‘I’ve made coffee,’ I said.
‘Thank you, but no.’ Her voice sounded strained.
‘Your clothes will be ready soon.’
‘What are you hiding, Dr. Kane?’
I froze. That’s what you do to dogs in heat. Throw a bucket of cold water. You’re left with a boner and no desire. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘You know some secret about me, don’t you?’ she accused.
I felt the cold hand of fear for her.
‘So it’s true,’ she cried, her eyes enormous with shock. ‘You’ve found out something about me that you have not allowed me to remember.’
‘Listen—’
‘How could you? How dare you?’ she gasped in disbelief.
‘Hang on—’ I tried to explain, but she cut me off.
‘I trusted you,’ she whispered, backing away from me.
I moved toward her and she held up a warding hand.
I halted immediately. ‘I was protecting you,’ I explained. Even to my own ears it sounded weak.
‘Protecting me? From what?’ she barked. ‘Here’s an Americanism you’ll understand. Bull-fucking-shit. Just tell me the truth. What is it?’ she shouted, her voice now high and hysterical.
‘Ask yourself why I would have done something like that,’ I said in the most unemotional voice I could reach for.
It stopped her in her tracks, the anger leaving her as suddenly as it had come. She wrapped her arms around herself and frowned with confusion. ‘Why?’ she asked suspiciously.
‘I have nothing to gain from full disclosure, but you have everything to lose. Please, Olivia.’
‘Oh God! What is it?’ she sobbed slapping her hands to her cheeks. Her knees buckled and she fell to the ground. I strode over to her and carried her to the couch. I lay her on it and put some cushions under her head. She stared up at me fearfully. ‘Do my memories have claws?’
‘The problem is not insurmountable. I just need a little time to really help you. Will you trust me?’
‘I do trust you, Dr. Kane.’
‘Thank you, Olivia.’
She worried her lower lip. ‘Have I done something really wrong?’
My heart skipped a beat. ‘No. You have done nothing wrong.’
‘Has someone done something bad to me?’
I looked her in the eye. ‘It seems that way at the moment.’
‘Is that why I can’t remember?’
‘Maybe. There is no physical reason you cannot remember. Your mind doesn’t want you to.’
She frowned. ‘If it had happened to you, would you want to remember?’
I thought about the burning car, the smell of them burning, and I smiled sadly. ‘No, no, I wouldn’t.’
She nodded. ‘Something bad happened to you, didn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I said and fuck me, I felt tears gather at the backs of my eyes. All these years I had never shed a single tear. I had been frozen with horror and now the tears were threatening. I blinked. More in shock than anything else.
She lifted her hand and ran her thumb along my eyelashes, then put her thumb in her mouth. ‘I ate your tears,’ she said. And she sounded like a child.
Son of a gun, but I think I’m falling for her. I stared incredulously at her, the truth of my situation dawning on me. I was fucking falling for her. Every time we met, a little more. I was already neck deep.
‘Yeah, you ate my tears,’ I said slowly, as another tear rolled down unchecked.
She lifted her body and, coming close to my face, licked my salty cheek.
The action had an undesirable effect on my body. Like a half-trained polecat my cock reared its ugly head. I tried to move away from her, but she grabbed my forearms with both her hands. I looked down at them, so small and delicate and yet surprisingly strong. I looked up again into her eyes.
‘Don’t push me away,’ she begged.
I closed my eyes. The music had stopped and a thick heavy silence hung between us. All the things I wanted to say and the things buried inside her. She knew me not at all. I wanted to crush her in my arms and keep her next to me forever. I never wanted her to leave. There was such a pleasure in her proximity. To feel her breathe, to touch her soft skin, to smell the clean scent of her hair. I clenched my teeth. ‘You have to go. Your clothes must be ready by now.’ The words tumbled out of me, harsh and angry.
She went still. Then her hands slipped away from my arm. The music player clicked on again and Last Mistake came on.
‘While you were sleeping I was drinking,’ a man’s voice crooned.
I stood up and looked down at her. Her hair was wet and stuck to her head, her nose was red and my old bathrobe was a shapeless blob around her, but she was the most beautiful woman in the world.
‘By the way,’ she said listlessly, ‘Ivana has invited you to stay the weekend at Marlborough Hall. You can bring someone if you like.’
Marlborough Hall
Chapter 13
Marlow
The fish, even in the fisherman’s net, still carries the smell of the sea.
—Mourid Barghouti
Marlborough Hall had been built for one purpose and one purpose only—to dazzle. And to that monumental mission every stone in it was utterly committed. Its vast mass of rusticated granite soared, towered, and sprawled before us as we turned through a pair of imposing stone piers, topped with winged bronze chimera.
‘Oh my God. Look at that!’ Beryl cried as she dramatically fanned herself with her hands.
I stopped the Jag and we sat for a moment looking at the lighted splendor that had been the seat of the Swanson family for the last three hundred years. I thought it an ostentatious fortress and the unfriendliest place I had ever seen, but when I glanced at Beryl, I realized she was as horribly enthralled and fascinated by the naked display of power and wealth, as a rat would be in the face of a striking snake. All I could think of was that somewhere in that hostile pile of stones a pale plant called Olivia was struggling to thrive.
‘OK, I’m ready,’ Beryl said more calmly.
I started the car and we drove down a wide gravel drive. We crunched to a halt next to an antique Rolls-Royce.
‘Isn’t this marvelous?’ Beryl whispered excitedly.
‘That remains to be seen,’ I said dryly.
‘What about the hamper? Do we take it in?’ she asked, referring to the hamper of food she had ordered from Fortnum & Mason. She was convinced it was where posh people got their food.
‘I’m sure someone will come and collect it together with our overnight bags.’
‘Of course, silly me. They have servants, don’t they? I hope I don’t make a total fool of myself tonight,’ Beryl said worriedly.
‘You’ll be fine. If you get nervous just think of them sitting on the toilet.’
Beryl laughed heartily. ‘That’s very useful.’
‘Shall we?’ I asked, my hand on the door handle.
She touched my sleeve. ‘Before we go in, I just want to thank you again for asking me to come with you.’
‘I couldn’t survive it without you, Beryl.’
She beamed with pleasure.
‘Come on,’ I said, putting a foot out of the car. ‘Let’s see how the other half live.’
With impeccable timing the massive doors of the house opened and a liveried footman came out to help us. I refused his offer of help with my overnight case, so he made himself useful by carrying Beryl’s small suitcase and the hamper.
A man in a butler’s uniform complete with spotless white gloves respectfully greeted us in an echoing cold, gray, stone hallway. In a broad Northern accent he informed us that drinks would be served in the Green Saloon in an hour’s time. The footman left the hamper on a stand nearby and led us down a short walkway hung with large tapestries toward a gargantuan, double-storied chamber. It had a balustraded gallery around all four sides and its walls were lined with full-length portraits of the family, no doubt executed by the great masters.
‘Goodness me, I feel quite touched by the golden wand,’ Beryl said in a stage whisper. Her eyes were wide.
‘Hmmm…’
We followed the footman up a grand marble staircase with a red runner carpet, and down a narrow corridor. He stopped outside a door and respectfully said, ‘Here we are.’
He opened it, and upon entering the room, stood back to allow us to fully appreciate our lodgings. It was a large paneled room that had been prepared for our arrival. The lamps were lit, there was a fire roaring in the fireplace and a vase with flowers on a table. It smelt of fresh linen. And on the antique, canopied four-poster bed, towels and bars of soap were laid out.
‘Breakfast will be served from seven until nine, or if you prefer you can ring for it to be brought up.’
Then he opened another door, which revealed a connecting door. He opened that door and Beryl stepped into the room that she had been assigned.
After he had gone Beryl knocked on the connecting door.
‘Come in,’ I called.
‘Isn’t this amazing? Can you believe people actually live like this?’ she asked and sank onto the green brocade sofa.
‘It is an unfair world we live in,’ I said mildly and disappeared into the bathroom.
When I came out with the tooth glass Beryl jumped up.
‘Oh good. A dressing drink? I’ll have one too,’ she said and went off into her room then returned with her tooth glass. I opened my bag and poured us both a healthy slug of whiskey. Beryl didn’t stay long. She wanted to look her best for dinner. I sat on my own watching the logs in the fire burn. Evening fell and brought with it a sense of timelessness. I merged into it together with all those people who had lived there before.
I was feeling mellow and peaceful and could have sat there with only me for company when Beryl knocked on the door forty minutes later.
‘What do you think? Is it too little or too much?’ she asked.
She was wearing a long blue dress that had a slight shimmer to it and a sunburst necklace with matching colored stones. I knew she bought them especially for that night. I smiled, feeling a great burst of tenderness for her. ‘You look lovely.’
‘You really mean it?’
‘Have you ever known me to say something I didn’t mean?’
‘That’s true.’
I pulled myself out of my chair and shrugged into the jacket I arrived in.
‘Aren’t you going to dress for dinner?’
‘Nope.’
‘You’ll be the only one.’
‘So?’
She widened her eyes. ‘OK, boss.’
Chapter 14
Marlow
‘They don’t spend much on heating, do they?’ Beryl said with a shiver as we walked along the freezing corridor.
To access the Green Saloon we had to cross the Marble Room. A large room filled with fine French furniture, precious carpets from the Middle East and stuffed full with priceless works of art. It gave the impression of unrivaled luxury, but once again I had the distinct impression that the house was stalked by a frightening loneliness.
A footman—not the one from earlier—held open a set of tall double doors and ushered us into the Green Saloon. It was another opulent room with more works of art and expensive antiques, but it was much warmer here. A waiter stepped forward and asked us what we wanted to drink. Beryl ordered a glass of white wine and I asked for an American size double measure of Jack Daniel’s. The British idea of a double is laughable.
‘Right away, sir,’ he said and disappeared.
There were about twelve to fifteen people milling around, talking in small groups, but at our entrance almost everyone stopped talking, and was either openly or surreptitiously sizing us up. Maybe I’d had more whiskey than I had intended, but all the men appeared to have been dressed by the same tailor.
Almost immediately my gaze tangled with Olivia’s. She was conversing with a middle-aged couple, but she threw a shy smile in my direction. I nodded and looked away, and my eyes fell upon our hostess. Lady Swanson was standing by the super-large marble fireplace listening attentively to a tall, balding man. As I watched she broke away and came toward us, smiling as if seeing us was a dream come true.
‘Hello, how terribly sweet of you to come all the way from London,’ she trilled.
‘It was kind of you to ask us, Lady Swanson.’ I nodded toward Beryl. ‘This is Beryl Baker, my assistant.’
She smiled charmingly. ‘But of course, I remember you.’
‘You have such a beautiful home,’ Beryl gushed.
‘Yes,’ she said with a little laugh, ‘we rather like it, but it can be frightfully dreary down here, you know. No proper restaurants or theaters and freezing pipes all winter.’
‘I wouldn’t mind. It’s so beautiful,’ Beryl said. Her little face was quite red with excitement. ‘Oh, and thank you so much for inviting me.’
‘Not at all. I’m delighted to have you both here.’ Lady Swanson leaned forward, her eyes sparkling as if she was excluding the rest of the room, and sharing an intimate secret that only Beryl and I were privy to. She was a socially expert individual of the highest order, obviously. ‘Was there a lot of Friday traffic on the roads?’
‘No. It was fine,’ I said, hiding my amusement.
Beryl was still nodding vigorously in agreement when I cast my eye out for the waiter. He was walking toward me with a straight back and a tray with a glass of wine and my whiskey placed on a napkin square.
Beryl and I accepted our drinks and Lady Swanson said, ‘You must let me introduce you to my husband.’
We followed her toward a large, gilded grandfather clock where a rotund, balding, florid-faced man was standing stiffly next to a stout woman with a pink face, fat, heavily bejeweled hands, and a snooty tilt to her nose. Her lipstick had bled into the leathery creases around her mouth.
‘Darling,’ Lady Swanson said, ‘this is Dr. Kane, the hypnotherapist I was telling you about. The one that’s treating Vivi.’ She turned to me. ‘Dr. Marlow Kane, my husband, Lord William Elliot Swanson.’
So that was little Olivia’s nickname—Vivi. Totally unsuitable.
‘Ah,’ he said, his bushy gray eyebrows raised, as he took my hand and pumped it heartily. I could imagine him in a waxed jacket, gun in hand, whistling for his dogs.
‘Hello,’ I said, and listened while Lady Swanson introduced the woman with the greasy lipstick. She had a double-barreled last name that I did not bother to remember. She looked at me vaguely—a subtle method of telling me I belonged to an inferior class.
‘And this is Beryl Baker, his assistant,’ Lady Swanson said. With that piece of information the woman’s eyes completely glassed over.
At that point the butler caught Lady Swanson’s eye. She nodded and excused herself. Lord Swanson nodded blankly at Beryl and turned to me. ‘Did you have much trouble getting here?’
I sighed inwardly. ‘No. It was fine.’
‘No traffic? Don’t people leave London like lemmings at the weekend?’ he boomed.
‘Not this weekend.’
‘Jolly good.’
And with that the conversation was apparently over. He smiled at us in an expansive if dim way, and nodded us away.
I steered Beryl away. Olivia’s father was dull and not particularly bright, but his birthright as the male heir of the Swanson fortune meant that he was deferred to so sycophantically that he had no idea how uninteresting and stupid he really was. All these people who bowed and behaved as if the sun shone out of his ass were happy to go along with the illusion of his greatness because it kept their importance in the scheme of things secure.
We were drifting toward the tall, mullioned windows when a familiar voice said, ‘Hello. So glad you could make it.’
We turned around to face Olivia. She was wearing a velvet black dress with a high neckline and black lace sleeves. Her glossy hair was up in some sort of chignon that made me imagine taking it down and twisting it around my fist as I rammed
into her.
‘Hi,’ Beryl grinned.
‘I see you’ve met Daddy,’ she said softly, her silvery eyes straying from me to Beryl.
‘Yes. He seems…very nice,’ Beryl said.
Olivia’s expression said that she did not believe Beryl thought any such thing, but all she said was, ‘I’d like you both to meet my siblings.’
First was her sister, Lady Daphne.
She had inherited her mother’s beautiful eyes and she had very good skin. Otherwise she was, unfortunately, the spitting image of her father. She was only nineteen, but incredibly, she had already cultivated the critical, calculating hauteur of a dowager. Her voice was a sarcastic, assessing drawl and her cold gaze dismissed and traveled away from us even as she said, ‘How do you do?’
An awkward silence ensued as soon as the introductions were done. Olivia quickly herded us away and introduced us to a sleek man standing next to a painting of a dour ancestor, his eyes glazed with boredom. He was wearing a double-breasted, navy wool pinstripe suit, the pocket square, stuffed not folded, and the tie a different pattern but still working together perfectly. The tie knot was a gentleman’s knot, small, tight, four-in-hand with a dimple. Obviously a polo playing, champagne guzzling city boy.
Beryl said something quietly in Olivia’s ear and both ladies excused themselves. I presumed they were on their way to the powder room. My eyes nearly swiveled around to turn and watch her go.
‘So you’re the hypnotist?’ Jacobi Gough Swanson drawled, eyeing me curiously over the rim of his champagne glass.
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Mummy seems to think you’re rather wonderful.’
‘It’s not certain that will be her deathbed opinion yet.’
‘I have no doubt you’ll do very well,’ he said suavely, but some quickly hidden expression in his eyes made me wonder if Olivia had a secret enemy in him.
‘I don’t suppose you hunt?’ he asked.
‘As a matter of fact, I do.’ But not foxes, I added in my head.
His Frozen Heart Page 41