Darkest Longings

by Susan Lewis

  He sat up, wrapped his arms about his knees and buried his face.

  ‘Would you like to make love to me?’ she said softly.

  She watched him, her heart thudding with dread as she waited for the rejection. It was too soon, she had frightened him, and now she would lose him … But then his hand reached out for hers and his voice was muffled by his sleeve as he said, ‘How can one subject you, the most beautiful woman in the world, to such ignominy? One cannot debase you with the lust one is unable to control. You are sweet and perfect, and you touch one’s soul with your kindness.’

  Sitting up, she put an arm about his shoulders and pressed her cheek against his. ‘Do I have to tell you, a poet, the beauty of making love?’ she said. ‘You will not be debasing me, cheri, not if you love me.’

  ‘Oh, Monique,’ he groaned, and clutching her to him, he pressed his lips brutally to hers.

  Gently she pushed him away, then holding his face in her hands she said, ‘Let me show you,’ and parting her lips, she pulled his mouth back to hers and kissed him with a searing tenderness.

  When she let him go, he sobbed and threw himself back in the grass. ‘One is so useless!’ he cried, flinging an arm across his eyes. ‘I want you so much, Monique, but one doesn’t know how … One has never …’

  ‘Ssh,’ she said, putting a finger over his lips. Then pushing her hands beneath his pullover, she fanned her fingers across his chest. His eyes were still covered by his arm, but she could feel the rapid beat of his heart. ‘Look at me,’ she murmured, as she lowered her hands to his waist and began to tug his shirt from his trousers.

  He opened his eyes, but she could see that he was too overwhelmed to hold her gaze. Smiling, she took his hand and placed it on her breast. His eyes closed again as he moaned softly. Knowing that he would never have the courage to do it himself, she unbuttoned her blouse, then pulled it free of her skirt and slipped it over her shoulders. ‘Look at me,’ she said again.

  When he saw the sharp points of her nipples pushing against the silk camisole, his breath caught in his throat, but before he could turn away she lifted his hands and kissed them. ‘Touch me,’ she said. ‘Touch me here, Freddy,’ and lowering his hands to her breasts, she pressed them against her.

  ‘You are so beautiful,’ he murmured. ‘Oh, Monique, you are so beautiful.’

  She sat quietly as he tentatively lifted her camisole over her breasts and began to fondle her bare skin. Her nipples ached for his lips, but then he took them between his fingers and rolled them gently. She let her head fall back, murmuring and showing him what pleasure he was giving her. Then, when she judged the time right, she lifted a hand and placed it over the front of his trousers.

  He froze, then his hands fell to the ground and his head rolled from side to side as he began to groan. Slowly she began to unbutton his fly, watching him and pulling his hand back to her breast.

  ‘When we are married we can do this all the time,’ she told him, as she began to ease his trousers over his hips.

  ‘Yes, oh yes,’ he moaned, by now too enslaved by the sensation of her fingers as they closed around him to think beyond them.

  With one hand she started gently to massage him, while with the other she turned his face to hers. ‘Kiss me,’ she said, leaning towards him. His lips parted, and as she pushed her tongue between them, she tightened the grip on his penis.

  ‘Oh my God!’ he spluttered. ‘Oh my God!’ The semen was shuddering from his body in urgent, excruciating spurts. ‘Oh no!’ he cried, pulling himself away from her. ‘No, no, no!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, trying to turn him back. ‘Freddy, it doesn’t matter.’

  But he had covered his face with his hands and raised his leg so that she could no longer see his shame.

  ‘Freddy, I love you!’ she cried. ‘It doesn’t matter. Please, let me hold you.’

  ‘Oh Monique,’ he sobbed, as he buried his face in her neck. ‘Monique! What a child you must think me.’

  ‘No, you are a man, Freddy. A man who is finding love for the first time.’

  ‘I am so ashamed.’

  She smiled, and kissed and stroked his hair until finally he pulled away.

  ‘Can we try again?’ he asked. Then, colouring, he added, ‘I don’t mean today. I mean, can we…? Maybe tomorrow…’

  ‘Of course, chéri. But not tomorrow. I must go with Maman to Paris tomorrow. But I shall return next week. You will wait for me?’

  ‘Yes, oh yes!’ he gasped.

  ‘Oh, Freddy,’ she laughed. ‘You are so romantic!’

  As they strolled back down the hill, hand in hand, she leaned against him and said, ‘I wonder what everyone will say when we tell them?’

  ‘Tell them what?’ he said, horrified.

  ‘That we are going to be married, silly,’ she laughed. ‘When should we tell them? Shall we do it today, when we get back? But no, maybe it’s a little too early. I think we should wait until I return from Paris. Oh, Freddy, I’m so happy. I love you so much. I want to hold you in my arms and never let you go. Do you feel the same way, chéri? Tell me you love me too. Tell me you’ve waited all your life for this to happen. But you’re only nineteen, how could you have known it would happen so soon? But me, I have been waiting for you…

  ‘I knew that one day you would come, that there was a reason for all the rejection I have suffered. But those men, pah! They mean nothing now. They are épiciers compared to you – you, who are so sweet and so full of love. How am I going to keep this to myself, Freddy, when I want to shout it from the hilltops? I think, don’t you, that we must spend our summers in France, but I can barely wait to see your home, my darling. And soon, very soon, we shall fill it with children …’

  He let her go on, too stunned to interrupt. All he was thinking was, when, during those few ecstatic moments, had he asked her to marry him? He had no recollection of it, but he must have asked her or she wouldn’t be carrying on like this. He felt almost suffocated by his own breath as he tried to speak, tried to assure her that he loved her. Only an hour ago he had hardly been able to stop himself saying it, yet now …

  Why was it that she suddenly seemed like a stranger when they had just shared such intimate moments? Why was it that he wanted to pull his arm away, to escape her, when earlier the very touch of her fingertips had set him on fire with passion? Why was it that everything she was saying repelled him? The more she went on, the worse it became. Even the sound of her voice, that beautiful throaty voice, now grated on his ears.

  By the time her chauffeur had dropped him at Montvisse, and she had promised a thousand times that she would call him that night and then again from Paris the next day, he was beginning to realize that he would never again recapture the feelings he had had beside the lake. He still could not be sure why they had changed, and as he turned from waving Monique off and went into the château, he had no idea what he was going to do about it. He went upstairs to his room, informing the butler that he wouldn’t be wanting dinner that evening.

  He sat on the edge of his bed, letting the hours slip by. He saw his life’s plans, his hopes and dreams float away from him. He longed to talk to someone, but who could he tell? Dissy was no longer in France, and it was unthinkable that he should mention this to Céline. In the end, he realized that there was no way out. If he had asked Monique to marry him during those lust-crazed moments, then it would make him the greatest cad on earth if he were to spurn her after she had all but given herself to him.

  At ten o’clock his valet knocked, and with a heavy heart Freddy prepared himself for bed. The joy of being in France had been extinguished, and he longed only to go home.

  It was one of those crisp days of early autumn, when the light was so clear that Paris was even more beautiful than in the spring. The leaves on the trees lining the avenue Foch glinted gold in the brilliant sunlight, and the air was bracing. The breeze that wafted in through the open window of Élise Pascale’s drawing-room carried not only the
sleepy purr and growl of afternoon traffic but also the haunting strains of ‘Tout va bien’ played on a gramophone in an apartment below.

  Élise adored this time of year – but then she adored every time of year, she adored her whole life, and never a day passed when she did not thank the Good Lord for enabling her to use her exceptional beauty to such unforeseen advantage.

  It was her striking resemblance to Titian’s Venus of Urbino that had started her on the road to success, for that was what had first captured the eye of Gustave Gallet, the now forgotten artist who had passed through Toulouse ten years ago, and in return for her favours had taken her to Paris. Before leaving Toulouse her ambition had been merely to marry a man of means and status, and when Gallet first appeared she had already made some headway with the son of the local préfet. But the moment Paris was mentioned, she had seen all her dreams start to come true … Ever since her daughter was old enough to understand, and right up to the time of her own death, Élise Pascale’s mother had read her stories of the great courtesans of France, La Pompadour, Diane de Poitiers, Agnés Sorrel, women whose rise and fall had never ceased to fascinate them both. Élise wanted to be one of them, she wanted her name too to go down in history, and it had angered her that she was living in a France where there were no longer any kings, where she could never be a royal mistress. But then Gustave Gallet had taken her to Paris, and she had known that somehow she was going to make herself the most talked about woman in all France.

  Unfortunately, soon after their arrival in the city Gallet had died, and for three years Élise had been an artist’s model, moving from one cramped studio to the next. Then she had acquired her own modest apartment on the Quai de la Tournelle, paid for by an ageing film director, Alain Mureau. She had grown fond of Mureau during their eight months together, but when, at a party to celebrate his latest film, she was presented to Gérard, the bohemian son of the Duc de Verlons, she had no compunction whatever in consigning her lover to the past. And with Gérard her career really began to take off, for he took great delight in introducing her to his wealthy and influential friends, and Élise soon discovered that there was little she wouldn’t do to get what she wanted, and no one she minded hurting along the way.

  And now here she was, luxuriously ensconced on the avenue Foch. She never missed her daily prayer of gratitude – but it was at the shrine of her own voluptuous body that she most frequently worshipped, for it was that wonderful body, that face with its brazenly alluring features, that had got her where she was today. That, and ambition – which had seized her first all those years ago in Toulouse, and even now, despite her success, still burned like a fire in her veins.

  And now, as she stood at her drawing-room window looking along the avenue to the Arc de Triomphe, Élise felt so triumphant herself, so happy, that she wanted to laugh. For she was not alone in the room; and her engagements for the rest of the day were even now being cancelled by Gisèle, her maid, who had taken the diary to the telephone in the dining-room so that she should not disturb her mistress and their unexpected visitor.

  As yet François had said little, but it was not in his nature to indulge in idle talk, and besides, his presence here, at her apartment, told Élise all she wanted to know. It would be unwise to express her delight, though, even if her heart was singing like a teenager’s; François was well aware of the effect he had on her but he hated her to show her feelings. So Élise kept them to herself, and displayed instead the kind of bored sophistication and cat-like indolence he preferred. It was like a game, a game she had come to excel at: always careful to read his moods before she spoke, judging when to disguise her love beneath a mask of indifference; always concealing the deep, secret fear that one day she would lose him. For she loved him as she had never loved any other man.

  She took a deep breath, then turned from the window to look across the sumptuously furnished drawing-room. With its muted shades of turquoise and yellow it was a blatantly feminine room, arranged so that every chair and sofa faced the tall arched windows and the white wrought-iron balustrades of the balconies beyond. As she looked at François a teasing light flashed in her narrowed emerald eyes. ‘So,’ she drawled in her low, husky voice, ‘you are married.’

  François was sitting in an Aubusson tapestried armchair, his long legs stretched out in front of him, a Gauloise in one hand and a glass of his own wine in the other. For answer, he merely raised an eyebrow, took a final draw on his cigarette and ground it out in the ashtray beside him.

  The corners of Élise’s soft mouth twitched. Lifting a hand-mirror from the little table beside her, she inspected her delicately rouged lips and patted the waves of her expertly coiffed yellow-gold hair. ‘I didn’t expect to see you so soon,’ she remarked.

  When again he didn’t answer, she put down her mirror and went to sit near him on the sofa. ‘Weren’t you supposed to be in Biarritz for two weeks?’ she asked.

  ‘My wife was eager to leave,’ François answered, taking a sip of wine.

  ‘She didn’t find Biarritz to her liking?’

  He met her eyes, and after a moment or two the corner of his mouth pulled into a smile. ‘Shall we just say that my wife prefers to be at Lorvoire?’ he said smoothly.

  She hated him referring to The Bitch as his wife, but said nothing, understanding that she would be wise to let the matter rest there.

  ‘Have you heard from von Pappen?’ he asked, holding out his glass to be refilled.

  ‘I thought he’d left a message for you at Poitiers?’

  ‘He did. Do you know where he is now?’

  ‘In Munich, I believe.’

  François was quiet for a moment. Then, as she handed him his wine, he said, ‘I am leaving for Berlin in a few days. I want him to meet me there.’

  ‘Berlin?’

  ‘I have a new customer there with a penchant for Lorvoire wine.’

  Their eyes met fleetingly, and Élise smiled. Sitting down again, she rested her finely pointed chin on her hand and watched him as he sat once more immersed in the privacy of his thoughts.

  It was two years since he had come into her life, and almost as long since she had fallen so desperately in love with him that, when he asked it, she had abandoned every one of her other rich and titled lovers and kept herself for him alone. From that time on, he had become her whole life. Only once had she made the mistake of telling him how she felt about him. In return he had made it plain that he did not love her, and did not now – nor ever would – entertain the slightest intention of marrying a whore from the gutters of Toulouse.

  It wasn’t the first time he had called her that, but it was the first time she had allowed her fury and pain to get the better of her. The clock she hurled at him had missed, but the bone china pot she threw after it found its mark, and blood began to flow from the barely healed scar on his face as he moved purposefully towards her. Terror kept her fighting, beating her hands against his chest and insulting him with all the foul language she knew, until he threw her across the sofa and began to make love to her. But it was hate, not love, for at the end he had left her begging and screaming for the total satisfaction he sadistically denied her.

  ‘Love me if you must,’ he told her when he had had his fill of her, ‘but I don’t want to hear it. All I want from you is what I have just taken.’

  After that she hadn’t seen him for a month, during which time she had heard the rumours about Hortense de Bourchain. Immediately she had resolved never to see him again; but when at last he came again, when he stood looking at her with those mesmeric black eyes, she had felt herself drawn to him as a moth to a candle. She had run towards him, ready to embrace him – but he put out a hand and held her at a distance, looking at her. Then, with a smile that twisted through her heart like a knife, he had lifted his hand to her cheek, saying, ‘I shall never repeat this, but perhaps you should know that I desire you as I’ve never desired another woman in my life. I will give you all that I am able to give, and it will be to you, and
you alone, that I shall turn for fulfilment. However, your declarations of love revolt me – which is why I spoke as I did. And I warn you, that is the only response you will ever get from me should you be so unwise as to mention your feelings again.’

  And then he had pulled her into his arms, and kissed her with a tenderness he had never shown her before. That was when, looking up into those curiously compelling eyes, she first began to recognize the extent of his power.

  In the months that followed she had seen him exercise that same anomalous power over politicians and generals, and she began to realize that François was playing some sort of political game. By observing him closely, she soon understood, too, the nature of that game. It was dangerous, more than dangerous, at times it was lethal, but then she had suspected from the beginning that any association with François de Lorvoire would be exceptional …

  After a time, in quiet ways, she had let him know that she understood what he was doing and that he could trust her. To her surprise he seemed to accept it – though he was always scrupulously careful to conceal from her the precise details of the information he auctioned while they entertained ambassadors, generals and even prime ministers at her apartment; and though she had tried on many occasions, she had never been able to discover the source of his information. What she did know was that he had connections in the corridors of power that went right to the very top, not only in Paris, but in London, Rome and Berlin. In these critical times, such connections could be extremely profitable. She also knew – as their dinner guests did not – that François’ patriotism was, to say the least, questionable: his dealings were often complicated, even tortuous, but ultimately the information he had for sale went to the highest bidder. And always before the information was handed over, François would graciously accept a munificent order for the unexceptional though perfectly palatable, Lorvoire wine. For a proprietor of vineyards, selling wine was the most natural cover in the world, and it enabled François to move about Europe without exciting suspicion …