Wandering around the house, he came across footmen taking naps in odd corners, but no Lou. He was on his way to the lodge to see if she was still at Viv’s when he saw someone sitting on a bench, staring out over the lake. He had to look twice; he wasn’t used to seeing women in pants anymore.
“Lou!” he waved at her.
She raised one arm about halfway and gave a restrained wave.
He strode along the path, expecting her to run to meet him, but she simply stood up and waited, aloof and unmoving.
When he moved to take her in his arms, she held up one hand to stop him. “I can’t do it, Mac.”
“Can’t do what?”
“I can’t break the story. I’m leaving now. There’s a car coming for me any minute.”
“Lou, honey, what’s wrong?”
“I can’t do it,” she repeated. “It’s a violation. It was her life, Mac. Something terrible happened to her, a betrayal of trust. Let someone else do it. I won’t.”
“Don’t you think you’re being a bit melodramatic? You’re jumping to a lot of conclusions from those few words.”
“What else could they mean?”
Out on the lake, the swans floated into view, followed by four small gray blobs. He hadn’t even known they had eggs hatching.
She dabbed at her eyes. “You said it yourself—strong language. Passion, inconstancy. Don’t make this harder for me than it is.”
“Harder for you! You said it yourself—this is huge. We’ll handle it with tact. What the hell did your advisor say?” He stared at her in disbelief. Was she out of her mind?
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I have to go back to Montana. There’s an offer on the ranch. Look, you don’t understand the implications of this. Millions of people would have their illusions of Austen destroyed. They don’t want to think of her as a woman who’s wrecked by passion. They want her to be the epitome of happy endings and true love.”
“So? A few old biddies might reach for the smelling salts, but—”
“Austen lovers are not old biddies!” She glared at him. “What about your mom?”
“Oh, she wouldn’t mind being called an old biddy,” he lied. He took a step toward her and seized her hand. “For Christ’s sake, Lou, run away back to the cows if you want, but this story will break whether you want it to or not. You should take credit for it, whatever the truth of the matter is. You know there’s going to be an immense amount of scholarly interest—you could make your career with this.”
“I know.” Her hand was like ice.
“So? Come on, Lou. You and me, as soon as you come back. Otherwise I’ll break it on my own. I’ll tell Peter and Chris today. They should know. I’ll show them the rat’s nest. We’ll work out a media plan—”
She took her hand from his. “My car’s here. I have to go.”
She walked past him toward the lodge where a car had pulled up. The driver got out, popping the trunk open.
“I’m sorry, Mac.”
She walked away from him. He followed, and even at this moment he couldn’t bear to see her go. Even now, when he hated her for what she was doing. She disappeared into the lodge and he watched as she came out with a purse on a strap over her shoulder and a battered leather bag that the driver put in the car. Viv stood in the doorway, waving goodbye as the car drove off.
To hell with her and her scruples. What was wrong with her?
He marched back to the house, sick at heart, and went to the east wing. The Paint Boys, uncharacteristically languid, lounged at the tables, Jon doing a crossword puzzle, Simon staring at a computer screen. The trays filled with plastic bags were now empty.
He headed for the filing cabinet. “Can we help you?” Simon asked.
The shelf where Lou had left her box was empty except for boxes of pens and staples.
“Lou left me a box with her name on it.”
“In there?”
“Yes. It’s a box about this big.” He measured with his hands. “Like the empty ones on the shelf there.”
“Oh, a large artifact box.” Jon yawned and stretched and laid his crossword puzzle aside. “You’re sure it was in there? We don’t use the filing cabinet for artifact storage. What was in it?”
He improvised. “She brought me here last night to see the conservatory and her necklace broke. So she put it in a box to pick up later and she asked me to get it for her before she left this afternoon.”
They looked at each other and shook their heads.
“Can you think where it might have gone? If someone had picked it up, say, and thought it was one of yours, and figured it was in the wrong place?”
“The only people who would have done so would have been me or Simon,” Jon said.
“Where do you keep stuff if it isn’t in this room? Could you have moved it?”
“Nothing here, I’m afraid. We take sorted and classified artifacts to a museum storage facility. In fact, I’m just back from a delivery.”
“Where is it?”
Simon smiled maliciously. “That information is not divulged to the public or the media. And even if someone did discover its whereabouts, they would have to deal with a very sophisticated security system.”
“We have over five thousand pieces in storage there,” Jon said.
“Many of which are stored in artifact boxes of many sizes.”
“Fragments of china, scraps of cloth, coins, nails…”
“Pieces of wallpaper, the occasional earring, pins, beads, the ever popular unidentified metal object…”
“Okay, okay, I get it.” He left them, wondering if they would continue their litany whether he was there or not.
Maybe she’d hidden the box somewhere else in the house.
Or maybe she’d taken it back to the States with her.
But more likely, and far worse, she’d destroyed it and everything else that they’d planned, including their future together.
* * *
DINNER THAT EVENING WAS A subdued affair, guests picking at their food, footmen yawning and spilling sauce. Even Rob was off his game, responsible for dropping and breaking a platter in a spray of gravy and shattered china.
“You may have noticed, Mac,” Peter said, carving hefty slices from a huge cut of beef, “our handling of media is a little haphazard. We are in dire need of someone to handle press for us, write some white papers and so on, do clever things on the website.”
“I’ll see if I can come up with some names for you.”
“Forgive me for being obtuse. We were thinking of you.” A large slice of beef, bleeding slightly, thudded onto his plate.
“Well, I don’t know. It’s real good of you to consider me.”
“On the contrary, I think you’d be very good for Paradise Hall. Do think it over, Mac. I know you’re pining for our Loulou, but she’ll come around. After all, she’s going to curate our education center.”
“When we get the funding and when she’s recovered from her sulk,” Chris said.
“Well, there’s a reason she’s not herself today,” Peter said. “I thought it was you, Mac—that you’d committed some dreadful act of depravity on her person—but of course I realized too late, after she’d gone, why she was out of sorts.”
“You did?” Mac said.
“It was her wedding anniversary, poor darling. I wish she hadn’t rushed off, but she is rather a private person. But you’ll let us know soon, won’t you, Mac, about the job?”
“Sure,” Mac said. “Thank you for thinking of me. I appreciate it.” Of course you want me as a press officer. I’m the ideal candidate. I’ve been complicit in losing you the story of the century.
* * *
Ten days later
Rob
“REMEMBER,” MAC SAID AS HE turned the Land Rover into the airport entrance, “rubbers are erasers. Maryland doesn’t rhyme with fairyland. If they’ve never been here, they’re convinced this is a country of warm beer and London fogs. And don’t forget to ask Lou about the box.”
“What’s in that box anyway?” Rob asked. Why the hell did Mac have to make everything so complicated and mysterious? He had a suspicion that the box was a code word between Lou and Mac that would result either in her shrieking with laughter or banishing him from her house, leaving him alone in the wilds of Montana.
“Nothing much.”
It was what he said every time the issue of the mysterious box came up.
“Feeling gay today?” Mac asked.
Rob pretended to consider the question. It had become a running joke between them. “Not particularly. How about you?”
“About the same as yesterday. Your dad asked me what color he should paint the cottage downstairs and I told him camouflage green. Something very butch.” Mac glanced at him. “I don’t know about the stubble on you, though. You still look too damn pretty.”
Rob fingered his chin. “Shit. I thought I’d better try and look older in case Lou, well, you know, I mean, she may have puritanical Midwest neighbors.”
The traffic slowed as they entered the passenger drop-off area. “They’re five miles away, so unless they have radio surveillance on her house and can read the date of birth on your passport, you’re safe,” Mac said.
And, Rob thought gloomily, she might not want to have sex with him anymore. Perhaps it had been the livery, or the whole playacting thing that turned her on, and back home she might just regard him as the equivalent of one of her students and consider him off-limits.
“What are you going to do now?” he asked Mac.
“I turned the piece on Paradise in to my editor this morning, so I’m off the hook and free to scrape around for more freelance assignments. I’ll go to London and visit my kid. She’s the same age as Graham, but she likes pink things and ballet, not football.” He cleared his throat. “Have you heard from Lou?”
Poor bastard, he asked every day. Viv had threatened to ban him from the lodge, he lurked around there so much asking to check his email.
“No. Only through Chris and Peter and only stuff about travel.”
A car pulled out in front of them with a screech of tires and Mac steered into its vacated space. “Okay, this is it. Have a good flight.” He popped the boot. “Email if you want, let me know how everything goes.”
Rob nodded. “Yeah. Thanks for the ride.”
Rob went round to the back of the car and grabbed his bag. He ran a mental checklist—passport, iPod, mobile—and Mac appeared at his side and swung him around, enveloping him in his arms.
“What the fuck if it does look gay?” he said. “I’ll miss you, kid. Keep in touch.”
They lurched together in a clumsy, affectionate hug. Rob let Mac go, giddy with excitement again at the thought of going to the States, hefted his backpack onto his shoulder and headed for the automatic doors. He looked back and waved and Mac, grinning and looking like anyone else in jeans and a regular shirt, waved back. He wasn’t Mr. Darcy anymore. He was a friend.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Lou
Lou had cried for an entire transatlantic flight, throughout the domestic flights for the final leg of her journey and during the expensive cab drive back to the ranch. She was too demoralized and exhausted to ask any friends to pick her up. The next morning, heavy-eyed, congested and aching, she called her neighbors to let them know she was home, and retired to bed with the worst summer cold of her life. She called her neighbors again, this time for help.
“You should have let us know you were coming home before.” Bea Reynolds, a motherly woman in her sixties, unloaded containers of chicken soup and brownies into Lou’s refrigerator. The dogs gamboled around Lou, wanting her to go outside and play with them, delighted at her return.
“I lost track of things,” Lou said. Boy, had she ever lost track of things.
Leo pushed his nose into her hand and whined. She bent to kiss his head and he panted enthusiastically. “Sorry, baby, I can’t play with you today. Bea, I think I’d better go back to bed. I’m sorry.”
Bea brought in a tray of soup and ginger ale and cold medicine and shooed the dogs out. “You don’t want to let the dogs on the bed,” she said.
“Why not?” She didn’t think she was ever going to sleep with anyone again. She might as well let the dogs keep her company. She craved their easy affection, the thumps of their tails on the covers.
“They’re farm dogs. They should be outside. Now you get some rest. Colds from overseas are always the worst. We’ll check in on you tomorrow and Bob will look after the livestock until you’re better.” She looked out of the bedroom window and shook her head. “Too late to put in a garden this year. It’s a pity.”
Lou was mildly entertained at the thought of vicious overseas viruses striking down innocent Americans; Henry James would probably have approved. She thanked Bea and gazed at the view. It was so unlike England, hard and bright and dry. She’d woken this morning, sick and disoriented, not knowing where she was, finding her bedroom and the harsh glare of the summer intimidating.
“This fell off your bed stand,” Bea said, replacing a framed photograph of Lou and Julian on their wedding day. “Such a dear man. You were married around this time last year, weren’t you, honey?”
Lou blew her nose in response and as soon as Bea left, turned the photograph over.
After several days of being cosseted and fussed over, she woke up feeling guilty over the amount of time and care her neighbors spent on her, and with a hankering to go outside. She stumbled out into the sunlight, blinking at the unaccustomed brightness, and decided her recovery had begun. Hard work was the answer, and she went into a whirlwind of activity, collecting boxes, and starting the arrangements for Rob’s arrival.
Peter and Chris emailed gossip about the house and its employees and the restoration work, and reminded her that they’d like her to return. She wrote an occasional affectionate, noncommittal reply.
It might have been a mistake to invite Rob. At the time, she had felt someone uncomplicated, kind and efficient was the answer, and in addition he could bring her news of Paradise Hall. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to have sex with him. She wasn’t sure she wanted to have sex with anyone ever again, not after her discovery about Julian. Maybe it was the effect of returning to the ranch, once the happiest place in the world for her, but which now represented a dull despair.
Now, with time to think, she realized the flaw in her logic. She couldn’t continue this way indefinitely—it was unfair to Peter and Chris, her friends. And to Mac.
She didn’t want to think about Mac, although memories of their time together haunted her. She wished she hadn’t hurt him at their last meeting beside the lake. How cold she’d been, and how she’d steeled herself to ignore the pain in his eyes.
* * *
SOMETHING HAPPENED TO HER AS she waited for Rob’s plane to discharge its passengers. Her breasts tingle
d, the touch of her cotton dress on her thighs seemed unbearable and her body was light with desire. Here, in the airport, she had gone into heat because a man was coming to see her and she couldn’t wait to touch him, slide her hand into his shirt and onto the warm skin of his back, press herself against his erection.
So much for her original plan to work him so hard all he would be able to do at the end of the day was collapse into a chaste bed.
The first burst of people came through the gate, and a woman with a small child ran into the arms of a guy in a business suit. Two guys hugged and slapped each other on the shoulders. Ah, there Rob was, backpack slung over one shoulder. He raised an arm and waved to her and she had to stop herself rushing to him and running her hands over him, to seek his mouth with hers. She wasn’t even sure her legs were up to any sort of rush. She moved at a sedate walk instead.
“Hi, Lou.” He looked a little apprehensive, as well he might, summoned from half a world away to help an unpredictable woman shove things into boxes, as though there was no closer source of labor.
She came to her senses and asked how his flight was and if he had luggage, the usual sort of airport-pickup conversation. He handed her a bag of English chocolate from duty-free with a shy smile.
She couldn’t take her eyes off him. He’d grown some fashionable stubble that gleamed coppery gold and gave him a little edge. His lips were slightly chapped, dehydrated from the long flight. She couldn’t help imagining both lips and stubble on her breasts, her thighs, but she pushed such thoughts aside and offered him a drink from her water bottle. Later, she would have the secret pleasure of placing her lips where his had been.
“No luggage?” she asked again. She couldn’t remember what he’d said.
“No, just this.”
They stood looking at each other. “Like the boots,” he said.
“Thanks.” She wore her cowboy boots and her cotton dress fell to just above her knees.
“I’ve never seen your legs before. I mean, you know, in a dress.” He grinned. “Okay, um, I’m ready.”
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