Hidden Paradise

by Janet Mullany

  She collapsed beneath him.

  “What the hell was that?” he said in a whisper, and stroked her back tenderly. “That wasn’t sex, it was some sort of seismic event. You okay?”

  “Great,” she mumbled, wishing she had words or energy to tell him more as he rolled off her and enfolded her in his arms. But there were three words that expressed her feelings, and she had to say them, now before she fell asleep: “I love you.”

  * * *

  A TAP AT THE DOOR WOKE HER next. She snatched Mac’s dressing gown and went to answer it. She’d overslept. The light outside told her it must be late morning. Mac rolled over, pulling the sheets over himself and a pillow onto his head.

  Di was outside with a tray of tea. “Sorry, I’m late, ma’am. We’re all a mess after last night. There’s an extra cup here if you need it. Do you need any help with your gown this morning?”

  She was relieved Di hadn’t brought two extra cups. “No, I’m fine, thanks.” The young woman looked exhausted, shadows beneath her red-rimmed eyes. “Are you okay?”

  Di nodded, a tear sliding from one eye. She shoved the tray at Lou, stepping away. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not. Come on inside,” Lou said. “Mac’s here, but he’s asleep. I’ll draw the bed curtains. Have a cup of tea with me.”

  Lou poured them both tea at the table by the window.

  “Sorry, I’ve got a bit of a hangover,” Di said. “It doesn’t help. My boyfriend broke up with me this morning. Well, last night. He texted me, but I didn’t get it until this morning.”

  “That’s horrible,” Lou said, and remembered Di and Rob together last night.

  But Di continued, “He said he was fed up with never seeing me and he’d found someone else.” She blew her nose on a well-used tissue from her apron pocket. “I was having such a great time here with Rob and Viv and everyone. Now everything sucks.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Lou said. She put her hand over Di’s. “Had you been together a long time?”

  “About a year. I know, it’s not long but I loved him. I thought he loved me. And now I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to stay here but I can’t go back to London.”

  Lou said, “If I were to offer you some advice, I’d suggest you stay here. For now, anyway. People like you, and you have friends here. It’s a safe place to be sad, if that makes sense.”

  Di sniffed and wiped her eyes. “Yeah, that does make sense. Thanks.” She drained her tea and stood, offering Lou a weak smile. “I’d better get going. You have anything to go back to Viv?”

  “Only last night’s gown. I’ll take it back later.”

  “Okay. Mind out, though, Viv’ll be like a bear with a sore head. She was really putting it away last night and she may have company. I’m keeping out of her way today.”

  * * *

  MAC WAS STILL ASLEEP WHEN LOU, showered and dressed, her ball gown over her arm, left the room. It was late morning, about 5:00 a.m. on the East Coast, and while her advisor was a notorious early riser, Lou thought breakfast and a quiet stroll over to Viv’s would take care of another hour. The house was quiet, a few footmen, yawning and with aprons over their livery, taking down last night’s wilted garlands from the pillars and staircase.

  She stopped by the breakfast room, where another couple of footmen, tired and unshaven, slouched against the wall. It appeared few guests were awake and nearly everyone had been up until dawn. Helping herself to a roll and butter to eat on her walk across the grounds, she drank some more tea and suggested the footmen sit, since no other guests were present. They collapsed onto chairs like rag dolls. One of them rested his head on the table and fell asleep.

  The grounds were even quieter, not a soul around. Her discovery yesterday now seemed almost like a dream. What was the story behind those few words? What other treasures might they yet find in those two, last unexplored rooms or in other houses in the neighborhood?

  She reached the lodge and tapped on the door, remembering Di’s warning about Viv’s state of mind. After a few minutes, the door dragged open to reveal Viv with mascara-ringed eyes, her spiky hair on end, a cigarette hanging from her mouth.

  Viv removed the cigarette and coughed for a good thirty seconds. “Oh, it’s you. Come on in.”

  Lou followed her flapping kimono into the lodge. One of the footmen—Ivan, Lou thought—sat at the table, smoking and reading a newspaper.

  “You,” Viv said to him, “out.”

  “Don’t I get a cup of tea, then?”

  “No, you bloody don’t. Sod off.”

  “Okay,” the footman said, not sounding too upset about it. “Bye.”

  “It’s always a mistake to let them stay over, even when they have a cock that huge,” Viv said, running water into her electric kettle. “Throw the gown into the hamper. I thought it looked good, if I say so myself.”

  Lou explained that she needed access to her bag.

  “Sure. I’ll make tea and get back to bed if you don’t mind. Take as long as you need.”

  Lou thanked Viv as she directed her to the storage area where guests’ bags resided in wire cages, each with a padlock, and reminded Lou what her combination was. Then, yawning, Viv left to return to bed.

  Ever since she’d known Julian, he’d had this bag. It was entirely impractical for travel, the leather making it too heavy, and it had no wheels. In addition, she now found, there was a new tear in the lining. She scrabbled around in the dark before taking the entire bag into the kitchen and wishing her notebook was not small and black and almost impossible to find. Her hand closed on something within the lining, her fingertips brushing the leather seam, a bundle of papers wrapped around something that, from its size, had to be her notebook. She placed it on the counter and unfolded the papers that she saw now were email correspondence.

  Oh, Julian. The whole point of email is that you don’t print everything out. Isn’t the house full enough of your printouts and notes and lists, and none of them any good to me?

  At first, she thought they weren’t his emails, since the one she chose at random was sent to an account unknown to her, not the university email he used for everything. She was about to throw them away, but she saw his name on them and picked a random page.

  Julian, I can’t wait until I see you again. I’m lying here, thinking of you and how much I love you....

  Love letters. She was reading love letters to her husband, some of which included his passionate responses. In growing disbelief, she looked at the dates. They were in order, starting the semester after she and Julian had married, and the first ones did use his university email account. He wrote to welcome someone called Christine to the campus and thank her for finding and returning his appointment book.

  Christine.

  Did Lou know her? She couldn’t recall anyone on campus called Christine.

  A week or so later, the other email address was in use and the messages were about when they could meet. Some emails referenced attachments, which thank God he had not printed out, the very special photos Christine had taken with her cell. He’d written after one of these: “You excite me so much. I can’t wait to see you. I’ve told my wife the Wednesday-night committee meeting is still on, so usual place? I can’t wait.”

  The lying bastard. She remembered the Wednesday-night committee meetings, but she also remembered a lot of sex with him, loving, inventive, frenzied sex. And all that time....

  She read on. More meetings, more photos,
more references to sex—in his truck at the side of the road, in his office.

  And Christine’s contributions—short, sexy messages full of abbreviations and exclamation points. Christine used c*ck and c*m and f*ck as if the full words were too weighty for her smartphone or her intellect. She frequently forgot to put on underwear—“LOL.” And her spelling was bad, her grammar worse.

  Sex standing up, sex on his desk, sex in Christine’s dorm room.

  Her dorm room?

  A student. No wonder students had played such a large part in Julian’s fantasies and Lou was suddenly overcome with guilt that she had encouraged them. She thought of those dirty games with a shudder of horror now.

  Julian wrote, “Even though you’re not my student, we have to be careful because of campus ethics. My wife doesn’t suspect anything, but when I’m with her it makes me miss you even more and think about you all the time.”

  Lou’s stomach lurched.

  Some angry emails a little later on when Christine demanded more of his time and attention, and insisted that he get a smartphone so they could email each other at any time. Julian, technophobe that he was, had refused.

  A series of messages, building in intensity, were about going away together to a conference.

  Then a panic. “Don’t order your plane ticket. Lou says she might want to come with me. I’m doing my best to dissuade her. More later.”

  Lou remembered that. Julian told her she’d be bored and that the conference location was not that great; but she’d welcomed a chance to write, order room service and test the capacity of the hotel bed with him. Christine apparently wanted those last two items, too. But their neighbor’s wife went into the hospital for surgery and Lou found herself helping with chores and cooking for them, so she’d stayed home. She and Julian were inexplicably short of money the following month and now she knew why—Christine’s airfare.

  The next email detailed a pregnancy scare, and Lou decided she had read enough.

  Her marriage had been a lie. All of it, a lie. And today, of all days, she’d learned the truth.

  Passion…inconstancy.

  She knew what she must do now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Rob

  He and Di sat on the front steps of the house, throwing pieces of gravel back into the driveway, an easy pastime since there were always pieces of gravel on the steps, a seemingly infinite amount. This was a sloppy, lazy sort of day, nearly everyone hungover and short of sleep, standards relaxed. In the two hours he’d been off duty last night, there had been no terrible disasters—nearly everyone was drunk, someone had vomited in the rosebushes, and one of the cooks had gone crazy and waved a knife around, insisting someone had stolen his stash of marijuana.

  And Di had been dumped by her worthless boyfriend, which made Rob feel bad for her—he hated to see her weepy and sad—but also vaguely hopeful about his chances, because he liked her. He really did. They got on, and she’d come to him first with the bad news—or nearly first. She’d talked to Lou.

  “I thought she was standoffish, you know?” Di said to him now. “But she’s okay. Nice. She said I should stay on here, because I wasn’t alone here, even though I feel like flushing my head down the toilet.” She sniffed, her needle darting in and out of a bunch of cloth on her lap. “I don’t know. I might take a few days off. How about you?”

  “I don’t know.” He yawned and apologized.

  He threw a piece of gravel and watched it skip and sparkle in the sunlight. He hated the idea of offering himself to Di as some sort of first reserve—boyfriend dumped you? Never mind! Here I am, infinitely shaggable good old Rob—but he also didn’t want to find she was going out with someone else because he’d misjudged the timing. Neither did he make the mistake of saying Di’s boyfriend must be a real jerk, because what did that say about Di?

  “Rob?” He turned to see Ivan at the front door. “They want you in the office.”

  Oh, shit. Maybe there’d been some almighty cock-up last night and he was about to get a bollocking. He stood up, brushed off his breeches, and Di reached up to tug his coat straight. He ran through his mind what could have been left undone from last night or today, but everything had gone well, even though very few people had shown up for breakfast or nuncheon. Dinner, in an hour or so, might be better attended, as it should be, since it was the farewell dinner for this particular group of guests.

  He went round the outside of the house to the office. Peter and Chris were there, their faces serious, with a tall slender woman in jeans and T-shirt. She looked familiar and the sight of a woman’s legs made him a little lightheaded.

  “Lou?” he said in surprise. “Mrs. Connolly, I mean.”

  She nodded. Her face was tight and strained, her arms crossed tight over her front as if to protect herself. She propped herself on the edge of Peter’s desk. Shit, he thought. What had happened?

  “I’m leaving this afternoon, Rob,” she said. “I’ve got a flight out early tomorrow.”

  What the hell? “I’m sorry to see you go,” he said politely, since they weren’t alone.

  She nodded. “Yes, originally my plan was to stay on and do a little work here for Peter and Chris, but I’ve accepted an offer on the ranch, so I need to go home and attend to it.”

  Was it his imagination or was there the slightest pause before she said the word home?

  “We were wondering,” Peter said, “what your plans for the next few weeks are. Our next trial run is in mid-August and we hope Lou will be back by then, and as you know there’s plenty of work to be done around the place. But in the meantime…” He looked at Lou.

  “I need someone to help me clear out the ranch, sort things, put stuff into storage and so on, within the next month. You can come over on a tourist visa—I’ll pay your fare and a small stipend for a couple of weeks. Peter and Chris have very kindly agreed to spare you if you’re interested.”

  “Wow. The States!” he blurted out.

  “It’s Montana. Beautiful and isolated, very rural, but there’s certainly no reason why you shouldn’t travel for a bit while you’re over.”

  He had the distinct impression he wasn’t being invited for a two-week bonk fest, but he saw a sudden appeal in her eyes—help me, help me. Naturally, like the sucker he was, he prepared to saddle up his white charger.

  “Think it over. Let Peter and Chris know in the next couple of days, please.” She held out her hand, the ice queen bidding her subject to depart. “You’ve been terrific, Rob. Thanks.”

  He shook hands with her, but something felt off. This was wrong, all terribly wrong.

  The office door closed behind her. He looked at Peter and Chris, whose faces both held stunned, resigned expressions. “What is going on?”

  “We don’t know,” Peter said. “But we think it may be Mac.”

  Rob ran out after her. “Lou! Wait.”

  She stopped, turned and ran into his arms, pushing her face against his shoulder. “I can’t talk about it, Rob. I’ll tell you one day. But not now. I’m sorry.”

  “What did he do to you?” The bastard, the bastard.

  “Who?” She looked up at him. She wasn’t crying, as he thought she might be, but she looked vulnerable and shaken.

  “Mac. I’ll kill him if—”

  “He didn’t do anything. It has nothing to do with him.”

  He believed her, sort of. But what else could it be?

  “I don’t get it,
Lou.”

  She sighed. “I don’t expect you to, but trust me. Please come over. I won’t be a mess then, I promise. I need a bit of time alone.” She put her arms around him and hugged him. “You’ve been great, Rob.”

  “Don’t go,” he said, his voice going all wobbly and strange.

  “I’m sorry.” She kissed him and he watched her walk away.

  Another woman walking out of his life for no reason he could understand. He swore and kicked the paneling—it was okay, it wasn’t original—and gave himself a satisfying stubbed toe. But it didn’t help.

  * * *

  Mac

  THE DIMNESS OF THE DRAWN BED curtains made him sleep until well into the afternoon and Lou, of course, had wandered off somewhere. He considered lounging around sexily to wait in the bed that smelled of her, but really more of him and Rob.

  He considered. Did he feel gay today? Not particularly. Horny yes, but only where Lou was concerned.

  And then it came back in a rush of excitement, the scrap of paper with its familiar signature, the implications of what they’d found, what it would do for Paradise Hall and all of the people he cared about here. Particularly Lou, his lovely Lou, who’d achieve fame, if not fortune, who’d establish herself as an unmatched Austen scholar with the discovery.

  Hardly anyone was around, and he remembered the current crop of guests would disperse within the next few days, but the house was pretty much deserted. Nuncheon had come and gone, and the kitchen staff was more surly than usual, telling him they were tired of him begging for food at odd hours, which meant they’d eaten all the leftovers. One of the cooks relented and fried him a couple of eggs. Mac had to listen to his long, bloodthirsty monologue of what he’d do to the villain who’d had stolen his stash, which didn’t improve Mac’s appetite.