Englishman's Bride (9781460366332)

by Weston, Sophie

  ‘Oh, Kit! My poor love.’

  Philip was no longer even thinking of laughing. He wanted to put his arms round her and suddenly did not dare.

  She looked away. ‘Lisa helped me get through that too. She found me a therapist. He said to look at what I want, not what other people wanted for me.’

  ‘You’re over it, then?’

  Kit drew a shaky breath. ‘Who knows? There are as many different patterns as there are cures. The last man I went to said that he thought in my case it was probably an idea that had been implanted early, because I started so young. If I could dig that out I might dare to say I’m cured. But I don’t know if he’s right or how the idea got fixed. We even did some hypnotherapy and couldn’t find it. So maybe he’s wrong.’

  Philip looked at her gravely. ‘And you think that if you let me make love to you you’re risking it starting up again?’

  Kit shook her head decisively. ‘No. Not that. I know the signs. I can handle stress now.’

  ‘Then what?’ said Philip. ‘Because you’re afraid of something, aren’t you?’

  Kit looked at the unicorn in the painting, so gallant. So heedlessly hopeful. The unicorn did not know that there was anything to fear from those men creeping through the woods after it. But she did. She did.

  ‘People hurt you,’ she said. ‘They’re having a good time, so they don’t notice. But you notice. And you don’t get over it.’

  He could not bear it. He put his arm round her and pulled her against his side.

  ‘Are you telling me you haven’t got over Johnny?’

  She shook her head again, violently.

  ‘What, then? What haven’t you got over, my love?’

  She did not remember that she had told him never to mention the word love to her again. She said baldly, ‘I should have had a baby.’

  There was absolute silence. Then Philip said in his most gentle, controlled voice, ‘You’re right. This needs talking about. Come with me.’

  They went to a small sitting room. There was a great copper jug of cherry blossom in the grate and the leaded windows stood open to the spring sun.

  Philip sat her in a tapestry chair and pulled up a battered footstool to sit by her feet. He took her hands and held on to them.

  ‘Tell me.’

  She swallowed. ‘I had a crush on him. He wasn’t really interested. But it was convenient to have someone to go to parties with on campus, I suppose. We only made love a couple of times.’ She looked up. ‘It was as much my responsibility as his. I made all the running,’ she said, anxious to be clear. ‘I don’t want you to think I was some sort of victim.’

  Philip pushed a soft strand of hair behind her ear as if he could not help himself.

  ‘Something else we have in common, then. I always want to be fair, too.’

  She gave him a sweet, surprised smile. ‘I think you could just be my hero.’

  She did not notice the effect that had on him. Philip saw it ruefully. He kept hold of her hands.

  She said with difficulty, ‘I thought I was pregnant. Well, I was nearly certain. I told Johnny. He went ballistic.’

  She could still see his face. White and furious. She shivered slightly. Philip’s hold tightened.

  ‘Probably he was frightened as much as angry,’ he said in his calmest voice. Though he could have killed the young idiot who was making his darling shake with remembered grief.

  She nodded. ‘Maybe. At the time all I knew was that he hated me. He shook me.’

  Philip’s hands clenched on hers like a vice. He looked dangerous suddenly. Hundreds of combatants around the world would not have recognised their rock-like peace negotiator in this narrow-eyed man. Catching sight of his face in the mirror beyond her shoulder, Philip did not recognise himself either.

  Kit eased her pinched fingers. Philip looked down, remorseful. She shook her head. ‘I’m all right. Though for a long time I didn’t want anyone to touch me. I’m probably over that now. After Coral Cove.’

  It was like being given everything he had ever dreamed of. And she did not even realise what she had said. She was sitting there. Frowning as she strove to tell him her horrible secrets, when she had already told him the only thing in the world that mattered.

  I am going to make her so happy, Philip promised himself. I am going to make her the happiest woman in the world.

  ‘Only—I ran away. It was a filthy night and I just ran. Walked and walked. Got soaked and still carried on walking. And then I went to get the bus home. The steps were wet. I fell down them. A long concrete flight.’

  ‘You lost the baby,’ said Philip quietly, understanding at last.

  Kit gave a laugh that broke in the middle. ‘Not even that. They said in the hospital that it was a false alarm. That I had never been pregnant at all. And I thought that they were lying.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘Spare my feelings. People always want to spare my feelings. As if I’m too feeble to cope with life as it is. Too feeble to protect my own baby.’ She sounded as if she hated herself.

  Philip said sharply, ‘You’re not feeble and doctors don’t lie to spare people’s feelings. They’re too worried about lawsuits.’

  Kit raised her head.

  He said, ‘If you want a reason to beat yourself up, find a better one than that.’

  She searched his face and saw for the first time the narrow-eyed temper.

  She echoed wonderingly, ‘Beat myself up?’

  ‘What I can’t understand,’ said Philip, very precise in his fury, ‘is that people have let you hang on to this nonsense all these years. Even if you managed to sell it to your family, surely serious health professionals should have told you to get a grip? You did say you had a therapist?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kit, dazed. Suddenly she wanted to laugh, to run like the unicorn, tossing her head in the air and dancing with delight. ‘Yes, I did. Only I never told him about the baby. I never told anyone before today.’

  ‘Then let this be the end of it,’ said Philip soberly.

  ‘Oh, yes. Yes.’

  She leaned forward and rested her head against his. She could feel his strength flowing into her. He was a rock.

  He said into her hair. ‘I mean it, Kit. I can fight rivals. I can fight the world if I have to. I can’t fight what’s going on in your own head.’

  She looked up then and took his head between her hands. She kissed him full on the mouth.

  ‘You don’t have to. I’m all right now. I will always be all right. With you.’

  He took her round his kingdom. He took her to all his favourite places and offered them to her, as if he was a knight returning from a quest with all that was precious in the world.

  He took her along the portrait gallery, going from ruffled ancestor to ancestor.

  ‘My family are a cold and unforgiving lot. They don’t trust easily. If they do trust and it is betrayed they pursue the betrayer forever.’

  Kit looked at a wall full of uncompromising jaws and steady eyes, so like Philip’s own, and believed him.

  They went to the old castle guardroom with its arrow-slit windows and flagstone floor.

  ‘I used to play Ivanhoe here,’ said Philip with a reminiscent smile. ‘The stone makes a wonderful clang if you hit it with your sword.’

  ‘They gave you a sword to play with?’ said Kit, appalled at the recklessness of the upper classes in the matter of child rearing.

  He laughed aloud at that. ‘The drawing-room poker. I’ll show you.’

  They went through the stables.

  ‘My grandfather said I could only have a pony as long as I groomed him myself.’ Philip ran his hand up a beam, looking at the empty stalls. ‘When I went away to school he was sold.’

  ‘He sounds tough.’

  ‘He was. Fair, though. Just not very warm.’

  Kit walked into the curve of his arm, laying her cheek on his shoulder as if she would compensate for all the warmth he had missed without kno
wing it. She rubbed her cheek against his cashmere sweater.

  ‘Who did you play with?’

  He looked down at her, amused. ‘Now this is where your prejudice against the upper classes is going to come into its own. My grandfather had my nanny import two boys from the village for the purpose. On Saturday afternoons. It meant they missed football. They hated it.’

  ‘Oppressor of the poor,’ said Kit, twinkling.

  ‘Completely. We became good friends, though. One of them is now my land agent. One of them is the local postman. Married to Sandy, whom you’ve met.’

  She made a face at him. ‘Feudal lord!’

  They linked hands and wandered out into the sunshine.

  ‘Did you ever play when it hadn’t been planned in advance?’ Kit asked curiously.

  His eyes danced. ‘Not until now.’

  She did not laugh back at him. ‘Then we’d better make it worth waiting for,’ she said, looking at him steadily.

  And slid her hands under the sweater.

  His eyes flared.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he said in a low voice.

  She nodded.

  That was when he took her to his own room.

  This was different. It did not have the golds and velvets and elaborate carving of the Queen’s Room. It did not have priceless paintings or great urns of ceremonial flowers. It was simple and homely and his.

  The moment Kit walked into it, she knew she was in the right place. It was almost as if she had been here before. She recognised a tie on the chair. He had worn it at that fateful reception at Coral Cove. The room spoke of him. It felt like home.

  ‘Looks as if Sandy has already been in,’ he said. ‘She always dives on my suitcases, looking for washing. But just in case—’

  He turned the massive iron key in the lock and came to her.

  Now that she was here, she was nervous again. Not scared. She could never be scared of Philip. But aware that she had never done this before. Never gone to bed in the middle of the day and stone-cold sober with a man who looked as if she was about to give him the world.

  She said worriedly, ‘When I said I wasn’t an innocent I didn’t mean that Mata Hari could take my correspondence course. I mean, I’m not all that experienced.’

  ‘I am,’ said Philip, amused.

  Kit ignored this frivolity. ‘It isn’t that I haven’t done this before. Well, not exactly this, maybe. But I haven’t done it for a long time. And never, well, never—’

  ‘Never with me,’ said Philip calmly. ‘Another thing we have in common.’

  ‘Yes, all right. I suppose so. But it feels—’

  He slid hands that were warm and sure under her T-shirt.

  ‘Yes?’ he prompted mischievously. ‘How does it feel?’

  Kit gave a deep, voluptuous shiver.

  ‘Strange,’ she said, suddenly hoarse.

  ‘And that?’

  She swallowed. ‘I could get used to it.’

  He shook his head. ‘Now there’s a challenge.’

  Kit looked deep into his eyes. She had never done anything like this, she realised. Never looked into a man’s eyes and desired and teased and loved.

  Loved?

  She felt it slide through her, like water flooding a lock. It filled her, made her tingle, made her yearn.

  She stood up very straight and pulled the T-shirt over her head. From the look on his face, she saw that Philip knew how big a step it was for her.

  She melted into his arms. She kept her eyes tight shut, hearing his hurried breathing, her own galloping pulse, the creaks of the old house, the call of the birds outside the window…

  Philip said her name in a voice that did not sound like his at all.

  She began to tug at his clothes with fingers that were clumsy and unfamiliar. He stilled them.

  ‘Slowly.’ It was a ragged whisper.

  ‘I want,’ said Kit, panting. ‘I want—’

  But she couldn’t say what she wanted. Any more than she could open her eyes.

  He picked her up. Her heart lurched and her eyes flew open.

  ‘Better,’ said Philip, still ragged.

  He carried her to the bed and pushed the sober navy duvet aside. With one knee on the bed, he lowered her as gently as if she was a precious device and withdrew his arms. He touched her face, gently, possessively, as if he could not believe she was here in his bed.

  Kit caught his hand and carried it to her lips.

  She saw his reaction that time all right. But still he held off from her.

  ‘Don’t close your eyes, Kit,’ he said as if it was dragged out of him. ‘Don’t shut me out.’

  It was not an order. This was no longer the all-powerful negotiator, calm and godlike, she saw, wondering. This was a man who did not know his way through the maze any better than she did.

  For a moment she thought she would drown in panic. And then she did the bravest thing she had ever done in her life.

  She mastered the stupid embarrassment that was not doing either of them any good.

  And sat up.

  And wriggled out of the rest of her clothes.

  And sank back naked among his pillows and held her arms out.

  ‘Look at me,’ said Kit, with a catch in her voice. ‘Love me.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  HE MADE love to her with his whole heart. Kit was quite certain of that. No matter how limited and long ago her sexual experience had been, there was no mistaking that. She had never felt so cared for in her life.

  He was right, he did know more than she did. A lot more about the rhythms of her body as well as his. A lot more about how to sensitise her flesh and then take her to the pinnacle of sensation and beyond.

  ‘Where have you been all my life?’ she gasped at one point, when she could speak again.

  He laughed in his throat. ‘Just waiting for someone who would appreciate my expertise properly to come along.’

  And he bent again to his self-appointed task of driving her wild.

  But it was not the expertise that captured her heart. Nor the laughter, though she had never thought people could laugh as they made love and it enchanted her. It made her feel as if they were equals as well as lovers and could laugh at the world together. It was the way he treasured her. The way he looked at her. The way he never stopped looking, even when his own body convulsed in shattering climax. The way he seemed to look straight into her heart.

  ‘And I thought I didn’t like people looking at me,’ said Kit, disconcerted, when at last they could talk again. She sounded bemused and not a little shocked.

  Philip held her against his shoulder and looped some blonde hair around her ear.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘What?’ She was put out.

  ‘Stick with that thought. I’m not people. I’m your lover.’ He kissed her temple softly. ‘No one else needs to look at you. Keep all the others off with boat hooks and grappling irons.’

  Kit’s eyes drifted closed at the caress. She gave a dreamy chuckle. ‘I take it you played pirates as well as Ivanhoe?’

  ‘With a lake on the premises? What do you think?’

  It was wonderful lying together as the sun set behind the hill beyond his window. It was wonderful to talk nonsense and know that he understood, as she understood him. Every shared joke bonded them closer. Every possessive touch welded them further into a couple.

  ‘I never knew it could be like this,’ she said softly.

  He stroked her arm with the tips of his fingers. ‘Nor me.’

  She nestled against his chest. He was hairier than you would expect from his fine-boned face and smooth, well-kept hands. It made Kit feel as if she knew a secret about him—that under the conservative suits and restrained manner he was flesh and blood. And vulnerable to passion, after all.

  Oh, boy, was he vulnerable to passion, she thought, stretching luxuriously along the length of his tall body.

  He caught her hand and held it to his chest.

  ‘Comfortabl
e?’

  She flexed her fingers under his, feeling the structure of bone and muscle, the warmth of skin. She felt as if she had never been so close to another human being. She thought in wonder, Who would have believed I could ever do this? Feel this?

  ‘Mmm. Every bit of me is comfortable,’ she assured him, beginning to slur. ‘Never been so comfortable.’

  ‘Good.’

  Even with her head on his shoulder, she could feel him smile.

  Feel him smile? Boy, have I got it bad, thought Kit drowsily.

  She murmured, ‘Philip?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Love you,’ she said on a massive yawn.

  And fell asleep.

  So she did not know that Philip stayed awake, staring at the darkening landscape. He held her strongly, protectively. But the laughter died away. Along with the warmth.

  Philip Hardesty, cradling his sleeping unicorn girl, viewed a suddenly uncertain future. A future which had just slipped out of his control. If he let it.

  ‘Live for today,’ she had said. But how could he? How could he?

  He had watched so many colleagues’ marriages founder on the absences, the sheer preoccupied business of being a peace negotiator. Families receded into the background for weeks, months at a time. And the danger! He knew how sensitive she was. He had seen it. How would she cope with him not only being away but being a target as well?

  It would not be fair to ask her. It would not be fair to any woman.

  But I don’t want to be fair.

  Philip thought about it for a long time as, beyond the window, the moon began to rise. His face grew stern. Slowly, imperceptibly, his shoulders tensed, as if he was taking up an invisible burden again.

  He curved his hand lightly along Kit’s bare arm. The unseen caress spoke of longing and an almost unbearable tenderness. But it was no longer possessive.

  And Kit slept on, unaware.

  For Kit the days that followed were magical. As the blossom opened and the sun intensified it seemed she was opening to new life as well. It went to her head like wine. She did not notice anything except how happy she was.

  She walked with Philip in the gardens, scrambled through Ashbarrow Woods with him, and sat in the fire-lit drawing room, holding hands with him. When they had been apart for an hour she went into the library where he was working on his computer. And he closed the thing down at once and held out his hand to her, as if she was his guardian angel.