‘So sorry I’m not good at subtle, sophisticated repartee.’
Nicholas shrugged, his smile surprising her. ‘Why should you be? Anyway, I find those people who try to make every remark a clever one tedious. Conversation should be relaxing, at least some of the time, not a perpetual test of intellect and wit.’
But although they moved on to neutral topics, and part of Bridget enjoyed the evening because Nicholas was a stimulating and entertaining companion, she didn’t experience any real relaxation. She was too acutely aware of him, and too burdened by the disturbing memory of her helpless physical response to him, to be able to rid herself of an inner tension, although the absence of controversial subjects allowed her sufficient outward serenity to be able to make a proper contribution to the conversation.
Additionally, she was disconcerted by the way Nicholas would occasionally lapse into silence and simply sit there studying her with a brooding cynicism. Then self-consciousness would resurface as she wondered what he was seeing or thinking or, worst of all, remembering, because if she couldn’t forget for a moment that he had seen her so passionately abandoned to the arousal of his most intimate and erotic kisses and caresses, then how could he?
Of course, he was too sophisticated and experienced for sexual desire to be an awesome mystery to him, so perhaps he was thinking of other things when he looked at her like that, but it still felt as if he was visualising her in the condition to which he had reduced her just before Loris’s call had come.
Not until after their meal, served by Sita, and the coffee which followed it, did he refer to the question of the trip to Rajasthan, and then he did so as if the matter was already settled, merely stating the time at which he wished to leave Delhi.
‘You’re still assuming that I’m willing to fall in with your plans,’ Bridget protested.
‘I think you’re going to have to, you know. The bookings Anand was to have organised for you haven’t been made, and it’s a bit late now, if you hope to keep to your itinerary—as Virgina will be expecting you to, Bridget,’ he reminded her silkily.
Bridget coloured as she accepted the truth of it, but she managed to drop her eyes.
‘You’re so clever, aren’t you?’ she derided resentfully. ‘All right, damn it, I suppose I’ll have to let you drive me there, but I’m only doing it because I refuse to let anything prevent me making the selections and placing the orders—not even the prospect of having to endure your company!’
‘Ah, now that’s real professionalism,’ he mocked. ‘I’m beginning to be reassured.’
‘And I’ll know better than to leave any of my arrangements to Mr Bhandari in future, while you’re around to interfere and stop him making them for me,’ she swept on tempestuously.
‘Just call me a power-junkie,’ Nicholas invited her facetiously.
‘Making a joke of it doesn’t make it any less true,’ she retorted, and he laughed. ‘You’ve manipulated me… I suppose you always win like this!’
‘It wasn’t a battle, Bridget,’ Nicholas said gently.
‘Meaning it’s just no contest when you take it on yourself to organise someone’s life?’ she taunted. ‘You go ahead and do it anyway, regardless of any resistance. Your victims haven’t got a chance.’
‘Let me know if you still feel like a victim when you’re standing in front of the Taj Mahal, darling.’ Nicholas stood up. ‘I have some work to do.’
He left her seething. This trip could end up being a disaster, and yet what was the worst she had to fear? Reflecting on the realisation and subsequent decision she had made earlier, Bridget was troubled. It had become obvious that whatever Loris had said when he had rung asking to speak to her, plus the knowledge that she had cried over his cousin, had convinced Nicholas that the call could only have resulted in a renewal of her—nonexistent—relationship with Loris, and while he might still want her himself, as his references to her telling Loris it was over seemed to imply, he had no intention of sharing her with another man.
Bridget sighed. Since she couldn’t trust herself in his arms, it seemed safer to let Nicholas go on believing she was intimately involved with Loris, but she hated deception of any sort, and she wasn’t sure if she had the skill or sophistication to sustain this one.
She felt a little more confident by the time they came to Agra, once the beating heart of the Mogul empire, the following day. Nicholas had been in an easygoing, lightly informative mood during the drive through countryside still redolent in many ways of Kipling’s descriptions, farmers toiling in slow, measured fashion under the broiling sun, and water-buffalo standing in dazzling streams. They had stopped briefly at Sikandra, north of Agra, at the mausoleum of Akbar, probably the most tolerant and enlightened of the emperors, with its imposing minareted gateway and terraced tomb.
‘Agra never feels like a city to me, although it is actually a small one,’ Nicholas told her now as he slowed the car outside a massive rust-coloured sandstone structure. ‘And, of course, for the Moguls it alternated with Delhi as their capital, and still today its name is known worldwide, the object of millions of journeys. This is Agra Fort. It looks all rugged military might from outside, doesn’t it? But within there is great beauty: the palace of Jahangir, Shahjahan’s residence, the Diwan-i-Am for public audience, Moti Masjid, the lovely pearl mosque Shahjahan built… But as we’re here for the Taj we’ll go straight there now. It’s important for you to see it by day.’
‘Why?’ Bridget asked curiously.
‘Because the sun is honest,’ he answered her with a slight frown. ‘Oh, it’s beautiful by moonlight, sailing on the Yamuna, and at dawn when it appears ahead of the sun and seems to be moving, but those things are illusion. In the sun, you see only its truth… But I suppose you prefer romance to reality, as you seem to want to believe—or want the world to believe—that you’re in love with my cousin when it’s obvious that you are not! How many of the facts do you know, Bridget?’
‘About the Taj? I suppose you’re going to tell me all sorts of unromantic things about it?’ she taunted gently, hiding the strange pain she felt in response to his absolute cynicism.
‘Such as the fact that poor Mumtaz died in childbirth of one pregnancy too many, that twenty thousand men laboured for seventeen years to build it, and that the son Aurangzeb wasn’t thinking of reuniting them, but merely being true to his peculiarly parsimonious nature when he decided his father should lie beside his mother instead of having his own mausoleum.’
Bridget shot him a reproachful look, ‘Yes, but there’s one other fact, too. They did love each other, Shahjahan and… what did you call her?’
‘Mumtaz Mahal… Mumtazul-Zamani.’
The parking area was crowded, and Nicholas was silent as he ushered her through the arched tunnel to her first proper sight of love’s memorial, and later she understood and was grateful because, as for so many other pilgrims, that first moment was the supreme one.
A dream serenely standing, the Taj was reflected in the still water of the long rectangular pool between lines of dark cypresses that stretched before them. Subtler than a pearl and purer than the flawless blue sky it graced, all exquisite symmetry, the gentle central dome soaring above its marble platform, made perfect by the presence of four slender minarets.
Bridget couldn’t say a word. The Taj was beyond comment or description; it was a feeling, an emotion, awesomely tender, toweringly passionate, purity and restraint miraculously brought to elaborate fantasy, perspective to indescribable beauty, coolness to radiance.
She glanced quickly at Nicholas and found him watching her, but for once she couldn’t find it disturbing because a split-second later all her attention, thoughts and emotions were drawn back to the beauty before them.
She remained silent, still rapt, and then, approaching the Taj, was awed and overwhelmed, gazing up at the lavish inlay work of the entrance and its inscribed verses from the Koran, and at the lovely curves of tapering Mogul arches. It was incredible that a mortal ma
n should have conceived of this, and other men made it reality, Muslim and Hindu, from all over Hind and beyond, Persia and elsewhere.
Shoes removed, they went in to where the tombs lay beneath the dome, Mumtaz Mahal’s all diminishing oblongs, Shahjahan’s larger and imposing; and further man-made wonders of the world were here, the finest lace-like screen carved from a single block of marble, and matchless inlay work—cornelian, bloodstone, lapis lazuli—scores of inlays to a single inch piece.
In reality, Mumtaz and Shahjahan lay buried in a crypt below the tombs, and Bridget and Nicholas went down to the royal lovers’ real, dim resting place for a few minutes before going up again and out, to wander about the platform overlooking the Yamuna and flanked at a short distance by the two comparatively modest mosques.
Bridget was unconscious of the passage of time, and when finally they made their way through the gardens once more she had to keep pausing to look back, unexpectedly discovering that the Taj had more reality from a distance, an airy warmth instead of the cool reminder of long-ago love and death that had been present within.
Stopping one last time, she looked at Nicholas, wanting to express all that she was feeling but lacking the words to describe the depth of emotion this place had inspired: an aching rapture and a poignant awareness of how fortunate she was to have seen and experienced the reality of its atmosphere, the memory of which she knew she would cherish forever in her heart, when thousands, millions around the world never had and never would.
Nicholas was standing still beside her with his eyes resting on the Taj’s lovely dome, his expression remote. Impulsively, Bridget touched his arm.
‘Thank you very much, Nicholas,’ she said simply as he turned to look not at her face but at the hand she was already withdrawing. ‘We can come back again tonight, can’t we?’
‘If you want to, I suppose we can,’ he conceded, so irritably that she was hurt.
‘Only if you want to,’ she returned stiffly, deciding that if he didn’t she would find her own way back anyway.
His mood had become so uncommunicative that Bridget was bewildered.
Back in Agra, they checked into the elegant hotel in which he had booked rooms for the night, and then met for a drink.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ Nicholas asked abruptly, catching her gazing at him. ‘I’m not the Taj.’
‘No, rather you’re all things that are the opposite of— of that,’ she snapped back irrationally, goaded, hardly having realised she was staring at him, lost in some Tajinspired daydream.
‘Yet you had the same look on your face as you did earlier,’ he informed her sardonically. ‘It occurred to me that you might be deciding that one Stirling was as good as another, as Loris isn’t around. Are you missing him?’
The sheer insolent arrogance of it stopped Bridget’s breath momentarily.
‘Why should I be, when it’s only his name or his money I’m interested in? Or so you’ve decided,’ she taunted, resentfully accusing. ‘And it would have to be those things if I was considering you as a substitute! I suppose you think like that because something of the sort did happen once? I’ve just remembered.’
‘I suppose ‘Virginia told you?’ His smile was hard. ‘Yes, when Dulcie realised I wasn’t interested in marrying her she quite simply decided that my other cousin Adrian would do instead, and she damn nearly had him trapped too, because she was a very determined woman.’
‘So you interfered and rescued him?’ Bridget taunted.
‘Is that what my sister said? Once he woke up to what was happening, Adrian was desperate to be rescued.’ Nicholas paused, surveying her thoughtfully. ‘No, you could never be as hard-headedly calculating as Dulcie. To be fair, I don’t suppose there’d be anything conscious about it in your case.’
‘How fantastically magnanimous of you! I’d have to have lost my mind in the first place!’ she asserted scathingly, pushing her empty glass away. ‘I’m going out to have a look round the town.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘Please don’t bother,’ she requested with exaggerated earnestness.
‘It’s no trouble,’ he assured her in a similar tone, before laughing, allowing her one of those glimpses of his charm which did far more damage to her equanimity than his cynical accusations did. ‘Maybe we both need the down-to-earth ordinariness of shops and bazaars after the Taj. You’ll like them. There’s a lot of marble work on sale, and this is also a centre of the sort of silk and wool rug-making tradition the Moguls brought from Persia… What’s wrong now?’
Bridget had been staring at him in perplexed fascination.
‘Why does your mood keep on changing?’ she asked directly.
‘Trying to get inside my head, sweetheart?’ Now he was contemptuous. ‘I hate it when people try to understand me, so don’t.’
‘I’d never succeed anyway,’ she muttered resentfully, and for some reason it restored his humour, which was just typical of the unpredictability he had been displaying.
But Bridget enjoyed exploring Agra in his company, especially as he was so knowledgeable. Later, they returned to the hotel to change and have dinner, agreeing to meet in its multi-level public area, which included a raised section from which the Taj’s dome was visible.
‘That’s why I didn’t bring you here to check in first this morning,’ Nicholas explained. ‘Your first sight of it should be the traditional one.’
Touched by his thoughtfulness, Bridget smiled spontaneously. ‘I’m glad it was, thank you.’
He didn’t smile back, his eyes sweeping over her pretty pink and blue on white Indian cotton dress from one of Ginny’s previous Indian ranges.
‘Do you still want to go again tonight?’ he asked abruptly.
‘Yes, please, but I’ll organise a taxi if you don’t want to go.’
‘No, I’ll go,’ he decided, and flung her a challenging smile. ‘There’s even a moon for you, but don’t count on the Taj by moonlight assisting you, if you’ve got any ideas about seducing me, whether physically or emotionally. I am not a romantic.’
Bridget regarded him inimically. ‘No need to state the obvious! You really do think you’re irresistible to women, don’t you?’
‘Have you any idea of the way you look at me?’ he enquired pointedly. ‘But, as I was going to add, what the moonlight won’t do for you a quick phone call to Loris will. It’s up to you, Bridget.’
‘Forget it,’ she snapped.
She still hated the lie, but she tried to tell herself that she wasn’t actually hurting him with it, especially as his interest in her could only be temporary, and she was definitely helping herself. If Nicholas knew she wasn’t involved with Loris… Bridget shivered.
She was subdued as they ate dinner, afraid of provoking more comments about Loris and being goaded into telling the truth, only losing her self-consciousness when they returned to the Taj Mahal.
By moonlight it was everything all the poets, singers, writers, great and bad, claimed it was, a contradiction, a floating vision from a fantasy, immortalising a real, royal love, one man’s maddest extravagance and his humblest expression of deathless devotion.
They did not go into the tombs tonight, but Bridget didn’t mind, relating more intensely to the unbroken, flowing grace of the exquisite exterior, content to know what it enclosed without seeing. They stood a while and looked, simply absorbing its beauty, but this time Bridget remained conscious of Nicholas, somehow moved by his presence here at her side.
As they turned to leave, she felt his hand at her back, the touch no more than one of convention’s courtesies, but instantly she was drawn back into the sensual world he had started to show her. Involuntarily, she turned to look at him, her expression vulnerable in the moonlight, eyes shadowy pools of wonder.
There was a moment of tension in which both of them stood immobile, and she felt some profound emotion trembling within her under her outer stillness. Then she stirred restlessly.
‘Nicho
las…’ Helplessly, not knowing what she wanted to say, Bridget lifted a hand to his shoulder. ‘I—’
‘No.’ Nicholas spoke with sharp authority, moving swiftly out of her reach. ‘You know what you have to do, Bridget. You want me, you want an affair, but it is not going to happen until you break off your relationship with Loris. These romantic surroundings won’t do it for you!’
‘I’m not! I wasn’t… I wouldn’t—’ Horribly humiliated, Bridget couldn’t articulate the outraged denial properly.
It would have been a lie of sorts anyway because Nicholas was right. She had felt something, wanted something—but what? To touch and be touched, to lass, to experience again at least some of what he had made her feel before—not all of it, of course, only the languid pleasure, because the passion frightened her in retrospect when she recalled how bereft of control it had left her.
‘We’re going back to the hotel now, and what happens then rests with you,’ Nicholas was continuing harshly.
‘I would never, I could never feel anything for someone as horrible and conceited as you,’ Bridget asserted tempestuously, thankfully finding her voice.
He gave a single derisive laugh and said, ‘Apart from lust.’
‘That’s an ugly word!’ she retorted childishly.
‘Oh, God, you really do like to dress realities up in romance if you can object to such an honest word,’ Nicholas taunted.
‘So I wouldn’t really suit you at all, would I?’ she countered, and was appalled to hear a ring of resentment in her voice.
‘Only as much as I suit you. These differences in personality don’t tend to count for much in the bedroom,’ he stated outrageously. ‘But I’m not prepared to stand here pointlessly debating the question. Let’s go.’
They barely spoke to each other as they drove back to the hotel. Bridget hated quarrels, and had had so few in her life that this one had her feeling as if she was falling apart. She was close to tears, but she knew it would only irritate Nicholas even more if she gave way to them.
At the hotel, Nicholas walked with her to the lifts and then halted, his eyes holding hers, and Bridget saw the flicker and then the flare of awareness in the grey depths in response to something she must be revealing.
Sophisticated Seduction Page 11
