Scorpio Summer

by Jacqueline Gilbert

  'You're engaged! Oh, Zoe, I am glad!' exclaimed Frances, giving her friend a warm embrace and turning to kiss Gareth as he stood, smiling, by their side. 'Gareth, I'm so happy for you.'

  Thank you, Frances.' He turned to Zoe. 'Come along, darling. Our flight has been called.' Shaking hands with Felix and Theo, Gareth took Zoe firmly by the arm and led her away, both turning to wave before disappearing out of sight.

  The return to Astrakeri was in the comparative comfort of Spiro's car. As she sat in Felix's arms, Frances asked:

  'How long do these feast days go on?'

  Felix settled her more comfortably against his chest and replied: 'I believe this one lasts two days,' and they looked out of the window at the musicians playing for the benefit of the people still dancing in the streets.

  'Theo's house was beautiful,' Frances said dreamily. 'All those lights strung from the trees—it was like something out of a film! How kind he is.'

  Felix nodded, holding her closer. 'We have Theo to thank for a great deal . . . he took over all the legal proceedings completely.'

  'And that gorgeous food,' she enthused. 'Delectable sticks of meat and mushrooms—what do they call them, Felix?'

  'Souvlaka.'

  'Souvlaka,' she repeated obediently. 'Where are we going, Felix?' she asked, not minding, so long as she was in his arms.

  'Home,' he replied, and she gave a sigh of satisfaction.

  When they were within a couple of kilometres from the villa, Spiro broke out into, song, a romantic song, he afterwards told them, which he rendered in a surprisingly beautiful tenor voice. He deposited them with due ceremony at the gates, and full of emotion, wished them both much happiness and many children.

  Felix shook him by the hand and was emotionally embraced and kissed on both cheeks. Frances solved any doubt by reaching up and kissing Spiro herself, and then, giving another of his funny little bows, he donned his cap, which had materialised on the way, climbed back into the car, and drove off. His voice, raised in song, wafted back across the mountain.

  'Do you think he'll be all right?' Frances asked anxiously, as they walked slowly down the path and into the villa. 'I think he must be quite tipsy.'

  Felix lit a lantern and said with amusement: 'He'll be fine, don't worry—Saint Spiridon looks after his own.' He lifted the lantern high, throwing a beam before them. 'This is the main room, you'll see better in the morning. Sofia and Maria, bless them, have been working like beavers getting it all ready for us.' Holding her close, he led her through the rooms, commenting on kitchen, guest room, bedroom . . . 'And bathroom!' he exclaimed triumphantly. 'Corfiotes believe baths to be unnecessary, when the sea is so conveniently placed!'

  'Are we close to the sea here?' Frances asked, moving away from him to cross the bedroom and peer out of the window.

  'The garden ends by the cliff edge. There's a good path down to the beach and the swimming is safe.'

  Frances gazed with enchantment at the moonlight shining on the sea.

  'Oh, Felix, do come and look! How beautiful!'

  'Yes,' agreed Felix, his eyes upon her, 'very beautiful.'

  There was something in his voice that made Frances turn, and finding the open look of admiration on his face hampered normal breathing, she covered up her confusion by asking teasingly: 'May I be the first to use your fantastic plumbing? I feel as though I have all the dust of Corfu sticking to me.'

  'You may,' Felix replied, delighting in her confusion, and making a grandiose sweep of his arm towards the bathroom door.

  When Frances returned, deliciously cool and sweet- smelling in a white nightdress carefully chosen for Felix's approval, she found the bedroom empty. Moving dreamily to the window she saw a pale blur coming towards the house from the direction of the garden. A few moments later Felix came in, a towel round his neck, hair damp and his navy bath-robe casually tied round his middle. In his hands he carried a bottle and two glasses.

  'Felix, you haven't been in the sea!' she exclaimed worriedly.

  He shook his head and smiled, teeth shining whitely in the dim light from the lantern.

  'No, my love, I've been using our more primitive methods of taking a shower. There's a well in the grounds, with a convenient bucket! Ice-cold water, but very refreshing.' He held up the bottle. 'And Spiro, bless the man, remembered the champagne I asked him to keep cool for me.'

  Frances laughed in delight. 'Where? In the well?'

  'Naturally,' he told her solemnly. 'Where else?' He placed the glasses on the table and expertly popped the cork, pouring out two measures and handing her one of the glasses. Taking the other for himself, he stood looking at her before raising it to hers.

  'To us,' he said softly.

  'To us,' echoed Frances, taking a sip, savouring the cool liquid appreciatively. 'Mmm . . . lovely, lovely champagne.' She took another sip, a more generous one, and eyed him over the rim of her glass. 'Is this the time and the place, Felix?' she asked demurely, a smile playing on her lips.

  Felix drained his glass and reached out to take hers, disposing of them with deliberation.

  'If it's not, I damn well want to know why,' he proclaimed with grim amusement, and took her into his arms. He kissed her fiercely, hungrily. 'You little wretch! To turn the tables on me so completely!' He threw back his head and laughed deeply in his throat. 'I can see you now,' he observed with a groan, 'sitting on that seat in the garden, your hands held primly in your lap, suggesting calmly that I take you away with me! If the earth had opened up and swallowed us both I couldn't have been more astounded—more horrified!'

  'But why?' asked Frances, laughing quietly at his revelation.

  'Why ? I'll tell you why, my girl!' and he scooped her up and carried her to the bed where he settled her in his arms, her head resting on his chest. 'Because I wanted to shake some sense into you! Tell you not to throw yourself away on a man like me! The gall rose in my throat —how I'd had the devilry to suggest it in the first place was now incomprehensible to me,' and he buried his face in her hair and held her even closer.

  'You were so grim I thought you didn't want me any more,' she said lovingly, cupping the nape of his neck, running her fingers up and down through his hair, savouring the sensuous feeling of delight this gave her, satisfying a long-felt desire to do so.

  'Oh, I wanted you all right, but not on those terms, not like that! Not for a long time like that! I wanted to claim you for my own, harness you with the shackles of respectability, tie you to me irrevocably, so that everyone knew you belonged to me!' His lips moved warmly to the curve of her neck and he punctured his words with caressing kisses. 'I came away from that wretched luncheon feeling low and depressed, knowing the mess I'd made of apologizing to you. You were so remote and uninterested, not my warm and generous Frances. What a fool I was, I told myself over and over again, that having once found the woman whom I could love and live with for the rest of my life, I have to bungle everything so abominably! I was convinced that I'd lost all chance of recovering myself in your eyes again!'

  'Foolish, foolish man!' Frances murmured, nestling comfortably in his arms. 'Even when I was hating you, I knew I was powerless to stop loving you—and how ruined were your chances you must ask Gareth, for he witnessed the way I reacted to the news of your accident—hardly the actions of an uninterested person!' She paused and added softly: 'When did you first guess that I loved you, Felix? I tried so hard to hide it from you.'

  'Oh, it was a conglomeration of things, my love, which taken separately meant nothing, but which put together added up beautifully . . . once I knew that you'd turned down the Stoppard play. That was the final, blinding revelation. Then I began to ask myself, would you have been so angry over my wrong accusations had you been completely uninterested!' His voice took on a smiling quality. 'You should have asked yourself why I was so blazingly angry too, for the same reasons.' He took her hand and held it to his cheek. 'And then Gareth confirmed my amazing suspicions. In a moment of weakness I confided in him my feel
ings for you, and he told me how upset you'd been . . .'

  'Oh! and I asked him not to!' protested Frances feebly.

  'He felt he had some justification in breaking that promise, my dear, mainly for the welfare of his patient —me—who was likely to fade away and die . . . of a broken heart.'

  'Nonsense,' she whispered, brushing her lips against the warmth of his shoulder. 'You wouldn't ever have given up . . . not having that Ravenscar arrogance of yours! Now admit it! I bet you were going to be somehow involved in the Stoppard production if your accident hadn't put paid to that!' She twisted round and smiled triumphantly, knowing she was right by the look on his face. 'You see! You were going to hunt me down and use your abundance of charm to get back into my good books!' She slipped her hands beneath the robe and curved her arms round his back, holding herself close. 'And you would have succeeded,' she said huskily, feeling his heart beating rapidly against her body. He loves me, she told herself dreamily, basking sensuously in the unbelievable knowledge. She had always known that beneath the well-controlled facade there was a wealth of passion and feeling waiting to be unleashed, and somehow it seemed that she was the one to have released this love! Even now, matching heartbeat for heartbeat, kiss for kiss, it was difficult not to believe she was dreaming! and she offered her thoughts to Felix shyly, her voice full of wonderment.

  His dark brows rose, mocking her tenderly, and his hands moved over her possessively. 'If you're dreaming then so am I, and so long as we wake together . . . in this bed, that's all that matters!' His smile broadened. 'And my mother must be in this dream too, because I have a letter for you in which she sends her very dear love.'

  'Oh, Felix! Really?' exclaimed Frances, forgetting her rosy-cheeked confusion and lifting her face to his. 'Is she too disappointed at not being here for the wedding?'

  He shook his head. 'She couldn't have flown out, in any case, because of her health, and for us to go off quietly and do it without any fuss suited her fine. She is, of course, convinced that it's all her own doing!'

  'Without any fuss indeed!' It was Frances's turn to tease now. 'I suppose you call flying Zoe and Gareth out a normal thing to do? Or proposing to me in a bus! And as for keeping me at arms' length ever since we arrived—well! If that had gone on much longer there jolly well would have been a fuss! It's a wonder I didn't end up a nervous wreck!' she complained laughingly. 'I was so mixed up—I thought you didn't want me any more.'

  'You are wholly adorable,' said Felix, 'and you knew darned well that I wanted you!' Giving her a little shake, he groaned: 'Oh, what a trouble you've been to me, Frances, right from the moment you stepped into that fateful lift!'

  Frances gave a sigh of satisfaction and traced his profile with a light finger. 'I remember I looked across the space between us and thought what a dangerously attractive man you were!' Her lips quivered with laughter. 'And all you could do was to look down your nose at me and be horrible!'

  'Nonsense,' he replied firmly, smoothing the curls away from her forehead and searching her face, eyes dark and intense. 'I looked across and thought—now there's a real beauty! and as my interest deepened and our paths crossed more and more, I found I was having to make myself resist your attraction . . . your smile that demanded a smile in return, your outrageous sense of humour, your courage and generous spirit.' He shook his head sadly. 'I was a doomed man that day in the lift, had I but known it.'

  Frances slanted him a wicked glance. 'I wonder what the stars say for Scorpio today?' she asked slyly, holding back from him to see his face.

  Felix lifted her up and swung her round, his expression tender as his eyes hungrily searched her own.

  'Never mind the stars. I say we have some unfinished business to attend to.' His hands dropped from her shoulders, moving down her arms to clasp her fingers in his. 'We were interrupted this morning . . . do you remember, Frances, my love, my very own dear love?'

  'I remember perfectly,' she murmured, 'just perfectly,' and her arms crept round his neck. With her lips very close to his, she whispered: 'Shall we . . .?' but her question was abruptly cut off as Felix brought his mouth down on hers, crushing her to him. At this precise moment, words were unnecessary.

  Frances Ravenscar stepped into the lift and smiled at the other two occupants already there. The doors closed behind her and the lift began to descend from the eighth floor. Frances ignored the man and woman in the opposite two corners and thought about what Tom Deverell had just told her—that she had a good chance for a part in the Shakespeare season coming up. Dear Tom, he had become a good friend . . . still joking that he had been instrumental in bringing Felix and herself together and that he had witnessed their first kiss, which indeed he had. Frances' lips curved in a reminiscent smile as she remembered the anger that kiss had inspired, and how she had heartily disliked the donor, a tall arrogant fellow with yellow-brown eyes! And here she was, married to him! Even after eighteen months she couldn't get over the surprise she felt when someone called her Mrs Ravenscar, as Tom's secretary had just done.

  The prospect of working in Shakespeare again was appealing . . . it would be nice to finish with an old favourite. Felix would be pleased for her.

  Finish . . .

  She smiled again, hugging her other news to herself. Felix would be pleased about that too! She glanced at her watch. In two minutes she would be meeting him . . . and the thought brought a tinge of colour to her cheeks.

  The lift stopped at the next floor and then continued its descent. Frances glanced at the newcomer and gave him an interested appraisal. Her regard was returned with a boldness that deepened her colouring, and she was thankful when it passed on to the blonde girl in the other corner, who was also eyeing him up and down. Frances couldn't blame her. He was worth looking at, and he knew it too, as shown by the return of his eyes upon her. The best thing to do with this situation is to do a bit of out-staring, thought Frances, but when his left eyelid dropped in a wink she wanted to laugh. The cheeky thing, and her a married woman!

  Controlling the impulse to smile, she turned her attention to the fourth person in the lift, a thin, sandy-haired young man who didn't seem interested in anyone. A much safer person to contemplate, decided Frances, and began thinking about the evening ahead.

  Felix had wanted to take her out to dine, but she had insisted on preparing the meal herself. This particular birthday, Felix's thirty-eighth, was going to turn out to be a special one and she didn't want to share it, or him, with anyone, not even anonymous strangers in an hotel dining room. November the second—and she hadn't even had the chance to say 'happy birthday' properly yet, Felix having had to leave so early that morning. She had merely murmured the words lovingly as her arms had left the warmth of their bed and wound themselves round his neck as he bent to kiss her goodbye. She could still evoke the fresh, newly-showered smell of him and the funny sense of loss as his weight left her, could feel his lips brush her bare shoulder and hear the tender amusement as he unwound her arms and declared firmly that as much as he hated leaving her he had a living to earn and would meet her at four at the studios.

  Frances flicked a quick look at her watch—it was right on four o'clock—and gave a satisfied sigh. Everything had worked out beautifully as planned. She hadn't, rushed. With her new sense of serenity she had kept her two appointments, both fulfilling her hopes. She would tell him first about her meeting with Tom, and then when they were full of good food and wine, she would tell him that she had been to see Gareth.

  She hugged the anticipation to herself and with a flicker of surprise found that her gaze had wandered back to the newcomer who was regarding her with open interest.

  She found herself answering his smile, she just couldn't help it, and then the lift came to a sudden jolt, descent halted, and after a general regaining of balance, the four occupants looked at each other.

  'Oh, no!' the blonde exclaimed. 'Are we stuck?' and her eyes passed round the group to finish hopefully upon the newcomer who was leaning in the corner
of the lift, a resigned hand over his face.

  'Does it do this very often?' Sandy-hair asked generally.

  Felix lifted his head. 'Only when the stars foretell,' he intoned prophetically, moving indolently to the button plate and stabbing at the alarm bell. He then crossed to stand in front of Frances, hands flat on the wall either side of her, and eyed her appreciatively up and down.

  'If you're frightened,' he said softly, using his most seductive voice, 'don't worry. I'll look after you.'

  Frances could see the amazed look on the other two faces and a bubble of laughter exploded inside her. He was outrageous, he really was, but oh, how she loved him! She gave a tremulous smile and fluttered her lashes.

  'Why, thank you, that is kind.' She looked down with maidenly modesty. 'I feel better already,' she confessed.

  'Good,' soothed Felix. 'Perhaps I'd better hold you, in case things become a little rough,' he suggested, ably following words with action.

  'Do you think shouting would be any use?' the blonde asked Sandy-hair feebly, but he was too fascinated by what was going on at the other side of the lift to answer.

  Felix looked down at Frances, eyes brimming over with love and laughter, and she sighed happily, a comforting warmth spreading over her as his arms tightened their grip. And in that moment she knew that she couldn't wait, that she had to share her good news with him now, and lifting her face to his, whispered:

  'In seven months it will be June.'

  Felix accepted this statement at its face value, giving a quick, if rather puzzled nod of assent.

  'And isn't it a coincidence, Felix, that Gemini, depicting twins, is the Zodiac sign for June?'

  His brows rose fractionally. 'It is?'

  'Uhuh . . . because Gareth says that twins are often hereditary and we should be prepared for . . .'

  The lift gave a shudder and began to descend and by the time it stopped and the doors opened to allow two of its occupants to make a hasty exit, the other two were oblivious to anything but themselves.