by Sara Craven
She forced a smile in return, her throat constricting. ‘Old times’ sake’. Old times that were over for ever. Did he really think she needed a reminder of those late summer days when he’d taught her the beauty of the high moors—taught her to love the lonely rocks, the cry of the curlew, and the great sweep of wind-driven cloud which was never far away?
Or was he just being cruel? Lydie wondered bleakly as they took their drinks over to a table beside the inglenook. Was he punishing her for having stayed in his home-place while he was in exile?
But I’d have gone with him, she thought, biting her lip. In spite of everything, all he had to do was ask— send for me, and I’d have been there. But there was nothing—nothing...
She was acutely conscious of him beside her on the worn, velvet-cushioned bench, of the brush of his thigh against hers.
She lifted her glass in a parody of a toast. Well—this is—kind of you,’ she said stiltedly.
He stared at her. ‘What the hell’s kindness got to do with it?’
‘You’ve rescued me from an awkward situation. And there must be so much else you could be doing tonight. So many other people to catch up with after all this time.’ She was aware that she was babbling and stopped abruptly.
‘At the moment,’ he said, ‘I’m catching up with you.’ She looked down at the table. ‘I haven’t moved very far.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘And I’m wondering why not. You’re a bright girl. You don’t have to limit yourself to what Thornshaugh has to offer.’
‘Nor do you.’
‘Touché,’ he said wryly. ‘But I always knew I’d have people depending on me—relying on me to safeguard their livelihoods. That makes a difference.’
Her heart skipped a beat. Was he talking about the workforce, or more personal responsibilities? She realised she didn’t want to know.
She hurried into speech again. ‘It’s the same for me now, in a way. The gallery’s providing an outlet for local artists—for creative people in the area generally—helping them find their feet and start to sell their work. That has its own importance.’
‘But you could have done that anywhere,’ he said.
She shrugged. ‘Nell likes Thornshaugh,’ she said. ‘She thinks it has potential.’
And I would never have gone away, she thought. Because all this time, God help me, I’ve been waiting—hoping that you’d come back.
‘And what about your own creativity?’ He lifted a hand and slowly stroked a strand of hair back form her forehead. ‘How do you propose to channel that?’
Her breath quickened. She wanted to pull away, but at the same time was reluctant to let the casual caress assume too much importance.
‘Oh, I’m the business end of the partnership,’ she said, trying to laugh. ‘I pay the bills and sweet-talk the bank manager.’
‘God help him,’ he said, an odd note in his voice.
‘You could persuade anyone to do anything against his better judgement, Madonna Lily.’
Lydie looked away. ‘Please don’t call me that,’ she said raggedly.
‘Does it disturb you so much—even after all this long time?’
His fingers captured her chin, making her face him. Eternity would make no difference, she thought achingly.
‘I didn’t say it disturbed me.’ This time she pushed his hand away.
‘Then why are you trembling?’ he questioned softly.
‘Hunger, I expect.’ She pinned on a smile. ‘We were too busy to eat our lunch today.’
For a moment he looked astonished, then he laughed. ‘I never thought of that. Finish your drink, then, beauty, and I’ll feed you.’
The cool grey gaze held hers. ‘And then,’ he added gently, ‘we’ll decide what to do for the rest of the evening. Agreed?’
In a voice she barely recognised, Lydie heard herself say, ‘Yes.’ And wondered exactly what she’d agreed to.
CHAPTER SIX
THEY had a corner table, candlelit and secluded, in a long, low room where most of the tables seemed to be for couples. Carved wooden columns supported the ceiling, garlanded by swathes of dried hops. French windows opening onto a terrace bright with flowering tubs took advantage of the late June evening.
They drank Frascati and shared a huge platter of Mediterranean prawns grilled with garlic butter and lemon juice, followed by chicken in a sauce thick with tomatoes and peppers. A girl with long hair and wistful eyes played the mandolin and sang in a sweet, high voice.
Lydie said, ‘She’s good,’ and Marius agreed. ‘And I like the decor,’ she added. The walls had been rough-plastered and painted off-white. The table linen was in shades of deep amber and terracotta. ‘Except for the candle-holders.’ She touched one with a critical finger. ‘We have some far nicer ones at the gallery. Perhaps I can do a deal.’
‘Some other time,’ he said. ‘I want you to forget business completely tonight and concentrate wholly on pleasure.’
She pretended to be scandalised to cover the faint, dangerous flush of awareness warming her face. She let her lashes sweep down to veil her eyes in case they betrayed too much. She said hurriedly, trying to make a joke of it, ‘But we’re a Benco subsidiary now. We have to try harder.’
His eyes met hers. He said softly, ‘When you look like that, Madonna Lily, you don’t have to try at all.’
Her flush deepened uncontrollably. She was burning up—consumed by a flame which had nothing to do with embarrassment.
‘But I forgot,’ he went on. ‘You don’t like to be called that any longer. Tell me, have you reached the right age for Lydia yet?’
She recalled telling him once that when she’d been a small child she hadn’t been able to manage the extra syllable on her name.
‘And now I prefer Lydie anyway,’ she added. ‘Maybe one day I’ll be grown-up enough for the sophisticated version.’
She’d known exactly when that would be—on the day she stood beside him in the parish church at Thornshaugh. I Lydia Catherine take thee Marius...
How simple it had all seemed then. How inevitable.
She said slowly, ‘Fancy you remembering that.’
‘I’ve forgotten very little.’
On the surface it was a commonplace remark, yet some faint discord set alarm bells jangling along Lydie’s nerve-endings.
She had to be careful, she reminded herself. She couldn’t allow herself to be seduced by the charm of their surroundings, and the stealthy, dangerous glow that his company always engendered.
She couldn’t afford to forget, either, exactly what Marius had done to her.
She sent him a wary glance, but his attention seemed to be absorbed in refilling their glasses.
She said, with a slight shrug, ‘Anyway, I haven’t got to the Lydia stage yet. I seem to be stuck with the revised version.’
Marius lifted his glass, studying the colour of the wine. He said lightly, ‘I confess it was a surprise to come back and find you hadn’t changed your name even more fundamentally. I’d expected to find you married.’
Her heartbeat quickened. ‘I suppose I could say the same for you.’ She managed a small laugh. ‘Or have you got a wife or something hidden away somewhere?’
The grey eyes watched her meditatively.
‘No wife,’ he said. ‘Or anything.’
‘No encumbrances of any kind?’ She exaggerated the words, opening her eyes wide in a parody of curiosity, trying to hide the fact that her questions were in deadly earnest.
It was his turn to shrug. ‘You know the saying—he travels fastest who travels alone.’
But there was someone, she thought. A girl who existed like a shadow in her mind, an image without a name or even a face. A girl who’d also lain in his arms and responded to the rapture of his lovemaking. A girl who’d found herself equally abandoned when Marius had gone away, but who had, at least, had his baby.
Whereas I, she thought, was left with no one and nothing.
There was a sudden tightness in h
er throat. Her appetite had gone, and she pushed her plate away.
‘Is something wrong?’
‘Not a thing.’ She kept her voice light and bright. ‘I simply can’t eat any more.’
‘No pudding?’
‘Heavens, no.’ She forced a giggle. ‘I have to watch my figure.’
‘If we’re talking in clichés,’ Marius said sardonically, ‘I suppose I should say that’s a pleasure you can safely leave to me.’
Lydie pulled a face. ‘Oh, please. I wasn’t looking for compliments—however trite.’
‘I know that.’ She felt her flush deepening as the searching grey glance swept over her again. ‘You were a lovely child, Lydie. Now you’re a beautiful woman.’
His voice was serious, his face unsmiling, as if the words had been forced from him against his will.
He had called her beautiful five years ago, she remembered with equal reluctance, his voice raw and shaking as he’d caressed her, all the barriers he’d built against the world torn away.
One flesh, she thought. That night we became one flesh. I thought they were just words. That it couldn’t really happen. But it was true—the ultimate miracle. The two of us united—inseparable.
Now the man who’d taught her such complete abandon was a guarded stranger again, taking refuge behind a wall of silence and evasion.
Talk to me, she called to him silently. Tell me what happened. I have to know.
In the end Marius ordered fresh fruit for their dessert. They ate nectarines and dark plums with flesh as golden and sweet as honey. Lydie licked the juice from her lips and heard his swift intake of breath—saw the grey eyes sharpen to a new intensity, move from her mouth to the thrust of her breasts under her shirt.
Suddenly, she was aware that her nipples were hardening against the thin fabric in a response she could neither deny nor, seemingly, resist.
And she was watching him in turn. Looking at his hands as they moved to emphasise a point he’d just made, or held the stern of his glass, and imagined them—remembered them touching her, the long fingers tender against her skin, moving slowly, sensuously...
She thought in a kind of panic, Dear God, what’s happening to me?
She should not be here with him, and she knew it. She’d have been safer at Greystones, enduring Hugh’s wounded looks and unspoken reproaches.
She felt as if she was being enfolded in some invisible web of memory and secret, dark delight, drawn down some path where she knew she should not venture.
She should make some excuse, she knew. Tell him she had to leave—say anything...
But she said nothing. Just sat there as the enchantment gathered her up—intensified as the ache of yearning, so long subdued, diffused into sharper, more potent emotion, as the only reality became her own passionate need.
The meal drew to its leisurely conclusion, the waiter bringing coffee, and Sambucca, the coffee beans burning with a vivid blue flame in the tiny glasses.
They were among the last to leave. When the waiter brought the bill, he handed Lydie a flower—a carnation in deep clove-pink.
‘Oh, how lovely.’ She inhaled its scent, brushing the petals against her mouth.
Marius said softly, ‘Lovely, indeed.’ But he wasn’t looking at the flower.
She felt a long quiver of guilty excitement tremble through her body. She was frightened, yet at the same time exultant. She reached for her bag, but emotion made her clumsy and she knocked it to the ground, the contents spilling out onto the flagged floor.
‘Ah, signorina.’ The waiter knelt, and so did Marius helping her pick things up. ‘I hope your mirror not break.’ He passed over her compact. ‘No seven years’ bad luck for you.’
It was intact. And I think, she whispered inwardly, that my luck could be on the turn.
‘This was under the chair.’ Marius was holding out Darrell Corbin’s cheque.
‘Oh, heavens, was it?’ That was appalling carelessness, she berated herself, flushing, as she zipped the cheque into an inside pocket this time for safe-keeping.
There was a silence, then he said, ‘I’ll get the car.’
That was all he said, but she knew quite suddenly and definitely that something had changed.
She stared after him, watching his tall figure stride to the door and disappear, and she wanted to run after him, even though the car park was only about fifty yards away.
Instead, she fastened her bag, then followed Marius without haste, smiling her thanks at the waiter as she left.
She was a girl who’d had a wonderful meal, she thought with quiet detachment. In fact, a wonderful evening which was suddenly, and inexplicably, over.
The night breeze struck a chill through her shirt as she waited. She heard the impatient growl of the engine and saw the car’s headlights approach, like great golden eyes seeking her in the darkness.
Marius opened the passenger door and she ran round and climbed in beside him. A tape was playing. Music to shelter behind, she thought; to make conversation unnecessary. This was the old Marius once more, with all the barriers firmly in place.
She was trembling again, but not, this time, with anticipation or pleasure.
She wanted to scream at him at the top of her voice, Don’t do this to me, but instead she said, deliberately casual, ‘That’s a terrific place.’
‘Yes, Nadine was quite right about it.’ His reply was like a slap across the face. And a deliberate one, she was sure, reminding her that she was not, and never had been, the only one in his life.
As if she needed any such reminder.
She didn’t venture any more remarks, just sat, rigidly, her mind churning, as the car ate up the miles back to Greystones.
He stopped outside the front door. He said courteously, ‘If you’d like to get out, Lydie, I’ll put the car away.’
‘Yes, of course.’ She fumbled with the seat belt, and with a barely repressed sigh he leaned across and released it for her. A breath of his cologne reached her—the old sharp, musky fragrance, totally personal, instantly recognisable.
She turned and put her lips softly and fleetingly to his cheek. Felt him tense—almost flinch at the brief contact. And could have wept.
She said calmly and sedately, ‘Goodnight, Marius. And—thank you.’
‘My pleasure.’ His voice was cool, noncommittal. She watched the car’s tail-lights vanish, then went into the house alone.
Not again, Lydie thought as she paced restlessly up and down her bedroom carpet. This couldn’t be happening again. She pressed her hands to her hot cheeks.
One moment she’d seemed so close to Marius, wrapped in an intimacy which had been almost tangible, the next, banished to some kind of outer darkness, without a word of explanation or regret. The misery of the last five years resurfaced in microcosm.
But she wasn’t going to submit tamely to having her emotions ripped to shreds all over again, she thought rawly. This time she was going to find out exactly what game he’d been playing all evening.
But tonight was only part of it, of course. All the other unanswered questions still lay below the surface of her consciousness, savage and corrosive. However painful it might prove, this time she was going to demand the whole truth.
It seemed hours before he came upstairs. Straining her ears, she could hear the murmur of conversation as he said goodnight to Austin.
She sat tensely on the edge of the bed.in her robe and nightgown, and waited. Downstairs, she heard a clock chime one. Otherwise the house seemed dark and silent.
She’d waited like this once before...
Quietly she let herself out of her room and trod barefoot down the passage to Marius’s room. A crack of light still showed under the door, so at least he wasn’t asleep—he was probably reading in bed.
She turned the handle gently and slipped into the room. The bed was certainly turned down ready for him, but the room was empty, and she stood for a moment, her mind a blank, feeling a little foolish, until her attention w
as alerted by the sound of the shower running from the adjacent bathroom.
Lydie hesitated. Maybe it would be better to postpone any confrontation until daylight after all, she thought, her eyes travelling reluctantly round the room.
It was barely recognisable now as her one-time sanctuary. Her mother’s flair for interior decoration had ruthlessly stripped away every trace of Marius’s presence. New wallpaper, curtains and bedcover had transformed it into just another anonymous spare room—exactly as Debra had intended, presumably.
Even the old brass bedstead had been got rid of, and there was no hiding place under the wide modern divan which had taken its place, however much she might suddenly feel the need of one, she thought wryly.
The only thing that hadn’t changed was the scent of lilies flooding in through the open window from the garden below, exquisite and evocative in the same measure.
She thought, I definitely should not be here. But as she turned to go the bathroom door swung open and Marius emerged, his brown hair curling with damp, a towel draped casually round his hips.
He stopped dead when he saw her, his expression hardening to stone.
‘What are you doing here?’
I couldn’t stay away. That was what she’d said the last time he’d asked her that question in this room. Then she’d unfastened her dressing gown and let it fall to the floor, watching the grey eyes warm to slow, unquenchable flame as he absorbed every inch of her young, naked beauty.
But that wouldn’t happen this time. The glitter in Marius’s eyes was more like ice.
But then—that first time—that only time—she’d been so sure of him and his desire for her—his love...
Whereas this time—tonight—she wasn’t sure of a thing—except that she’d been a fool to come here.
‘Answer me, damn you,’ he said harshly. ‘Why are you here?’
Lydie lifted her chin. ‘I want to know what happened tonight.’
‘I thought we had an excellent meal in enjoyable surroundings.’
‘No.’ She could have stamped in frustration. ‘I mean—what went wrong? What did I do—or say?’
‘Nothing at all.’ Again that smile that didn’t reach his eyes. ‘You were perfect company, my dear. But all good things must come to an end.’