She was right, of course. But for some reason the thought of her walking away, back to Richard and their happy, stable domestic life, filled Henry with utter misery.
‘Not yet,’ he pleaded, burying his head between her thighs to drive the point home. ‘Please.’
It pained him to realize that he was envious of Richard. Envious of the love that he and Lucy shared, notwithstanding Henry and Lucy’s current dalliance. Henry loved Eva, but they’d never had that stability, that calm, contented companionship that Richard seemed to have achieved so effortlessly with his wife. And it was Henry’s fault entirely that they didn’t. Eva was nothing if not stable. Endlessly kind, devoted, faithful, forgiving. If Henry couldn’t make it with Eva, he couldn’t make it with anyone. But perhaps that was exactly it. He couldn’t make it with anyone. Richard, Lucy and Eva were all fundamentally good people. Loyal people, even if Henry had managed to tempt Lucy temporarily into his bed. Henry wasn’t. He was fundamentally flawed. Broken. Incapable of lasting happiness. So he leapt instead at fleeting joy, of the kind that Lucy offered him, all the sweeter because it wouldn’t and couldn’t last.
One day, and probably soon, Henry knew that Lucy Smart would file him away under ‘regret’ and return to her real life, never to think about him again. At least, not in that way. Henry found this idea simultaneously painful and intoxicating.
‘I’ve got something to show you.’
They’d left the airport now and were pulling on to the M25. Reaching into the back seat of Henry’s vintage, wood-green Bentley S2, Eva unzipped her case and pulled out a carefully wrapped package.
‘For me?’ Henry raised an eyebrow.
‘Sort of.’ Eva smiled, opening the box and carefully removing layer after layer of lovingly folded tissue paper. ‘For us.’
At last she pulled out a very fine, exquisitely worked piece of lace. Holding it up to the light, you could see some faint yellowing at the edges, presumably from age. But it seemed to go on for ever, yards and yards of beautifully embroidered needlepoint.
‘It was my grandmother’s wedding veil.’ Eva stroked the fabric lovingly. ‘My father sent it to me from Stockholm as a surprise. They found it when they were packing up the summer house in Skåne.’
‘That was kind of him,’ said Henry, keeping his eyes on the road.
‘It’ll bring us good luck,’ said Eva, smiling and placing her hand on Henry’s thigh. ‘Farmor and Farfar were married for almost sixty years when Farfar died.’
A muscle on Henry’s neck twitched involuntarily.
‘We won’t need luck,’ he said, covering Eva’s hand with his. ‘I love you.’
Eva felt suffused with happiness.
It really was going to be all right.
‘I love you too, Henry.’
Flora ran through the woods, sweat pouring down between her shoulder blades. Reaching the bottom of the steep slope that ran from the end of Peony Cottage’s garden all the way to the banks of the River Swell, Flora turned sharp left and began climbing again, through the woods that marked the boundary of the Hanborough Estate. Although not officially public footpaths, generations of local villagers had walked and ridden through the Hanborough woods. The track Flora followed was well worn, if a little slippery after the recent rain. At this time of the evening – by the time Flora had finished work, Skyped Mason, changed and got out of the house, it was already past seven – she had the place to herself, but the dwindling light combined with the natural shade from the overhanging trees made it hard to see where one was going.
Two more miles, thought Flora, and I’ll turn around. She still had a mountain of emails to get through this evening, and the burning sensation in her thighs was getting beyond a joke. OK, maybe one more.
Reaching the top of the rise, she was about to make another right, deeper into the trees, when a strange sound stopped her in her tracks. It was loud and high-pitched and sudden. She heard it a second time, and then a third. The hairs on Flora’s forearms stood on end.
There could be no doubt about it. The sound was human. Human and female. Someone, a woman, was being attacked.
Pulling out her phone, Flora checked for a signal but there was none. Her mind raced. Should she surprise the attacker, or run directly for help? On the one hand an unarmed, exhausted girl of five foot two was unlikely to be of much physical help to this poor woman, whoever she was. She needed real help. The police. On the other hand, the perpetrator might run off if surprised. And by the time Flora got back to her cottage and a phone, it might be too late.
The screech came again.
Shit.
Using her phone as a light and holding it low to the ground, Flora made her way gingerly through the undergrowth towards the sound. Maybe if she could just see what was going on she could hit the guy over the head with something. A branch? In any case, she couldn’t just stand there while some poor woman was being raped or murdered.
After about twenty yards, the thick ground cover of ferns and brambles began to thin out. Flora saw what looked like a derelict barn or store of some sort, nestled in a clearing. It was hard to imagine a more secluded or desolate spot. You would never know a building was here, unless …
There it was again. The noise. But this time it was accompanied by some scuffling and heavy breathing. And then a lower, more masculine sound, almost like a … a grunt?
Oh God! Flora felt sick. Someone was being raped. Looking around desperately, scanning the forest floor for a possible weapon, she saw a biggish stone, about the size of a large grapefruit. Racing forwards before her fear got the better of her, holding her phone in one hand and the stone in the other, Flora ran around to the far side of the building, where the noises were coming from.
What she saw next would never leave her.
Lucy Smart, spread-eagled against the wall, her skirt pushed up around her hips and her underwear around her ankles. And behind her, totally naked and thrusting himself violently into her like an Exocet missile, was Henry Saxton Brae. Lucy had her eyes closed, utterly lost in the moment and Flora now recognized her screams as cries of pleasure. Henry, however, clearly sensed himself being watched. Without stopping or even slowing the frenzied rhythm of his thrusts, he turned his head around, his eyes wide open, and looked right at Flora.
It was the most mortifying, and longest, moment of Flora’s adult life. It felt as if the two of them stood there staring at one another for hours. At last, incredibly, it was Henry who broke the spell, turning away from Flora and continuing to fuck his best friend’s wife as if nothing had happened. As if Flora wasn’t there. As if she hadn’t seen them.
Her heart pounding, and not knowing what else to do, Flora turned and ran.
‘I’m coming!’
Barney wiped his wet, soapy hands on his jeans – Jeeves had got to the box of expensive Belgian chocolates that his godmother had sent Barney for his birthday last week, and proceeded to crap spectacularly all over the cottage – and raced to the door.
Flora, his second visitor in less than an hour, stood panting and dishevelled on the doorstep. In running gear, splattered all over with mud, and with twigs and bits of bramble literally stuck to her hair, she looked as if she’d been to war.
‘What on earth’s happened?’ Glancing down, Barney saw the scratches on her arms and feared the worst. ‘Did someone attack you?’
‘Henry …’ Flora gasped, doubling over as she fought to catch her breath.
Barney’s brows knitted into a deep scowl. ‘Henry? Henry Saxton Brae tried to hurt you?’
Flora shook her head, too weary to explain. She’d run all the way from the Hanborough woods to Barney’s cottage, because it was closer than her own and because she needed to talk to someone about what she’d seen. Should she tell Eva? As a friend, all Flora’s instincts screamed that she should. If the shoe were on the other foot and Mason were the one having an affair, Flora would definitely want to know.
On the other hand, the idea of being responsible for shat
tering not only Eva’s happiness but Richard Smart’s too was not a pleasant one. Flora didn’t know Richard or Lucy well, but they’d both seemed like such lovely people. Plus they had children. Not to mention the fact that speaking up would mean the end of Flora’s Hanborough job. The whole thing was a giant cluster-fuck.
How dare Henry put her in this position?
Turning around like that, as if the fact he’d been caught didn’t even matter; as if he already knew what Flora was going to do – or not going to do. The revolting arrogance of the man! And to think, she’d actually started thinking there was more to Henry Saxton Brae than met the eye. That, deep down, there might actually have been a good man lurking in there somewhere.
So much for that theory.
‘No one attacked me,’ she told Barney, finding her voice at last as the oxygen rushed back into her lungs. ‘I saw Henry—’
‘What about Henry?’
To Flora’s horror, Eva drifted into the hallway. In a flowing gypsy skirt and flat boots, with a gossamer-thin cashmere sweater loosely belted at the hips, she looked like an angel, or the heroine of some Pre-Raphaelite epic poem. The smile she gave Flora radiated happiness and peace. Flora’s stomach lurched.
What the hell was she doing here?
‘He hasn’t been giving you a hard time, has he?’ Eva asked. ‘If he has, just tell me and I’ll sort him out. No one knows more than I do how hard you’ve been working up at … My goodness, are you OK?’ Belatedly Eva noticed the state Flora was in. ‘You look terrible.’
‘I’m fine.’ Flora plastered a stupid grin onto her face. ‘I’ve just been for a run. Thought I’d pop in and see Barney. I won’t disturb you though.’ She turned to leave.
‘No, stay!’ Barney urged her. Even with his house smelling strongly of a mixture of dog poo and Dettol, he was keen for Flora to come inside. Whatever it was she’d wanted to tell him about Henry, surely the fact that she’d come to him was some sort of a good sign?
If only Eva hadn’t been here, Flora would have come in and confided in him. They would have shared a secret, an intimacy of sorts. Barney felt himself getting more and more cross. Really, it was too much, the way these supermodels just dropped in for tea whenever they felt like it, tearing a man away from his novel-writing and dashing his romantic chances to smithereens, without so much as a by your leave.
‘Yes, do come in,’ Eva was cajoling Flora. ‘You look like you could use a bit of a sit-down.’
‘Exactly,’ said Barney.
‘And you’re not disturbing anything.’
‘Nothing at all,’ he reiterated.
‘We were just having a cup of tea, weren’t we, Barney?’
‘We were.’
They’re like an old married couple, thought Flora.
‘Besides,’ Eva smiled knowingly, ‘I want to know exactly what Henry’s been up to.’
No, you don’t, thought Flora, the sick feeling in her stomach returning. You really don’t.
‘Another time,’ she said hurriedly. And before Barney had a chance to stop her, she ran off, taking the back road up the hill to Hanborough and the safety of her own cottage.
Henry pulled in to the side of the lane, turned off his engine and sat alone in the darkness, waiting.
Why did it have to be Flora who saw them? Flora, whose good opinion meant so much to him, for some reason he’d never fully been able to fathom. That look of horror on her face, seeing him with Lucy. It was a combination of revulsion and, almost worse, deep, deep disappointment, and it would haunt Henry for ever. He knew he ought to be grateful that it had been Flora and not Eva who’d caught them. But he wasn’t. Not at all.
When he’d turned away from Flora in the woods, tried to block out that look of hers by pretending she wasn’t there, he’d done so not out of arrogance, but out of shame and utter, abject panic. He’d been weak. Horribly, pathetically weak. It was that, more than anything else, that he needed to put right now.
In some strange way, he and Flora had always been equals. He’d tried to take the upper hand in the relationship when they’d first met, but he’d failed, and that was OK. Equal was good. Equal was refreshing.
Subordination, however, was not to be borne. Henry had dealt Flora the upper hand this evening and he must, at all costs, get it back.
If Flora was going to hate him, so be it. Hatred he could deal with. But not disdain. Not from her.
He looked at the dashboard clock impatiently.
Where the bloody hell was she?
Too tired to run any further, and nursing both a sore ankle and a pronounced stitch in her left side, Flora slowed her pace to a jog, then a walk. By the time she finally reached her garden gate it was nearly nine o’clock at night, cold and completely dark.
Fumbling in her pocket for her keys, she jammed it into the lock, but her fingers were numb with cold and she couldn’t seem to work the door open.
‘Let me.’
Flora screamed, jumping out of her skin. Emerging from the shadows like a night stalker, Henry had crept up behind her, grabbing her keys with one hand and blocking her escape with the other.
‘Shhh,’ he whispered in her ear, unlocking the door and bundling the two of them inside before Flora could scream again, or hit him, or react in any way. Only once they were inside and Henry had closed the door behind them and switched the hall light on did she turn on him.
‘Get out!’ she hissed. ‘How dare you come into my house? Ambush me like a fucking burglar.’
‘I’m sorry about that. I needed to talk to you.’
‘Yeah? Well, I don’t need to talk to you. I mean it, Henry. Get out. You make me sick!’
Henry leaned back against the door and looked at her calmly. ‘Do I? Why?’
‘Why?’ Flora repeated, incredulous. His nonchalance was truly infuriating – the ultimate insult. Everything about his body language, the relaxed way he extended his leg and rolled his ankle to and fro, spoke to Flora of his deep-seated selfishness, his utter lack of remorse. ‘You’re engaged to be married, Henry. To a lovely, incredible girl who you don’t deserve.’
‘That’s true,’ said Henry. ‘We’re not married yet, though.’
‘Lucy is,’ Flora shot back. ‘To your best friend! My God, Henry. Don’t you have any boundaries?’
‘I hate it when you start speaking American,’ Henry quipped, with a confidence he was far from feeling. ‘And as a point of fact, I have very clear boundaries. You crossed them tonight when you decided to trespass in my woods.’
‘You’re not funny.’ Flora looked at him witheringly. ‘No one’s laughing.’
‘No. I know.’ Henry looked at the floor. For the first time he showed the slightest hint of being chastened.
‘You don’t care about anyone except yourself, do you?’ Flora said furiously. ‘I can see why you and Georgina Savile found each other.’
Henry looked up sharply. ‘I’m nothing like George.’
Flora laughed out loud. ‘Of course you are! You’re two selfish peas in a pod. That’s why you’re screwing her as well, isn’t it?’
The words were out of her mouth before she even knew she planned to say them.
Henry’s eyes narrowed. ‘No,’ he drawled. ‘If you must know, I fuck George from time to time because I loathe her.’
Flora flushed with a mixture of embarrassment and anger.
‘With Lucy it’s different.’
‘Oh. I see. So you sleep with your best friend’s wife from time to time because you love her? Is that it?’
Flora’s voice dripped with sarcasm. But when Henry answered he was deadpan.
‘I do love her. I love Eva too. It’s complicated.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ said Flora. ‘It’s very, very simple. You’re a selfish asshole who thinks with his dick and to hell with the consequences. I really, really want you to leave my house now.’
Moving past her into the tiny cottage kitchen, Henry pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. Picking up
a saltcellar in the shape of a pheasant, turning it over slowly in his hand, he said, ‘I can’t do that, I’m afraid. Not until I know what you’re going to do.’
Gritting her teeth, Flora sat down opposite him.
‘Are you going to tell Eva?’
The question was neither angry, nor pleading. Like Henry’s expression it was impassive, unreadable. Does he want me to tell Eva? Flora wondered. Is he like one of those serial killers who’s secretly hoping to be caught?
‘I probably should,’ she said.
Henry exhaled slowly, his shoulders dropping with relief. That ‘probably’ spoke volumes. Equally important, he and Flora were negotiating again now like equals. He’d achieved his goal.
‘But you won’t.’
‘Not for your sake,’ Flora hastened to add.
‘No. For yours, I imagine,’ said Henry. ‘You want to keep the job at Hanborough.’
Flora considered denying this but then thought better of it. One of them might as well be honest.
‘I do, yes. This restoration’s very important for my career.’
‘You’re ambitious, aren’t you?’ Henry smiled. ‘I like that in a woman.’
‘I don’t give a toss what you like,’ Flora snapped, appalled at herself for the momentary flash of desire she’d felt when he smiled at her. No wonder Lucy Smart had been seduced by him. The man should have a government health warning tattooed across his forehead. ‘And Hanborough’s only part of the reason,’ she pressed on. ‘Eva’s my friend. That’s the bottom line, I guess. I don’t want to see her hurt.’
Henry stood up, apparently satisfied. ‘OK. Well, thank you.’
‘Don’t thank me. Like I said, I’m not doing it for you.’
He nodded, heading for the door.
‘I’ll see you up at the castle tomorrow, then?’
‘Yes.’
Flora closed her eyes. She felt bone-tired all of a sudden, a combination of all the physical exertion and stress.
‘Henry?’ she called after him as he unlatched the door.
He turned around silently.
The Bachelor Page 14