by Megan Mulry
Eliot leaned his forehead into hers, closed his eyes, and felt a deeper intimacy than he would have ever thought possible. He pulled a light blanket over them and repositioned his body into a snug cocoon around hers. The two of them dozed off, finding each other in that place of shared freedom.
Chapter 18
Marisa couldn’t resist doing a little research about the castle where she and James would be spending the weekend. She looked it up online Thursday night and got a feel for the scale (massive) and scope (vast) of the buildings and surrounding gardens and parklands. She saw photos of James’s cousin, the current duke, Max Heyworth, and his American wife, Bronte Talbott, and other shots of Devon Heyworth and his wife, Sarah James, the one who knew Eliot, and a few pictures of the younger sister, Abigail Heyworth, who, Marisa realized, was the same Abigail Heyworth she had started to hear about in her own circle of foundations and funders of African aid projects. Perhaps Abigail would be at the house party over the weekend and Marisa could further justify this crazy escapade by securing some additional funding for the school in Tanzania.
She had managed to schedule two appointments in London, which made her feel a tiny bit less guilty about lying so categorically to Eliot. She was on a business trip, after all. She wasn’t entirely without honor.
She took a 6 a.m. flight out of Geneva Friday morning, which gave her plenty of time to make a ten o’clock meeting near Victoria Station and a one o’clock meeting in Marylebone. She hoped that last one would be over in an hour or so and she could meet James at his office in Mayfair immediately after.
He had called her each morning and each night of the past week to wish her a simple good day and a simple good night. He never pressed or brought up Eliot, or the heat that had passed between them in Frankfurt; he proffered a consistent, supportive friendship.
Sure, she could try to believe that, she chided herself. Her one o’clock meeting had finished in just under an hour, and she was riding in a taxi from Marylebone High Street toward Oxford Street, making her way inexorably toward Mayfair to meet James at his office. Her attempts at controlling her excitement with lame rationalizations about James-the-supportive-friend were futile. She tried a different tack and began immersing herself in the very real possibility that, upon seeing her, he would kiss her as passionately and heedlessly as he had in the Lufthansa lounge. She hoped that if she could anticipate a tidal wave of passion, perhaps she could prepare herself for it.
Foolish, foolish woman.
All that did was make her squirm and feel like the opaque black tights under her practical black suit were entirely too warm and annoyingly confining. And while the James-as-supportive-friend theory might have been a blatant prevarication, it did not lead to the unfamiliar pulls of sexual tension that always accompanied even the most glancing contemplation of the James-as-passionate-lover hypothesis.
The taxi was feeling close and overheated, so Marisa rolled down the window slightly, welcoming the brisk, wet air that signaled the very beginning or the very end of winter rain. She took a deep breath through her nose and then looked down at her purse and pulled out her compact. She smirked with a not-much-I-can-do-about-it-now look then pulled out a small brush and gave her hair a few quick pulls. It was straight and it was blond, that was about all she could manage at the moment. Her face was a bit flushed from the cool air (and those other thoughts, no doubt), so she didn’t bother putting on any powder or blush. She added a bit of lip gloss to her bottom lip, then put everything back into her large black Fauchard bag. A gift from Eliot. Ugh.
She should have switched to her black Longchamp purse, but it hadn’t occurred to her until she was already on her way to the airport at five that morning. Too late now. She was fastening the closure when the driver tapped on the dividing plastic and said, “Here you are,” in a far too normal voice.
Didn’t he know she was about to open his taxi door and step out onto a very large, very deep metaphorical lake that had only the thinnest treacherous layer of ice to support her? She breathed again, paid the driver through the glass, put her purse over one shoulder, and hefted her weekend bag out onto the sidewalk with her other hand.
Marisa wasn’t sure what she had imagined, but the Mowbray store was so quintessentially British, so quintessentially male. The enormous mahogany doors had gleaming brass handles, and the panes of glass on the upper portion were so crystal clear, they looked as if they were cleaned hourly. The four full-story picture windows on either side of the entrance were designed with formal but stylish flair. Large black-and-white photographs provided a grainy, classical background to offset the rich colors and immaculate cuts of the men’s clothes. The mannequins were antique, and the linen that covered them looked tea-stained with age.
Marisa let her stare rise slowly up the solid, formidable facade and felt defeated.
This was all a terrible idea.
She was not a frivolous woman. She was not inclined to larks and mischief. And her aversion to such trifles was a characteristic that she liked about herself. She respected who she was and how she acted. And now she had traveled halfway across Europe to meet up with a virtual stranger.
What had she been thinking?
She turned to see if she might still be able to catch the taxi that had just deposited her on this precarious sidewalk and watched, deflated, as it pulled quickly away into traffic.
“There she is now!”
James.
Her chest tightened in a split second of fear, then an unavoidable spilling warmth spread from her solar plexus out to the tingling tips of her fingers and toes.
James.
“Abigail, let me introduce you to my new friend—”
“Mary Moreau,” Marisa interrupted quickly, reaching out her hand to shake Abigail’s.
James looked at her askance, then tightened his eyes and deferred to the deception. For now. “Mary…” he said slowly, “this is my cousin Abigail Heyworth. Abigail, this is… Mary.”
Abigail looked from one to the other and felt a sweet recognition of the tender affection that she had recently rediscovered with Eliot. It looked as though James might have finally found someone he could tolerate for longer than his typical five minutes.
More than tolerate.
Marisa pressed on with forced ease. “Abigail, it’s a pleasure. I was hoping I might get to see you while I am here. I work for an aid agency that’s working in Tanzania and really admire everything you’re doing with the Rose and Thorn Foundation.”
Abigail turned to James with real concern. “Why didn’t you tell me about Mary? We have so much in common. Have you been hiding her from all of us?” She turned back to Marisa with a wide, genuine smile. “He’s notoriously secretive, you know. All sorts of internecine goings on. Watch out!” But Abigail’s complicit wink was all encouragement, despite her supposed warning.
James looked down at his perfectly polished shoes and shrugged his shoulders. Marisa thought he was the most engaging man she had ever seen. It was strangely hard for her to look away from him. Even if he never wanted to see her again after this weekend, she decided in that moment, she was going to enjoy as much of him as she possibly could.
She must have been staring like a fish-eyed idiot because Abigail looked from James to Marisa and back to James again then burst out laughing. “You two are pretty bad. I thought I was pretty bad, but you two are…” She smiled and shook her head.
James looked at Marisa and didn’t even care if Abigail could see how obviously glad he was to see his new friend.
Abigail straightened her back and tried to reposition the eight Mowbray bags she was lugging, then gave the parcels a guilty look. “I have a friend in from out of town and he arrived on my doorstep without any of his personal possessions. A few essentials.” Abigail lifted the bags in evidence. “Fetch me a taxi, James, so I can leave and the two of you can greet one another properly.”
The taxi pulled up and James helped load the shopping bags.
“And we wi
ll see you at Dunlear tonight?” Abigail asked with an inquiring eyebrow.
James nodded to confirm that both of them would be there.
“Great to meet you, Mary,” Abigail said, then turned and settled herself into the cab as James shut the door and the black vehicle pulled away.
“She’s quite nice,” Marisa tried.
“Yes, she is… Mary. Let me take your bag.” James reached for the heavy weekend bag that she had set on the sidewalk between them.
“What do you have in here? We’re just going to a friend’s house for the weekend, not to meet the queen.”
Marisa looked at him cynically. “Really? I Googled your so-called-friend’s house and I thought I might pack a little bit more than my long-sleeved black T-shirt and my Carhartts.”
“Touché. And by the way, I liked that T-shirt very much.” He smiled, then pulled the door to the store wide open. “Come on in.” As they walked through the main floor, James held her substantial valise over his right shoulder as if it were as light as a shirt from the dry cleaner, then he reached for her, resting his palm against the small of her back. “I can’t wait to hear more about you… Mary.” She opened her mouth to speak and he shook his head to stop her, then added quietly, “Let’s get up to my office and you can tell me all about your split personality.”
She smiled despite herself as she took in the wonderful smells of leather and wool and old wood and a hint of beeswax from the floors. Masculine scents of sandalwood, bay rum, and pine floated through the centuries-old store. She saw racks of perfectly hung suits, a section of country tweeds, a shoe area in the far corner to the right, and a manned elevator, complete with a perfectly polished brass cage directly in front of them. James didn’t release his hand from her back until they were in his office and he had shut the door behind him and tossed her bag on the very old and very comfortable-looking leather Chesterfield sofa along the wall to her left. A fire burned in the small grate.
“Wow. Some office.”
He remained standing with his back against the door and watched as she dropped her handbag on the sofa and continued to walk around the room, his space. She picked up the occasional paperweight or photograph. “Is this you?”
“Probably.” He wasn’t going to look away from the way her skirt hugged her perfect hips long enough to pay attention to the frame she was holding.
“James! You are not even looking at me.”
“I beg to differ.” He met her eyes and she flushed, then looked quickly away and put the picture back on his desk. She continued to the other side of the office, where floor-to-ceiling bookcases were filled with nearly three centuries of hand-bound chestnut leather ledgers, dating back to a time when the Mowbray wool had to be carted across Scotland and England behind a team of horses.
She let the pads of her fingertips trail along the tooled ridges of their bindings. James felt his mouth go dry as those delicate fingers tripped mindlessly across those lucky books.
She came back to where she’d begun, standing a few feet in front of him in the center of his domain, trying to keep calm as her heart pounded amid the warring artillery of fear and desire. “So.”
“So,” he said, “why is your name now Mary?”
Marisa felt a little disappointed that he hadn’t showered her in kisses by now, then shook her head and reminded herself she had advanced degrees from prestigious universities and shouldn’t be having pattering thoughts about showers of any kind, much less those of the kissing variety.
“Ugh. It’s so stupid, I suppose.” She turned half away so she was looking at the fire, then pulled her perfectly straight blond hair in front of her left shoulder in an impatient gesture that, James noted, had the added benefit of revealing a lovely kissable spot at the nape of her neck. “I just didn’t want to have to explain myself to anyone. Our wedding announcement was in the International Herald Tribune about a month ago and just now with Abigail… I mean, she and I are in the same industry. I’ve admired her work over the past year. Not to mention her mother is married to a close family friend of Eliot’s, for goodness’ sake. I even met Jack and your aunt Sylvia on holiday in Italy last summer. It’s all too close.”
“Aunt Sylvia is not going to be there this weekend, I can assure you of that. And your engagement announcement,” he rephrased her words with pointed meaning, “probably passed by most casual readers.”
“From what I’ve heard, Bronte Talbott is not most casual readers; she is a marketing and PR fanatic. She probably knows every wedding announcement ever made about every employee of Danieli-Fauchard. Not to mention Sarah James.”
James shrugged again.
Marisa continued, “You know she’ll probably end up there this weekend too. I’m sorry. It seems silly now, but in that moment when you introduced me to Abigail Heyworth, I had this spontaneous dread of saying my real name and having her ask, ‘The Marisa Plataneau?’” She was still staring at the low fire when she felt the sudden touch of his lips at the nape of her neck. She swooned. Or she imagined that’s what it must have been, because she’d never really believed that such a thing was possible.
“I’ve changed my mind…” he whispered provocatively.
She stiffened, then softened into him when he nibbled at her exposed earlobe and said, “I don’t care if your name is Mary or Gertrude or Sam or Bill.” He kissed his way down her bare neck as he recounted a lengthy list of progressively ridiculous names. Then he turned her so she was forced to look him straight in the eyes. With her no-nonsense three-inch black heels, they were exactly the same height. He held her chin in his right hand, then added, “As long as you know, I like Marisa the very best.” And then he began to kiss her with a gentle, demanding passion that made her forget any name she had ever possessed.
She was still holding the bulk of her hair in the clench of her right hand, as if it might fall off her head if she did not keep it in place. Her other hand flew up and fisted around a piece of his shirt fabric at his chest to hold herself steady.
After he had kissed her to the point of throwing her into a maelstrom of confused lust, he trailed the tip of his tongue around the perimeter of her full lips, just as she had done to him in Frankfurt.
“Welcome to London,” he said formally and guided her to the sofa and settled her into a sitting position. She felt boneless. “Have a seat for a little while and I’ll wrap up what I was working on, then we can head out to West Sussex,” he said as he walked back toward his large mahogany desk in front of the wall of windows that overlooked Sackville Street.
She was staring across the room at his amazing form, his broad shoulders beneath the striped broadcloth, his strong thighs in the moleskin jeans. Marisa wasn’t sure she’d ever wanted a man like this… like she wanted food. She was hungry for James Mowbray. She couldn’t string two thoughts together. How was he able to kiss like that and then speak in complete sentences, she wondered with abstracted academic interest.
He sat behind his desk then smiled at her stunned silence. “I think you are going to like it here.”
She let herself fall back, mouth slightly open, into the well-worn leather of the sofa and let out a nonsensical, “Huh.”
They spent the next two hours in a businesslike silence that was punctuated by distracted looks and a few irrepressible sighs of silly joy on Marisa’s part. James had more loose ends to tie up at work than he’d originally thought, but Marisa was happy to go over her notes from her meetings earlier in the day and clean out her emails. She kicked off her shoes and sat on the sofa with her laptop, a position that afforded her a spectacular view of James at his helm. It was a surprisingly comfortable arrangement.
***
Bronte was in the particularly foul mood that only someone in the late stages of a multiple-birth pregnancy could appreciate. She was swollen everywhere. The skin around her ankles and wrists was so stretched, she questioned whether or not those parts still contained bones. On the other hand, since she hadn’t actually seen her ankles in we
eks, the bone discrepancy was moot as far as those joints were concerned.
Everyone was being overarchingly accommodating and protective. At first it was adorable, especially her husband’s sexy remonstrances about how she needed to be particularly still while he took care of her, you know, there. But after a while, even that became annoying… her body repelled the slightest touch, as if her muscles were starting to reserve every bit of energy for the coming onslaught. All of her husband’s fussing and caring made her want to slap him, and not in a spanky, fun sort of way. She needed a distraction from her confinement, because—despite the archaic sound of it—that’s exactly what it was: confining.
Of all the prenatal visits she’d attended, of course Max randomly decided to join her on the one in which the doctor told her in strict tones that she must “take it very easy” for the final three weeks.
Bronte’s idea of taking it easy was diametrically opposed to her husband’s. She would have cut back to half-days at the office, or maybe three days a week instead of five. She wasn’t paralyzed, after all, she was just an enormous waddling beast.
“Surprise!” Max said far too cheerfully as he entered their bedroom with a beautiful breakfast tray in his hands.
Bronte groaned as she tried to heave her cetacean mass into a more upright position. “These two angels better love me so profoundly and infinitely.”
“Now, Bron. Don’t go blaming the girls. They can certainly hear you at this point.”
“Hear that!” She patted her huge belly with firm authority. “Love your mother!”
“Careful!”
“Jesus, Max. It’s my bloated beast of a body. Trust me to know how hard I can whack it, all right?”
“Did you just say whack and hard in the same sentence?”
In the absence of actual sex, Max’s sense of humor had disintegrated into something akin to a twelve-year-old boy who just found the word fuck in the dictionary.