She had spent the afternoon shopping whilst Xavier rehearsed at the Carnegie Hall. Clothes, jewellery and other trinkets littered the bedroom of their suite, spilling out of bags stamped boldly with the names of fashionable stores.
Georgiana had sunk into a chair feeling exhausted, not so much with journeying through the shops, as the long years of travelling with Xavier on his endless conducting tours of Europe and America. In the beginning she had been happy enough to trail after him like an eager young groupie on his yearly tours, but after his showdown with the English Symphonia with whom he had been chief conductor for over a decade, he had become demonically restless, tearing around the globe, shaking the dust from one great city after another from his feet before it had even had time to gather. It was becoming impossible to keep up.
Xavier, lying prone on the bed relaxing between rehearsals and a big performance that evening, heard her weary sigh. He had looked up at her, surveyed the spoils and smiled indulgently. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t been enjoying yourself?’ he commented with mocking incredulity.
‘Yes, of course I have.’
‘But?’
‘But I was alone. I’m always alone,’ she said bitterly. ‘You have your work, your orchestras, your music…’
‘So?’
‘I need my home, my friends, my own life.’ She knew her words sounded trite and unoriginal, that Xavier would never understand her need for her social circle, her women friends and the crackle and thrust of gossip. Shopping – like so many other luxurious pastimes – had a limited attraction when you were doing it solo. And what was the fun of buying outrageously expensive things if there was no one there with you in whom you could kindle a spark of pure envy?
Xavier raised himself slowly into a sitting position and held out his arms to her. ‘Georgiana! You have me. We have each other.’ His eyes beckoned her to approach. When Xavier beckoned it was hard, no impossible to refuse him.
Georgiana moved slowly towards the bed and allowed him to place his hands on her slender hips. His hand moved over one toned buttock and silky thigh. His fingers pressed into her flesh. She stiffened, she couldn’t help herself. She prayed he hadn’t noticed.
He reached up and stroked her face. He drew his fingers around her lips and parted the long blonde strands of her hair very gently. As always his iron control went some way to reassuring her. Xavier was astonishingly controlled. He could maintain a quiet, courteous demeanour throughout what seemed to Georgiana the eternity it took to prepare for sex, and when he eventually penetrated her he seemed to keep going for ever before eventually exploding deep inside her.
He was an exquisitely sensitive, careful and considerate lover. He had never once alarmed her with violent passion even though she sensed an undercurrent of longing within him for just that.
His hand reached inside her silk shirt. Mentally she shuddered. Dutifully she stroked his neck and chest. She hooked her fingers hesitantly in the band of his trousers. Her mind slurred away from what lay beneath, that terrifying pole of masculinity: swollen, hard and dangerous.
Her thoughts tumbled in wild confusion. It was no good; sometime, sometime soon he would have to accept it. She was just dead as far as sex was concerned.
Georgiana groaned, mimicking the cries of pleasure made by actresses in sexually frank films. She had trained herself to make all the appropriate noises but in truth her groans merely reflected her horror at the prospect of yet another coupling, yet another invasion of her identity and her most deep and private self.
She wished she could switch off: simply allow the husband she loved to invade her flesh with his and gain the satisfaction he was entitled to. But increasingly the act seemed an invasion, not just of the body, but of the soul.
Sex! All that writhing and groping and stickiness. All that grasping and yelping and clutching. And then the endless obligatory mutual congratulations afterwards.
The words ultimate invasion screamed silently through her mind as he plunged into her. The ultimate invasion of the self. That was it! That was sex in a nutshell.
Personal identity was hard to cling on to with a husband as successful and revered as Xavier. Trotting around in his shadow was one of the problems, although she judged she could deal with that. But to be expected also to yield up the freedom to guard the privacy of her own body and spirit was simply asking too much.
And yet he was so gentle and restrained, just for her sake. She wanted to do better. A wife had a duty to do better. He was a wonderful husband, she told herself, stroking the long carved bones of his face. But even as she registered the thought, a spark of hatred flashed through her head. She was locked to him, her body shackled to his flesh. He was her friend, her husband, her lover – but he bound her in chains and tortured her. Regularly.
He expected far too much. And deserved so much more. How she loathed the guilt and inadequacy he made her suffer.
Her teeth clamped together like a vice.
And then – oh mercy, oh joy – he gave one final thrust and suddenly it was over.
She cradled his head to her girlish half-apple breasts, blissful with the sense of renewed freedom. It might be another whole week before she need endure the ordeal again.
She felt his hand stroking her softly. She breathed in deeply. The release she felt, the incredible relief became more intense each time he performed sex on her. Sometimes she thought she would have to run away and leave him rather than go through the awful charade yet again.
There were long moments of silence.
‘Do you hate it that much?’ he asked carefully, sending her into a flurry of confusion. She had never dreamed that he would guess. No, not that. She had never dreamed that he would confront her. She had believed things were skilfully balanced. She stared at him, uncharacteristic anxiety in her wide blue eyes. Might everything suddenly fall apart?
‘Do you want to go back to London?’ he enquired.
‘Yes.’
He nodded. ‘Yes, I see that now.’
She held her breath, her heart ticking loudly in her chest. She had a swift unnerving image of herself banished from his court: a queen dethroned. The thought of losing him was like a dagger in her side. She reminded herself that trotting in his shadow was only one side of the coin. The flip side was basking in his glory. She could not bear to be cast off, could not survive outside the role of being his wife and under his protection. And she loved him. She did. Yes she did!
‘Will you see a therapist?’ he asked, his grey eyes frighteningly steady. He’d suggested this before, making delicate allusions to her need to explore the deeper aspects of her personality. She had suspected that this exploration was basically aimed at getting her into her into gear sexually. But he had never gone so far as to say this, nor had he pressed the point about therapy, merely mentioned it once or twice again in a casually solicitous manner.
‘Yes. Yes, I’ll book an appointment straight away.’ She tried not to sound too eager.
He nodded. ‘Good. Good.’ His tone held the measured and courteous tenderness which characterized their relationship.
‘Alicia will know someone,’ Georgiana volunteered, desperately seeking to retrieve her cool composure as though wrenching a silk wrap around herself having been caught naked – which she still was.
He smiled. ‘Alicia knows everyone.’ His mockery of her rich, idle friend was open but not malicious.
‘It was the miscarriage,’ Georgiana told him, apologetic but on the defensive. ‘Things have never been the same since then, have they?’
Xavier smiled, his eyes distant and cool. ‘No. So – that will be your starting point to begin your work with a good therapist. The miscarriage? Mmm?’
She nodded, half believing her own desperate excuses, almost certain her husband did not.
Xavier kissed her cheek softly, left the bed and crossed to the window, staring out. She knew that some kind of milestone had been reached. She slipped on a silk kimono, covering her nakedness before goin
g to stand beside him. ‘I do love you,’ she said quietly.
‘Yes,’ he agreed after a long moment of silence.
A sudden tenderness for him swept over her and she touched his arm with light fingers.
‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.
‘The Brahms Fourth,’ he said. ‘I’ve suddenly realized for the first time how I must conduct the final section.’
‘You’ve done that piece time and time again,’ she replied, exasperated and wounded. Bloody Brahms, butting in and putting the lid on any chance of a further discussion of her marriage.
‘I’ve always taken it too slowly, too reverently,’ he mused. ‘Now I know.’
Bloody Brahms, bloody Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, Mahler, the whole lot of them. Georgiana rang down to the desk and instructed them to book her on a flight to London.
Xavier watched her pack, his face calm and abstracted. He handed her into a taxi then leaned down and kissed her.
When she got back to London she called Alicia and asked her to recommend a good therapist. Then she arranged to meet her friend for lunch, planning to ask her for advice on a rather more intimate kind of service.
That had been four years ago. And Alicia had not let her down Georgiana thought as she went backstage to join Xavier in his dressing room. In fact her recommendations had led to one of the most fascinating projects of Georgiana’s life.
CHAPTER 3
Leaving the city centre after the concert, Tara felt in no hurry to get home – to whichever place she decided would be home that night. Her head still reverberated with the magical last movement of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony. She wanted to hold on to thrilling sensation it had stirred in her, cling to the feeling until it evaporated like a precious dream in the harsh white morning. She made her leisurely way to the embankment and stared into the broad glinting girdle of the Thames. Under the autumn evening sky the shifting water was inky black. The moonlight reflected on the choppy ripples looked like broken fragments of silver which had fallen from somewhere high above.
Tara stood and watched the glittering water now empty of traffic. In her head she saw it reaching away to Tilbury, then the sea, the oceans and the rest of the globe. Its timelessness mesmerized her. The stirring closing chords of the symphony tumbled over and over through her mind.
Various male passers-by eyed her with speculation – a small, sexy-looking young woman on her own in the heart of London at gone eleven at night. A variety of possibilities passed through a number of minds.
Tara was well aware of the dangers of the big city, having been sternly lectured on them by several people who had her best interests at heart. She was utterly indifferent. She could take care of herself. Just let anyone try anything. During her year in London she had already sent two flashers packing and psychologically crushed a slavering drunk on the tube who had told her that she had come-to-bed eyes.
She stared into the swollen flow of water, then upwards to the glitter of the lights strung out along the embankment. Suddenly she wanted Bruno, wanted his big comforting body, his kind treacle-brown eyes, his unquestioning devotion.
An hour later she was tiptoeing down the hallway of one of University College’s residential blocks, a pair of clumpy ankle-boots clutched in her hand, an expression of wicked stealth in her eyes. Arriving at his room she scratched on the door with small, short-nailed fingers.
A rangy and rumpled young man eventually opened up, blinking in the light as he fixed wire- framed glasses around his ears. He peered down at Tara and then broke into a smile of delight.
‘Hello there!’
‘It’s only me,’ she said. ‘No need to look as if you’ve just discovered buried treasure.’
Beaming with happiness he bent down and kissed her tenderly on the mouth.
‘Well – can I come in?’ she asked impatiently.
‘Yes. Yes.’ He cleared a space on the chair for her beside his small desk, both of which were littered with books and papers.
Tara sat on the bed. Bruno went to sit beside her. His faced was filled with concern as he tried to read the expression on her face. He would hate to say anything to upset her. ‘Did you see him?’ he asked eventually.
‘Yes.’
‘How did he look?’
‘Weary. Resigned.’ Tara screwed her face up, concentrating on the image in her head. ‘He looked – old.’
‘Well he is in his fifties,’ Bruno pointed out, wanting to reassure her. At twenty Bruno held the reasonable view that life is basically downhill all the way for anyone over forty. ‘How long is it since you last saw him?’
‘I’m not sure. Weeks.’ Guilt squirmed inside her. ‘He looked fine then.’
Bruno reached out and squeezed her shoulder sympathetically. He knew what it was like to have been the cause – however reluctantly - of a rift with parents.
‘I thought about going back-stage, giving him a surprise,’ Tara said regretfully. ‘I almost did. But I felt…well, I felt shy.’
‘You! Shy!’
‘Incredible, isn’t it. He seemed so stern and remote up there on the platform. I couldn’t believe he was my lovely daddy who used to swing me round by my arms until I was all dizzy and helpless with laughter.’
Bruno smiled. ‘Sweet memories of childhood.’
‘Oh, there were some pretty good bits here and there,’ Tara agreed, her face registering a number of conflicting feelings. ‘It was just so awful that last row. I said some terrible things. I must have hurt him so badly.’
Bruno’s face glowed with love and compassion as he gazed at her.
‘I’ll go and see him soon,’ she burst out. ‘I will, I really will. Before the next Xavier concert at the very latest.’
‘Aha – Xavier!’ Bruno exclaimed, his eyes lighting up. ‘The great man himself. What did you make of him?’
‘A master of audience manipulation. The people in the seats next to me were gawping at him with that slushy sort of reverence usually reserved for the Royal Family.’
Bruno grinned. ‘But was the music good?’
‘The music was heartbreakingly wonderful. I wish you could have been there.’ She smiled at Bruno, her green eyes slanting up at him from long black lashes, making his heart contract with desire.
‘So do I.’
‘How was your evening? Did you get to meet anyone influential?’ she asked him, gently teasing.
Bruno had had to forgo the concert in order to attend a social gathering in the Law Department, which offered students the opportunity to meet practising solicitors and barristers who could well be helpful to them in their future careers. It was a function students were advised not to miss, which was the only reason Bruno had gone along.
Bruno Cornwell hated being a law student. He hated the grindingly boring fat tomes to which he was tethered day and night. He hated the whole idea of a career in law. Bruno wanted to be a musician. His parents, who had little interest in music, had been happy to pay for piano tuition for their son and had dutifully attended school concerts in which Bruno took part. But when it came to a career they had been adamant. Music was not a serious occupation: there was no security for an aspiring young man in the artistic world. Bruno must study for one of the professions. It might be hard graft and boring for a few years, but it would be worth it in the end. And after that then maybe he could think about music; performing in amateur groups and that kind of thing.
Bruno was torn but in the end hadn’t the heart to go against his parents’ wishes. They had been kind and loving parents. They were not rich and they had had to make ‘sacrifices’ to give him a private education. He must get his degree and then somehow find a way into the world of classical music.
‘Influential?’ Bruno mused. ‘Oh, I doubt if there was anyone in the Law Department tonight who will throw a shadow over my future life.’
Tara shook her head in exasperation. ‘How long are you going to go on with this farce of studying law? Cut loose, Bruno. Fly a little!’
&nbs
p; ‘Like you, my own gorgeous sweetheart,’ he grinned, reaching out and pinching the end of her nose.
‘Oh sure, like me. Part time waitress extraordinaire at the local wine bar. That really is cutting loose.’
‘No,’ he chided. ‘You’re a student of philosophy, that’s your true identity. Waitressing’s just a little hobby, an endearing foible.’
‘It’s a way of earning spare cash,’ Tara declared with some ferocity. From the start of her university career a year ago she had refused to eke out an existence on her student grant cheque. She needed money for her razor cut at Vidal Sassoon and for all the latest classical and pop CDs . The wine bar would do for now, but she had her sights on landing a job at one of the big hotels - The Ritz or Claridges. You could get simply fantastic tips in those places.
‘And I doubt if studying philosophy has anything to do with my true identity whatever that is,’ she exclaimed, entertained by Bruno’s innocent earnestness. ‘I haven’t been to more than a couple of lectures this term, or handed in an essay.’
‘Well, you’re a very bad girl then.’
Tara narrowed her eyes. ‘So what are you going to do about it?’ she whispered provocatively.
Bruno grabbed her and threw her over his shoulder. Tara squealed and bit his ear. Chortling with mirth and lust they fell onto Bruno’s bed, their limbs entwined in some kind of furious wrestling match.
‘Quick, quick! I can’t wait,’ Tara breathed.
Their sex was spontaneous, warm, guilt-free and candid - a celebration of high spirited youth and genuine affection. It was over in six and a half minutes flat.
‘Mmm, love you,’ Bruno said.
‘Mmm, back’ she murmured, already nearly asleep.
In the porter’s lodge in her hall of residence the telephone pealed out urgently at regular intervals through the night.
CHAPTER 4
At seven o’clock the following evening, Georgiana stood in the doorway of her elegant drawing room with her friend Alicia and surveyed the preparations for Xavier’s fortieth birthday celebrations. Silently she congratulated herself on the clever and subtle way she had side-stepped the threat to her marriage and transformed her relationship with Xavier into something precious, lasting and unique.
The Maestro's Mistress Page 2