A Lesson in Passion: Season of Desire Part 4 (Seasons Quartet)

I’m lying in darkness, surrounded by cool, fetid blackness. Nearby I can feel the damp chill of a rock wall. I blink, trying to make out what or who is around me. I can feel their presence although I can’t see anything. I’m paralysed by the darkness, and by the fear growing inside me. The presence is close. I can hear its breathing.

I manage to move. I can stretch out a hand and touch something. It’s a rough fabric, like towelling, and underneath it is a firmness. I must be touching someone – a body – but it’s almost too cool for that. Where is the body heat? Why is there no warmth? My fingertips run lightly over the roughness.

‘Mama?’ I whisper.

There is no answer, just the faintest hint of a sigh on the night air. And then, from nowhere, a hand grabs my wrist, seizing it with a hard, iron grip. My eyes fly open in shock against the darkness and I gasp, and then scream in utter terror—

‘Freya, Freya! Wake up, sweetheart, you’re all right. It’s just a bad dream. I’m here, sweetheart, I’m here.’

Strong arms are wrapped tightly around me, and at first I struggle, trying to fight off the horrifying grip in my dreams. I’m blinded by fear, gasping and crying.

‘Freya! You’re all right! I’m here…’

At last his voice penetrates my consciousness and my terror subsides. I slump into his arms, panting and sobbing as I realise, with a drenching relief, that I’m safe. Of course, I know where I am. I’m in the beautiful master bedroom of a chalet just above Klosters. I’m in Miles’s arms after spending the night with him. I ought to be in a state of bliss but here I am, still gasping after my nightmare, my eyes streaming.

‘Oh God, I’m sorry,’ I say between intakes of breath. ‘I’m sorry!’

‘Don’t be sorry,’ he soothes me, ‘it’s fine, it’s okay now. Did you have a nightmare?’

I nod.

‘It’s because of what we talked about last night, isn’t it?’ Miles says softly. His blue eyes gaze into mine, tender but questioning.

‘I guess it must be.’ I take a deep breath and let out a long sigh, trying to get my breathing back on track and restore myself to calmness. ‘Sometimes I get these flashbacks. They’re so powerful. They must be dreams but they feel so real. At first I dream that I’m sleeping and then, in my dream, I wake up. But it feels exactly like what waking up is like, and so when the bad stuff comes I truly believe in it.’

‘That sounds awful, you poor wee thing.’ Miles’s voice is so gentle, his Scottish accent so sweetly comforting in the way it rolls softly, enveloping me like a soft duvet.

‘And I can’t describe the presence – I can never see it. It’s near me and it’s so real, I can hear its breathing and feel its mass – sometimes its weight if I’m on a bed. It’s watching me and I can’t move, and at first I don’t know if it’s good or evil, it just seems curious about me. Then… then… I realise it wants to harm me.’ A sob in my throat catches me by surprise and I hunch forward. Miles’s arms tighten around me and he hushes me quietly, as I shake off the awful feeling that comes with the memory of that awful thing.

‘I don’t have to be Doctor Freud to interpret that dream,’ Miles says in a low voice, rocking me a little. ‘Not now you’ve told me about what happened in your past.’

I nod miserably. ‘I know. So often I’m back there – in that cave. With my mother.’

‘You’re safe with me,’ he says firmly. ‘I’ll always keep you safe.’

‘Well…’ I sniff and manage a laugh. ‘You
are
a bodyguard, aren’t you? It’s your job.’

He looks at me solemnly, his blue eyes as serious as I’ve ever seen them. ‘But we both know that you’ve got a good reason to be suspicious of bodyguards. No wonder you always had such an attitude towards me and the others.’

‘I suppose I have found it hard to trust after what happened. The fact that we were betrayed by someone who was supposed to keep us safe was very scarring.’

‘Well, I know that now.’ He shakes his head. ‘Personally I think we should have been told about this event. It would help us all understand your father’s paranoia and over-the-top demands. The security checks he insists on would put a military installation to shame. And it might make relations with you, our charges, a little bit easier if we knew about the history involved.’

‘You mean you all hate us!’ I say, with a weak smile.

He grins back, that gorgeous half smile that twists his lips and makes my heart do little flips. ‘We don’t hate you. But let’s just say you don’t always make it easy to be enamoured of you.’

‘I suppose not.’ I feel calmer now, almost back to my old self. I lie back on the pillows. This room is so serene. It’s luxurious but very natural too, with the plain wood walls, the embroidered fabrics and the hand-carved furniture – an expensive take on a traditional Swiss chalet. Above me, sunshine floods through the skylight, illuminating the room with gentle golden glow.

‘We don’t talk about it to outsiders,’ I say, staring upwards. ‘My father’s channelled all his anger and fear into trying to keep us safe and making sure nothing like that ever happens again. But I think he felt guilty too because he couldn’t save us in time. All his money and power, and it turned out he could do nothing against a gang of kidnappers in the Italian mountains.’ I turn my head so that I can look over at Miles. ‘He’s never forgiven himself for my mother’s death. He’s afraid that if we talk about it to the outside world, it will give the impression that we’re weak and vulnerable. And someone might try again. So we have to pretend that our security has never been breached and we’re absolutely impregnable. That way no one will bother us.’ I shrug. ‘That’s the idea anyway.’

Miles nods. ‘I can see that.’ He rubs one hand slowly across the top of his head, ruffling up the short dark hair there. His bare arm bulges with muscle and I have a strong desire to touch him, to bury my face against his smooth skin and inhale the scent of him. ‘I really do.’

‘And if we told employees, it would be bound to leak out. For some reason, we’re objects of fascination. I mean, we’re only people like everyone else but the papers are obsessed with us. I don’t welcome it, it just happens. They get so much gossip about us, some of it invented, and some of it true. I have no idea where it comes from.’ I blink at him slowly. ‘It makes all of us paranoid. Maybe our friends are selling stories about us behind our backs, or perhaps someone’s listening in to phone calls or bugging rooms. That’s partly why we hardly ever talk about what’s really going on in our lives, even to each other, in case someone’s eavesdropping and it leaks out. Imagine if you saw your private life all over the papers, to be pored over and laughed at. I’m not an actress or a politician or a model, or someone who’s asked for attention.’ I shrug. ‘I’m just a girl!’

Miles smiles at me. ‘Not just a girl, Freya. Never that.’ His gaze runs over me, taking in the curves of my bare shoulders, the rise of my breasts above the sheet, my dark hair spilled out over the snow-white pillow. ‘I never saw how beautiful you are until now. When you were Miss Hammond, I never even thought you were very attractive.’

I laugh. ‘Oh, thanks!’

He goes on, ignoring me. ‘But now…’ That raking look again, the one that sends my stomach into ecstatic raptures. When he speaks again, his voice is husky with desire. ‘Now I think you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’

A delicious shiver sweeps over me at his words. I beam at him, hoping I don’t look too stupidly happy at his compliment. I remember last night, when I couldn’t resist the temptation to open my heart just a little and whisper the word ‘love’ to him. A kind of hot but almost pleasurable flush creeps over my cheeks. There’s a very good chance that he did hear but I’ve no idea how I’ll find out one way or the other.

‘Is it time for our lesson?’ I ask, hopefully. My gaze shifts to the door to the bathroom. If the lesson today is on the theme of water, then perhaps he’ll be asking me to accompany him into the shower…

Miles laughs, his eyes glinting mischievously as he shakes his head. ‘Uh uh. Let’s not rush things. You know, a lot of people believe that you learn better if you’ve had a healthy dose of exercise.’

My eyes gleam. ‘Well, luckily for us, our lessons are all about exercise, aren’t they? Two birds with one stone.’ I raise my eyebrows at him. ‘So what are you waiting for?’

‘I’m thinking about an entirely different sort of exercise, you incorrigible girl.’ He picks up a snowy white pillow and tosses it on to me. ‘I think we need to get outdoors and work up an appetite for later – in more ways than one.’ His blue eyes are twinkling with humour now. I love that look: warm and merry. I feel as though I’m being allowed to see a Miles that very few other people have ever seen. I’m one of the lucky few.

I wonder who the others are…
The thought flies lightly across my mind and I felt a nasty tang of something like jealousy at the thought of other women Miles might have laughed with and loved. I put it out of my mind before it can poison our blissful morning together.

‘We are going to get up,’ says Miles as I squeeze the pillow to my chest, ‘and I’m going to make you coffee and eggs just the way you like them. Then we’re going to get dressed and go on the mountain.’

‘The mountain?’ Amid the happiness, I feel a small pang of anxiety. ‘You mean skiing? What if I see someone I know?’

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