by Sara Craven
He touched her delicately at first, his fingers a mere whisper of sensation against her satin heat, then deepened the caress with a warm and deliberate sensuality, beckoning her down a path she had never traversed before.
Her eyes were wide and cloudy with excitement as she lay, looking up at him, every quivering nerve-ending attuned to this new and dangerous enchantment.
He smiled at her, then his head bent, and his mouth possessed her instead with slow, devastating insistence.
The breath caught raggedly in her throat. He couldn’t be doing this to her. He couldn’t …
Her senses were fainting, her body drowning in a warm rippling pleasure which was carrying her inexorably to some edge—some terrifying brink.
Her head fell back, and her body arched helplessly, rent apart by shafts of delight so intense she thought she would die. There were tears on her face. She was aware of Alain moving, and his body covering hers. Acting on pure instinct, her arms went up to lock round his neck, while her slender legs lifted to hold and weld him close to her.
Such a long time. The words sobbed inside her. Such an eternity since this.
She felt him inside her, steel masked in velvet, and cried out in joy and welcome, her embrace tightening convulsively as he began to move, thrusting deeper and deeper inside her.
She was content for it to be like this—to give herself at last. But then suddenly, amazingly, she experienced the swift dark surge of her own returning pleasure. The world of reason slid away, and in the warm, swirling ecstatic void which replaced it there was—only and forever—Alain.
Philippa opened drowsily reluctant eyelids to find herself lying in a welter of gold.
For a moment she was completely disorientated, telling herself confusedly that she must be still asleep and dreaming, then reality began to impinge, and she saw her golden world for what it was. She began to remember …
Untrammelled late afternoon sun was pouring in through the windows of the pigeonnier, illuminating every corner and crevice with warm syrupy light.
And Philippa herself was lying on the floor, completely swathed in the folds of the gold brocade.
She sat up slowly, pushing her hair out of her eyes, assimilating other details. Her own clothes, folded, had been acting as her pillow, but she had not the vaguest recollection of putting them there.
And, more significantly, she was alone.
Her sense of delicious lassitude began to evaporate. Where, she wondered, was Alain?
She’d wanted him to be there when she woke, she realised. Wanted the reassurance of his arms round her, and his lips on hers.
And more than anything, she thought, a warm wave of colour sweeping over her, she had wanted him to make love to her again, to ravish her body with his, exquisitely and completely, to make her cry out in abandonment as he took her, once more, to the heights of culmination.
I’ve probably exhausted him, she thought with mingled guilt and delight.
She had lost count of the times they’d made love. One lingering, sensuous act had seemed to flow naturally into the next, as they discovered new ways to pleasure each other.
She’d never imagined, even in her wildest dreams, that she would be capable of such depths of feeling. But, at the same time, she acknowledged wonderingly that it was only Alain who could have liberated her emotions with such totality.
She stretched, frankly enjoying the various unfamiliar aches and pains that her body was making her aware of. Her muscles weren’t used to such prolonged exercise, she thought with a little grin. And the studio floor had been hard, although both of them had been too far gone in rapture to care.
If Alain had gone to find somewhere more comfortable to sleep, then she couldn’t altogether blame him.
Her drawing-board was lying where she had dropped it, and she picked it up, studying her drawing with smiling eyes.
I won’t finish it, she thought. I’ll have it framed, just as it is, and keep it somewhere totally private to remind me of today—the beginning of the rest of my life with Alain.
She tucked the board under her arm and went, with one last lingering glance at the sunlit room, down the stairs.
She had half expected to find Alain in the living-room. She’d grown used to the almost perpetual aroma of coffee when he was around. But the room was empty. There was no sound in the house. In fact, no sign of life at all, so he must be very deeply asleep. Wherever he was.
Philippa put the drawing down on the table and went upstairs.
She pushed open Alain’s door, and stood for an endless moment as her shocked mind tried to assimilate what she saw.
The room was deserted—bare. All Alain’s things were gone, and the bed was stripped once more down to the mattress, the duvet and bedding folded neatly at its foot.
Her hand caught at the doorpost, the knuckles turning white. She heard her voice, strained, almost unrecognisable, saying, ‘No—oh God, please—no!’
But denial, however fervent, was useless. Without the slightest doubt, Alain had gone—just as he’d promised he would. And nothing that had happened between them—the breathless, seeking urgency that knew no satiation, the frantic overwhelming pleasure—had made the slightest difference to his resolve.
She flew downstairs, jerking open the front door, but there was no car in the courtyard beyond. Slowly she sank down until she was half kneeling, half crouching in the doorway. The warmth of the sun on her face seemed to be mocking her now.
She wanted to cry, but no tears would come.
How could he have gone like that, without a word? Yes, they had agreed to part, to separate permanently, but that was a lifetime ago. Didn’t he know how she’d changed? How she now felt?
The unacceptable truth facing her was—of course he knew, but it made no difference. Alain was probably all too accustomed to evoking that level of response from his women. With him, love was not an issue, as he’d made cynically clear. He’d had her, and enjoyed her, and that was it.
He’d have enjoyed the victory too, she thought desolately. He’d have relished breaking down her defences, destroying her stubborn resistance, and reducing her to the level of a small, sobbing wanton animal.
I like to win. Only last night he had told her that. She got stiffly to her feet and walked over to the table. That was what she’d seen in her drawing, heaven help her, but in her excitement she had failed to realise its significance.
How pathetically easy she’d been to manipulate!
She unclipped the drawing from the board and tore it again and again until it was utterly destroyed. Then she gathered up the fragments, took them to the stove and watched them burn.
She was burning too—with humiliation, and regret. Dear God, hadn’t she had enough warnings?
And now she would have to leave too. She couldn’t stay here in the house in the clouds. Not with these memories. She would have to move on, find somewhere else to rent, put her life back together somehow before Gavin returned.
She would pack her things, walk down to Montascaux and take the first bus to anywhere.
She’d tackle the studio first, she thought. Meet the pain head-on.
She wouldn’t be able to carry all her equipment. Some of it would have to stay here. Maybe she’d be able to come back for it, later. When she could stand it.
It took a long time to bring her painting things down from the pigeonnier. Even though the easel folded up, it was still heavy and difficult to manoeuvre on the narrow stairs, and she was glad of this, because it made her concentrate on the job in hand, and left no room for other thinking.
She left her unused canvases. The portrait of Alain at the table she turned to the wall.
She was about to go upstairs to her room and fling her clothes into her bag when she heard the sound of the car. She paused, tensing, staring out through the open door.
Alain’s car, she thought, her throat muscles tightening agonisingly. But it couldn’t be. It was an hallucination. Alain had gone, and he wasn�
��t coming back.
As if paralysed, she watched him climb out from the driving seat and cross the courtyard towards the door.
She didn’t know why he’d come back, and she didn’t want to know. The only certainty was that she couldn’t face him—couldn’t see the triumph in his eyes—or the pity.
She tried to slam the door, her hands fumbling for the massive key in the lock, but as she did so, Alain reached it and pushed it open, using his shoulder.
‘Are you crazy?’ he demanded roughly, as she backed away from him. He looked around, his brows lifting. ‘Why is your painting gear down here?’
‘Because I’m leaving.’ Her voice cracked a little. ‘Travelling on. I’ll make sure you have an address eventually—for the lawyers.’
‘For the lawyers,’ he repeated slowly. ‘What in the name of God are you talking about?’
‘The divorce.’ Philippa lifted her chin. ‘That’s what we agreed, wasn’t it? So there’s nothing more to be said. I—I can’t imagine why you chose to come back.’
For a moment he was silent. He was very white, she saw, and there was a tiny muscle jerking beside his mouth. Then he smiled.
‘D’accord. As you say, madame. There is nothing more. I’d thought, maybe, we should say adieu—but I will not detain you any longer.’
Head held high, Philippa went past him, and up the stairs to her room. She opened the door, and stood, aghast. It was in such turmoil that, for a moment, she thought the unthinkable had happened in this backwater—that a thief had got in.
Then, slowly, it dawned on her what the mess confronting her consisted of.
It was Alain’s clothes, she realised, stunned, her eyes roving over the sweaters, shirts and casual trousers, strewn across her bed. And over on the dressing chest, his brushes and razor. The leather toilet bag he used for travelling.
She heard him follow her upstairs and turned slowly.
His face expressionless, he said with cold formality, ‘Je vous demand pardon. I was—presumptuous. Perhaps it would be simpler if I packed first.’
He made to move past her, and Philippa caught his arm.
She said hoarsely, ‘Why did you put your things in my room?’
‘Do you really need to ask?’ There was a wrenched harshness in his voice that caught at her heart. ‘Because I thought—I hoped that, at last, I would be sleeping here tonight. That from now on you would be spending every night in my arms.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘What a fool I was! Because it meant nothing to you, did it, ma femme, that—heaven that we shared together only an hour or two ago.’ He shook her hand from his arm. ‘Be good enough not to touch me.’
‘Alain, no, listen to me.’ Her hands gripped the front of his shirt, clung. ‘I thought you’d gone—that you’d left me. You said you would, as soon as the car was fixed. I woke up alone, and your room was empty, and the car had gone. I—I didn’t look in here. I didn’t think …’ She took a deep breath. ‘I was so unhappy, I wanted to die. That’s why I was leaving. Because I couldn’t bear to stay here without you.’
The green eyes narrowed in disbelief, but he didn’t push her away. ‘Leave you? You truly thought that?’ He shook his head. ‘No, mon amour. Whatever I may have said, I never had the least intention of going. Even without the intervention of Monsieur de Thiéry, I would have found some excuse to stay, until I got what I came for.’
‘What was that?’ Her voice was barely more than a whisper.
A smile twisted his lips. ‘It was you, my reluctant wife. All of you, body, heart and sweet, stubborn mind.’ His hands covered hers, and she realised they were trembling. He said, ‘Philippa, don’t pretend any more. You know that I love you. Will you stay here with me—share the honeymoon we never had? Begin our marriage all over again?’
She said brokenly, ‘Alain, it’s you that’s pretending. It’s not me that you want. It’s the Baronne—Marie-Laure—and I—I can’t live with that, no matter how much I love you. It’s too much to ask.’
He said gently, ‘But I don’t ask it, mon amour. Marie-Laure means nothing to me, and never did. Oh, yes, when I first met her she was alluring—an exciting adventure, but that was all.’
‘How can you say that?’ she whispered. ‘Alain, I saw you together—at that party, on the terrace. You know that. You—you were kissing her and …’
‘Ah, no.’ He gathered her into his arms, held her against him, his lips against her hair. ‘It was over—all over between us long before. She followed me—threw herself at me. Treated me like the fool I must have seemed. Only by that time, of course, I knew …’
‘Knew what?’ Philippa’s voice was a thread.
‘That like your friend Fabrice, she had been hired, in the first instance, by my uncle,’ he said grimly. He met the incredulity in her eyes, and nodded. ‘You find it hard to credit? So did I—at first. I have my share of male vanity, you understand? I met this beautiful woman who made it clear she wanted me, and I believed, to begin with, everything she wished me to believe.’
He smiled cynically. ‘When the scandal broke, I was astonished. I was not, after all, the first man in her life. It was all—too neat, somehow. So I had enquiries made, and discovered that she was heavily in debt. The Baron was a wealthy man, but not a generous one. And Marie-Laure liked to gamble. There wasn’t a casino in the South of France that she hadn’t visited. For my uncle, she was the perfect weapon. So I ended the affaire.’
He paused. ‘I had, of course, the perfect excuse. I was going to be married.’
Philippa said bleakly. ‘I see.’
‘No.’ A laugh shook in his voice. ‘You do not see, ma femme, and you never have.’ He cupped her face in his hands. ‘Since that evening in Lowden Square when I first saw you, there has been no one in my life. No one but you. Don’t you know that?’
‘No. How can I know it? I was an expedient for you. I wasn’t beautiful. I didn’t belong in your world …’
‘Not beautiful?’ he questioned softly. ‘Ah, Philippa, for an artist, you can be very blind. And what does the world I belong to know of the kind of love and loyalty you had to offer? I found myself thinking—tonight, she only thinks of her father. One day, perhaps, she will think of me.’
She felt his heart thudding against her. He said unevenly, ‘I could not believe what was happening to me. The next morning, at the hotel, I was in agony, asking myself what I would do if you did not agree, if you did not come to me. Knowing that, wherever you went, I would follow. As I did when you left me.’
She looked into his eyes, saw her own pain, her own uncertainty mirrored there. She said, with a little gasp, ‘Alain …’
His arms went round her fiercely, holding her so that their bodies ground together. His mouth on hers was heatedly passionate—demanding, questioning, and Philippa answered with her heart on her lips.
When he lifted his head, his eyes were emerald-bright, the flame in them scorching her. ‘Tell me you love me,’ he said. ‘Say it. Say you will be my wife in truth, this time, and that you’ll never leave me again.’
‘But it was you who kept leaving,’ she protested, her fingers shyly stroking his face. ‘In Paris, I was always alone. There were all those nights you didn’t stay at the apartment …’
‘Do you think I could bear to be there with you?’ Alain demanded roughly. ‘Watching you hating me— shrinking every time I came near you. I didn’t blame you for that. I’d intended to wait, to be patient, and instead, I behaved like an idiot and a brute.’
He groaned. ‘All that time in London, I had hardly dared allow myself to touch your hand in case I frightened you away. On our wedding night, the knowledge that you belonged to me at last made me forget everything else. I was crazy with wanting you, and so sure that I could make you want me in return.
‘Afterwards, I hated myself. I didn’t sleep for the rest of the night. All I could see were your wounded eyes, ma chère. All I could think was that I’d ruined everything between us forever.
‘The
re’s a suite of rooms at the company building for use in emergency. I started sleeping there at night. I had to stay away, because I couldn’t trust myself to be near you. You only seemed prepared to tolerate the minimum contact between us, and there were times I needed much more than that, and I was scared I might shock you—disgust you—create even worse barriers between us.’
‘And I thought you were with Marie-Laure.’ Philippa looked up at him reproachfully. ‘And you let me think so, Alain. You gave the impression you were still having an affair.’
He grimaced ruefully. ‘Well, perhaps—a little. Your hostility about her intrigued me. It made me wonder if you could actually be jealous—if, under all that polite neutrality you showed me most of the time, you were beginning to care. It was the only hope I had to cling to. I kept telling myself that if you were really as indifferent to me as you made out, then my having an affaire shouldn’t affect you as it obviously did. So I decided to lead you on a little. And Marie-Laure helped, of course, in her determined attempts to get me back again.’
He bent his head and kissed her very gently. ‘Can you forgive me? If I hurt you, I was more than repaid when I thought you’d fallen in love with Fabrice. Then I began to know what jealousy really is, and I suffered. I also realised that by dangling Marie-Laure in front of you as bait, I’d trapped only myself. You were distressingly eager to free me so that I could marry her, and then, when I tried to explain—to tell you the truth—you wouldn’t listen.’
‘I thought that was what you wanted. A real marriage with the woman you loved.’
‘It was you that I meant. It was our marriage I wanted to be real, but I would have had you under any terms—any conditions. I’d have spent the rest of our life together wooing you, praying that one day you’d turn to me.’ He sighed. ‘I thought maybe if we had children, and you cared for them, you might eventually come to love their father. That’s how desperate I was.’
‘I was desperate too,’ she confessed in a low voice. ‘That’s why I ran away. I—I couldn’t take any more. And today, when I thought you’d left me, I wanted to die.’
