‘It is not a charade!’
‘Oh, come on, Sabrina. I know you. This ridiculous talk of marriage, threatening to sell Loxley.’ He laughed scathingly. ‘Don’t tell me that isn’t about hurting Tish. A girl who, as far as I can see, has never done a damn thing to hurt you.’
Sabrina lost her temper. ‘My God, you’re like a scratched record, defending her all the time without ever listening to my side of the story.’
‘What “story”?’ said Dorian, exasperated.
‘I never said we were going to sell Loxley, OK? I said that we might sell. And that it was up to Jago, not her. I’m tired of her lording it over me, thinking she’s so high and mighty. Just because you think the sun shines out of her saintly ass, doesn’t mean the rest of us have to run rings around her precious feelings.’
Dorian shook his head. ‘You’re better than this, Sabrina.’
His disappointment was more than Sabrina could bear. Dorian was obsessed with class. Her engagement to Jago was supposed to make him think more of her, not less. Yet here he was, still going on about ‘poor’ Tish, still taking her side. The unfairness of it made her lash out.
‘You’re just jealous, because I’m getting married to someone who loves me, and you’re saddled with a miserable wife who’s so resentful of you I doubt she’d piss on you if you were on fire.’
Dorian reeled backwards, as if he’d been slapped.
Sabrina felt a stab of guilt. Perhaps she’d gone too far?
For a moment, they stood there in silence. Then Dorian said, very quietly, ‘You know nothing about my relationship, Sabrina. Nothing.’
‘Fine,’ shot back Sabrina. ‘And you know nothing about mine.’
‘I know a sham when I see one. If it’s money you’re after, there is none. Loxley’s a black hole. I have a stately home of my own so I know what I’m talking about.’
Of course you do, thought Sabrina bitterly. Dorian might give off regular-Joe vibes, but the truth was he was an aristo just like Tish. No wonder they stuck together like limpets. And I’m just a nobody who got lucky, right?
‘This has nothing to do with money,’ she said icily, determined not to let Dorian rattle her. ‘I’d marry Jago if he had nothing.’
Dorian smiled wryly. ‘You know what? You probably would, too. Purely out of spite. You are a piece of work when you want to be, Sabrina. It makes me sad because I know how much more you are, how much more you could be.’
Sabrina pushed past him. There were tears in her eyes.
‘Fuck you,’ she said viciously. ‘I don’t need your approval. And I don’t give a crap what you think. You are not my father. You’re my director, and thankfully not for much longer. I’m going to marry Jago, and if you, or Tish, or anybody doesn’t like it, you can all kiss my ass.’
She stormed out of the room.
‘Where are you going?’ Dorian yelled after her. ‘We aren’t done yet, Sabrina.’
‘Wardrobe,’ she shot back at him. ‘And, for your information, we are done. We are totally and completely done.’
She fled down the corridor, willing him not to follow her. Whatever else she did, she must never, ever let Dorian Rasmirez see her cry.
Four days later, the film crew packed up and left for Romania. Tish, who couldn’t bear goodbyes, watched them go from an upstairs window with Mrs Drummond.
‘You’ll be next,’ said Mrs D wistfully, as the last of the trucks pulled away, with Chuck MacNamee waving cheerfully from the driver’s window. ‘I’ll miss you and Abel. It’s been lovely this summer, having a child in the house again.’
‘You’ll still have a child in the house,’ joked Tish. ‘You’ll have Jago.’ It was gallows humour, but she didn’t really know what else to say. None of them knew what the future held for Loxley with Jago, and perhaps Sabrina, at the helm. Tish felt terrible about going and leaving poor Mrs D in the lurch again.
‘He won’t really put the house on the market, will he?’ The tremor in the old woman’s voice filled Tish with fury towards Jago. Loxley was Mrs Drummond’s home as much as it was theirs. How could he and Sabrina play fast and loose with so many people’s lives and emotions? They deserved each other.
‘I doubt it,’ she said, hoping she sounded more convinced than she felt. ‘He hasn’t mentioned it again since our row. And, whatever she says, I think Sabrina loves the idea of being lady of the manor. I doubt she’ll give it up when push comes to shove.’
‘You really think they’ll marry, then?’ Mrs Drummond sounded surprised. ‘You don’t think it’s a flash in the pan?’
Tish shrugged. ‘With Jago, who knows? It could be.’ But deep down she feared that this was one flashing pan that might very easily turn into a forest fire. Sabrina Leon was trouble, a lighted match to Jago’s fuse.
And all I can do is sit and watch.
PART THREE
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Chrissie Rasmirez arched her back and thrust her hips forward, greedily pulling her husband deeper inside her.
‘Tell me you want me,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘Tell me you need me.’
‘You know I need you,’ replied Dorian automatically, nibbling Chrissie’s earlobe, and marvelling again at her fit, athlete’s body. He himself was in lousy shape, physically and mentally. So much so that he could feel his erection starting to fade, and tried doubly hard to focus on the job in hand.
Coming home to Romania had been bitter-sweet. As ever, Dorian’s heart leaped at the sight of the majestic Transylvanian landscape, the verdant Carpathians jutting against the sparkling blue sky like a string of giant emeralds threaded on the golden Bistrita river. Nestled amongst the jewelled countryside, the Rasmirez Schloss stood as tall and proud and ancient as ever, solid, unchanging and beautiful. Loxley was a romantic house, and the fields and villages surrounding it idyllic, but it was beauty on a miniature scale. Compared to the Schloss it felt like a perfectly rendered doll’s house. But Dorian missed Loxley Hall nonetheless. Or, rather, he missed the sense of calm that he had come to feel there. Certainly, there was precious little calm and order to be found at home.
Since he’d got back, Chrissie had been as demanding and complicated as ever. Her neediness, combined with the stresses of filming, establishing a new set in the Schloss’s East Wing and all the long hours of frustration that entailed, left Dorian permanently exhausted. And then there were the financial pressures. At Loxley Hall, Dorian had somehow been able to shut everything else out and focus on making the movie. The money, the distribution deal, that would all come later as long as the work was good. Build it and they will come, he told himself. But here, every day on set was a reminder of what he stood to lose if Wuthering Heights was not a success. The sleepless nights were back with a vengeance.
‘What’s wrong?’
The pace of Dorian’s thrusts had slowed. Chrissie could sense his distraction, feel him wilting inside her.
‘Nothing,’ Dorian lied, speeding up but feeling increasingly hopeless. He’d reached the point where no amount of visualizing Brooklyn Decker minus her Sports Illustrated bikini was going to help – and if Brooklyn couldn’t help him, no one could. Chrissie always took it personally when he didn’t come, and any excuses Dorian offered – tiredness, jet lag, work stress – only served to fan the flames of her anger. Especially after being apart for so long, now that he was home, Chrissie expected sexual fireworks on a daily basis. Dorian felt the performance pressure like a lead weight on his chest; or, more accurately, a slow puncture in his dick.
It was no good. Pulling out of her, he rolled onto his side and tried to hold her close, but it was like hugging an ice cube. Her whole body was locked rigid with anger.
‘I’m sorry, honey. It’s not you. It’s …’
‘Work. I know,’ said Chrissie contemptuously. ‘Until the damn movie’s finished, I should put up, shut up and forget about us having a sex life, right?’
This was hardly fair. It was eight o’clock in the morning and, although Dorian�
��s morning glory had admittedly turned out to be less than glorious, he had made love to her last night, as well as the night before.
‘You know, I think Princess Diana was lucky having three people in her marriage,’ added Chrissie caustically. ‘I only have one person in mine: me. I feel lonelier now than I did when you were in England.’
‘Honeeeey,’ Dorian remonstrated. ‘Come on, that’s not true. You know how happy I am to be home with you and Saskia.’
But even as he said the words, they felt wrong and contrived on his tongue. In fact, the overwhelming feeling Dorian had been aware of since he got back to the Schloss was nervousness. Quite apart from his work worries and bumpy re-entry into the marital atmosphere, inevitable perhaps after such a long stint on location, he was expected to become a father again overnight. Distressingly, he realized he had no idea what to do.
Yesterday, he’d taken Saskia to the local park on his own, after Chrissie insisted she needed ‘a break’ – oddly, given that Rula the nanny had worked the last four straight days since Dorian got back, with Saskia practically glued to her ample hip at all times.
‘It’ll do you good anyway,’ Chrissie had added, reapplying her lipstick as she ran out through the door. ‘You need to bond with Saskia again.’
How he hated that word, bond. For some reason it always made him think of the Airfix model aeroplanes he used to build as kid. Bond the propeller to the wing …. If only parenthood came with a similar set of easy-to-follow instructions.
But to Dorian’s surprise, the playground expedition had actually been fun. Saskia had matured so much in the last two months, in her language, her expressions, her play; it was a delight to watch her. Dorian had enjoyed it thoroughly; right up to the part where an older child had pointed at him and asked Saskia if he was her daddy, and she’d looked pensive and said, ‘Sometimes.’ That was a long, cold glass of guilt in the face, and all the more hurtful because he knew he deserved it. He’d like to have confided his feelings to Chrissie, but he knew if he did she’d turn the incident against him and he’d never hear the end of it. Unbidden and unwanted, Sabrina’s words in the kitchen at Loxley came back to him: ‘Your wife’s so resentful she wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire.’
Was she right?
Lying stiffly in Dorian’s arms now, twitching with frustration, what Chrissie actually felt was a maelstrom of conflicting emotions. What Dorian read as anger, at him for not keeping it up, Chrissie experienced as acute anxiety: she was losing her looks, her sex appeal, her raison d’être. He doesn’t want me any more. I don’t excite him. If she no longer did it for Dorian, her adoring lapdog of a husband, who else was going to look twice at her?
Certainly not Viorel Hudson.
Chrissie had spent the week before Dorian’s return (which conveniently coincided with Viorel’s arrival) in a flat-spin panic about her looks – she was terrified of appearing old and raddled next to Sabrina Leon, but knew Dorian would hit the roof if she flew her dermatologist over from LA. So she had had her Botox touched up by some local quack in Bucharest and was convinced he’d made her look like Meg Ryan. When the film crew finally showed up, it was all a bit of an anti-climax. While Sabrina glided about the Schloss looking predictably perfect as she bemoaned her separation from her newly acquired, aristocratic fiancé to anyone who would listen, Viorel flew in from LA looking drawn, and immediately withdrew to his room. He’d spent the days since in a flat, humourless mood; not aggressive, as Dorian complained he had been in England, but gloomy and sullen. Gone was the flirtatious, devil-may-care rake who’d so entranced Chrissie a few weeks ago. Gone also was the spark that she had felt between the two of them the whole time she had been at Loxley. This Viorel was polite, distant, professional and painfully uninterested, at least in her.
Chrissie challenged him about it on the second day. Running into him in the Schloss’s magnificent library, where he was admiring the mind-boggling array of first editions and original folios, she’d slipped an arm coquettishly around his waist. Viorel withdrew as if he’d been stung.
Chrissie pouted. ‘I don’t bite, you know. At least, not unless you ask me to.’
But Viorel hadn’t asked her to. Instead, he’d had the gall to apologize, feeding her some line about Dorian and feeling guilty for what had happened between them at Loxley. ‘It’s not that I’m not tempted,’ he said smoothly. ‘But it mustn’t happen again.’
Chrissie tried to believe him, but the blow to her ego was severe. As always when rejected by one of her lovers, her knee-jerk reaction was to turn to Dorian for reassurance – but now he, too, seemed to be confirming her suspicions: I’m old and dried up. I’ve been in this place so long I’ve desiccated, like a Christmas orange stuck under the sofa. The high she’d felt in LA, with Harry Greene and the world’s press paying her so much attention, felt light years ago now.
Part of her wanted to stop chasing it, that elusive bright light, to be content in her marriage to Dorian and make it work. After all, they had been happy once, in the early days. And despite this morning’s lacklustre performance, she was sure he still loved her. But Chrissie couldn’t be expected to make all the effort. Dorian would have to try too. He’d only been home a week, and already his good resolutions about leaving the set on time every day and prioritizing family life were fraying severely at the edges. Last night, he hadn’t emerged from his editing suite until almost ten o’clock. Angry at being neglected, Chrissie had squeezed herself into a sexy red Hervé Léger minidress and heels, secretly hoping that if she caught Viorel’s eye it might reignite their flirtation over pre-dinner drinks. But, after forty-five minutes alone in the Grand Ballroom, one of the butlers told her that Viorel, Sabrina and the rest of the cast had all gone into Bihor to eat. Of course, nobody had thought to include her in the invitation. Sitting alone at the kitchen table, again, eating leftover chicken wings and salad for one, it was hard not to feel resentful.
Dorian’s hands were around her waist, caressing the smooth hollow of skin between her belly and her hipbone. She softened, turning around and kissing him on the lips.
‘How about I cook for us tonight?’ she said, her voice low and sultry. ‘I could do my special-recipe lasagna. We haven’t had that in years.’
‘That would be great.’ Dorian tried not to sound as surprised as he felt. Since their first year of marriage, he could count the times Chrissie had turned on an oven on the fingers of one hand.
‘I want it to be just us, though. Tell everyone we need some private time. I’ll have Rula put Saskia to bed. What do you think?’
Dorian was touched. He knew he’d been neglecting Chrissie and that things weren’t right between them. He wanted to bridge the growing gulf more than anything. ‘I think it’s a terrific idea,’ he said, pulling her closer so that her firm, apple breasts pressed against his chest. ‘Things are gonna get better, Chrissie. I promise.’
By four o’clock that afternoon, Dorian was slowly losing the will to live.
It was the first day of shooting Cathy and Heathcliff’s pivotal love scene. This was the moment when, after Cathy’s death, Heathcliff begged her spirit to remain on earth – she might take whatever form she would, she might haunt him, drive him mad – just as long as she did not leave him alone. For Dorian it was the most moving scene in the book, the crux of Catherine and Heathcliff’s tortured love affair. It had to be pitch perfect.
The day began badly. The temperature on set was unbearable, literally and metaphorically. The late Transylvanian summer was punishingly hot, almost a hundred degrees at noon and with the sort of humidity that drained the body of energy like a vampire sucking blood. Today’s scene was being shot in one of the old bell-tower bedrooms, a stunningly romantic backdrop, but one whose only ventilation consisted of a small, stone mullion window. As this was also the only source of natural light, blazing halogen lamps had been strapped to the ceiling, increasing the heat levels in the room threefold. Dorian, like the lighting and sound guys and two cameramen,
was working topless and barefoot in a pair of simple cotton shorts. But Viorel and Sabrina had no such luxury. Sweating like a horse after the Grand National in his dark wool trousers and ruffled shirt, Viorel’s face was an oil-slick of smudged make-up. Sabrina, in full corset and crinoline, was even more overheated, although this didn’t seem to stop her from expending what little energy she had left on provoking Viorel rather than focusing on the scene.
At one point she asked for a minute in which to ‘find her centre’.
‘I’m sorry,’ she announced, looking directly at Vio, ‘but I really can’t project arousal unless I’m thinking about Jago. I need to get into the right head-space.’
‘For fuck’s sake,’ muttered Vio, pulling at his sweat-drenched shirt.
They’d done the scene again and again. But the only two emotions Dorian was catching on camera were hostility and heat exhaustion.
‘Cut!’ he shouted, for the third time in as many minutes. ‘What is this, amateur fucking dramatics night?’
Sabrina pouted petulantly and lit a cigarette out of the window. Vio merely stuck his hands in his pockets and scowled.
‘Grow up, both of you,’ snapped Dorian. ‘I’ve seen more of an erotic charge between the three little bears at Saskia’s nursery-school pantomime.’
‘Maybe the three bears had air-conditioning,’ grumbled Sabrina.
‘Yeah. Or maybe they brought their “centre” with them and didn’t need constant validation about their utterly uninteresting sex lives,’ snapped Vio.
Debbie Raynham giggled and he winked at her.
‘I don’t need validation,’ said Sabrina furiously, catching the wink. If there was one thing she couldn’t stand it was being the butt of other people’s jokes. ‘Maybe if you played your goddamn part, I’d be able to play mine. Heathcliff’s supposed to be smouldering with desire and distraught with insatiable need. He’s grief-stricken. He wants to fuck Cathy’s ghost, OK, so we can assume he’s got it pretty fucking bad. But all I see is a whiny little boy in a gay shirt getting pissy because he hasn’t gotten laid in the last five minutes.’
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