The Earl of Dysart wanted to know how soon he would be able to meet her brother, the artist. ‘Bring him over tomorrow,’ he said, patting Phoebe’s hand like a father. ‘It’s my tenants’ feast day, you know. We have it outside every summer. You’ll love it. Everybody dresses up, and my friend Rowlandson always comes over. It would be good for your brother to meet him. Bring the family with you. Good, that’s settled then.’
Phoebe would have liked to talk longer with the Countess, having heard how Ham House had suffered years of neglect, like her own, until the new Earl and his lady had begun a programme of restoration. Many of the rooms had been refurbished in an earlier style which, although not to Phoebe’s modern taste, had been carried out lovingly and with consideration. It would have to wait, she thought. The Countess would not have time tomorrow, with a tenants’ party to organise straight after a musical evening.
‘You have never looked more beautiful, madame,’ Ransome whispered to her as they returned to the hall. ‘Happiness becomes you.’
‘You are very kind, my lord.’
‘No, I’m not being kind. You know me better than that.’
‘Yes, I do. I’m happy because things appear to be falling into place, at last. And I’m happy to be here with you. To be known as your mistress.’
‘As my future wife, perhaps?’
‘You have certainly removed almost all my reservations about that, my lord. Ah, but see…the musicians are returning.’
‘Almost all? What’s the remaining one, may I ask?’
‘Shh! I’ll tell you when it’s gone,’ she said, arranging the red silk over her knees. Then, to comfort him, she laid a hand over his and kept it there as the musicians launched into excerpts from Mozart’s Magic Flute with a group of enthusiastic soloists. But again, the music became incidental to Phoebe’s more private and personal needs, and the hand that held hers conveyed its own message in an occasional squeeze that said as clearly as words that their thoughts were the same.
The journey back to Richmond was taken in the intimate silence of reflection and anticipation, too short to do more than sit close together, too long to be bearable.
The time for polite conversation and half-understood phrases had passed, and Miss Cowling was dismissed before she’d done more than open the bedroom door without a blink of surprise. She had seen this coming. They would not even hear her ‘Goodnight, ma’am.’
No reticence or pretence, no more proprieties to be observed, they came together with only one song between them, their mouths, arms and bodies desperate for the kind of music only they could create, unaccompanied. A duet of love to which only they knew the words.
‘Beloved…ah, my delight…thou art like a ripe plum…’
She laughed. ‘A plum?’
‘Yes, a red, juicy…sweet…plum…for my mouth to… plunder. Take off this…damn skin…and let me get…to the flesh, woman.’
Only Buck Ransome could say it like that, she thought, and make it sound so romantic. Feverishly, with pauses, fingers working frantically to remove all the trappings of the evening, they helped each other out of their clothes, flinging them carelessly aside with laughter and some curses, until Ransome stood before her in his linen drawers and Phoebe reached her chemise, suddenly overcome with modesty, captivated by the first sight of his supremely beautiful candle-lit torso.
She had known the kind of thing to expect, but knowing had not prepared her for the reality, the width of shoulder and powerful chest, the sinewy neck and arms, the smooth slender hips of an athlete, his handsome head with the black hair that rose above the widow’s peak in thick waves, with some mutinous exceptions. Since their first wary en-counters, he had always been impeccably dressed, and to see him like this reminded her forcibly of how Claude Donville’s finery had concealed a boy’s body, a deceit as mean as his bedroom manners. If Ransome was high-handed, straightforward and lordly, he had a body to match his lofty ways and a manner of deceptive kindness, rather than the opposite. Whatever he was concealing from her could surely not be bad enough to turn her against him, as she’d been before.
‘What is it, sweetheart?’ he said, watching her eyes in the dim light.
Like a child in doubt, she bit at her top lip and released it, laying a hand over his arm, aware of the silky covering. ‘A thought,’ she whispered. ‘That’s all. Just a thought.’
He took her hand from his arm and drew her forwards until she could feel the warmth of him from knee to shoulder. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’s been an evening that stirred up the past, sweetheart, as I knew it would. But it was a moving on too, wasn’t it? Like this. We’ve dealt with the past, yours and mine, and now we’re free. And I swear I shall never deceive you. Never. Whatever your reservations are, ask me and I’ll tell you. I would not hide anything from you that can affect our relationship, and if I used you badly when I forced you to accept me, that was the only ammunition I had, sweet nymph. Desperate measures.’
She was trembling as he lifted her and carried her in his arms across to the curtained bed, laying her upon the sun-warmed sheets. The scene had begun in haste, but her hesitation had slowed them down to a wonderment of delicious details, overlooked the first time. The gentle unpinning of her hair, the spreading of it, her hands seeking over the sweep of his long back, their lips moving over silky skin, tasting new surfaces. Lingering.
Keeping her hand captive on the pillow, he pulled at the cord of her chemise to open the neckline and to draw the fabric down, inch by inch, following it with lips and hand until she was naked under him, shifting in delight as he explored and discovered hidden valleys, folds, creases and private places that came alive, sending urgent demands for something more. Slowly, deliberately, he answered her demands with a skill previously only hinted at when conditions had been restricted, finding that her responses were as immediate as the first time, her moans becoming cries for consummation. Eagerly, her hands urged him on, positioning herself without his prompting, arching and meeting him, ready for his possession. ‘Now,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t hold back, beloved. Love me.’
His reply to her passionate invitation was as tempestuous as her dreams of him and, as her fingers dug into his arms, she felt the answering fierceness she had wanted, needed, yearned for over the past empty years, taking her to heights she could never have imagined. This was the man she had waited for, the only one to break down the wall she’d built around herself, to challenge the so-called peace of her life that was only one step away from isolation. The first time, in the garden, had been limited in scope and tailored to her newness, but now she was new no longer, and the evening had mended some of her broken dreams. It was time to give back, to be as fervently generous as he had been to her.
There was to be no leading or following on this second occasion, but a sharing of pleasures all the more potent for being linked to those fading old memories of discouragement on her part and rejection on his. She felt the mastery in his powerful control, but it was something to be gloried in, not resented or passively accepted, and what might have seemed like a mock-battle was, in fact, a wildness of the kind that had made him want Phoebe in the first place and, but for her interfering mother, would have won. She fought him, but only in love; she made him labour, but paid him handsomely. It was the most exciting and rewarding loving of their lives, rolling them over and over and across the bed in escape and pursuit, possession and submission, sweetness, and the kind of grim determination that takes hold of a man at the end, silent and intent.
Exhausted, exhilarated, Phoebe reached the pinnacle at the same moment and hovered, weightless, as the sky came crashing down on them. They clung, moaning, holding on to the last fading star, their lips sharing the same shallow breath.
The candle had died and the moon shone a white floodlight through the open curtains of the bed when they moved, at last, from one tangle of limbs to another. Drowsily, Phoebe snuggled deeper into her lover and smiled as one large hand smoothed over the roundness of her hip. ‘Licence my
roving hands,’ she murmured, ‘and let them go…’
‘Before, behind, above, below,’ he answered, caressing.
Stretching like a sleepy cat, Phoebe turned to him again, offering him her lips.
The next morning she drove the phaeton over to Mortlake, hoping to persuade Leon to take up residence at Ferry House until his future and health were more settled. The patient, having benefited from a long rest, careful nursing and the best food that Ransome’s cook could devise, had changed beyond recognition from the pathetic creature he had been only a few days ago to the usual nattily dressed beau with trimmed black hair, and eyes that had already begun to show the blue-whites of health. Naturally, there was an apologetic air clouding his more usual confidence, as if he was still unsure what had happened to him, or why, or what he could do about it. ‘Whatever you think, Pheeb,’ he said. ‘I’ll stay at Ferry House if you want me to. Though it’s all a bit temporary, isn’t it?’
‘We’ll see, love. No need to make decisions all at once.’
To avoid Claudette’s curiosity, Ransome had left Ferry House at first light. Agreeing to Leon’s change of venue, he had offered to convey his luggage later on in the coach where it would be unremarked by wagging tongues, an arrangement that gave the brother and sister a chance to be alone. Leon could not remember ever visiting Ferry House, and the difference in its appearance did nothing to aid his memory. Not until the gates opened for the phaeton did he realise that this was the lovely house he had lost over a game of chance.
‘Oh, Pheeb,’ he said in a subdued voice. ‘Is this it? Your home?’
In theory, there had been an opportunity for her to explain exactly what the plan was and how it had come about so soon, after her well-known antipathy to Lord Ransome. But sitting side by side over a bumpy road with her attention more on her driving than on affairs of the heart was hardly the best way to do it. She decided to wait until the meeting and greeting was over.
The welcome almost overwhelmed him. Hetty, Claudette and Tabby Maskell had all changed in varying degrees, but Claudette most of all. They had not met for years, but Hetty’s later reference to the Prodigal Son was not so far out, except for the fatted calf, and soon he was being shown round the house and garden, Claudette not realising that her enthusiasm for her lovely home was somewhat misplaced, in the circumstances. It was Tabby, her governess, who noticed the despairing expression on Uncle Leon’s comely face and who suggested that he needed a rest. With his sister. Alone.
‘Listen, Pheeb,’ he said, flopping into a chair in her study. ‘I’ve had time to think about all this… well, about you, that is. I’ve still got the family home on Harley Street. It’s not as big as this one and it doesn’t have the garden either, but there’s enough room for you and—’
‘Leon, stop…love. The problem has been solved already.’ It was not the kind of news one could blurt out in a rush to someone recovering from the mother of all hangovers. It had to be administered by degrees, like medicine.
‘What?’ he frowned, accepting the coffee cup she passed him. ‘Is there something going on between you and Ransome? What’s he been up to? You’ve never liked him, and now suddenly you’re speaking. And why is he doing all this for me, after what he… Oh, it was my own damned fault. Why deny it?’
‘Leon, let me explain. We came to an agreement, that’s all.’ Whichever way she tried it, the words seemed to take on a new ambiguity.
The coffee cup clattered. ‘An agreement? That’s not all, Pheeb, is it? You’ve sold yourself to him, haven’t you? For this place. For me. Is that it?’
‘I have not sold myself, Leon. Don’t over-dramatise things so.’
‘But you’ve agreed to become his mistress, and he’s letting you stay here. Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes, because I can see clearly now. All that polite accord, after you couldn’t stand the sight of him?’ He stood up, ramrod straight, alert and, she thought, rather insulted.
How could she make him understand? ‘Please, will you listen to me?’
But it was already too late. Even as she spoke, a man’s voice could be heard in the hall, the wail of a child, a woman’s high whine.
‘Damn!’ said Leon. ‘That’s Ross, isn’t it? What does he want?’
At once, Phoebe saw her chance of an explanation slip away, Leon being more confused, herself trying to defend him from Ross’s accusations and scheming. Grabbing him by the arm, she pulled him to face her. ‘Please, Leon, let me handle this, will you? I know what they’ve come for. Don’t look shocked, for pity’s sake. Look as if you know.’
‘Know what?’
‘What I’m about to tell them, dammit! Ross… Josephine! What a surprise, so soon. And Arthur. Hello, young man. Might it be best if we were to sit in the parlour? I don’t receive visitors in here.’ Taking control of things before they did, Phoebe thought, was the best way to deal with this family gathering. Nothing she could have done, or said, however, could have lessened the open-mouthed astonishment on the faces of Ross and his wife.
Ross drew himself up like an army officer about to lecture a new recruit. ‘Oh!’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Taking coffee with my sister, Ross. Good morning, dear Josephine. You’re looking as well as ever. Good heavens, how the infant has grown.’
‘When did you arrive?’ Ross wanted to know, solicitor-like. Leon’s presence had clearly unsettled him, his hard look at his wife seeming to imply that whatever they had come for might have to be approached from a different angle.
Leon’s presence did no such thing for Josephine’s line of attack, for her cross-examination began even before Ross had an answer to his first question, and no sooner had they trouped across to the parlour than she demanded to be told all the details of what exactly Leon thought he was doing to place poor dear Phoebe in such a dreadful position, in that awful man’s dependence. And did he not know that they had been the first to offer her their—?
‘Your what, Josephine?’ Phoebe said, politely. ‘What was it you and Ross offered me? Do you know, I’ve quite forgotten.’
‘I don’t think that’s relevant,’ Ross said, lifting up the squealing child. ‘The thing is, we’ve found a way round the problem, so it’s just as well you’re here, Leon, because it involves you.’
‘Oh, you do surprise me, brother,’ said Leon, wincing at the ear-splitting howl emanating from Arthur’s huge pink mouth. ‘But do you think we could discuss my involvement without the accompaniment?’
It took several minutes for the unhappy child to be taken off to the garden with his cousin, for coffee to be poured and handed round by the ubiquitous Hetty, and for Leon to discover that, if nothing else, his sartorial aptitude exceeded his brother’s by a mile. Which boosted his morale enough for him to initiate the next phase of the ‘who-has-done-most’ discussion, and to bestow a smile of something close to enjoyment upon Hetty. ‘Sugar, but no milk, thank you, Het,’ he said. ‘Now, Ross, what’s this solution you have in mind? Does it involve me alone, or all of us?’
Ross cleared his throat, but he was too slow.
Josephine did not intend to cede this moment to anyone. ‘It was my idea,’ she said, taking a biscuit. ‘I wrote to Lady Templeman in reply to her letter. Well, as a daughter-inlaw, I had to do what I could to ease her mind, didn’t I? Poor lady. And I knew she was in no position to offer dear Phoebe a room at—’
‘I should hope not,’ said Leon, stoutly, ‘when dear Pheeb could hardly wait to get away from the place. I’ve just sugg—’
‘Leon!’ said Phoebe. ‘Allow Josephine to continue, if you please.’
His eyebrows flickered, but the message was understood.
‘Thank you, Phoebe. As I was saying, I have proposed to Lady Templeman that Leon should make his house available to you as your home. After all, he should be the one to be inconvenienced, and although I realise that—’
‘You did what?’ Phoebe said, sharply, pinning her sister-in-law back into her seat with a dagge
r-like look. ‘Did it occur to you that I might wish to be consulted on the matter, Josephine? Did you, Ross?’
Josephine blinked at her biscuit and replaced it on her plate. ‘Well, what would have been the point in that, dear? Were you in a position to…?’
‘When I am not in a position to make my own decisions regarding my future, Josephine, you may carry me off in a coffin. And what about Leon? Is he not to be consulted about who lives with him?’
‘Leon has been in no position to be consulted about anything,’ said Ross. ‘Has he?’
‘How d’ye know that?’ said Leon, looking across at his younger brother with a sobriety that impressed Phoebe, after what she’d seen yesterday. ‘You haven’t exactly made it your business to find out what my position was, have you, Ross? Ransome was the one to offer me help. He actually came to find me.’
‘But we are offering you help, Leon,’ Josephine whined, glancing at her husband in the hope of support. ‘And Phoebe too. We thought it would be best for both of you, now everything has changed. Didn’t we, Mr Hawkin, dear?’
Phoebe stepped in before he could say ‘yes, dear.’ ‘So which of you is going to break the news to me that you’ve made an offer for Ferry House? Which of you two is the most confused between opportunism, greed, help and downright interference?’
‘Pheeb,’ said Leon, quietly. ‘Sit down, love. Let Ross explain. He’s used to making out a good case, aren’t you, brother?’
Ross’s shifty eyes flitted between his siblings like a shuttlecock waiting to fall. When they did, it was upon his hands, thumbs twitching. ‘We came to tell you about that, too, Phoebe. It was part of our…er…’
‘Plan? Scheme?’
‘Part of our rescue. Lord Ransome has agreed to discuss the matter with me tomorrow morning. That’s why we thought you should know today. I’m sorry. We understand how disappointed you must be.’
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