Acts of Love (14 page)

‘Would you like to come in?’

‘I’d rather take you out to lunch. Would you consider that?’ He sensed her hesitation. ‘Nothing serious. A pub lunch. I was going anyway.’

‘Well then, yes, I’d like that.’

‘Great. Come through the window – I have the car at the back drive.’ He extended a hand.

‘Do you know how pathetic this is? Two adults sneaking out of the house through a kitchen window because we’re too wimpish to ignore those busybodies?’

‘Pathetic in the extreme. Give me your hand. “
Là ci darem la
mano
”,’ he intoned from Mozart as their hands joined to pull her through the large Georgian window, which came nearly to the floor, and into his arms. Her hair caught on a branch of one of the shrubs. He carefully disentangled it. She felt good in his arms. He sensed it. Their eyes locked on each other’s for several seconds. The attraction was there between them but there was something else too in her eyes. Hesitation? Apprehension? He was quick to place her on her feet. The last thing he wanted was for her to feel those things about him. He went first, to hold the branches of box hedge apart so she could pass easily. Together, they walked to his car.

There was once again between them that same comfort, a certain ease that he had experienced with her when they had shared the ride to London. Just being together, walking in silence with the occasional look at each other, a smile, seemed to draw them together. Words? The chat? The charm? They were redundant. It was as if each of them was savouring an inexplicable pleasure in simply being together.

Was he, she wondered, really the reason she had wanted to come these few days to Chessington House? To experience just what she was feeling now – the pleasure, the stirrings of excitement over a man again? He walked with a long stride and seemed to be always just that little bit ahead of her, enough to permit her to steal a glance at him every now and again. He was wearing clothes similar to those she had seen him in the last time they had been together. This time she found him that little bit more attractive. Everything about him seemed to suit her. She took pleasure even in the sound of his boots on the gravel, the firmness of his step, the way his body moved with every stride.

Ben had thought Arianne beautiful from the first time he had seen her, with a quiet, almost still kind of beauty as against the ravishing looks he usually went for in women. The kind of dramatically perfect looks his wife had had, that his present lover Simone had, was what had always excited his lust, and generated his love for a woman. It surprised him how much more beautiful and provocative Arianne seemed to him than he had remembered. She was exciting something more in him than he had expected when he had tapped on Artemis’s kitchen window.

When he had seen Arianne walking from the garage, it had
registered with him what a good body she had, in her tight jeans, body-hugging polo neck jumper, and denim jacket thrown over her shoulders. There had been something about the way she moved – a certain sureness of herself that he had not seen in her before. There was a sexiness in the way she moved her shoulders when she broke into a little run every few steps, presumably to keep the jacket from slipping off. Or was it? He had after all imagined that there was a sexy lady under that still and quiet beauty she carried so well. Now, riding the few miles to the pub, he was amazed at how happy he was that she was there beside him. He nearly reached out to touch her. What stopped him? He sensed that, if he did, there might be no turning back.

It had been an impulse, asking her to lunch. And now, sitting in front of the open fire, warming themselves, bottle of claret on the table, he wondered if he hadn’t wanted to see her all along. Ever since he had given her that ride to London.

‘Lunch,’ he announced as a waitress appeared with the menu written out in chalk on a small blackboard framed in wood. He rose from the bench where he was sitting opposite Arianne and slid in next to her. She made room for him and together they scanned the offerings of the day.

‘How about cottage pie?’ Ben suggested.

‘Sounds fine to me.’

‘There are other things. I don’t mean to push the cottage pie at you.’

He seemed anxious to please her, concerned that he might be taking over, leaving her without choice. She sensed he wanted reassurance that that was not the case. ‘I would have chosen it myself.’

‘Honestly?’

She nodded. ‘I nearly always order cottage pie for a pub lunch.’ And, gazing at each other, they left it at that. There was silence between them. Less of a smile than a quiet pleasure shone in their faces, as it sometimes does when two people are pleased to be where they are simply with each other.

Ben wanted to touch her, to bend in close to her and graze her cheek with the back of his hand. It seemed such a natural thing to do. But there was something vulnerable about her that spelled caution. It made him hold back. It did, in fact, make him retreat.
He returned to his place opposite her and raised his glass: ‘Have a happy Christmas.’

‘Happy Christmas to you too, Ben.’ She touched the rim of her glass to his and drank. Then, replacing the glass on the table, she unbuttoned her jacket, removed it, and placed it on the bench next to her.

Once again he was aware of her body, and of how much he was attracted to it. Carnal feelings were taking over. He liked the way the cashmere jumper she was wearing hugged her, accentuating her long neck, the wide shoulders and slender arms. The hint of nipple he could see through the soft knit of the jumper suggested that she wore no bra. Her breasts were unexpectedly large and there was something extraordinarily erotic about them and the narrow waist. They seemed a contradiction to the seemingly shy person with such an understated kind of beauty sitting opposite him. She excited his interest more than ever. But …

‘We have things in common,’ he told her.

‘Oh?’

‘We both have one parent that’s English, the other American.’ He seemed very proud of that. And she thought, We have
that
in common too.

‘I didn’t know that, Ben. And?’

‘And what?’

‘The other things we have in common. What are they?’

‘I don’t know yet. But I’m sure we do have other things in common. They’ll reveal themselves to us, in time.’

‘Chessington House. Are you as attracted to the place as I am?’ she asked. ‘I mean, your uncle notwithstanding.’

‘Yes. But in my case I am not so sure that’s a good thing.’

Arianne wanted to pursue that question, but she felt it was too personal. It did, however, make her wonder how much of a good thing her own attachment to the place was.

The waitress arrived with their cottage pie.

Arianne sensed that Ben was just as relieved as she was by the interruption of food. Their mutual attraction and attachment to the Tudor house and its parkland seemed suddenly fraught with all sorts of emotional traps that gave them reason to be there, issues too personal to be readily revealed to each other. Arianne had already admitted to herself that it was not just for Artemis
that she made the trip to Gloucestershire every week. Not Artemis, nor simply the beauty of the place drew her to it as often as possible. It was certainly not the astonishingly unattractive atmosphere that the residents created from their rootless notions of how to live up to the place in which their money had landed them. Nor their downright silliness, though that now brought the hint of a smile to her lips, not missed by Ben.

‘A penny. Will that buy your thoughts?’

‘I was thinking of how annoyingly silly some of the residents in that house are.’

‘It would almost be acceptable if they were interesting or amusing, or half as eccentric as my uncle and your mother. But they’re not. They’re just your plain, average, middle-class man and woman in the street hoping to live out a quiet old age in a stately home. Nice enough people, who have given up their dreams and passions, in the hope that, having done so, they will earn a free ride to heaven. They’re bitter and pompous, because it’s all over for them, the life of taking chances, spontaneous living. They blame it on old age, and never consider that they have chosen to give up the big things in life for the little things, hard work for an easy life, for having arrived where they are intact and with nothing to do, except to create problems and projects to reassure themselves they are still alive. Lady Hardcastle and my uncle are the odd ones out. They are still remarkable, vital, independent spirits, not willing to conform, in spite of old age and their conservative, frightened neighbours.’

Here he hesitated. He was buttering a piece of brown bread and watching Arianne fork some of the cottage pie into her mouth. He liked her mouth. Found himself fixated by it. She caught him and he felt somehow foolish. ‘Do you know about your mother and my uncle?’

‘No.’

‘Oh!’

‘Just, oh?’

‘Sorry, I assumed you knew. Now I find this embarrassing.’

‘Please don’t, not on my account. Artemis and I have never exchanged confidences. It’s just the way we are. We have an odd mother-daughter relationship, always have had.’

‘One would never guess that, the way you are with her.’

‘How am I with her?’

‘Incredibly kind, dutiful. She is, after all, not an easy woman. Mightily attractive as a woman and a charmer, and an interesting character, but not easy.’

‘What about them, Ben – my mother and your uncle?’

‘Well, for one thing they’re off on their annual holiday together. You didn’t know that?’

‘No. But I guessed she was going off with a man.’

‘You had no idea there was something between them?’

‘That night when you gave me the lift back to London, for a fleeting moment I suspected something because of the way she ordered him to pay my taxi. I did know that they were close friends, she, Gerald, and Sir Anson, and for a very long time. She had told me that much. Now you must tell me more. She never will, you know. And I’m so happy she has someone in her old age. Men have always adored her. And she has always adored them adoring her.’ Playing thus with words brought a smile to her lips. ‘Do you think they love each other?’ she asked, thrilled for Artemis that it might be so.

Ben hesitated for a minute. Arianne looked so genuinely happy for her mother. He felt it would be no betrayal on his part to tell Arianne what he knew. There was no question in his mind that she would be discreet about it, and would most probably never mention to Artemis that she had heard anything. She looked to Ben like that kind of a woman. He filled their glasses and they continued with their meal.

‘Yes, I do think they love each other. They have for a very long time. They have been lovers for more than thirty years. Quite a romantic love affair. They have managed to go off together alone on a jaunt of one sort or another every year since the first time they met and fell in love.’

‘And Gerald?’

‘Gerald, Artemis and my uncle were friends and remained close friends until Gerald’s death. If Gerald knew, he turned a blind eye. They were very discreet. Uncle Anson did tell me that several years after he had been with Artemis he asked her to marry him. She turned him down. Not because she didn’t love him, she told him, but because she loved him too much to ruin his life. She was too selfish, she told him. She needed a man like Gerald who
loved her beyond all else in life. She knew my uncle could never sustain a marriage with her. He had his work; he was passionately ambitious, a career diplomat; he had his hobbies, and many women; and she was clever enough to know that he would never be able to give those things up. Another thing: she liked a frivolous life. So did he, but for no more than an hour or two. So they remained friends and lovers.’

‘She is a remarkable woman, my mother. She never stops surprising me. She does keep her secrets well.’

‘I bet you do too.’ The blush that came to her face told him that he had struck home on that assumption. ‘It’s not a bad thing, you know, to keep a part of your life secret. What law is there to say that you have to reveal yourself to the world? We all retain the right to keep our intimate life for ourselves. Some can, some can’t. My uncle took me into his confidence about his affair with Artemis because I am the executor of his will and he wanted me to understand the reason for some aspects of his will pertaining to Artemis: that their thirty years together should not end with the death of either of them. He is in the end the ultimate gentleman and a grand romantic.’

The colour had not gone from Arianne’s cheeks and because it had not, Ben was more certain than ever that this lovely lady sitting across from him had yet to reveal herself to him. And that he wanted her to, although there could possibly be more to an affair with Arianne Honey than he was prepared to take on. Love seemed to be stirring, feelings for her he had not anticipated when he had tapped at Artemis’s kitchen window to gain her attention. Though to love her seemed both exciting and comforting, was he ready for love again – and what it might lead to? A question he did not care to probe. Once again he retreated, this time by looking at his watch.

Arianne saw a change in Ben’s expression. She was enjoying being with him, so much so that the restless look that came into his face upset her. ‘Do you have somewhere to go? Am I keeping you?’

Reaching across the table to take her hand in his was instinctive. A spontaneous gesture. He was quick to tell her, ‘You’re not keeping me. I should like nothing better than to linger over this lunch with you, but I do have to catch a ferry at
Dover this afternoon. You see, I only came over to collect some papers of my uncle’s which he had forgotten to send on to the Home Office. His valet, Pandit, was not here to do it; he’s with my uncle.’

Arianne covered her disappointment well, ‘Ah, then fate and not Christmas has taken me out to lunch.’

‘Yes, I suppose you could say that.’

‘You’ll be having Christmas Day dinner in France?’ She was thinking of her goose – how she would have liked making Christmas goose with all the trimmings for him. How lovely it would have been to dine at a table in front of the fire in Artemis’s beautiful drawing room, to drink champagne and get tipsy together. She stopped her day-dreaming there, before it went too far. Before she had to face the truth of it: she wanted to be held in Ben Johnson’s arms, for him to bring to life those long-dormant sexual feelings she had so revelled in in the past.