englishwoman with a spray of red roses on her shoulder and five or six diamond bracelets encircling her arm. Their eyes were on Ramon.
Nancy’s soft lips curved and her smile was that of a woman who had conquered the unconquerable. What Bobo said was true, and he was hers and would have been for ever. No one would be able to take that knowledge away from her.
‘They say that Princess Marinsky is distraught and has taken to her room …’
Nancy had moved out of earshot and so was unaware of the princess’decline.
‘That’s the trouble, darling. He’s never had to ask for anything in his life. Ramon simply takes.’ The Englishwoman licked her bottom lip slowly. Bobo recognized the expression in her eyes and wished her luck. She would need it if she hoped to seduce Ramon. To Bobo’s knowledge no woman ever had. Ramon was the seducer. A natural predator who put every husband immediately on his guard – and with good reason.
Bobo blew an answering kiss across the room to Hassan who was hemmed in by the sultan and the maharajah.
Nancy Leigh Cameron was achieving a world record. Bobo wondered if she was aware of it, and also how much longer it would last. Ramon showed none of the usual signs of boredom which afflicted him after the first few weeks of an affaire. It was all very intriguing. Not least the arrival and quick departure of Senator Jack Cameron. Bobo could not see Jack Cameron playing the part of a compliant husband. American herself, she knew how important the public image of happy family life was to a man in Jack’s position. She had expected a quick curtailment of the affaire and Nancy’s return to Washington. When the liner docked in New York, reporters and photographers would flock and Jack would explain blandly how his wife had taken a winter vacation and of how, missing her intolerably, he had been driven to cross the Atlantic and to bring her back with him. The public would love it. Jack would kiss Nancy for the photographers’benefit and millions of romance-starved women would drool over the story as they drank their morning coffee.
But Nancy had not returned with Jack and, even while her husband had been in residence, she and Ramon had done nothing to hide their feelings for each other. It had left one conclusion to be drawn. It was one so breathtaking that even the wordly Bobo had gasped at the implications.
At dinner they were joined by Nina Correlli, who had struck up a rather odd friendship with Margot Alleynian’s angular twenty-one-year-old son, and Lady Helen Bingham-Smythe who was escorted by Reggie Minter. Nicki was there and his eyes travelled meaningfully to her mouth. She sent him a pleading look of admonition as Ramon also saw and uttered a word in Portuguese that none of his guests fortunately understood.
Later, in the ballroom, he danced with her and her alone, performing rumbas and tangos with an innate sense of rhythm that his guests could not hope to emulate.
Nancy laughed and followed him step for step, her body moving to the music with a freedom Lady Meade found indecent.
‘If I’m all Portuguese, you’re all Irish,’ Ramon said, his hand hot on her waist. ‘Where have all your Bostonian restraints gone?’
‘Into the Charles river,’ she answered gaily.
Georgina Montcalm decided it was too late to ask Zia to counsel Nancy and urge her to be more discreet. Too many people now knew of the affaire between her and Ramon. No one seeing them together could imagine they were anything but lovers. Every glance, every touch was an open declaration. They seemed oblivious of the gossip they were causing. It was almost as if they were flaunting their affaire. In weeks, days even, London and Paris and Rome would begin to buzz with rumours. Then they would never be able to leave Madeira without having to face a barrage of reporters and flash bulbs. Even if they remained, the world’s press would print their own version of the affair, each more scandalous than the last. Nancy Leigh Cameron, scion of America’s new aristocracy, darling of the Democrats, favourite subject of society columns from California to Massachusetts, would find herself a social outcast. Adulterous relationships might be the norm among the section of society that had the time, leisure and disposition to indulge in them, but they were not relationships that were publicly acknowledged. A divorce could still hold a newspaper’s front page for three days at a time. Georgina, like Bobo, began to wonder if she had underestimated the relationship. It was the only explanation for behaviour that bordered on social suicide.
Count and Countess Szapary danced past them in a foxtrot that the count executed with military precision and blatant lack of enjoyment. The little countess’face was flushed. Nancy turned her head, following the direction of the sparkling eyes. She was not surprised to find that the countess was looking rapturously in Vere’s direction.
He smiled when he saw Nancy’s eyes on him and moved his shoulders in a gesture which said: ‘I can’t talk to you when I never see you.’
Madeleine Mancini’s entry temporarily silenced the room full of sophisticates. Her dress was split thigh-high and made of
leopard skin. Her finger and toe nails were enamelled a deep black. Her lipstick was black; her eyes so heavily lashed that she resembled a panda. A very sexy, very man-eating panda, not the cuddly sort imitated by the toy manufacturers. Costas escorted her and threw his arms exuberantly around the maharajah in greeting. Nancy wondered if there was anyone that the big jovial Greek did not know.
They were dancing to a tango. Expertly Ramon swung her low, his body bending over hers as he said softly, ‘Do you know what I am going to do with you tonight, my love?’
Before she could gasp a reply she was upright again, his cheek pressed against hers, their hands joined as he proceeded to tell her in the minutest detail.
Her face flamed and he laughed. ‘Not all of your Bostonian upbringing is in the Charles river. Tonight we will make sure that what remains is drowned for ever.’
Desire licked through her, lighting her with a radiance that was incandescent. For years afterwards Kate Murphy said she had never seen any woman as beautiful as Nancy Leigh Cameron was that night.
She was not alone in her opinion. Not a man in the room remained unstirred by the magical luminosity she exuded. Even Charles Montcalm lost track of his conversation with Lord Michaeljohn and stared wonderingly after her for so long that Georgina had to tap him on the arm three times to bring him out of his reverie.
The music slowed to a waltz. Countess Szapary’s head barely reached Vere’s shoulder. Nicki’s eyes still sought Nancy’s but, nevertheless, his hand slid indecently low over Fleur Molière’s delicious bottom.
Nancy closed her eyes as Ramon gently but firmly waltzed her out of the glittering, flower-decked ballroom and into the coolness of the night air. When she opened them she could see the moon high over the dark silhouette of the mountains.
‘I love you,’ he said, and she hugged the very timbre of his voice to her heart.
They did not re-enter the ballroom. They danced until the terrace gave way to grass and then, hands clasped, they ran like children to the wide-open French windows to the Bridge Room. The hem of her dress was damp, her black satin pumps grass-stained. She was uncaring. He swung her up in his arms and strode with her through the empty lounges and down the softly lit corridor to the Garden Suite. They did not see Maria or hear her silent departure. They had re-entered their private world and there were no intruders.
She did not sleep. As dawn broke and Ramon lay exhausted at
her side, his breathing deep and regular, his hand still cupping her breast, she lay awake treasuring every fleeting moment. Her fingertips traced his hairline and the smooth curve of his jaw. Once, in his sleep, he murmured her name. She smiled and her arm tightened around him.
Inexorably the light in the room paled and the first shafts of sun filtered through the shutters. She lay perfectly still, willing him to sleep on, fearful that any movement might waken him. He looked curiously vulnerable. His face had lost its hardness and there was no trace of the deep furrows that formed between his brows when he frowned, or the grim, almost brutal lines that transformed his mouth when his volatile temper was roused.
His hand tightened its hold on her breast and as his eyes flickered open he automatically moved to roll across her.
‘No …’ She slipped from his grasp. If he made love to her now she was lost.
He was immediately wide awake. ‘What’s the matter?’
She was standing by the bed, barefoot, tying a serviceable white towelling dressing gown tightly around her waist. She was unaware of it, but it emphasized her femininity in a way that not even the finest of her French negligées did.
‘I have to talk to you.’
‘Then come back to bed.’
‘No. What I have to say can’t be said in bed.’
His eyes narrowed and he sat up, reaching to the bedside table for cigarettes and matches. When he had inhaled he said simply:
‘Well, I’m listening.’
Her mouth was so dry she thought she would never be able to utter a word. Her fists were clenched tightly in the depths of her dressing gown pockets. Her eyes located a point on the wall some six inches above his head, and she stared at it fixedly, saying with a rush, ‘I’m leaving Madeira with my father.’
‘The hell you are!’ He leapt from the bed and as she cried out and backed away he gripped hold of her shoulders.
‘Just what happened yesterday afternoon?’
‘Nothing. It’s just that I realize now that … That we can’t possibly continue like this. Jack needs me …’
‘Jack Cameron would kill you if it was advantageous for him to do so!’
‘No. I …’
He shook her like a rag doll. ‘Look at me,’ he blazed, as her eyes fought desperately to avoid his. ‘Look at me, for Christ’s sake! Are you going back with your father to join Cameron? Are you? Are you?‘
‘No … No …’
She could feel hysterical sobs rising in her throat and fought them down. She had to remain calm. She had to remain lucid.
‘What did O’Shaughnessy say to you? What did he blackmail you with?’ He had stopped shaking her and his left hand had wound itself through her hair, pulling her head back cruelly so that she was forced to face him.
‘Nothing. Please, Ramon. You’re hurting me!’
The hand relinquished its grip by the merest fraction. ‘Tell me what he said to make you agree to leave. Tell me, Nancy, or I swear to God he’ll be lucky to die from a heart attack!’
‘Nothing,’ she repeated helplessly. ‘He didn’t say anything. He’s ill and he’s old and he needs a rest. He says my private life is my own. He’s reconciled to the fact that I’m not returning to Jack. Truly. Ramon, please! Believe me!’
‘Then why?’ he repeated through clenched teeth. ‘Why are you leaving?’
‘Because … Because I’m tired. It’s been fun, Ramon, but I’m a city girl at heart. I’m homesick for Boston.’
Her hair felt as it it was being torn from its roots. His face was only inches from hers, a mask of fury.
‘Of course! I should have guessed! That’s why you used to bury yourself at Hyannis for nine months out of twelve. You just had to be near those bright lights, didn’t you? The non-stop night life that rocks miles and miles of sand dunes and gives the gulls no peace! Whatever lies you tell me, Nancy, make them credible ones!’
‘Oh God! Stop! Please!’ He was forcing her down on her knees in front of him.
‘So it was fun, was it? And now you’re tired and want to go home. Is that the truth? Tell me. Tell me!’
Her eyes glazed with a fury that equalled his own. ‘Yes! If you want to know, that’s exactly the truth. I’m tired of being trapped here. I’m tired of having no other lovers. I’m tired of you!’
He let go of her as suddenly as if she had been poisonous.
‘I don’t believe you, Nancy. It’s something he said.’ His rage was being replaced by something far worse. There was inexpressible agony in his eyes, pleading.
She moved away from him. Her voice was perfectly controlled. ‘I’m sorry Ramon. You’re wrong. My father has nothing to do with my decision. It’s-merely convenient that he will be returning home soon and that I can join him. I would have left anyhow.’
‘You love me!’ He spat the words.
She laughed, a harsh brittle laugh. ‘Well of course I said I loved you. We were sleeping together, weren’t we? I believe it’s quite acceptable vocabulary under those circumstances.’
‘You bitch,’ he said viciously. ‘You incredible, unbelievable, smooth-talking little bitch!’ His skin seemed to have tightened over his cheekbones. She flinched and backed away from him. His eyes were filled with loathing.
‘Don’t worry, I shan’t hurt you. I shan’t lay a finger on you. Not ever again.’
He was dressing, pulling on his trousers, leaving his evening shirt open, not bothering to fasten the buttons. It was as if he couldn’t leave the room quickly enough. He slung his jacket over his shoulder and said tightly, ‘Thank
you for an interesting few weeks. I’ll have Villiers repay you financially for your services. You deserve it. A more accomplished little whore I’ve yet to meet!’
The door slammed behind him.
‘Oh God,’ she sobbed and sank down on her knees beside the bed. ‘Oh dear, dear God!’
Chapter Twenty
Three hours later she crawled to her feet and became aware, for the first time, of Maria’s presence. Shakily she drank the endless cups of black coffee that Maria poured and then numbly she dressed.
‘Tell my father I wish to see him.’
‘Yes, madame.’
Her face was anxious as she returned to Nancy and said: ‘The mayor is with Mrs Sanford, madame.’
Nancy’s eyes were lacklustre, her skin pallid. She said on a note of surprise, ‘I’m going to be sick,’ and rushed to the bathroom.
It was reaction, she told herself afterwards, as Maria brought her a slice of dry toast and a glass of Perrier water. If her father was with Zia it was all for the best. She could see both of them at the same time. The queasiness lingered. She felt distinctly unwell.
‘Don’t you think you should go back to bed, madame?’ Maria asked. ‘I will change it now. Immediately.’
The silk sheets were still rumpled from the previous night’s lovemaking. Nancy averted her head. ‘No thank you, Maria. I’m going to see my father. Will you begin to pack my bags, please.’
She had no idea what ship her father was returning on, or when. The Ile de France was still in harbour but en route for South Africa. She didn’t care. He would be leaving soon. It was election year, and an extended absence would be ruinous for him.
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