‘It seems so. Do you?’
There was a moment of silence. Then, ‘Yes,’ she said consideringly. ‘Though I think you may have flattered me a little.’
He half smiled, but did not rise to the bait.
She wandered away from him, lifted the lid of the piano, played a few notes one-handed. Beyond the window a shifting mist drifted, ghostly, a nebulous curtain between the house and the outside world. The fire crackled in the grate.
Isobel executed a gentle ripple of notes. ‘It’s November next week,’ she said inconsequentially.
‘Yes.’
‘Winter. Dark evenings. Dark mornings. Cold skies. The weather’s been really horrible this year. How’s your leg?’
‘Much better, thank you.’ He had stopped work and was watching her.
She bent to the keys and brought her other hand to the keyboard. There was a brief and accomplished flurry of Chopin. She lifted her bright head. ‘When it’s better, will you have to go back?’
‘I suppose so, yes.’
‘You haven’t spoken about the war.’
‘No.’
‘Is it awful?’
‘Yes.’ His smile was lopsided.
Isobel straightened, and closed the lid of the piano with quiet precision. ‘Papa says it will end soon.’
‘I’m sure Papa is right.’
She smiled, quickly and mischievously. ‘Papa always is. It’s a habit he finds hard to shed.’
His laughter was genuinely amused.
She walked to him, still smiling, her cornflower eyes brilliant and steady. ‘When it’s over, will you go to Italy?’
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’
‘The wine. The sunshine. The mountains. Isn’t it what you most want in the world?’
In the mist-enclosed silence that followed the words, he kissed her.
As she had intended that he would.
Footsteps sounded in the hall outside. Kit stepped back, his colour high, his breathing uneven. ‘I’m sorry.’
Isobel shook her head a little, smiling calmly, as Lucy came through the door carrying a tray. ‘I’m not. Oh, look, how nice – Lucy’s brought you some tea.’ And with another beguiling smile she left him.
In her room she sat at her dressing-table, chin on hand, gazing into the mirror, studying her own image intently. Her eyes blazed. She was beautiful, and she knew it. He had kissed her. He had kissed her! And he would kiss her again. She would make sure of that.
Humming softly, she jumped up and took a few dancing steps about the room. It had happened; at last it had happened. Life had finally come to Isobel Brookes; and Isobel Brookes was going to make sure that she grabbed it with both hands before it passed her by.
*
The days were short and the weather dull; Kit could work only until about three in the afternoon. Poppy, released at last from lessons and from nursery lunch, joined him in the drawing-room at about one-thirty that day. As the door opened, he lifted his head, sharply expectant, but relaxed and grinned as the small brown head appeared. ‘May I come in?’
He beckoned, smiling. ‘Of course, Mouse. Come on.’
She skipped into the room. Her straight brown hair had slipped from its fastenings and hung untidily about her face. She came to the easel and studied the half-finished picture. ‘You’ve done a lot of Isobel,’ she observed, a little abrasively.
His grin widened. ‘I’m saving the best till last.’
The child laughed at that. ‘You’re teasing.’
He looked at her for a moment, thoughtful and affectionate. ‘Perhaps I am. Perhaps I’m not.’
‘How much longer will it take?’
He shrugged, bent again to the canvas. ‘Three, four days. Something like that.’ He hesitated for a second. ‘Perhaps a little longer.’ The room was very quiet. Fog billowed to the windows. Kit turned his head, listening. Was that a footstep? She’d come back, surely? Wouldn’t she?
Poppy threw herself into a velvet-upholstered armchair. ‘Have you heard the news?’
He glanced at her. ‘What news?’
‘The Turks have surrendered. Papa read it from the paper. He says that Germany will have to give up now.’
‘He’s probably right.’
A companionable silence fell. She watched, engrossed, the movements of his brush. ‘I think you’re very clever.’
‘Thank you. I think you are, too.’
‘Me?’ The word was a squeal of laughter. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I bet you can do arithmetic.’
‘Well, of course I can. Can’t you?’ He shook his head dolefully.
She eyed him suspiciously. ‘You’re teasing again.’
His grin was non-committal.
Poppy jumped from the chair and wandered to the window, stood peering into the fog. ‘What horrible weather. Have you seen Isobel today?’
His hand stilled, and there was a brief moment of silence. Then, ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She popped in to check on progress this morning. Why?’
Poppy shrugged. ‘I just wondered where she was, that’s all. I haven’t seen her all day. I suppose she must have gone out.’
He was surprised at the strength of his disappointment. ‘Oh? On a day like this?’
‘She’s probably gone to see awful Mary Seward. She lives in the house at the end of the lane. She’s the same age as Isobel. They pretend they’re friends.’
Kit cocked a puzzled eyebrow. ‘Pretend to be friends? How do you mean?’
Poppy turned from the window, shrugging prosaically. ‘They can’t stand each other really. The only thing they talk about is those silly books they read. But there isn’t anyone else around, you see. It’s a bit of a shame. I mean – Isobel’s bad enough, but Mary—’ she rolled her eyes and pulled a face ‘—she’s gruesome.’
Kit laughed. ‘Mouse, you’re priceless.’ He applied himself to the portrait again, smiling as Poppy clattered out ‘Chopsticks’ on the piano, trying to tell himself that it did not matter that a flighty girl had kissed him and run away, apparently not to return. Telling himself that even if she did, it could only lead to trouble, and trouble was something he had quite enough of at the moment.
Trying, unsuccessfully, not to remember the touch of her hand, the yielding of her lips under his. His hand shook a little. ‘Blast it!’ he muttered, and reached for a rag to repair the damage.
Poppy, however was wrong; Isobel had not gone to see her friend Mary. She was in her room, sitting at her small writing desk, a scrap of paper in front of her. Her smooth, prettily manicured fingernails clicked upon the desk as she drummed her fingers nervously. She could not decide; was she being too bold? Too precipitate? And yet – if she did nothing – might she not regret it for ever? The one thing they did not have was time. Any day now he might have to leave, to go back to France. The thought terrified her, for him and for herself. She reached for a pen.
Kit was tidying his things away when she slipped through the door of the drawing-room. Hearing her, he spun round. Swiftly she put a finger to her lips, enjoining him to silence. He took a step towards her and in a second his arms were about her, his lips on her hair. For a moment she clung to him, then shook her head quickly and struggled free. ‘No, Kit,’ she whispered. ‘Not now. Not here.’
‘Then when?’ He, too, was whispering fiercely.
‘Where?’
She took his hand, folded a small piece of paper into it, turned and sped back to the door. Once there she turned. Her eyes glowed with excitement. She touched her fingers to her lips, blew a kiss and was gone.
For a moment Kit did not move. It had happened so quickly that he had hardly taken breath. He looked down at the crumpled piece of paper in his hand and smoothed it carefully.
The message was simple: ‘The summer house. 8 o’clock.’
*
The summer house stood on a rise of land some few hundred yards behind the main house beneath a great, spreading copper beech, overlooking the tennis court and facing we
st to catch the evening sun. On a fine summer afternoon the view was splendid, the distant waters of the river reflecting the sunlight, glinting like a sequined tapestry through the curtain of the riverside willows. The house was a spacious affair, wood-built and with a wide, covered veranda. Elizabeth was fond of taking tea there, George even fonder of surveying his property from its height; before the advent of a war that was to destroy them, a couple of generations of young people had used it as headquarters for tennis tournaments. It was the perfect refuge from a cool spring breeze or from warm summer rain. On a dank and foggy late October evening it gave at least some protection from the chill. Kit, bare-headed, his shoulders propped against the wall, leaned in the misty shadows of the veranda, cupped his hand over the flame of his lighter as he lit a cigarette. It was ten minutes past eight.
The house loomed beneath him, wreathed in fog, its lighted windows glowing muted gold. He could smell woodsmoke in the thickened air. Water dripped from the bare branches above him, splattering on to the wooden roof, surreally loud in the still darkness. Moisture stood in his hair and on the rough fibres of his tweed jacket. The cold was beginning to creep to his bones.
Would she come?
It seemed that he had been waiting for an eternity. It had actually been half an hour. Carefully he lit his lighter again, peered at his watch. Twelve minutes past.
Something rustled on the lawn beneath him. He lifted his head sharply, like a scenting animal, straining his eyes into the shifting, disorientating fog. The glow of the windows dimmed as a particularly thick patch drifted in from the river. Sound was muted. Nothing happened.
How long should he give her? Was this some kind of game? Was she sitting safe and warm beside the drawing-room fire, modest and smiling, knowing he was here, watching, waiting, wanting her? Memories stirred, and he winced. No. Never again. No woman would ever treat him like that again.
‘Kit?’ Her voice was soft, endearingly unsure. ‘Kit, are you there?’
Warmth flooded him. ‘I’m here.’
She materialised out of the fog, shrouded in a cape and hood, a ghost in the cold mist. He saw the pale blur of her face as she lifted her head to look at him. For a suspended moment there was stillness. Neither moved. Then he took a step and held out his hand. In a second she had run up the steps to the veranda and was in his arms. He held her, rocking her, holding her fast to him.
‘I’m sorry I’m late. I had to say I had a headache – it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be – Mama made a great fuss and insisted I take an aspirin—’
The fog billowed silent and isolating about them. ‘Come,’ she said and caught his hand, drawing him towards the door of the summer house. It stuck for a moment, then flew open, screeching in the silence. ‘Have you got a light? There’s a little lamp in here somewhere and in this pea-souper no one will notice if we light it.’
Kit flicked his lighter again. The room was furnished with a wooden table, several rattan chairs and a low two-seater couch. A couple of tennis rackets were propped in a corner. The windows were shuttered, closed for the winter. Upon the table stood a small lamp. As he lit it, it guttered and flared before settling down to a steady glow. Isobel put back the damp hood from her bright hair. Moisture dung to the tendrils that framed her face. The hand he held was cold, and trembled in his. She looked very young and very vulnerable. There was a moment of silence.
‘Do you think me very forward?’ There was a quiver of trepidation in the words; the eyes that searched his were anxious.
He smiled and drew her to him, bent his lips to hers.
The kiss was long and very gentle. When at last he released her, her eyes were glowing like stars in the lamplight. He slipped his arms beneath the cloak she still wore and held her to him again, laying his cheek upon her damp hair, feeling the trembling of her body, trying to control the growing urgency of his own. She lifted her face to kiss him again, one hand reaching to the soft thickness of his hair. The movement lifted her breasts softly against him and the clean curve of her back and buttocks were under his hands. He tried to pull away, but she clung to him. His hands slid to her narrow waist, and tightened, trying gently to push her away a little. ‘Isobel—’
‘Kiss me. Please, kiss me.’ He kissed her.
After a long time she drew away from him, her fingers at the fastening of the cloak. It dropped from her shoulders to the dusty floor. The slim-waisted velvet-trimmed corduroy dress that she wore suited her graceful figure to perfection. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he said.
She came to him again. ‘Am I? Am I really?’
‘You are. Really.’
She leaned back in his arms to look at him, her face lit to a fearful excitement. ‘We must be careful. Papa would kill us if he found us.’
He smiled wryly. ‘I’m well aware of that, my darling.’
She laughed, softly and delightedly, at the endearment. ‘No one’s ever called me that before. Well—’ she stopped, suddenly shy ‘—you know what I mean.’ She laid her head on his shoulder, her hands flat against his chest. ‘Your heart is beating very fast.’ The words were barely a whisper.
He tightened his arms about her. Her hands crept up to slide about his neck. With a strength he could no longer control he kissed her again, fiercely and hungrily. He felt her gasp, struggle a little against him and then suddenly she was kissing him back, as demanding as he. His hand moved to cup her breast. Her mouth opened beneath his.
Somewhere within him the small voice of sanity spoke. What was he doing? What the hell was he doing? Then the flood of his senses took over and the voice was drowned. She made no attempt to stop him as he fingered the velvet-covered buttons at the front of her dress and one by one they slipped open. She gasped aloud as he slid his hands beneath the material. Her breasts were heavy, warm and silky. As he bent his head to kiss them she closed her eyes, her long fingers cupping his head against her.
On the table the lamp burned steadily in the rustling darkness.
It was perhaps half an hour later when he said softly,
‘You really should go, my darling. It’s nine o’clock.’ ‘Yes.’ She did not move. She was lying beside him on the little couch, half covered from the cold by her cloak, her head in his lap, her bared breasts gleaming like pearl in the lamplight. She lifted her great eyes to his, bit her lip a little. ‘Kit, if I ask you something – something you might think silly – you promise you won’t laugh? I should die if you did.’
He cocked his head a little, his smile gentle. ‘Don’t be silly. Of course I won’t laugh.’
She hesitated. ‘What – what we did just now. Is it—’ She stopped, chewing her lip again, a deep, embarrassed flush creeping into her cheeks, then finished in a rush ‘—is it what makes babies?’
There was a moment’s startled silence. Then he leaned to her, gathering her to him, burying his face in her hair. ‘Oh, my poor darling, no! No, it isn’t. We touched each other, that’s all. You needn’t be afraid.’
‘I’m sorry. Do you think I’m stupid?’ Her voice was muffled, and on the brink of tears.
‘No, my darling, I don’t think you’re stupid.’
‘No one’s ever told me – you know – what actually happens.’
He released her, smiling into the blue, tear-bright eyes. ‘Do you regret doing what we’ve done?’
‘No! Oh, no! Please don’t think that.’
Gently he sat her up, carefully buttoned the front of her dress, bent forward to kiss her lightly. ‘Come on. Time to get you safely home.’
They slipped through the fog-shrouded. gardens to the back door, carefully skirting the lighted drawing-room window. In the shadows by the door she lifted her face once more for his kiss. ‘Kit?’
‘Mmm?’ Their voices were soft as breath in the misty darkness.
‘You do love me?’
A more experienced woman might have noticed the fatal moment of silence. that followed the question.
Then, ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘Of cou
rse I do.’
Chapter Four
Isobel was almost frantic with happiness. Far from distressing her, the necessarily clandestine nature of her relationship with Kit actually added to her delight in it. In the house as he worked she teased him with glances and the swift brushing of hand or lip; when they met in the quiet, dripping woodland or in the summer house she was fierce with passion, all the dull and closeted years of her young womanhood a spur to her infatuation. She looked neither forward nor back. She lived only to see him, to touch him, to have him woo her, with words and with the touch of his body.
As for Kit, for all his efforts, restraint was well-nigh impossible. Radiant with love and excitement, by turns demanding and sweetly pliant, Isobel would have tried the virtue of a celibate saint, and Kit was far from that. Though infinitely more experienced than Isobel, even for him the bittersweet tensions of their situation were a heady aphrodisiac; the fact that they were thrown so much together, the knowledge that with each day that passed he was one step closer to returning to the Front, Isobel’s eager, high-strung and perilously infectious excitement – all served to create a reckless and total disregard for good sense. The secret lash-veiled glances, the notes tucked into his hand, the hasty, dangerous meetings in the darkness heightened his senses and stirred his body; in the chill whispering darkness of the summer house, three days after that first meeting, he gave in to her pleadings and made love to her. And the seeds of disaster were sown; from that moment neither could stay away from the other. Inexorably the days moved on, and the time for Kit to leave grew closer. Time spent apart was time wasted. They took greater and greater risks, were less and less careful around other people, and though neither of Isobel’s parents suspected anything – to them, such behaviour by their cherished elder daughter was quite literally unthinkable – there were sly and knowing glances from the servants and, more dangerously still, a growing and unfortunately unnoticed resentment from small, miserable Poppy.
‘Darling, darling Kit. I’m so happy!’ Isobel lay upon the wicker sofa in the summer house, her head in Kit’s lap, his hand gentle upon her breasts. She closed her eyes, smiling a little. Looking down at her, at the curve of her lashes against the pale skin, the delicate vulnerability of her face, the supple temptation of her body, he thought he had never seen anything so beautiful. Past traumas, surely, were past; could this not be the future? It was a dull and wet afternoon, the light already fading to an early winter dusk. Isobel had opened the shutters and in the shadowed room her skin gleamed, smooth and cool and shining with life. Languidly she lifted an arm to touch his cheek with her finger. ‘Make love to me. Please?’
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