The Flower Garden

by Margaret Pemberton

  His white teeth gleamed in amusement. ‘The removal of a coat can hardly be classed as manhandling. However …’

  ‘Lay one finger on me and I’ll ruin your reputation!’

  ‘An impossible task. It’s ruined already.’

  His dark eyes laughed at her. She was incredible. Instead of the boring half hour of cocktails and small talk that he had anticipated, he was being entertained in a way he hadn’t been for years.

  Maria entered the room, bewildered by Morris’explanation of the events taking place in the drawing room, two thick warm towels in her hands along with a pair of maribou-trimmed mules.

  Ramon turned to her, smiled in a way that made Maria’s legs weaken, swept the towels and mules from her unprotesting hands and said easily, ‘Mrs Cameron requires a hot scented bath. Let me know when it is ready.’

  Dazedly, Maria nodded and wondered if the formidable stranger was intending to bathe Madame himself. Mr Cameron never ventured either into Nancy’s bathroom or dressing room. The olive-skinned stranger obviously had no such inhibitions.

  ‘This is not Europe, Mr Sanford,’ Nancy’s voice quivered with rage. ‘I don’t care how high-handedly you treat your servants in Portugal, you’ll treat mine with a little more respect. When I want a bath to be run, I will ask for it to be run. Now that you have humiliated me and given the staff enough to gossip about for a month, perhaps you would kindly leave. The fun is over. I have no intention of being treated like a peasant in my own apartment.’

  ‘I doubt if you have the slightest idea of how a peasant is treated. Now, remove your stockings and sit down.’

  ‘I will do no such thing! I …’

  ‘Then I’ll do it for you.’

  He tossed the towels and mules on to a deeply cushioned couch and took a step towards her.

  Nancy’s voice was suddenly faint. ‘You wouldn’t dare!’

  ‘I would.’

  Nancy saw the sudden hardening around the sensual mouth and knew that he spoke the truth.

  ‘Now be a sensible girl and take them off.’

  Dazedly she looked down at her damp feet and freezing legs. They were so cold that they burned. Or at least her legs did. Her feet had long since lost any semblance of feeling.

  Meekly she turned her back to him, unhooked her stockings and rolled the sheer silk downwards. As she did so Ramon moved away from her to the drinks trolley, pouring a large brandy. The stockings were thrown on to the discarded sable and he said in a voice that was surprisingly gentle:

  ‘Sit down and have a brandy while I rub some life back into your feet. They’re bad enough to need hospital treatment.’

  The pain in her toes was excruciating. Obediently, she moved to the deeply buttoned couch and sat down. Ramon swirled the brandy, warming it in his hands before handing her the glass. Then he sat beside her, ignoring her gasp as he swung her naked legs up off the floor and across his knees and began to rub them with the softness of the towels.

  Nancy swallowed deeply from her glass and closed her eyes. The whole day had been a farce. From the moment she had stepped into Dr Lorrimer’s surgery nothing had been real. Least of all this. Ramon Sanford was not known for acts of kindness or geniality. The press had dubbed him the Panther of the Playboys and it was a title that suited him. He had been born into a family of vast wealth and impeccable breeding. The knowledge sat easily on him. He moved through life with the careless arrogance of a man who had never had to ask for anything.

  She opened her eyes and in the dull light his handsome face was a study in bronze. The towel had been dropped and his strong hands moved rhythmically, massaging and kneading, warming and relaxing her. She felt a glow spreading through her, replacing the numbed cold with a sensation of heat as the blood began once more to circulate. His hands mesmerized her with their combination of strength and gentleness. A ruby the size of a nut flashed blood-red on the little finger of his left hand. Small dark hairs disappeared beneath the lace-frilled cuff of his shirt. She gazed at them and knew that his broad chest would have the same olive flesh tones: the same dark springing hair that curled so unfashionably and originally low over the collar of his evening shirt. The heat that warmed her feet and legs changed character, spreading higher and upwards.

  With a cry of protest she swung her legs from his grasp, leaping to her feet with such momentum that she stumbled and nearly fell.

  Immediately he was on his feet, his arms steadying her, dangerously close. The alien feeling he was arousing in her intensified at his nearness. His mouth was only inches away from hers. She wondered what his kiss would be like and raised her hands to his chest, pushing him away viciously. She was going mad. The shock of the diagnosis had unhinged her mind.

  ‘What the hell …’

  ‘Don’t touch me! Don’t ever touch me!’ She was trembling and there was a note of rising hysteria in her voice. ‘I can’t bear to be touched! Not now! Not ever!’ Her voice broke and she began to sob, hugging her breast as though holding herself together against an inner disintegration.

  Ramon’s eyes narrowed. He had thought her behaviour nothing more than the disorientation of a perfectly possessed public figure caught out in the midst of a drinking bout. But the tearing, racking sobs were those of a woman either deranged or hurt beyond comprehension. She had rushed into the apartment wanting desperately to speak to her husband. Whatever the conversation had been, it had obviously been unsatisfactory. Ramon wasn’t surprised. He couldn’t imagine the glossily smooth senator being a comfort to anyone but his bank manager.

  His hands gripped her shoulders hard and she shrank away. His grip tightened and he pulled her against his chest. This time she submitted, clutching the lapels of his jacket, burying her head against the ruffled lace of his evening shirt, crying and crying as she had wanted to do ever since the dreadful interview in Dr Lorrimer’s surgery. At last, exhausted, her breath coming in shuddering gasps, she eased herself away from him, his handkerchief clutched tightly in her hand.

  ‘I’ve ruined your shirt.’ Dear God, what a fool she had made of herself. Never let your guard down. As the daughter of a political man and wife of another, this dictum had been drummed into her for years – and assiduously obeyed. She never had; not until now. For years she had stood beside her father on the hustings and had accompanied him to official functions when his election was successful: had captivated the hard-headed Washington crowd without one careless slip of the tongue. Never one foolish word that could have been used against either her father or Jack. In the last few hours all those years of careful self-control and caution had been thrown to the winds. She had not just let her guard down, she had thrown it away. And in front of a man she had never met before. A man whose father had been one of her father’s most implacable enemies, and a man her husband had only ever spoken of with contempt.

  Jack had publicly proclaimed long and often that a man born as he had been, into a family of great wealth, also had social obligations. In his case, he would explain disarmingly, he intended fulfilling them by dedicating his life to public service. It made his intention of running for the Democratic nomination in 1936 seem almost a self-sacrifice. He had no time for the Ramon Sanfords of the world. Once, while listening to her husband’s condemnation of Ramon’s latest affair with the Russian Princess Marinsky, she had wondered if he were jealous. The princess’husband had insulted Ramon at the Savoy Grill and Ramon had laid him flat with one blow, fastidiously adjusting his cuffs and continuing with his meal of quail and champagne while the staff carried the prostrate body of his companion’s husband to the nearest hospital. Flashbulbs had popped and reporters had scurried to their news desks. It had filled the world’s press for three delicious days. Jack’s moral outrage had been deeply appreciated by their guests, a fiercely Baptist senator and his wife.

  Nancy was not so convinced of her husband’s moral outrage. His latest affair with the wife of a New York judge was well into its sixth month. The only difference between the two affairs that N
ancy could see was that one was furtive and the other was not. She suspected that the reason for Jack’s venom was that Sanford could, and did, choose his mistresses wherever his fancy took him. The need for circumspection narrowed Jack’s choice alarmingly. The judge’s wife was eight years older than Nancy. It had been an affair that had hurt her intensely.

  She was aware of a distinct desire to ask Ramon if the Russian princess still figured in his life, and stilled it. She was behaving like a child. She had needed comfort and he had given it: therefore she felt grateful, nothing more.

  ‘Aren’t you going to tell me?’ The dark, almost black eyes, were questioning.

  She shook her head, wiping her cheeks with her hands, taking on the outward appearance of Nancy Leigh Cameron again as she said lightly. ‘It was nothing. Some bad news, that’s all. I’m all right now. Really I am.’

  His eyes were unreadable as he watched her push her bobbed hair from her face, smooth her dress, changing her manner to that of a polite hostess.

  ‘I’m most awfully sorry for throwing such a scene. I can’t think what got into me. I hope I haven’t made you late for your evening engagements.’

  It was nearly eight o’clock. Gloria would have been tapping her heels for almost an hour. He said, ‘I don’t have any engagements this evening.’

  Her composure was tinged with embarrassment. The sable coat lay in a crumpled heap; clear evidence of the brutal way he had thrown it from her shoulders. The ruined stockings littered the elegant room, giving it the intimacy of a bedroom. She remembered his insistence that she remove them and felt her cheeks tinge with colour. She wondered if he had watched and knew instinctively that he hadn’t. Ramon Sanford would be too accustomed to the practised undressings of his mistresses to be titillated by her amateur fumblings.

  The silence stretched uncomfortably between them and Ramon did nothing to break it. He watched her steadily, seeing her newly found composure crumble as he failed to make the expected polite assurances, the convenient ‘goodnight’, the speedy exit.

  He flicked open his cigarette case and offered it to her. Nancy rarely smoked and her hand trembled slightly as she reached for a cigarette. As Ramon slid the gold monogrammed case back into his pocket he knew that her apparent calm was nothing but the thinnest of veneers.

  The lighter flared and as Nancy bent her head towards its glow, his hands steadied hers, holding but not releasing.

  ‘You’re a bloody bad liar,’ he said softly. ‘What happened to you this afternoon?’

  She was trapped. There was no avoiding his eyes or his nearness.

  ‘Nothing …’ She faltered. ‘Everything.’

  ‘Tell me.’ His voice was one that was used to being obeyed.

  She shook her head soundlessly, knowing how easy it would be to tell him and knowing that if she did he would not offer meaningless platitudes.

  ‘No,’ she said at last. ‘If I can’t tell my husband then I can’t tell anybody.’

  Ramon remembered the short, sharp telephone call; the violently thrown glass and the angry sobbing words. His dislike of Senator Jack Cameron deepened. There was a finality in her voice that deterred him from pressing her further. He had no desire to break her fragile defences and reduce her to the tears that he felt instinctively were only just below the surface.

  He grinned. ‘That’s a very Bostonian sentiment.’

  She stared at him for a second and then a smile hovered at the corners of her mouth. ‘I’m a very Bostonian lady.’

  ‘So I’ve heard. Go and take that hot bath and we’ll have a quiet dinner somewhere together and you can tell me what else you are.’

  Ramon Sanford, Panther of the Playboys. If any columnist saw them dining together à deux they would be choice items in the next day’s gossip columns. Jack would be furious. Mentally she could see him flinging his morning newspaper angrily across his Washington breakfast table. He would be on the telephone within seconds, demanding an explanation. She would tell him she was too busy to listen to him.

  ‘I’d love to have dinner,’ she said and Ramon noticed, with a sudden contraction of his stomach muscles, that when she smiled she was extraordinarily beautiful. Thickly-lashed eyes tilted tantalizingly upwards, giving her the mischievous look of a kitten. He had seen her at her worst – cold, crying, dishevelled – and she had aroused feelings of tenderness in him that he hadn’t experienced since his childhood. He wondered what effect she would have on him when she had bathed and changed and her eyes had lost their blue-ringed shadows.

  The doors closed behind her and he poured himself another brandy, moving across to the vast windows that looked out over night-time New York. One thing was certain: she was not the sort of woman he had expected. She was definitely not the sort of woman Gloria had so maliciously depicted.

  Gloria had been waiting for him now for more than an hour. He scrawled a brief line on the back of one of his cards, crossed to the secretaire, extracted a ‘Cameron’-embossed envelope and slid the card inside. He smiled as he did so. Gloria’s fury at his non-appearance would be nothing to her fury when she saw the family name on the envelope. He sealed it and rang for Morris. Gloria’s passion was always heightened when she was enraged. The weekend would be an enjoyable one.

  ‘Have this delivered to the Algonquin immediately,’ Ramon said as Morris entered.

  The butler eyed the scrawled name and his eyebrows rose fractionally as he withdrew. In his opinion Mr Sanford was rapidly

  reducing the Cameron household to the fairground antics of the

  Park Avenue set.

  Nothing was as Nancy had expected. They didn’t go the El Morocco or the Persian Room or the St Regis or the Waldorf. Instead, they drove to a small restaurant some twenty-five miles outside the city. It was the first time Nancy had ever been driven by her escort. His handling of the car on the icy streets was expert and confident. They sat in silence, the road streaming beneath them. The snow-covered sidewalks gave way to trees and fields of ghostly white. His hands on the Daimler’s wheel were sure and strong. Nancy looked quickly away, staring out into the darkness, aware of the unbidden drift of her thoughts. Their silence was without strain. It was as if the intimacy of being alone together was entirely natural.

  Ramon had not booked a table but the head waiter deferentially gave them the best one in the room, and was to be seen later apologizing profusely to an astrakhan-clad gentleman who vowed he would never patronize the restaurant again. The waiter was polite but unmoved. The patronage of Ramon Sanford was worth far more than that of an overweight, elderly railroad baron.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’

  Silver gleamed on white napery. They had been seated on a red velvet banquette surrounded by freshly imported flowers from Florida. She could feel the slight touch of his body against hers.

  ‘A Martini, please.’

  He raised his head the merest fraction and immediately there was a waiter beside him.

  ‘One Martini and one bourbon and soda. Bring the menu please, and we’ll order.’

  ‘Certainly, sir. At once, sir.’

  ‘Here’s to the end of prohibition,’ he said as his drinks arrived, and he raised his glass to her. Nancy smiled. The nightmare was receding. Tomorrow she would go to the Cape and think. Tonight her prayers had been answered and she was not alone in the dark.

  There was no long perusing of the menu as there would have been with Jack. He ordered oysters and a chilled bottle of Sauterne; saddle of venison and a bottle of 1870 Chateau Lafitte.

  ‘You’ve hardly changed since last we met,’ he said as the oyster shells were borne away.

  Nancy looked across at him, bemused. ‘We’ve never met,’ she said.

  The Sauterne had had the desired effect. He could see the tenseness that had been in every line of her body receding. Her skin in the revealing gown glowed luminously. Her breasts were small and high, in perfect proportion to a petiteness that had surprised him. He had expected her to be tall and studiedly eleg
ant. Instead, even with the evening shoes, she scarcely reached his shoulders and her gown was worn with natural grace.

  Never once did she check her appearance in the restaurant’s large mirrors. Her attention was given wholly to him. She didn’t primp into her powder compact, fiddle with her jewellery or hair, or display any of the female mannerisms that irritated him beyond endurance. Her hands were milky white; her only rings a wedding ring and a cabachon emerald surrounded by diamonds. Her nails were free of the blood-red enamel he so disliked. They were short and perfectly shaped, buffed to a pearly sheen. He wanted to touch her more than he had ever wanted to touch any other woman in his life. He put down his wine glass and took her hands in his, covering them completely.

  At his touch she felt an impulse of sensuality flare within her. She tried to pull away, but his thumbs caressed her wrists restrainingly.

  ‘It was at Cowes,’ he said. ‘It was 1909 and I was eight years old. You wore a pastel blue frock and had ribbons in your hair.’

  ‘It was my birthday,’ Nancy said, her hands remaining in his as the years slipped away. ‘I thought that was why we had been invited. I remember thinking it awful bad manners that there wasn’t a birthday cake.’

  He laughed. ‘My mother said I was to be nice to you and I thought you the most frightful nuisance.’

  ‘You had a sailor suit on and you sulked because you had a hoop and weren’t allowed to bowl it.’

  His eyes held an expression she wasn’t familiar with.

  ‘I’m glad you remember.’

  ‘I remember everything about that day.’ She was back in the past, her nightmare shelved to a far recess of her brain. It had been a hot, sunny day and she had been forced to wear white gloves that had irritated her skin.

  ‘You must address the king as “Your Majesty” if he should speak to you,’ her mother had said, holding on to her lavishly trimmed hat as their launch approached the Victoria and Albert.

  ‘Of course the king will speak to her,’ her father had said, tossing his cigar stub into the sea. ‘I’ll make sure of that, honey. Don’t you worry,’ and his arm had tightened around Nancy’s shoulders.