Forbidden or For Bedding?

by Julia James

  So, at the end of the safari, when the Jeep returned to base, she did not head for the airport with the others. She found a small pension, simple but respectable, and stayed there awhile, going out every day with paints and inks and sketchbook, her body shrouded to keep attention from her, her head covered against both the sun and male eyes. The locals thought her mad but let her be, unmolested and unchallenged, and she was grateful.

  Each day she worked, depicting in starkest lines the empty vastness of the lifeless desert, and each day, in the dry, relentless heat, little by little the endless pain in her desiccated a little more, a little more.

  Until she could feel it no longer.

  Had it gone completely? She couldn’t tell. Only knew, with a deep, sure certainty, that the work she had done was good. Spare, stark, bare. But good.

  Then and only then did she pack up her work and head for home. The six-month lease of her tenants had expired, and they had moved out. She was wary, deeply so, of returning to London, lest it plunge her back into the vortex of memory again. Above all she knew that she would not—could not—simply return to the life she had had. She would put the flat on the market, move away, right out of London, for good. Find a future in her work.

  It was hard to walk into her flat. Hard to see its familiar contours. Hard to block out the memories that went with it. But block them she did. Not bothering to unpack, she left her suitcase in the bedroom, with her newly created portfolio of desert art, and took a quick shower to refresh herself after her long flight. Then she changed into a pair of well-cut grey trousers and an ice-blue jersey top, knotted her hair into its usual neat chignon, took up her handbag and went back downstairs.

  She needed to go to the shops to refill the fridge. On the way back she would look in at the estate agents—not the agency that Guy had so arrogantly bought!—and talk about marketing her flat for immediate sale. In the evening she would go through all her finances to see what her options for the future would be. At some point, too, she knew she would have tell Imogen she was back—but not until she had a good idea of what her plans were going to be. Her mind busy, determinedly so, she stepped out of the front door and headed down the short flight of steps to the pavement.

  ‘Miss Harcourt—’

  A car had pulled up in front of her at the kerb, and a man was getting out. The car was nondescript, and so was the man accosting her. In broad daylight, on a busy pavement, her only emotion was puzzlement.

  ‘Yes?’ she said.

  ‘I work for a security firm,’ the man said. He handed her a business card, with an upmarket-looking name on it that even she had vaguely heard of. ‘My client has requested a meeting with you.’

  ‘What client?’ said Alexa. Warning bells were ringing now.

  ‘Madame de Rochemont,’ said the man.

  Alexa froze. Madame de Rochemont. Guy’s wife.

  Despite the heat of the afternoon, a chill went through her. A chill she forced to subside. She had not spent all that time away, purging herself of the past, only to be felled at the first reminder of what was no longer a part of her life, a part of her. But her insides churned for all her resolution.

  He had a wife.

  It was done—Guy was married.

  Married to that poor girl—the one who’d looked the antithesis of ‘radiant’ at the prospect. With good reason. Alexa’s mouth thinned. Louisa von Lorenz had known what kind of man she was marrying. What kind of marriage she was in for. What kind of husband she was getting.

  The adulterous kind.

  Alexa’s thoughts were like knives. But why on earth should Guy’s wretched new wife have asked for a meeting with her? What for?

  How does she even know of my existence?

  And how could she possibly know I’d be walking along this pavement today?

  ‘How,’ demanded Alexa frigidly, ‘does Madame de Rochemont come to know of my whereabouts?’

  The man was unfazed by the question. Maybe it was a familiar one to someone in his line of work. ‘When your tenants moved out, Miss Harcourt, your flat was put under surveillance on the chance you might be returning shortly. As indeed you have.’

  Alexa’s mouth twisted. Of course. Guy had bought the lettings agency, hadn’t he? When you moved in the stratospheric circles that the de Rochemont family moved in such things were unexceptional. Just like hiring people like this man to wait until she showed up.

  But how Guy’s wife had found her was inconsequential—the question was why on earth did Louisa de Rochemont want to meet her?

  Cold went through her suddenly as realisation struck.

  Does she think I’m going to take up with Guy again now that I’m back in London? Is that what she fears?

  Had that poor girl somehow found out—or been told—just who the last woman was that her husband had had a liaison with before he’d become engaged? Had she then, knowing what her husband was going to be like, speculated that he might well carry on after their engagement and their marriage with the same woman he’d been seeing before?

  The chill in Alexa’s veins deepened. Had all this security surveillance and private investigation shown up a photo of her? It was more than likely. And then—she swallowed horribly—then Louisa would recognise her from that evening at the charity gala.

  She’ll know that she spoke to me—will she think that I knew all along who she was?

  But, whether Louisa had seen Alexa’s photo or not, Alexa knew that one thing was clear—she was not going to have Guy’s bride think the worst of her. Whoever was providing Guy’s adulterous sex, it was not her! And any attempts, by any of them, to subject her to surveillance and investigation could stop right now! She was clear of Guy de Rochemont and she would stay that way. She would not be sucked back anywhere near that maelstrom. Wasn’t she doing everything she could to be free of it all?

  She looked straight at the man. ‘Where is your client?’ she demanded.

  ‘Madame de Rochemont is currently in London, Miss Harcourt,’ he answered, in his professionally neutral tone. ‘She has indicated that it would suit her to see you this afternoon.’

  London? Well, that was convenient. And so was getting this over and done with right now. Another thing she could put behind her.

  ‘Very well.’ She pulled open the rear door of the car and climbed in. The man got into the driving seat and restarted the engine. The car set off, heading out onto Ladbroke Grove, and thence towards Holland Park. Cutting across Kensington, it made its way into the pristine, elegant squares of Belgravia, pulling up outside a vast white-stuccoed terraced house set on an elegant square with a private garden in the centre. It was a location where, Alexa knew, only the richest of the rich could afford to live. But then, Guy de Rochemont was in that ultra-exclusive echelon.

  I knew he was rich, but I hardly saw it, Alexa thought as she got out of the car. So was it really so surprising that a man like that, so blessed by the gods—not just with vast wealth and the highest social position, but by incredible good-looks and searing masculine attraction—should have thought that she, or any woman, his wife included, would do whatever he wanted of them, without question or demur or objection? Would such a man not naturally have a natural arrogance that expected others to comply with his every wish, every desire?

  Like the way she’d just rolled over into his bed the moment he’d indicated he wanted her there…

  But even as she thought that memory intervened. Not the memory of Guy casually informing her that he’d bought a lettings agency as he might buy a bar of chocolate, simply in order to locate her, or informing her that she had been selected to provide his sexual amusement and compensate for his being required to marry a teenager for dynastic purposes, or demanding to know what the hell she thought she was playing at by objecting to his plans for her.

  Not that Guy.

  The Guy who took me to bed—breathtakingly, wonderfully, amazingly! The Guy who held me afterwards, slept with me, woke with me. Ate with me, smiled at me, talked with me
about art and history and culture. Who would sit and check his e-mails on his laptop, or look through business papers, while I watched a TV documentary or read a book. Nothing much, nothing extraordinary.

  Yet precious—so precious…

  The old, familiar rending ache scraped at her. She had to wrest it away, make herself think of Guy as she had to think of him now.

  Above all, a married man.

  A married man whose wife—young, naïve, innocent—did not deserve to have her marriage, as difficult as it must be, blighted even more by worrying about whether her husband was going to take up with his former lover again. A wife who, though she might call a house in Belgravia only one of what were doubtless half a dozen palatial homes around the world, deserved the reassurance that only Alexa could give her.

  Yet as Alexa walked up the wide steps of the multi-million pound house, stepping into the grand hallway beyond, she felt anew the gaping distance between the world she moved in and the world that Guy and his bride inhabited. She had been kept far apart from it.

  He’s a world away from me—he always was.

  Like a spear in her side, she felt the force of how pointless it had been to fall in love with such a man.

  Reluctance at being here filled her. But this had to be done. Head held high, she followed the member of staff who had admitted her as he proceeded up a graceful sweep of stairs to the first floor. She was ushered into a vast drawing room.

  She stopped short, her eyes going instantly to the walls. It was the paintings that drew her first, not the opulence of the Louis Quinze decor. She heard her breath catch as she took in enough priceless artworks to fill a small museum. Fragonard, Watteau, Boucher, Claude, Poussin—

  Instinctively, without realising she was doing so, she walked up to the one closest to her and gazed at it. A riot of Rococo art, a fête galante, with girls in clouds of silks and satins, and young men as lavishly adorned. A fantasy of the Ancien Régime that took her breath away with the exquisite delicacy of its brushstrokes to catch the richness of the fabrics, the hues of the fruits and flowers.

  A voice spoke behind her.

  ‘Rococo is no longer fashionable, but I confess I have a particular fondness for it. It embodies all that is most charmant in art.’

  The voice that spoke had the crystal quality of the upper classes, but with a distinct French accent. It was not the voice of the young girl that Alexa had encountered in the powder room at the charity gala. She swivelled round.

  A woman who must have been in late middle age, but who had the figure of a woman no more than thirty, chicly dressed, was standing before a huge marble fireplace, on an Aubusson rug, between two silk-upholstered facing sofas. Her dress was a couture design, Alexa could see instantly, and several ropes of pearls were wound around her neck. Her hair was tinted, immaculately styled, and her maquillage was perfect.

  And her eyes were green. As green as emeralds.

  Alexa started.

  ‘Yes,’ said the woman, acknowledging why Alexa had reacted. ‘My son has inherited his eye colour from me.’

  Her son—?

  Alexa swallowed. Madame de Rochemont…

  She had assumed—of course she had assumed—that it could only be Guy’s wife.

  The woman who was not Guy’s wife—who was his mother, could only be his mother—walked forward several steps, holding out her hand. Alexa found herself walking forward as well, to take it briefly.

  ‘Won’t you sit down, Mademoiselle Harcourt?’

  With a posture that was regally elegant, Madame de Rochemont indicated one of the pair of silk covered sofas. As Alexa lowered herself down, her head in a whirl, Guy’s mother took her place opposite her. Her green eyes flicked briefly over Alexa’s habitually groomed appearance, as if she were assessing her.

  Alexa’s thoughts were reeling. What on earth was going on? Why was she here? Why on earth had Guy’s mother wanted to see her?

  ‘Thank you so much for coming, Mademoiselle Harcourt. I have wanted to meet you for some time.’

  Alexa could only stare, nonplussed. All her expectations had been overset, and she could make no sense of what was happening. Then, a moment later, enlightenment dawned.

  ‘I wanted to thank you in person,’ Madame de Rochemont said, ‘for the portrait you made of Guy. He presented it to me for my birthday last month. I am very pleased with it.’

  ‘I…I’m so glad,’ Alexa managed to get out.

  ‘And I am also,’ said Guy’s mother, and now there was a different note in her voice which Alexa could not place, ‘very grateful for it.’

  Alexa gazed at her. For a long moment, Madame de Rochement simply looked back at her. Alexa had the strangest feeling she was being placed in a balance and weighed. Then, abruptly, the moment ended.

  ‘I understand you have been traveling?’ said Madame de Rochemont. ‘The Middle East. An unusual choice for a young woman.’

  ‘I—I wanted somewhere different,’ Alexa managed to say, wondering why Guy’s mother should have gone to the trouble of finding out where she had been these last weeks.

  ‘Indeed. But it is not a part of the world where young women tend to go on their own,’ observed Madame de Rochemont.

  Still reeling, Alexa tried to gather enough composure to make an appropriate answer. ‘I was treated with great respect, madame—I did not court attention in any way, and my hosts were kindness itself.’

  ‘You were there some time?’

  ‘I worked, madame. Painted. The desert has a beauty of its own.’

  ‘Of course. Tell me, do you plan to exhibit your work?’

  Alexa shook her head. ‘My talent, such as it is, is moderate only. Portraiture allowed me a comfortable standard of living, and I am grateful.’ How she got the words out, made this simulacrum of normal conversation when her head was reeling, was quite beyond her, but she did it somehow.

  ‘You are very modest, mademoiselle.’

  There was a tone in her voice that Alexa could not interpret. Her eyes went automatically to an exquisite seventeenth-century Claude beside the mantel, depicting a classical mythical episode in a vast landscape. ‘It takes only a single great work, madame, to make anything else impossible,’ she replied candidly.

  Guy’s mother inclined her head slowly. ‘Yet modesty,’ she said, ‘may go hand in hand with not inconsiderable natural gifts. The portrait you made of Guy confirms that to me. You have captured him well.’ She paused, her eyes never leaving Alexa’s.

  Alexa swallowed, fighting for composure, remembering all that had come about because of that portrait. Remembering, with burning pain, how she had finally come to complete it, her heart torn to shreds by the man she was depicting. Then… ‘Thank you,’ she managed to get out, her eyes dropping to the floor. She could not look at Guy’s mother. ‘I wonder, mademoiselle, if you would consider painting me, as well as my son?’

  Alexa’s eyes few upwards. She swallowed again. Madame de Rochemont was regarding her, her gaze slightly questioning.

  ‘I—I am sorry. No.’ Alexa’s reply seemed staccato, blunt, even to her own ears.

  ‘No?’ The arched eyebrows rose delicately. The questioning look was still in the eyes. More than questioning. That sense of being evaluated came over Alexa again. She felt her cheeks colour slightly. More than ever she wanted to get to her feet and walk out—as fast and as far as she could.

  ‘I—I am sorry,’ she said again.

  There was a pause—the very slightest. ‘Perhaps you would tell me why, mademoiselle.’ It was politely said, but there was a hauteur in it that Alexa could hear clearly. She knew why—a grande dame such as Madame de Rochemont would not be used to hearing blunt refusals, especially to a commission that was intensely flattering, not to say valuable and prestigious.

  Alexa pressed her lips together, trying to find an answer. ‘I no longer practise portraiture, madame. I am so sorry.’

  ‘I see. Would I be correct in thinking, therefore, that my son’s portrait is the l
ast you have made?’

  Into Alexa’s mind came the vivid, violent portrait that was the demonic twin of the one that had been a birthday gift for Guy’s mother.

  ‘My last professional portrait, yes,’ she replied. ‘It was a commercial commission. Done only for money.’ Her voice was flat.

  ‘Of course,’ said Guy’s mother. ‘Why else would you wish to paint my son’s likeness, mademoiselle?’

  Alexa looked away. Back to the Claude beside the fireplace. She studied the figures, tiny against the broad pastoral expanse. One of the figures, at least, was blending into the landscape. It was Daphne, at the moment of her transforming into a laurel bush to escape the attentions of Apollo.

  I escaped as well—becoming a recluse, hiding from life. Hiding from Guy. From what he wanted of me.

  She looked away again, her gaze colliding with that of Guy’s mother. The air froze in her lungs and dismay drowned her. Realisation dawned.

  She knows. She knows what I was to her son…

  Her face paled. Panic rose. Without conscious volition she got to her feet. She had to go now. Right now.

  ‘I am sorry, Madame de Rochemont, but I must go.’

  Guy’s mother did not stand up. ‘Before you do, I have a favour to ask of you.’

  There was something different in her voice. Alexa didn’t know what it was. Didn’t know anything except that she had to go. Escape.

  ‘I’m so sorry, but I really can’t undertake the commission you mentioned—’ she began, her voice hurried.

  Madame de Rochemont held up a hand. A graceful, imperious gesture, cutting her off. ‘That is not the favour,’ she said. Her voice was dry. Her expression was as unreadable as ever, but there was a tension in it suddenly. She paused a moment, then spoke. ‘I would like you to go to France. To talk to Guy.’

  Alexa froze, disbelief in her eyes. Had she really heard what she had? Had Guy’s mother really said that? Why? Why on earth…?

  Words formed in her throat. Words that were impossible to say—impossible to get out—certainly not in front of this formidable grande dame who was Guy’s mother, and who knew about Alexa and Guy. But she must say something…