“It was not as difficult as you think,” Mischa said quietly. But she had seen what was in his eyes and she knew he lied. Two gentle hands touched her cheeks and tilted her face up for his tender kiss. “But it must not happen again,” he said. “You must not hate them anymore.”
“I love you so much,” she said.
“Lady, I love you,” Mischa said, his deep voice gentle, like a night breeze. Then he pulled her to his chest, his arms encircling her, his hand enfolding her head.
He held her while the breeze turned cold and the first stars appeared in the black sky, her hands curled close against his chest, protected and enclosed by him. She was safer than she had ever been and she knew she was safe forever.
* * *
Laddy dressed slowly, lovingly, relaxed and mellowed by her warm bath and the glass of wine she had sipped as she lay in the scented water. The silk of the burgundy caftan slid sensuously over her shoulders and hips, and her skin responded ecstatically, as though, like a snake, she had lost the hard outer layer of skin and the new skin was sensitive.
The caftan had a stiff high neck around a narrow front opening that plunged to the hollow between her full breasts, and she piled her hair loosely on her head with the help of combs and put on gold loop earrings. She looked like some pagan high priestess; the knowledge sparkled in her eyes, and she caught her lower lip suddenly between her teeth. If she had any sexual power over Mischa Busnetsky, she had it tonight or not at all.
She took the flashlight from the kitchen and made her way across the field in the cool spring darkness. Halfway to the house she paused, shutting off the flash to stand in the light of the early stars and the subdued murmur of the sea against the cliff face.
Mischa, coming from the big house to fetch her, found her there, motionless in the starlight, and he took the flashlight from her nerveless fingers almost harshly.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice deep. “Calling up some ancient god?”
With his thin broad figure encased in black turtleneck, black jacket and trousers, his dark eyes frowning down at her, Laddy could almost imagine that that was what she had done. “I think so,” she said. “I think it worked.” She felt as though she had drunk an entire bottle of champagne.
“What worked?” Mischa asked.
She smiled up at him. “The spell,” she said, surprised to hear how seductive her own laughter could sound. “I cast a spell to call up an ancient god, and I got you.”
His movement towards her was involuntary, and she looked into his eyes and felt his hand on her throat, firm against her chin. “Yes?” he said. His voice was subtly threatening, as though he dared her to go on.
“Yes,” she said, licking her lips against the tension that was building up inside her. “Only I’m not the high priestess, you know.” She smiled slowly at him. “Actually, I’m the sacrificial virgin. The one who was locked up in the temple for the sole enjoyment of the god. And if she wasn’t pleasing to the god he never came to her little room, and she just pined away, because she loved the god desperately, more and more as the years passed—”
In silent fury his mouth covered hers, stopping her words in her throat. He pulled her against him, her hands flat on his chest. His hands ran along her shoulders, her arms, then he clasped her wrists tightly and held her away from him, but not before she had felt his body stirring in response. The knowledge of her power shook her.
“What do you want?” he demanded. “To be taken without ceremony on the wet spring grass?”
She whispered, “Yes.”
But he only bent to pick up the flashlight, flicked it on and, gripping her fingers, led her through the night to the big house for dinner.
Afterward she could never remember what or if she ate. She remembered the colour of red wine against a white cloth, and she remembered Mischa Busnetsky’s hands in the soft light, and his eyes, and his mouth, and music. But whether the music was real or imagined she did not know. And in the end it was drowned out in the electric tension that hummed in her ears, deafening her even to the sounds her own mouth was making. And then finally the evening was over, and with his arm around her, Mischa guided her back across the field to the cottage with a light in the window.
He opened the door for her, pulled her to him and kissed her. “You are so very beautiful,” he said, “but tonight is not yet time.”
She came to with a sudden cheated cry, moaning his name, and his arms tightened convulsively around her. His hands began to search through her hair for the combs that held it up. He took them out one by one and buried his face in the thick hair as it fell. The sudden weight of it slithering over her shoulders charged her senses and she clung to him, then moaned her loss when he stood away from her. But he only gazed down at her, shaking his head.
“Why?” she cried.
“Because hunger, too, is a pleasure. And we will learn that pleasure first.”
And, not wanting to, he left her.
Chapter 9
“What are you working on?” Laddy asked the dark head bent intently over the papers spread out on the table. She was standing at the open door of Mischa’s cottage, the morning sun warming her back through her cotton T-shirt.
Mischa raised his head and smiled at her, his eyes warm, approving, and she felt as though the sun had shifted direction and now warmed her face.
“I am transcribing a book from my head to paper,” he told her. “And what are you doing?”
“Just...watching you,” Laddy said, with the crazy conviction that that activity might be enough to occupy her for the rest of her life. She straightened away from the doorpost and moved into the kitchen that, except in the colour of the fittings, was almost the twin of her own. “Transcribing from your head?” she repeated. “Do you mean you have an entire book in your head?”
“There was a shortage of paper in the prisons,” he said. “And a necessity to keep sane. During my last sojourn, I wrote a book in my head and memorised it. Now I write it down.” He gestured to the paper-strewn table top. “But I am not sure enough of my English.”
It took a moment for that to sink in, and then she gasped, “You wrote a book in your head in English?”
Mischa stretched a hand out to the pipe in an ashtray near him and began the process of cleaning and filling it. “It was a method of keeping sane,” he said.
“I must say I think that writing a book in a foreign language in your head and memorizing it is a project that would drive most people mad,” Laddy exclaimed, and she gazed at him, absorbing the fact of his massive intellect with a respect approaching awe.
“Not you, however,” he said matter-of-factly, as though she were protesting too much. He reached for a pile of handwritten pages. “If you have time, would you read two or three pages and see if my English requires a great deal of work?”
Laddy hungrily eyed the pages that he held. They were covered in strong black writing. “I’ll read them all,” she offered, dropping into a chair opposite him.
He looked at her in surprise. “Do you not have your own work?” he asked.
“I’m on holiday. And my work if any, is you.”
In the act of gathering up the manuscript, Mischa paused, his eyes holding hers while his slow smile warmed her. “Your pleasure, too, I hope, will be me,” he said softly.
Her heart leapt crazily in response, and in that moment Laddy knew exactly how Mischa intended to court and torment her. It was a delight she had never experienced before, and she understood that he meant to tear perfection out of the jaws of eight years of horror and emptiness for both of them. As the frisson of love and desire trembling along her breath reached her throat, she laughed.
“That will depend,” she said huskily, “on whether your pleasure is me.”
His eyes narrowed at her in glinting admiration, as though a fencing opponent had pinked him, and she felt the heady excitement of embarking on a battle where losing would be a victory.
The week that followed was dre
nched in joy. It seemed to Laddy that the world was changed—that colours were richer, scents were thicker, sweeter, that the sun shone more brightly than she had ever seen it. Sometimes she stared at the new spring leaves that were opening everywhere around her and wondered how she had never before understood about the miracle of growth, creation, life.
In that week Laddy came to learn the joy of waiting, came to delight in the knowledge that her body was entirely sensitised to his, as though she were swimming in a cold fresh lake, or climbing up a steep mountain into rarefied air. She was electrifyingly clearheaded and alive in every pore. And the power that she and Mischa had over each other was a constant torment, a constant delight.
She was with Mischa almost constantly. They ate breakfast and lunch alone together, then dined at the big house with Helen in the evenings. They went walking almost every morning, sometimes with Rhodri to explore his caves; sometimes the three of them drove to archaeological sites nearby—to standing stones or tombs or Roman ruins, while Rhodri told their history. Afternoons, Laddy made notes for the series of articles about Mischa she had begun to envision, while Mischa transcribed his novel at the kitchen table in his cottage. Laddy also worked with him to put it into more flowing English without destroying his powerful personal style. It was hard work, but after a few days she began to develop a sixth sense, an instinct that told her what he wanted to express.
Every moment of her day, every cell of her being, was steeped in happiness. She would lie beside Mischa Busnetsky’s length on a grassy ledge overlooking the sea, listening to his voice or his quiet breathing in the sunshine, and feel herself on the highest possible peak of happiness; then later, watching his dark, intent head as he worked at the table, she would feel a jolt of emotion so profound it was like being kicked over the heart, and she understood she had scaled yet another new peak whose existence she had never known before.
When he held her and kissed her, her heart was molten gold. Mischa taught her about love slowly, as he had promised—as slowly as he could. At the end of a week he was still teaching her the hunger, and they were taking an immense delight in tormenting each other, with words, with looks, with unexpected caresses. Laddy was catching up on what she had missed at fifteen and sixteen, when instead of dating she had travelled with her father, and at seventeen, leaving Mischa Busnetsky in that Moscow apartment as she had to. And it was slowly borne in on her that Mischa was for her the embodiment of every lover a woman has in her life: he was her first young love, her mature love, her true love...her only love. There were times when, giggling, she would have chalked “L.P. loves M.B.” in a heart all over the pavements of Trefelin, and times, when he held her, that she could have sobbed out the pain of a lifetime against his chest.
Laddy began to imagine that love was the last stage in the evolution of man, that one day she might wake up and discover herself part of a new species. The need to have him love her became an ache.
One morning more than a week after her arrival, Laddy’s sleep was disturbed by a tapping at her bedroom window. In her dream she opened the door of the small cottage, and when the knocking continued she saw that there were many doors to open, and she flew through the cottage in her dream, opening door after door onto huge, richly furnished rooms that were filled with light.
“This is a palace!” Laddy exclaimed aloud, and awoke. The tapping was at the window over her bed, and exuberantly she knelt up on her pillows, pulled back the curtains and opened the casement windows wide to a beautiful sunny morning and the figure of Mischa Busnetsky.
“Good morning!” she said in delight, the bubble of joy within her breaking down into a thousand little bubbles that spilled into her blood and sang along her veins.
“Good morning,” Mischa agreed, coming close enough to lean over her through the window. She was wearing a plain masculine pair of red-and-white striped pyjamas, but he looked at her as though he found the sight pleasing. “You are very beautiful,” he said, “and I should have known that I ought to wait until you were dressed and your eyes and hair had lost the memory of your bed.” His hands on the windowsill, he bent down and put his face into the tangled cloud of her hair and left a kiss on her throat that burned her like a brand.
She gasped, and his mouth moved over her neck and down under her collar to her shoulder. Suddenly she was aware that his hand was at the top button of her pyjama jacket; as though he became aware of the fact in the same moment, he drew back. He looked at her.
“In the question of breakfast,” he said, heaving a deep breath, “will you walk with me along the Coastal Path, and we will take our breakfast as a picnic?”
She laughed. When he stood back from her, her body swayed involuntarily towards him: she had no more control than if he were a magnet and she a stray piece of iron. He was asking her if she would go with him as though there were some possibility of her saying no.
“I would love to.” She flicked him a look. “Shall I bother to get dressed?”
He took a ragged breath and laughed in the admission that she had scored a point.
“Yes,” he said, “get dressed. When the time comes, it will not pain me to remove your clothes.”
Game, set, match. All the butterflies in her stomach rose in a fluttering swoosh. She dropped her eyes and busily began disentangling herself from the sheets. “Give me ten minutes,” she said with forced calm, as though he might not have seen what effect he had had on her, and fled from his laughing face.
When she had showered and dressed, they walked up to the house and, finding Brigit in the kitchen, begged picnic supplies from her. Chatting to them about the routes they might take, Brigit found an old haversack with a tartan rug strapped to the bottom and helped them stow breakfast inside.
“You won’t be wanting to carry along your special drink,” she said to Mischa. “Why don’t you drink it now before you go—I’ve got it ready, waiting.” As she and Laddy added cutlery and napkins to the haversack and closed it, Mischa leaned against the counter and drank the creamy liquid.
“There now,” Brigit said. “All set.” Mischa slung the strap over one wide thin shoulder and set his glass in the sink. “If you should happen to see Rhodri this morning, would you remind him that today is a schoolday?” Brigit smiled.
As it happened, they did meet Rhodri, walking up the Mill Path as they walked down it, carrying his knapsack and flashlight.
“Hello!” he called up to them delightedly, scrambling into a run by the ruins of an old mill that had closed in 1839, shattering the town’s economy. “Were you wanting to come out with me today?” He was full of excitement, coming towards them in uncontrolled little bounds, a young mountain goat in spring.
“We’d be too late for that,” smiled Laddy. A couple of morning adventures had taught her that Rhodri liked to get started with the sun. “Brigit asked us to remind you not to be late for school.”
His dark eyes were brimming with news and he gazed up at them, almost transported. “Oh—school!” he said dismissively.
Mischa hefted the knapsack more comfortably on his shoulder and said, “What have you found?”
A broad grin swept from ear to ear as Rhodri gazed up at Mischa, then disappeared quickly, and his eyes became serious. “A rockfall,” he said. “A cave I have been in before, too, and never noticed it. It was shallow, you see, and most cave paintings are deep in dark caves.”
“What’s a rockfall?” Laddy asked.
“The back of the cave is not bedrock,” he said. “The ceiling or walls have collapsed, you know, and perhaps there is a much deeper cave behind. And then, you see, perhaps this happened so long ago that no one has been inside since prehistoric times, and if something had been in the cave, it could be preserved.”
Rhodri turned away from them to look back along the beach that ran southwest of the Mill Path, then glanced at his wristwatch. “I wish I could take you now and show you,” he said impatiently. “There is a groove on the wall, you see, right by the rockfall....”
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He had their unwavering attention now. “A groove?” said Mischa. “A carved groove?”
Rhodri nodded. “It could be.”
“I think, Rhodri, you need to take an archaeologist to the cave.”
But Rhodri shook his head vigorously. “Not till I’ve found something sure,” he said. “I could show you now, but they say if I am late for school one more time—”
“Show us tomorrow then,” Laddy suggested. “If it’s lasted fifteen thousand years or so, it’ll last another day.”
Rhodri laughed, looking up at them warmly but saying impatiently, “School! They teach me nothing except the Wars of the Roses!” He ran by them up the Mill Path and turned and called to them, his knapsack banging against his leg, “Tomorrow morning, early? It is a promise?”
“Promise!” they called back, and watched him disappear over the rise before moving down to the stony beach. It was very warm for spring, and the air was fresh, clear, intoxicating. Laddy wanted to fling her arms out and spin like a dervish; she wanted to leap into the water and swim down and down to the strange realms under the sea....
“He is so certain,” Mischa said beside her. “You would think he had a special knowledge.” He spoke musingly, as though to himself, but Laddy knew that he was talking to her. It was part of their extraordinary closeness that at times they seemed to think with the same mind.
“Maybe he knows there are cave paintings here because fifteen thousand years ago he painted them himself?” And she could almost believe that. Nothing seemed completely impossible to her anymore.
They walked at a leisurely pace along the shore that led past the foot of the cliffs back in the direction of Tymawr House. They passed the mouths of black wet caves, some of which they had explored with Rhodri, and then there was no more shore. A rather difficult ascent led up what might have been a dry waterfall bed to the cliff top.
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