A Multitude of Sins

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘Jesus God,’ he blasphemed softly, and then he vaulted from the car, seizing hold of her hands. ‘I’m forty-two,’ he said abruptly, ‘and I’m not just in love with you, Beth. I want to marry you!’

  Her eyes flew wide with shock, and his hands tightened on hers with bruising intensity. ‘Is that an idea you could learn to come to terms with, Beth?’ he asked tautly. ‘If not, I won’t mention it again, but.…’

  She gasped, her eyes still open wide, still incredulous. ‘I … I think it’s an idea I could come to terms with very easily.…’

  He felt as if his chest were encircled with a band of steel. It couldn’t be happening. It was too wonderful, too marvellous.

  ‘I love you, Beth,’ he said again, huskily, and this time his arms slid round her, drawing her close. Her body swayed lightly against his, trembling in uncertainty and expectation. Gently, letting all the love he felt for her show in his eyes, he tilted her face to his. ‘Dearest Beth,’ he murmured, his lips brushing her temple, moving tenderly, slowly, to her cheekbone, the corner of her mouth. ‘Dearest, beautiful Beth.’ He could feel a moment of doubt flare through her and gently, deliberately, overcame it, bending her in to him, kissing her with tenderness and then, as he felt her doubt fade and she yielded willingly against him, with rising passion.

  It was a long deep kiss and when at last he raised his head from hers her cheeks were flushed, her eyes sure and certain. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, her arms still around his neck. ‘If you want me to marry you, Adam, then the answer is yes.’

  He grinned down at her. The gossips would have a fieldday. They would say he was marrying her for her money. That he was abusing his position as a family friend. He didn’t care. He loved her. He had always loved her. And now he was going to marry her.

  Later, sitting in the tiny solar that she had massed with plants and cushions, Elizabeth said anxiously: ‘You won’t want me to give up Four Seasons when we marry, will you?’

  They were sitting on the window-seat, sharing a bottle of ice-cold Sauterne. Adam put down his glass. For him to move into Four Seasons would do nothing to silence the gossips who would say he was marrying her for her money. He had his own, extremely comfortable home in Kensington.

  ‘No,’ he said, drawing her closer to him. ‘But we’ll keep on my house in Kensington for when we’re in town, and it will be easier if we are married from there.’

  ‘At Kensington Register Office?’ she asked, a smile tugging at the comer of her mouth.

  A slight frown furrowed his brow. They had agreed on a quiet wedding, but she was only eighteen. It would be understandable if she wanted a church wedding with all the trimmings.

  ‘Not unless you want to,’ he said, lifting the bottle of Sauterne from its ice-bucket and topping up her glass. ‘We could get married at St Mary Abbots, or even St Margaret’s, Westminster.’

  She giggled, snuggling close to him. ‘No, thank you. The Kensington Register Office will do very nicely. At least if we get married there I shan’t have to scout around for someone to give me away!’

  They were married a month later. Her tutor from the Royal Academy of Music stood as one witness and Princess Luisa Isabel as the other. She wore a cream satin dress, high-necked with short belled-cap sleeves, the mid-calf-length skirt swirling lushly around her legs. Her hair was swept high, smoothed into a glistening figure-of-eight knot, her only jewellery a single strand of pearls and matching pearl earrings, her bouquet a delicate cluster of white roses and dew-fresh freesias.

  Adam drew his breath in on a whistle when she walked down the staircase of his Kensington house towards him. ‘My God, you look lovely,’ he said reverently. ‘Like a princess in a fairy-tale.’

  She had slipped her hand into his, suddenly shy. The previous night had been the first they had ever spent beneath the same roof, and she was suddenly conscious of the night that was to come. A night that would not be chaperoned by Princess Luisa Isabel, as the previous night had been.

  The Princess, who was staying as Adam’s guest, had been appalled at Elizabeth’s decision to marry from Adam’s home and not her own. ‘People will think you have been living together!’ she protested, aghast. ‘It really isn’t done, Elizabeth. You must either leave for the wedding from your home in Sussex or from a hotel or a friend’s house.’

  ‘I have spent enough of my life in hotels and I don’t want to leave for my wedding from one,’ Elizabeth said gently but firmly. ‘And I don’t have friends of my own in London. All the people I know here were Daddy’s friends. I can’t very well presume to stay with them when I haven’t even asked them to the wedding!’

  Princess Luisa abandoned good sense as an argument and tried superstition, ‘It is terribly bad luck to meet your husband on the day of your wedding, before you meet him at the altar.’

  ‘But there’s not going to be an altar,’ Elizabeth had said in amusement ‘We’re being married in a register office, not a church, Luisa.’

  The Princess had thrown up her hands in despair. A first marriage for both bride and groom, and it was to take place in a register office. It offended her to the very depths of her Catholic soul.

  ‘I, Adam Harland, know not of any lawful impediment why I may not be joined in matrimony to Elizabeth Helena Kingsley,’ Adam said to the registrar in a strong sure voice.

  Luisa Isabel sighed and dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief.

  ‘… I call upon these persons here present’, Adam continued, ‘to witness that I, Adam Harland, do take thee, Elizabeth Helena Kingsley, to be my lawfully wedded wife.’

  The registrar turned his attention to Elizabeth. ‘Please repeat after me,’ he said gently.

  There was a slight pause before she spoke, and Luisa Isabel wondered if she was suddenly realizing what it was she was doing: marrying a man who had always been a surrogate father to her. A man twenty-four years her senior. A man who, until four weeks ago, she had never in her wildest dreams visualized as a lover.

  ‘I, Elizabeth Helena Kingsley …,’ she began in a low husky voice, and Princess Luisa Isabel lifted her shoulders fractionally in a gesture of resignation. It was over now. With God’s good grace they would be happy. That Adam loved her and was in love with her was beyond question. Perhaps it would be a long time before Elizabeth discovered that, though she, too, loved Adam, she was not in love with him. And perhaps by the time she discovered it the difference would cease to matter. She hoped so. She kissed them with much affection, laughingly accepting the gift of Elizabeth’s bouquet, showering them with confetti as they left for a simple wedding breakfast at the Café de Paris.

  They had told no one where they were going to spend their honeymoon. The Princess assumed it would be on the Continent. Florence, perhaps, or Venice or Rome. Her tutor, if asked, would have surmised somewhere quiet and scenic: Cornwall or the west of Ireland.

  They told no one their secret. When the wedding breakfast was over and their two guests waved them off from the front entrance of the Café de Paris, Adam drove not in the direction of Victoria Station and the boat-train, or in the direction of the roads leading west to Cornwall or to the ferry for Ireland. Instead he drove south, out through the London suburbs to Leatherhead and Guildford, motoring down leafy country lanes to Haslemere and the rolling countryside beyond. To Four Seasons and its quietness, its serenity and its uninterrupted peace.

  She sat close beside him in the open-topped Austin Swallow, blissfully happy. She had been lonely and bereft, and now her whole world was transformed. She had someone to love again, someone to care for. Someone who loved her.

  ‘How does it feel to be an old married lady?’ Adam asked with a grin as the house came into view and they swooped down through a tunnel of trees towards it.

  ‘It feels very secure,’ she said laughing, her arm hugging his. ‘Now you can’t run away from me. Not ever.’

  Adam pressed his foot down on the brake, sliding the car to a halt on the gravel that fronted the house. ‘I can’t imagine there w
as ever much danger of it,’ he said in amusement, slamming the driving-seat door behind him and walking round to her side of the car to open the door for her.

  ‘It’s better to be safe than sorry,’ she said, her cheeks dimpling as he swept her up in his arms and carried her over the threshold.

  Her arms were around his neck, his thick brown hair springy as heather beneath her fingertips. She rested her head next to his. ‘I love you, Adam Harland,’ she whispered softly as the oak door swung closed behind them and he walked with her across the wood-panelled hall to the staircase.

  His arms tightened around her. ‘I love you, too,’ he said huskily, ‘and in another few moments I’m going to show you how much, in every way that I can.’

  The bedroom was golden, filled with afternoon sunshine. He laid her gently on the large brass-headed bed and walked across the room to close the curtains. They had never been alone in such intimacy before. Ever since he had asked her to marry him, he had courted her with the restraint and propriety of a Victorian suitor, painfully aware that she had no parent to keep a watchful eye on her, determined that no one would ever be able to accuse him of taking advantage of the fact.

  She was still wearing the cream silk dress she had been married in. She lay where he had placed her, watching him as he drew the curtains and the room was plunged into muted light. She had very little idea of what to expect. She had never had a lover before. Never enjoyed even the most casual of friendships with members of the opposite sex. Her life with Jerome had been a strange one; It had made her worldly-wise in many ways; assured, sophisticated. At home in the grandest of surroundings, unimpressed when confronted by titles or fame. Yet it had also left her curiously innocent.

  She had never had any girlfriends her own age to discuss boys with, to laugh and giggle with. She had never enjoyed the easygoing camaraderie that comes from being a member of a group. Jerome had always been at her side, shielding her by his presence. She had seen things and witnessed a way of life that many people twice her age had never seen or were even aware of, but she had experienced very little. And nothing at all of love.

  He took off his jacket and tossed it on to a chair, saying with obvious tension in his voice: ‘Would you like some champagne?’

  She pushed herself up against the pillows. ‘Yes… No.…’ And then, with disarming frankness; ‘Is everyone so scared when they’re finally left alone?’

  His tension evaporated, and a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. ‘Not many would admit to it, but I’m damned sure they are. I think the champagne is essential. I told the daily help to leave some to chill in the refrigerator before she went home. I’ll be back with it in a jiffy.’

  When he had gone she rose slowly from the bed and walked across to the dressing-table, looking intently at her reflection in the mirror.

  There’s nothing to be scared of, she chided herself. It’s Adam I’m going to bed with, not a stranger.

  She raised her hands and unclasped the pearls, laying them down on the glass tray of her dressing-table. The drawn curtains were summer curtains, and the room was still full of soft light She took off her earrings and laid them beside the necklace. Adam, who loved her. Who made her feel safe and secure. She remembered Francine, chic and sexy and uninhibited. He had very nearly married Francine. And, if he had done, she knew how different the consummation of his marriage would have been. He was forty-two. He was accustomed to women who were sexually knowledgeable. Was she going to allow him to be disappointed in her?

  She raised her hands behind her neck and slowly drew down her zip fastener, letting the cream silk slip from her shoulders to her waist, to her hips, till it slithered into a milky pool about her ankles. Carefully she stepped out of it, picking it up and laying it on the chair next to his jacket. She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been happy in his company. When she had been very small he had listened to her sing, throwing her up in the air afterwards while she had shrieked with delight and her mother had looked on indulgently. Then, when Jerome had been travelling abroad, he had become a surrogate father to her, taking her to the zoo, the park, the circus. And now she was going to go to bed with him.

  Her hands shook slightly as she stepped out of her cream kid pumps, lifting up her lace-trimmed underslip and unfastening her suspenders. A month ago she had been disappointed that she was not to be a bridesmaid when he married Francine. She had never been jealous of Francine. It had never occurred to her to wish to be in Francine’s place. She slid the sheer silk of her stocking down her leg. Yet now she was. How had it happened? How had he moved so smoothly from being the Adam of her childhood to the Adam who was now her husband? She let the stockings fall to the floor and stared at herself in the mirror. Would her father have approved? A slight smile touched her mouth. He would have been too astonished to approve or disapprove. He had always lived his life exactly as he had wanted, taking no thought of other people’s desires or wishes. He could hardly be disapproving if she showed the same streak of wilfulness herself.

  The door opened behind her and Adam stepped into the bedroom, a bottle of Moët et Chandon in one hand, two champagne-glasses in the other. On seeing her dressed only in her slip, her breasts rising cream and pale from the lush lace that covered them, he halted abruptly, as if he had been punched hard in the chest.

  Through the mirror her eyes met his. His hair was rumpled, as if he had run his fingers through it several times on his way down to the kitchen. His handsome good-natured face was showing signs of strain. She could see tension in the lines around his mouth, uncertainty in the honey-brown depths of his eyes. Her doubts fled. He was Adam. Adam, whose generous compassionate nature had been her strength and support ever since she had been a little girl. Adam, to whom she was now married, and to whom she was going to give her love.

  Her eyes continued to hold his, and a smile curved her lips. ‘We don’t need the champagne,’ she said huskily. ‘I’m not scared any more.’

  Her reward was the relief in his eyes. He put the champagne and glasses down on the bedside table and walked towards her, sliding his arms around her, holding her tight. She leaned against him, looking at their reflection in the glass. He was not much taller than she, a toughly-built man who, despite his slight limp, moved with easy strength and confidence. A man whom women admired and other men liked. A man she was going to spend the rest of her life with.

  She turned round in his arms to face him, her hands sliding up and around his neck, her body pressing, soft and warm, against his.

  With a groan, he lowered his head to hers, kissing her with infinite tenderness, his hands moving reverently over the thin silk of her slip.

  ‘Oh God, Beth … I love you … love you …,’ he whispered hoarsely.

  She was pliant and willing in his arms, pressing so close against him that he had to exert all his will power not to lower her to the floor and take her there and then.

  ‘My darling … my love …,’ he groaned, scooping her up in his arms and carrying her towards the bed. For years he had restrained his desire for her; now, at last, it could be expressed. The thought of caressing her small, uptilted breasts, her private places, filled him with awe. She was so young, so pure, so immeasurably precious.

  He laid her gently down on the bed, his heart hammering in his chest as slowly, carefully, he peeled away the delicate straps of her silk and lace underslip, revealing the satin smoothness of her flesh, the rose-tipped perfection of her breasts.

  Excitement raged through him like a forest fire, but he held it firmly in check. She loved him and she trusted him, and he was going to do nothing to alarm or dismay her. He was going to be gentle and patient. Carnality had never had any place in their relationship, and he did not want it to have now. The thought of seeing shock or disgust in her eyes made him physically tremble.

  ‘You are so beautiful, Beth. So perfect.…,’ he whispered, refusing to give in to his body’s demand that he release his engorged penis from the tight constraint of his we
dding-trousers.

  Lightly, barely touching her, he ran his fingertips down the curve of her throat, marvelling at the beauty of her milky-pale flesh, her splendour as she lay half-naked beneath him.

  Her arms slid up around his neck, her lips soft and yielding as his mouth came down on hers. His hands closed caressingly over her breasts, her nipples brushing his palm, erect and taut. He could feel her heart beating under his moving hand. Her tongue hesitantly met and slipped past his, and he knew that he could endure no more.

  ‘I want you!’ he gasped, his voice choked. ‘Oh God, Beth! How I want you!’

  He rolled away from her, standing by the side of the bed, pulling off his shirt with shaking hands, kicking off his shoes and socks, unzipping his trousers.

  She watched in shy fascination. She had never seen a grown man naked. The muted sunlight cast golden shadows on the strong muscles of his chest and arms. His belly was flat, a line of crisply curling auburn hair running down from his navel. The blood rose hot in her cheeks.

  ‘Adam, I…,’ she began hesitantly.

  The bed rocked beneath his weight as he lay beside her, taking her lovingly in his arms.

  ‘I won’t hurt you …,’ he promised fiercely, seeing the sudden apprehension in her eyes. ‘I promise I will never, ever, hurt you.’ His mouth closed once more over hers, and as he felt her relax against him he very gently slid her underslip down to her hips, to her knees, tossing it free of the bed.

  ‘We have all the time in the world,’ he whispered reassuringly, as only a wisp of lingerie shielded her from his view. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of, my love. Nothing.’

  She clung tightly to him, her eyes closed as he lifted her beneath him, reverently removing the last remaining barrier of lace. The spring of her pubic hair, crisp and golden, brushed the palm of his hand like an electric shock. Beth. Toddling to meet him in the drawing-room at Eaton Place. Beth. Her face pale, her eyes wide and dark as they tobogganed together on the day of her mother’s funeral. Beth. Her hand sliding guilelessly into his as they left Francine and Jerry on the Spanish Steps and set off towards the Vatican Museum. So many memories. So much love. So much longing.