She was being forced into a decision that might or might not have been the one she really wanted to make. She could not go away with John, and she would never know whether she had wanted to.
“John, I can’t tell you,” she said desperately. “It’s business. I’ll be waiting for a story to break—” He interrupted her.
“You’re giving up your holidays to wait for a story?” he demanded, amazed. “Must be some story—What is it, the identity of the Yorkshire Ripper?” He was half-serious.
“No, no, nothing that big,” she said hastily. “But I’ve given my word to someone not to file a story until they—”
He interrupted again. “Well, hell, love! You don’t have to hang around waiting, do you? Write the story up and get them to call Harry when it can go! You know that.”
She did know that, and as soon as he’d said it, he realised there had to be something more.
“Well?” he queried softly.
“John, it’s not like that. They won’t give me an exclusive.... I have to be right there when they decide to—”
“Now, just let me get this straight.” He sounded as though he were battling to keep incredulity out of his voice. “You’ve got a story, and you’ve agreed not to file till someone gives the okay, but you haven’t got the promise of an exclusive?” He spoke with emphasis, measured pauses between each phrase, as though one of them might have trouble understanding.
Laddy nodded. He was right; it sounded absolutely insane. She should never have embarked on an explanation.
The waiter appeared at his side, and John glanced up as though he had come out of a time machine.
“I’m not hungry, Laddy,” he said. “Could we get out of here?” And almost before she agreed, he stood up, apologizing briefly to the waiter and passing him a couple of pound notes. He pulled her coat from the chair and flung it over his own arm, shepherded her rapidly past the tables and then outside.
They walked in silence to where her car was parked behind his at the curb. He opened the passenger door of his own car and she got in. “God,” he exclaimed suddenly, “I can’t even drive you anywhere!” He slammed the door and walked around to climb in behind the wheel. He turned to face her, his arm along the seat back in the gloom of dusk. “You’re not being honest with me, Laddy,” he said. “I want you to be honest with me. Tell me anything, lass, as long as it’s the truth!”
But what was the truth? “Everything I’ve told you is the truth, John—so far as it goes. I can’t tell you any more because—because I don’t understand it myself yet.”
“It’s a man,” he said flatly, and raised a hand against her gasp. “Don’t deny it—I know. Somewhere between last Thursday night and tonight you met a man, and he’s—he’s turned you upside down, Laddy. Dammit!” He hit the steering wheel with his hand. “How could it happen so quickly? How? We had something going, Laddy, I—”
“It wasn’t quick at all.” She couldn’t stop herself from saying it, or keep the pain and bitterness from her voice. “I knew him years ago, he.... “
“He’s come back?” John hissed, a light of anger, danger in his eyes.
Startled, she gasped, “Who?”
“I always knew there’d been someone,” he said. “But I thought he was gone, out of the picture. I always knew there’d been someone who hurt you.”
She said, “He couldn’t help it, John, but I....”
“But you think you still love him,” he said flatly.
“I don’t know.”
“But while I go off on my holiday alone, he gets a chance to prove that you do, is that it?” he demanded.
“No...” she faltered. “There’s a story—”
Abruptly he pressed the starter and the engine leaped to life with an angry roar, then he held the wheel and looked straight ahead out the windshield.
“I hope I never learn the bastard’s name,” he said. “I hope I never do. If you change your mind, call me.”
She got out of the car and stood on the pavement and watched as he roared off down the street.
* * *
Laddy spent most of the weekend with Margaret and Ben Smiley in the garden, wishing that she had gone down to Trefelin after all. She didn’t hear from John over the weekend, and she didn’t see him at work on Monday. She wondered whether it was by accident or design.
Monday night at six o’clock a wealthy gold dealer was shot down in London in the street outside his home, and Harry phoned her late that night to ask her to cover it first thing Tuesday morning.
She was somehow quite certain that John would be at the scene the next morning, and she wondered with a sinking heart what they could say to each other. But he was not there. Laddy had been so convinced John would be covering the story, that for a moment she didn’t recognise the man who was, an old Herald hand named Bill Hazzard.
She and Bill spent most of the day between the “scene” and the hospital waiting for news. And during the long pointless wait it occurred to her that John might have asked Richard Snapes not to send him on the same assignment as herself.
But that was paranoid and ridiculous. John was a professional photographer and he put that before everything; there had been many occasions in the past two months when they had not worked together for days at a stretch.
She knew she was not functioning well, and she was glad there were no intricate Middle Eastern developments today to follow and report.
Laddy set out for Wales on Wednesday in greater confusion than when she had left it ten days before.
* * *
Mischa Busnetsky had set up a study for himself in one of the cottages on the property. Both of what Laddy had thought were outbuildings were in fact self-contained cottages that Helen and Richard had had modernised—though not as extensively as the house—to serve as guest quarters. The house itself wasn’t large enough to accommodate guests comfortably over a long period.
“For one thing we’ve only one bathroom,” Helen explained. “Mischa is still sleeping in the house for the moment. Better to have someone within call just in case, but that will change once he’s a bit stronger.
“I’ve put you in the other cottage. The two are quite close together, but I don’t think you’ll get in each other’s hair—I hope not.”
The cottages were at right angles to each other, and at their nearest walls, the remains of an old construction that might once have been their common animal shelter ran between them. The walls were white stucco and the roofs and shutters were black. Large worn flagstones angled across the courtyard between the two front doors.
“But they’re charming!” Laddy exclaimed. “I don’t remember them at all from when dad and I were here.”
“They were pretty broken down—you were probably expected to keep away from them. We had them done seven or eight years ago.”
She showed Laddy into the cottage that lay farthest from the house, at a right angle to the cliff face. The door opened directly into a pretty little kitchen that had been repaired, decorated and supplied with water and electricity with the minimum of impact on the original design.
To the left of the kitchen lay a full bathroom, which Helen said had once been a pantry-storage room. To the right was the sitting room and through it the bedroom. “We did take out the kitchen fireplace simply on space grounds, but the one in the sitting room is functional. And we enlarged some of the windows.”
At the far end of the cottage, the bedroom window overlooked the sea. It was like something she had dreamed of, a place she had always known.
“I don’t suppose you’d consider selling it?” Laddy asked. “I’d retire here and write a book.” She planned to write a book someday—she might do some thinking about that during the next two weeks.
“Isn’t it odd you should say that!” said Helen. “Richard and I agreed only the other day to sell the other one to Mischa.”
“Oh,” said Laddy.
Helen invited Laddy to take all her meals at the house and particularl
y hoped to see her every night for dinner. But Laddy thought she would prefer to make her own breakfast and lunch, and when she had moved her luggage into the cottage, she drove down to the village store for supplies.
It was a beautiful warm spring afternoon, and Mischa Busnetsky was standing in the open doorway of his own cottage when she returned with her shopping, as though he had been waiting for her.
“So—now I have the press on my doorstep?” he asked, and moved across to take one of her bags and open the door for her.
He was wearing black trousers and a black-and-white-check shirt rolled up at the elbows; there was appreciably more flesh covering his frame than ten days ago. His short black hair now had the look of soft fur, and it crossed her mind that it might be rather pleasant to stroke it.
He wasn’t serious; she laughed. “In fact, I was even thinking of putting in an offer on this little place, till I learned you were buying the one next door.”
“And why did that change your mind?” he asked lazily, his eyes smiling, and it was as though the hostile suspicion of last week, when he had accused her of wanting only a story, had never existed.
“I thought you might complain,” she said nervously, setting her bag on the table, and when she turned he was close behind her with the other, and he was very tall and broad.
“About what?” he asked. “The distraction?” He moved to put the bag down, and then he was very close indeed. He put his hands on her shoulders and her body jerked as though electricity had passed through her between his two hands.
“You did not publish the story of my whereabouts,” he said. “Why?”
Laddy blinked at him. “Did you think I would?” she gasped, amazed.
“No,” he said. “I was not sure. Why did you not?”
His eyes were so deep she could have drowned in them. She thought wildly that if she let herself fall into those eyes she need never come up for air again. She swallowed.
“Helen told me that this could mean great trouble for you, that you might lose your job for it,” he said when she did not answer. “Is this so?”
“I would lose credibility with my editor if he found out,” she said. “But there’s no reason why he should.” A week ago she had been hating him for putting her in this position, and now here she was telling him it didn’t matter. She must be mad.
“This word ‘credibility’—it derives from the Latin credere, to believe?” he asked, and this was a jump she could not fathom. She nodded dumbly.
“Your editor will stop believing in you because of me, therefore?” he concluded, and she gazed in admiration at an intellect that could translate from English to Latin to Russian and so add another word to his vocabulary.
“But this is no small thing,” he said. “I was wrong to make this demand of you when it is so easy for me to promise you an exclusive story.” She had stopped looking into his eyes; she was staring at a small white button on his shirt front. “I will promise you an exclusive story,” he said quietly, “but I will make a condition.” He put his hand under her chin and raised it, and she looked into his eyes. “On this condition, “ he said, and he was half smiling, but his eyes were dark. “That you tell me why you did not publish my whereabouts last week.”
To her amazement she felt herself blush fiery red. She gazed up at him, unable to speak, unable to tear her eyes away from his. He was not smiling anymore. He was staring at her and his breathing had altered, and she watched his gaze slide to her mouth and her lips parted in a faint gasp.
The hand under her chin shifted, and she felt his thumb gently tracing her mouth. With a clarity so vivid it shocked her, she saw his hand touching the lips of the woman in the painting, and his touch was a burning brand on her mouth, and eight years melted away to nothing.
“Mischa...” she begged. He bent his head, and at last, at long last, his mouth touched her own.
It was the kiss they would have exchanged in that Moscow apartment if he had kissed her then, and in some extraordinary way, the girl who lifted her arms passionately, trustingly, up around his neck and clung to him was a seventeen-year-old girl who had only just learned the secret of why she had been born a woman.
He took his mouth away from hers, and she moaned her loss as his lips followed the line of her neck down to the hollow of her throat, and she pressed his head with her two hands and trembled. He lifted his head and looked into her eyes, then pulled her tightly to his chest and held her.
“How I have dreamed to see you tremble for me,” he whispered, and she could have wept at the perfection of it. He looked down into her face, her head cupped firmly in one large hand. “And you have no husband, no lover?” he asked.
“No husband, no lover,” she whispered.
“Not for a long time, too, I think,” he said quietly.
She dropped her eyes and said, “Not for a very long time. Not for eight years.”
She counted the seconds till he understood, and he went completely still. Then his hand was in her hair, pulling her head back, and his eyes raked her face, harsh, almost angry, his own face all planes and angles in the shadowy room.
“You will learn about love from me?” his voice rasped in his throat, and it was half question, half command, and when she could speak, she breathed,
“Yes.”
His broad fleshless hands encircled her face, her head; they trembled against her hair as though if he let go his control he might crush her, and she shook as his emotion enveloped her. “Why?” he demanded hoarsely, and she knew it now, she could say it now, it was so clear; she said,
“I love you.”
His eyes darkened as though she had struck him, then suddenly, roughly, her body was against the length of his, and the passion in his eyes blazed down at her. His thumb parted her lips, then he bent his head and his mouth covered hers, and she went up like dry underbrush and heard the flames roaring in her ears.
He lifted his mouth from hers and buried his face in her hair. “Lady, Lady,” he repeated, over and over, as though the sound was being torn from him.
“I love you,” she said, wrapping her arms tightly around him. “I love you so much.” And she tasted the first heady joy of surrender to love without restriction, without fear. With a groan Mischa buried his face in her neck, and his body, pressed so tightly to hers, was burning, flaming with his need of her. His face pushed away the collar of her shirt as his warm seeking mouth ran over the hollows of her neck and shoulders, then her throat, and finally found her mouth again. His kiss now was nearly savage, and in her response to it she felt for the first time her own deep savagery. His broad hands touched her body as though they would remould her at breast, waist and hip.... everywhere, his fingers spread and gripping to press her passionately against his body.
He leaned back against the table, and suddenly Laddy was off balance, lying against him. Then abruptly he spread his legs under her, and her body was brought into such sharp contact with him now that she pulled her mouth from his to gasp in the air she suddenly needed.
His hand reached up to wrap itself in her hair, stilling her for a moment as he gazed down into her eyes.
“Never?” he asked, and his eyes were slitted with pleasure, with triumph, knowing the answer.
“Never,” she whispered, and his body leapt against hers so that she closed her eyes against the confusion of desire in her.
“Open your eyes,” he commanded huskily, the hand in her hair shaking her head a little. “I have waited a long time to see this in your eyes. I thought I would wait forever. Open your eyes and let me see.”
She opened her eyes with effort, and his eyes were gazing down at her, his mouth half smiling.
“What do you want to see?” she breathed, indescribably moved by the hungry possessiveness of that smile.
“I want to see what I have dreamed of seeing,” he said, the silver thread of need glittering through his tone. “I want to see the first surprise of passion; I want to watch your innocence taste desire.”
>
On the last word his voice roughened, and his hands dropped to clasp her denimed thighs. With a drunken, reeling sensation she felt him slide her body up against his, and aware of him in every pore, she looked down at his dark head and watched his involuntary tremor as he pressed his face to the hollow between her breasts.
He buried his face inside the confining folds of her shirt, his mouth moving moistly against the creamy fullness of her breasts, leaving a trail of fire and a high aching longing that she scarcely understood. Her hands pressed against his head, against the sensuous panther pelt of his hair, forcing his mouth against her skin; she felt the passionate laughter in his mouth as it kissed her breast.
“Yes,” he said huskily, pushing his head back against the pressure of her palms, the mat of his hair fanning sensually against her sensitised fingers, and his passionate, triumphant eyes glittering up into hers. “You see how your body makes its demands—my mouth against your breast now, but it shall want more than this before we are through....”
His lips returned to her breast, and then he let gravity draw her down, and she felt his mouth trail its moist burning upward from the hollow of her breasts to her throat, the underside of her chin, felt the simultaneous passionate agony of her body sliding down the length of his own, her legs and hips finding and fitting his with a rightness that almost shocked her.
He kissed her mouth again. She was drugged with passion, with wanting him. When he straightened, holding her, and turned, she hardly knew what was happening until the world reeled and she felt the table top under her back. She opened her eyes to see him standing between her thighs, his hands on her prominent hip bones warm through the denim of her jeans, his eyes burning into hers. His body pressed against her, and her eyelids fluttered as she drew breath through her teeth. Then he dropped forward over her, a hand falling on each side of her head, and smiled down at her.
“Lady,” he whispered, his mouth tantalizingly near her own. “Lady, Lady, Lady.” His kiss was teasing, his firm full lips moving lightly over hers, his tongue darting into the corners of her mouth, while he repeated her name in a passionate whisper, sending a frenzy of sensation down her spine into her arms, her stomach, her legs.
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