Change of Heart (17 page)

Gil laughed and the sound was not pleasant. “A fight?” he repeated. “With Cecelia?”

She looked at him steadily. She knew him very well. She loved him very much. “What’s wrong, Gil?” she said quietly.

He sighed. “I’m too old for her, Liz, that’s all.” He sounded very tired.

“Do you think so?” Liz’s own voice had a peculiar intonation.

“Yes.” He smiled at her crookedly. “Would you care to dance?”

“Why not?” she answered and they moved toward the dance floor in the adjoining room.

Two hours later Cecelia slipped off upstairs to the bedroom Maisie had set aside for the ladies. She was beginning to get a headache and she wanted a few minutes of quiet. She opened the door and there, seated before the dressing table putting on fresh lipstick, was Liz Lewis.

“Oh,” said Cecelia. Then, getting a grip on herself, she came into the room. “How are you, Liz?” she asked with creditable calm.

“Fine,” replied Liz flatly. Then, “I don’t think Gil looks very well, though.”

Cecelia sat down on the chaise tongue and briefly closed her eyes. “No,” she said. “He’s been working too hard.”

“Hard work never tired him out before,” remarked Liz. She turned around and looked at Cecelia. “But then, he’s not as young as he used to be.”

Cecelia looked astonished. “Gil?” she said.

Liz laughed. “I thought as much,” she answered cryptically.

“I beg your pardon?” Cecelia felt stiff and she was also beginning to feel angry.

Liz picked up her evening purse and stood up. “I’ve known Gil for a long time,” she told his wife, “and there is one area where he has always underestimated his power. He has a very good idea of his talents as a journalist, a businessman, a sportsman, but he doesn’t understand his power over women.”

Cecelia sat perfectly still, frozen. Liz continued, “Oh, he knows he’s good. He’s no fool. But what it means to us to be in his arms ... no, he doesn’t understand that.” Liz’s mouth curved into a bitter smile. “He never meant to be cruel, you see, not to Barbara, not to me.” There was a pause as she looked at Gil’s wife. “He thinks he’s too old for you,” she said abruptly.

“What?” Cecelia stared at her.

Liz laughed and this time she sounded genuinely amused. “Yes. He told me so just now. Isn’t it funny?” She walked to the door. “I don’t like you, Cecelia,” she said. “You really can’t expect that I should.”

She was gone and Cecelia sat down again, motionless, trying to take in what Liz had been saying to her. What did it mean? What
could
it mean? It was fifteen minutes before she left the shelter of the bedroom. She wanted to go home. She had something she had to say to Gil.

* * * *

It proved more difficult than she had thought. Their ride home was not as silent as the ride to the party had been. Gil kept up a light stream of amusing comment the whole way and she found it impossible to get around his shield of small talk. It was only upstairs, in their bedroom, that he finally fell silent. She sat in front of her dressing table, took off her pearls, and said, “Will you unhook this dress for me, Gil?”

He came over and stood behind her. She felt his hands on her neck undoing the hooks and then he ran the zipper smoothly down for her. The dress slipped off her shoulders and she slid her arms free of the sleeves. He hadn’t moved away from behind her and his hands came down, very briefly, to touch her bare shoulders. Cecelia leaned back against him and reached to pull his hands down to cover her breasts. She felt rather than heard the sudden shocked intake of his breath. He tried to pull away from her, but she kept her hands over his, forcing them to stay where she had placed them. After a minute he jerked angrily out of her hold and went over to stare out the window. He was still in his evening shirt and black tuxedo trousers. “What was that all about?” he asked over his shoulder. He sounded a little breathless, as though he’d been running.

She didn’t answer immediately but swung around and regarded his back with troubled eyes. Why was he behaving like this? If she simply did not interest him, he would not have had to tear away from her and put half the room between them. He might behave that way if he found her repulsive of course. But she did not think he found her repulsive.

“Gil,” she said. Her throat was aching and tears began to glimmer in her eyes. “Darling, please look at me.”

He turned around, reluctance in his whole bearing. He was white around the nostrils. “What do you want?”

She was frightened by the way he looked. Suppose she was wrong. Suppose he
did
find her repulsive. The months of strain took their toll and the tears spilled over and a sob broke from her aching throat. Through the blurring in front of her eyes she saw him take a step toward her. “Cecelia,” he said. “What is the matter?”

She tried to stop the sobs but could not. He was bending over her chair now. “Baby, please stop crying. What’s wrong?” She reached her arms up around his neck and clung to him, her face buried in his shoulder. He lifted her out of her chair.

“I love you so much,” she sobbed into the crisp white pleats of his dress shirt. “And you don’t love m-me.”

“Not love you?” His arms were hard around her and she clung even tighter. “What do you mean, I don’t love you?”

“You don’t.” She hiccupped. “You only married me because of Jenny. And it’s br-breaking my heart,”

“Cecelia,” he said and his own voice was unsteady now. “My love, my darling, my angel. I don’t know what you are talking about.”

She raised her tear-streaked face to his. “You married me because you wanted a mother for Jenny.”

He stared down into her wet face, his own face looking very strange. “Is that what you think?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s not true.” He smoothed her hair away from her flushed cheek. “I married you because I loved you.” He seemed to collect himself and then he said, very carefully, “Why did you marry me?”

“Because I thought you were the most wonderful man in the world and because I loved you.”

“And what,” he continued steadily, “of Tim Curran?”

Her eyes widened. “What has Tim got to do with it?”

“I thought perhaps you might love him.”

Her large brown eyes looked into his own. For the first time in months he made no attempt to veil his expression. She pulled back from him. “Gilbert Archer,” she said breathlessly, “I can’t believe you could possibly be that stupid.”

“Where you are concerned I can be very stupid indeed.” His hands had dropped from her shoulders when she stepped away. “Tell me, Cecelia,” he said softly, “tell me how stupid I’ve been.”

Her dress had slipped to the floor when she had stood up and now it lay around her feet in a pool of rich, dark velvet. She wore only a strapless bra and a lacy half-slip. Her hair had started to tumble from its elegant knot and fell in silky strands across her shoulders. “I love
you,”
she said to him. “I always have. I always will.”

His face had altered radically at her words. “These last months I’ve thought I would give my very soul to hear you say that,” he said slowly, deliberately, after a long pause. “I’ve thought I would go mad with longing for you. But I could never forget the circumstances under which you married me.”

“What circumstances?” she asked,

“I practically blackmailed you, Cecelia, you know that.” The white pinched look had come back about his nostrils.

“You paid Daddy’s hospital bills, is that what you mean?”

“Yes,” he said.

She looked up at him and felt weak with love. The poor darling—all this time he had been thinking ... “I didn’t need to be blackmailed,” she said. “Is that really why you thought I married you?”

“Yes,” he said again. He managed a crooked smile. “It’s been a very salutary experience, let me tell you. For the first time in my life I realized that my own desires were not necessarily the law of the earth.”

She touched his cheek. “I would like it very much,” she said softly, “if you would kiss me.”

He bent his head and his lips on hers were very gentle. She put her arms around him and under her hands the muscles of his back felt taut with tension. “Gil,” she breathed as his lips left hers to move caressingly across her cheek, “darling, I won’t break.”

“I’m afraid you will,” he said a little bleakly. “I’m afraid this whole scene is just the product of your unbelievably kind heart.”

“Don’t be an ass,” she snapped, not at all kindly, and pushed him away. “Or at least don’t be more of an ass than you’ve already been.” She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “What kind of a wimp do you think I am? If I loved Tim Curran I would have married him. This isn’t the Dark Ages anymore. Girls don’t get married because the landlord threatens them with eviction, for God’s sake. I married you because I loved you. Although if I’d known what a colossal idiot you could be ...”

“All right! All right!” For the first time since they had come upstairs the muscles in his face had relaxed. Then he began to laugh. “I’m sorry. You’re right—as usual,”

“Well then,” she said severely, “kiss me properly please.”

He obliged her instantly. Crushed against him, feeling the hardness of his strong lean body pressed against hers, she gave herself up completely to the kiss. He felt the abandonment in her mouth. “Christ,” he said. “Cecelia.” He kissed her throat, her shoulders, her mouth again. Still locked together, he began to move her toward the bed.

It didn’t take very long to rid themselves of the remainder of their clothing. Then they were down on the bed together. There was hunger in Gil’s caresses—she could feel it—but there was also a care that melted her heart even as his passion enflamed her body. Her breasts swelled with longing under his fingers and he moved his lips gently across the soft swell of her belly under which beat a new life.

She slid her fingers into his thick silky hair. “Gil,” she whispered. His hand moved slowly down over her hip to her thigh and began to move caressingly. She whimpered and her body arched involuntarily toward him. She reached to draw him closer, open and aching for him to come and create the fulfillment they both needed.

He had wanted it to be a prolonged lovemaking. He had wanted to go slowly and with care, to give her every pleasure he possibly could. But when she tugged at him and cried his name like that, it was no longer possible to delay. It was no longer possible to be gentle and careful. Nor, it seemed, did she want him to be.

It was an intense and passionate lovemaking in which they gave each other a great deal more than physical pleasure. When they finally lay quietly, wrapped in each other’s arms, they felt the profound contentment that only comes when love is present.

After a while she stirred and softly kissed the strong column of his throat. “I adore you,” she whispered huskily.

He put his cheek against her hair and held her closer. “I wish I were the emperor of the world,” he said after a while, “because then I could lay it at your feet.”

She thought for a minute. “I’d like that.”

He chuckled. “Of course you would. Think of the horses.”

“Since I can’t have the world, however,” she went on serenely, her cheek still pressed against his shoulder, “I’ll settle for you.”

He stroked her hair with gentle fingers. “I’ve done a lot of thinking over these past months, Cecelia, and I promise you things will be different. I can’t promise you a nine-to-five job, because
News Report
will never be that, but I can be home a lot more frequently than I have been.”

She moved away from him a little so she could see his face. “Do you mean that?”

“Yes.” He spoke quietly, gravely. “I can see now what an abominably self-centered person I’ve been—first with Jenny and then with you. It simply never occurred to me that when I acquired a wife and a child I would have to make some adjustments in my own life-style. I never thought about it at all—that’s the worst part.” He looked at her and his gray eyes were darker than usual. “When it finally dawned on me that I scarcely ever saw you—and I missed you like hell on that European trip—it also occurred to me that maybe you liked it that way. You seemed so busy, so satisfied, with your father, the horses, Jenny.”

“I was busy,” she replied. “But not satisfied.”

He smiled a little although his eyes remained grave. “What brought on this—confrontation— tonight? Why did you suddenly bring all this out into the open?”

She hesitated and then told him part of the truth. “It was something Liz Lewis said to me tonight. It made me start to think. I had thought, you see, that you had simply lost all interest in me.

Liz’s comment made me think that perhaps there was another explanation.”

“What did Liz say?”

“She said you thought you were too old for me.” Her large, expressive eyes held his. “I thought that if that were true, then perhaps there was a very different explanation for your odd behavior. I thought it was worth a try to find out.”

“I see.”

“You hadn’t been near me in weeks,” she went on steadily. “When I put your hands on my breasts tonight you pulled away like a scalded cat. Indifference wouldn’t account for that.”

“No. It wouldn’t.”

“So I thought—I hoped—that maybe you did love me after all and were staying away from me because you thought I didn’t love you. It seemed incredible that you could be that dumb, considering the way I turned into jelly every time you looked at me, but then, I thought, maybe you
were
that dumb.”

His eyes were smiling at her now. “I take it back,” he said. “I’m not too old for you.
You’re
too old for me.”

She grinned. “Just stick with me, little boy, and you’ll learn. The love of a good woman is all you need.”

He looked interested. “Is that true?”

“Absolutely.”

He moved toward her purposefully. “Then I suggest we begin the therapy,” he said.

“Wait a minute,” she protested as he took hold of her. “That wasn’t what I meant.”

“Don’t argue,” he ordered and kissed her quite thoroughly.

When he finally raised his head she gently traced a line around his mouth. Then she smiled at him, a smile of infinite sweetness, infinite seduction.