by Margaret Way
'Okay,' Damien said soothingly, 'but stay.'
It was a mistake. She should have gone home right away. Afterwards, when people were drifting outside or into conversational groups Camilla in a beautifully executed stumble poured drink all over Jessie's lovely rose-coloured shawl and then in an apparent effort to save herself clutched at Damien's shoulder while one hand raked into Lucie's hair, dragging the pink camellias out of place so they fell with a soft plonk into Lucie's lap.
'Isn't it time you went home?' Damien shouted.
'Oh, I am sorry.' Camilla swooped and picked up the camellias, crushing them up in her hand. 'These were silly anyway.'
That Jessie's shawl should be ruined! Lucie stared at the wet folds on her shoulder. Damn Camilla and her ugly jealousy! She stood up roughly, the normally Madonna-like composure of her face replaced by fire.
'Give Camilla her broom so she can go home.'
It was so unlike Lucie, half a dozen people burst out laughing.
'Oh, your lovely shawl!' Marianne had appeared, pushing through the equally distressed and entertained group. 'Let me have it and I'll sponge it off.'
'It was an accident,' Camilla said loftily. 'I was almost thrown off balance—that damned ottoman thing.'
Marianne's face twisted, but she didn't say anything. Camilla was an important person in the Company and a terrible enemy.
'It's all right, Marianne,' Lucie resisted Marianne's halfhearted efforts to take the shawl from her.
'Shouldn't you '
'I have the feeling I've missed something?' Julian came in from outside to join them.
'I can't figure out why everyone is looking so grim,' Camilla laughed. 'I tripped and spilt a little mineral water over Lucie's itty-bitty shawl.'
'Describing your style to the nth degree.' Lucie flipped the shawl contemptuously and immediately droplets spattered Camilla's gorgeous, hand-painted silk kimono.
Camilla gaped down at herself, dumbfounded. An attacker all her life, she thought it impossible that anyone would have the effrontery to retaliate. Even Lucie seemed chastened by her action.
'Why didn't I think of that?' said Damien.
'You rotten little '
'Company, Camilla. Remember you're in company,' Julian drawled. 'Come along, Lucienne,' he gave her a tiny push, 'you seem to have incurred Camilla's ill- will.'
As Carlo shut the door on them with a gesture of amusement and embarrassment, they could hear Camilla shouting. The high-pitched female voice went on and on, unquestionably swearing.
'I thought people like that only existed in books,' said Lucie.
'When as it turns out, they're acutely real,' Julian returned quite bitterly. 'I'm concerned about Camilla.'
'It's easier to be concerned about Marianne and Carlo. It's their party.'
'My dear child,' Julian turned his head and gave her a weary look, 'one must have something to talk about. Camilla will allow that tall, moronic character to take her off in a few moments, then everyone else will sit down and discuss the whole situation with immense interest. It's easy to see you're such a baby, and so sweetly innocent.'
'You say that like you might say illiterate. Or failing that, retarded.'
'Shut up,' he said succinctly.
'It's Jessie's shawl, you know,' she retorted.
'I'm sorry about that.'
She glanced at him quickly, but perceived that he was. 'Do you suppose it will leave a stain?'
'We'll get her another one.'
'What a shame,' she said, nearly weepy with self- reproach.
'Oh, do shut up!' He sounded testy and very male.
'All right.' Very deliberately Lucie shut her eyes, contriving at the same time to see his handsome profile in her mind's eye. What a husband he would be! In every respect a tyrant. She was sure now he was doing the right thing in remaining a bachelor. The disadvantages of being committed to Julian would be far weightier than all the violent excitements. Or so she thought then.
The next time she opened her eyes she was sure she was in a fantasy. A male hand was boldly shaping the contour of her breast, and as she cried out in that split second of fright and confusion, she heard Julian say to her: 'Hush, little girl.'
She put her hand over his and held it tightly. 'Oh, Julian!' Desire was driving all drowsiness from her brain.
'Your heart is racing.' He freed his hand, only to cup the underside of her breast.
'I don't want you to.' 'You do,' he said gently. 'Even if one can't fail to see you've never even had a lover.'
'And how is that?' she asked plaintively. Her eyes were used to the semi-dark and she could see the beautiful, cynical mouth, amused and relaxed.
'Please, Lucie. The proof is in your face. You're certainly innocent. Lovely and innocent—an unbeatable combination.'
'I'm not as green as all that,' she protested.
'And not so sweet as you were either.'
Of course he was baiting her. She drew away from him and smoothed her silky hair, abruptly seizing on the fact that they were parked on an empty allotment with a ravishing view of moon-silvered water. 'Where on earth are we?'
'You poor little kid,' he said kindly. 'Don't panic.'
'I'm sure I should.'
'Put the seduction scene straight out of your mind,' he told her 'This is a block of land I've just bought. I want to know if you like it.'
'So far as I can see, it's beautiful.'
'Get out,' he said.
'I will indeed.' Lucie opened the door resolutely and he came round to her to help her out. 'Take care. It's been cleared, but there are a few rough spots.'
'We could be in the bush.'
'Don't frighten yourself. We're less than an hour from home. I think it's perfect—no neighbours.'
Lucie stood still beside him and stared around her intently. 'I can see some lights just through there.'
'Another house. It's not really of great consequence. All the blocks around here are large.'
'And are you going to build on it?'
'I don't know. I like feeling free.'
'Then why did you buy it?'
'Don't be a fool little one,' Julian put his arm around her and began walking. 'You know perfectly well this is a prime piece of real estate. Look at the view!'
'I'm looking.' She rested lightly against him. It was a beautiful night, but cooler now, some flowering bush scattering its perfume on the sweet air. 'I used to long for a home of my own,' she said softly, 'ever since I was a child. It was very difficult for my mother, losing her young husband and then having to rear a daughter. We never went hungry, but there was never enough money for our own house. We always rented some flat or other.'
'At least you had your mother,' Julian reminded her. 'My parents never had time to love me. They were both so successful I saw more of our household staff than I ever saw of them. I was very lonely until I thought to take my life into my own hands. I was about ten at the time, determined on treading my own path. I made myself very busy learning everything. Everything I could. I was known as an enfant terrible.'
'I've heard.' She gave a delightful little gurgle in her throat. 'But you did train as an architect?'
'Yes, but I have a much deeper love for the dance. It was only as a young man that I began to enjoy my mother—as a woman. Of course I idolised her as a dancer. Even past forty she could drop twenty years on stage. Every movement, every gesture, was that of a young girl. Her Juliet was superb.'
'Fascinating, your world.' She could see how it must have been.
'You could rival her in sheer technique,' Julian told her.
'I'm glad you said could.'
'Little Lucie and her sorrowful heart! If dancers can come back from polio so can you.'
The moon was golden in the boundless purple sky and as they walked on, Lucie tried to quieten her mind. How foolish it would be to hope. She wondered that Julian could continue to do so. Her legs would never bear her like they used to. There was no wisdom in hoping.
&nb
sp; 'I'm cold, Julian,' she murmured eventually, her voice sounding shaky and beset.
'We'll go back to the car.'
'Yes.' She broke away from him with surprising agility and almost ran ahead, the taste of frustration bitter on her lips.
'Lucie!' He called her name as if he feared she might fall, and it made her immensely angry. Her path was littered with tiny obstacles and loose gravel, stumps of saplings that fortunately she could see clearly in the moon's radiance. Damn Julian! She should be praying to bear her burden, not hoping. A good dancer was a top athlete and anyone could see she had lost her brilliant technique. What was a beautiful port de bras when she was terrified of her footwork?
'You hate me, don't you?' He caught her up so masterfully, she cried out.
'Why do you let me keep hoping, Julian? It's a cruelty!'
'A cruelty you should be glad to bear. Where's your spirit?'
'Don't you think I long to dance?' she hurled at him. 'But I can't. I'm a shadow of myself.' 'A shadow that grows stronger every day.' He mastered her easily, returning her flailing hands to her sides. 'To me you are still a dancer. You reflect so much. Sometimes when I exhaust you I hate myself, but I'm not going to allow you to give up.'
'But I am!' she cried. 'I'll let you long for the impossible, Julian, I'm going to be a model.'
'A what?' He stared fixedly into her delicate, tilted face.
'There was a woman at the party. . . .'
'Not Sarah?'
'Yes, Sarah,' she said bitterly, responding to his tone. 'She seems to think I would make a good photographic model.'
'My God!' There was a flash of genuine dismay in his voice. 'You want to be a pretty face on a magazine cover?'
'I've got worries, Julian.' Now she was nearly crying. 'I even worry at how much I'm worrying. I owe you so much.'
'Shut up!'
'I won't shut up! Shut up, you say to me, as if I'm a naughty little girl. I haven't inherited money. I haven't wealthy, influential parents. . . .'
'What about the boy-friend?'
It was said with so much insolence Lucie saw red. A cold thrill of anger went through her and she threw up her hand to strike him, knowing this impulse towards violence was as sensual as it was anger- provoked.
'Aren't you forgetting yourself?' he said in a harsh, clipped voice.
'You're hurting me, Julian!' Although she had involved herself in this physical confrontation, now she wanted out.
'I'm doing nothing. Yet.'
'You're bruising my hand!'
Julian shrugged and pulled her trembling weakly against him. 'You know what I want.'
'For as long as it lasts?'
'I could make you a lot happier than you are now.'
'That may be, Julian,' she said sadly, 'but I know what happens to women you drop. They fall apart.'
'You know nothing about the women in my life.'
'I'm sorry for Camilla,' she told him.
'You would be, though with her little sharp teeth she could tear you to pieces.'
'So let me go.'
'No. You're the type of woman who twists herself around a man's nerve centres.'
'Not his heart?'
'Darling, you're the romantic, not I.' Deftly he freed her hair so it swirled down her back and the breeze carried it around her gleaming, pearl-coloured skin. 'I like your hair down.'
'Do you?'
'I'm really very fond of you, Lucie.'
'I think you're amusing yourself.'
'Let's see.' He brought up his two hands, warm and strong, to cup her face, and as he did so the breath fluttered out of Lucie's body. She realised now she had thought of nothing but Julian's kissing her since the last time he had done so; no matter what she was doing, the magic and excitement that hovered just out of sight.
His mouth travelled slowly to hers, from her temple
down her cheekbone, beneath her ear lobe, wandering, wandering, until her senses were unbearably stirred.
'Kiss me, Julian,' she begged him fiercely. 'Get it over.'
'How brash!'
Always the mockery, the brilliant self-control. 'I won't fall in love with you,' she assured him.
'No. You won't get away from me either.'
He drew her long hair around her throat, then as though he too could endure the game no longer, covered her mouth with his own, not content with her softly closed lips, but forcing her mouth open so he could have her more freely.
It was yearning, it had to be. A timeless quality that gave it its mystery, too perfect, too beautiful to be real. It was like being encased in a silver dome where she had nothing to consider but pleasure.
'I'll never fall in love with you,' she promised.
'That's fine.'
It was ravishing, and moments after they were together in the car though all their movements seemed unbelievably slow, possessed of such fluidity and ease, it might have been a pas de deux for two lovers Julian had spontaneously devised.
The gracefulness went so deep in her, when his hands came up under her thin sweater to worship her breasts she arched her back for him, consciously erotic, so his muffled groan was genuinely shaken.
'I've never been so thirsty for a woman in my life!' he muttered.
When his tongue caressed her pink nipple, Lucie grew so lightheaded she thought she would faint. Then his mouth, spiralling shock waves from the very centre of her being.
'Oh, I love you!' Had she said it, thought it? It was equally true.
But Julian wanted more, experiencing a deeper, transfixing passion that Lucie, as yet, was only on the edge of. Now when the caressing hand touched her more intimately she was brought face to face with severance or a total surrender.
'Don't hold back from me, Lucie,' he begged her.
'I've got to.' It was agony to be so deeply aroused. For a lunatic moment she thought of giving herself to him, certain he desired her, but as uncommitted to one woman as any man could be.
'God!' he reacted to her sudden withdrawal. 'I won't let you go.' He took her mouth again, kissing her with such abandon she thought she could not withstand it. She was trembling violently, or was he? Consummation so imperative it was only seconds away.
'This is hell, Julian. I can't!’
For answer he groaned, a vibrant breath against her naked breast. 'Terrible—to be engulfed without release. I suppose you take nothing to protect yourself?'
'No.' Other girls had an active sex life. Lucie had only sought to exclude complications. Transient passions could only debilitate and it wasn't in her temperament to court meaningless experiences.*
'What the devil do we do, then?' A derisory note in among the outraged male.
'We could go home.'
'Well, of course. A bed would be a damned sight more comfortable.' 'You don't love me, Julian.'. Still her body clung to him.
'How do you define love, anyway?'
'Something more than sexual.'
'Not by me,' he assured her.
'That fits.' It was no more than she expected. Julian was used to taking what he wanted, but now she discovered she did not love him beyond pride. Pride was an important detail. Pride versus promiscuity. Julian had made love to dozens of women, including Camilla. She only wanted him. Which was to say, she could love him all her life.
'On second thoughts, I do care about you.' He spoilt it all by laughing.
'Go to hell, Julian!' she snapped.
'You don't mean that.'
'No, I don't.' She sank her hands in his luxuriant hair while he rested his face against her scented skin. 'Though I've no doubt it's where you'll go.'
'You don't know me at all, little one,' he said gently. 'The satyr of your imagination is really highly selective.'
'So what exactly do you see in me?'
'I'll tell you when you're wearing exactly nothing.'
'Lust has no love in it,' she protested.
'You're not serious?' Julian kissed her mouth briefly, hard. 'I couldn't manage to love a woman I
didn't lust after.'
'You have a facility for ignoring serious matters,' she told him sadly.
'And you have a most beautiful body. Sleep with me, Lucie?' His hand slipped through her hair with something like tenderness.
'You make me so reckless, Julian,' she sighed.
'Darling, I'm quite unimpressed with your recklessness,' he complained. 'If anything, you're amazingly virtuous. I don't know that I like it.'
'I'm pretty impressed myself.' Half senseless with delight, she still managed to lift herself off his shoulder. 'Please may we go home, Julian?'
He looked down at her for some moments, the virulent male all there in force but by no means without a sense of humour. 'Yes, we can, Lucie,' he said dryly. 'We'll abandon the awful prospect of seduction for tonight.'
She opened out the door so the night air could fortify her. 'It's far more serious for me,' she said levelly. 'I can't fall in love with you, Julian. Not on top of everything else. Plus the fact that you don't love me.'
'I don't know what I'm doing here in the back seat of a car.' He too got out and slammed the door. 'I don't love you, Lucie, of course. I only half love you. In fact I'm determined that's all I'm going to love any woman.'
'And there you are,' she said pleasantly. 'If I'd allowed you to do as you liked, I would only finish up despising myself.'
