The Ashford Affair (37 page)

It meant nothing, of course. They were friends, weren’t they? Friends.

She could tell herself that over and over, as if repetition might blot out the truth: that she had fallen again, and fallen hard, not for a mirage this time, but for the man himself, the man she saw day after day, wrestling with the books, playing with his children. The very thought of it made her heart ache. She didn’t want to think of it, not any of it; if she didn’t acknowledge it, it wasn’t true.

The drums urged her forward, to the shelter of the laughing darkness. “Just—just a short walk,” she said. “It’s so warm near the bonfire.”

It wasn’t just the bonfire heating her blood. It was a sort of madness. She itched to move as the dancers moved, to throw herself into the middle of that fiery circle and sway, bobbing in and out of the light of the fire, dancing past the crackling flames.

Frederick’s hand closed around hers, drawing her forward, and she followed, along the garden paths, past an acacia that dropped pale blossoms onto the gravel path. Behind them, the message of the drums followed, a steady thrum, like the beating of her heart, faster and faster, the air scented with rich perfumes, and Frederick’s arm around her shoulders, drawing her into the darkness, beyond the terrace, past the bonfire, where the trees rustled with the breeze and strange birds calling, urging them on.

They left the group on the verandah far behind, the sound of sophisticated conversation and glass clanking in cocktail glasses. They might have been anywhere, thousands of years before, the first man and the first woman, cushioned in the warm darkness with only the faint echo of the drums to set their pace.

She wasn’t sure how it happened, a stumble on the dark path, a pause, but they weren’t walking anymore; she was in his arms, his lips on her hair, her cheek, her lips, clinging together with all the urgency of the past six months of thwarted desire, working together, dining together, hiding her feelings behind a polite social smile and a briskness she was far, so very far, from feeling.

“Addie,” he whispered into her hair. The crepe de chine of Bea’s old dress felt like gauze and gossamer, scarcely a barrier; she could feel the press of his hands straight through the fabric, warm on her back, her waist, his lips against her neck. “Addie…”

Above them, in the trees, a branch cracked, a harsh, unlovely sound. Addie wrenched herself away. “What are we doing?”

Frederick caught her around the waist, his voice like velvet in the darkness. “Exactly what we’ve been wanting to do for months—years.” She hated herself for swaying towards him, for leaning into the touch of his hands. She hated him for being right. “Why else did you come out here with me?”

Something about the surety of that statement irked her, especially since it was true. But to admit to it meant—oh, so many betrayals! “For a walk,” she said sharply. “Just a walk!”

“Don’t lie,” said Frederick. She wished she could see his face, but it was shrouded in shadow. “Lie to yourself if you have to, but not to me.”

“We can’t—I can’t— You’re married!”

“So what?” Frederick’s voice crackled with frustration. Even in the dark, she could picture his face, chart each iteration of his expression. She knew him so horribly, painfully well. He jerked a thumb in the direction of the house. “So are half the people back there.”

“Is that it?” Pain wrenched through her, horrible, searing, wrenching pain. Bad enough to love and love unrequitedly, but worse, so very much worse, to be a tool for revenge. Her voice came out too loud and too shrill. “Just because we’re in Kenya, it makes it all cricket? You may be able to take your marriage vows that lightly, but I can’t. I won’t be—I won’t be your revenge against Bea. I won’t be your plaything.”

“You little fool,” said Frederick softly. They shouldn’t have, but the words sounded like a caress. He advanced towards her, shoes crunching on the gravel. “Do you really think that’s what this is? Do you really think I hold you so cheap?”

“I don’t know what to think.” That much, at least, was true. “We should go back—we shouldn’t be out here. No good can come—”

“Addie.” Frederick’s voice cut her off. The words tore out of him, harsh and raw. “Addie … in England … five years ago … I made a damnable mistake.”

Addie stood frozen, wanting to hear, not wanting to hear. What good could it do?

Don’t …
Her lips formed the word, but no sound came out.

Moonlight shone off Frederick’s tortured face. “I was ten times a fool, and don’t you think I know it? Don’t you think I’ve paid the price for it, over and over and over again?” He laughed, low and humorless. “Do you know what it’s been to have you here, in front of me, and know I can’t touch you?”

Addie stared at him, mouth ajar.

“Trust me,” said Frederick viciously. “No one has been served a more fitting punishment for a moment’s extreme stupidity.”

“More than a moment,” Addie heard herself saying. Old hurts rushed to the fore. “If you really felt that way, if you really wanted me then—”

“Don’t you understand?” His hands were on her shoulders, his voice compelling. “It was all wrong back then, everything. The whole world was topsy-turvy. I didn’t want to drag you down with me. I was just a step away from sticking a pistol in my mouth and pulling the trigger, but then there was Marjorie and all this”—his gesture encompassed the sleeping fields—“and I woke up from my bout of insanity and wondered what in the hell I’d done. I thought I could make the best of it, but then you came back. And now—”

“There is no now!” Addie’s voice came out more harshly than she’d intended. She felt as though her emotions were scraped raw, all the might-have-beens dancing in front of her—if she’d never introduced him to Bea, but she had, and he had acted on it, and how could she believe him? How could she believe any of it? “There can’t be.”

“Dammit, Addie.” He sounded so indignant she might have laughed if she weren’t so close to tears. “I’m trying to tell you I love you.”

“How can I believe you?” Her voice was thick with tears. She tried to pull away, but his hands on her arms held her tight.

“I love you. I love you,” he repeated, like an incantation. “I love the way you slurp your tea—”

Addie’s head shot up. “I don’t slurp my tea!”

“Yes, you do,” said Frederick tenderly. “You slurp your tea and you twist your hair when you’re nervous and you get starchy when you’re angry. I love you for all of it. I love you for being you. I loved you then, when I barely knew you—even if I was too much of a fool to own it—and that emotion is the mere shadow of a shadow to what I feel for you now. We’re meant for each other, you and I, whether you admit it or not.”

This was a whole new kind of hell, a thousand times worse than hiding her love behind the guise of friendship. This—to bring it out into the open like this—

“This is cruel,” she said angrily. “I should never have—”

“Are you telling me you don’t feel the same way?”

Addie’s hands balled into fists, her nails biting into her palms.

She hated that she couldn’t answer, that her principles, all the years of pounding propriety into her, bone by bone, all those years of Aunt Vera’s precepts faded before this one, primal need. She wanted him so very badly. It was true, there had been times, these past few months, when Bea was off jaunting, that Addie had pretended it was all hers, that this was their coffee farm, that Marjorie and Anna were their children, that they would have the right to sit on the porch with the owls hooting, her head against his shoulder and his lips in her hair.

“You see?” said Frederick, his voice low and triumphant.

“But it’s
wrong
!” It was all she had left to cling to, that last vestige of principle.

Frederick cupped her face in his hands. “Right, wrong … What does it matter out here?” There was something so terribly seductive about that notion, thousands of miles away from other people’s strictures, here, in the wilderness, with the drums pounding around them. “Tell me this isn’t right.”

For a moment, she clung to him, his lips on hers, putting all her tortured feelings into that kiss, all the wishes and wants and might-have-beens. She could feel his body molded against hers, limb by limb, and knew that this was what original sin must have felt like; there was no turning back the clock. No matter what, no matter where she went, she would always remember this, the feeling of this moment. She would never be able to look at him without knowing what his body felt like against hers, his hands in her hair, dizzying and urgent.

“I’m going home.” Addie pulled away, disheveled and panting, her lips leaving his with an audible popping sound. “I’m going home to England.”

Home. What a lie! England wasn’t home, not Ashford, not her old rented flat. Home was here, with Frederick. But it wasn’t her home. It had never been her home. She had only pretended it awhile, stolen crumbs from someone else’s life.

“I’m leaving,” she repeated, “as soon as I can get passage.”

Frederick stared at her, his chest going in and out, laboring for breath. “You mean you’re running away.”

The words stung, stung horribly. And who was he to judge? If he hadn’t slept with Bea all those years before …

“I can’t do this—not to Bea, not to David.” She’d hardly thought about David, not since being here, but now she held him up like a shield. “I can’t go on pretending to be your friend, pretending nothing’s changed, not after this. I’m going home.”

Blindly Addie turned on her heel. The delicate fabric of Bea’s old frock snagged on an acacia bush, releasing a shower of pale petals.

“Don’t tell me you mean to marry him?” Frederick’s voice was harsh, incredulous.

“Why not? After all”—the words came out unbidden—“you married Bea.”

Addie yanked at her skirt, not caring when she heard the fabric rip, and fled back to the house, slippers slapping against the gravel.

TWENTY-ONE

Kenya, 1927

“Your cousin is so deliciously prim,” commented Val.

She didn’t look prim now. Bea watched Addie coming around the side of the house. Her face was flushed, her hair mussed. Clandestine assignations behind the acacia bushes? How terribly out of character.

There was a man striding around the side of the house, hurrying after Addie. Bea couldn’t see who it was at first; the flickering firelight played strange tricks. He said something, but Addie shook her head and kept going, leaving him standing alone, near the cookhouse. He turned and Bea recognized him, not by his features, but by his stance, the way he held his shoulders, the angle of his chin.

She should know. It was her husband.

“So charmingly untouched,” mused Val, trailing his fingers along the bare curve of Bea’s spine. “Like a flower quivering on the cusp of awakening.”

Bea turned away, leaning her back against the balustrade. “Don’t, Val,” she said shortly. “She’s not the type.”

She took a long drag on her jade cigarette holder, feeling the familiar grate of the smoke against the back of her throat, drawing strength from the nicotine.

Val leaned forward, holding out his cigarette in two fingers. “Jealous?”

Bea mustered a convincing laugh. “Darling, you
are
joking, aren’t you?” She was jealous, but not in the way Val meant. She doubted he could understand it; she wasn’t sure she understood it herself. “Raoul, darling, there you are! And with bubbly! What an angel you are.”

“I shine only in the reflected light of your divinity,” he said. Unlike Val, he didn’t say it superciliously.

“The reflected light of your divinity?” Val raised a brow. “Does that make you the moon or simply a rather large hurricane lamp?”

“Better than quivering petals on the cusp of awakening,” retorted Bea, more sharply than she ought.

“Meow,” murmured Val. “Is someone feeling overblown?”

“Hardly.” Never show weakness, that was the rule with Val. “Merely bored by present company. Do come entertain me, Raoul. I need you.”

“Of course.” He took her arm and led her away, sending a glower in Val’s direction for good measure. Val merely smiled in return. Of course he would. Nothing ever flustered Val. He was impervious to all the normal human emotions. Whereas she …

In just two weeks it would be her birthday. She was almost twenty-eight. Twenty-eight! Just a whisper away from thirty and her life wasn’t anything like what it had been meant to be.

Everyone had always told her that she was born for greatness. They had told her that her lineage and her beauty were her destiny, and so it had seemed, back in the heady days of her first Season, with all the sons of her parents’ friends tripping over their own feet to dance with her. She didn’t need to stoop to conquer; she conquered simply by virtue of being what she was. At twenty, she had been a prize; by twenty-two, she was ruined. And here she was, at almost twenty-eight, hunted by everyone except her husband.

She hadn’t expected Frederick to remain faithful. But if he had to stray, why did it have to be with Addie?

“I wish you meant it,” muttered Raoul.

“Meant what, darling?” asked Bea absently. Addie was climbing the stairs to the terrace, keeping her eyes carefully on the treads. She wore Bea’s old frock, a green crepe de chine, two Seasons out of date.

“That you needed me.” Raoul grasped her hands, forcing her to face him. “That you needed me as I need you.”

“Darling,”
said Bea. Such a wonderful, multipurpose word, designed to mean anything one needed it to mean while promising nothing at all.

Raoul’s eyes glinted in the reflected light of the fires. “Come away with me. Come away with me from all this. They”—his sweeping gesture encompassed the terrace, the dancers, Frederick—“they do not deserve you.” His fingers bit into her arm. “You know it is true. You cannot deny it.”

No, she couldn’t. Even before tonight, she’d seen it happening, week by week, seen it and pretended she didn’t.

“Come away with me to Carmagnac,” Raoul urged. Raoul. It was so easy to forget he was there, like a puppy at one’s feet, constantly licking one’s toes. “You shall be feted as a queen—as an empress!”