The Maestro's Mistress (3 page)

Her thoughts tumbled in wild
confusion. It was no good; sometime, sometime soon he would have to accept it.
She was just dead as far as sex was concerned.

Georgiana groaned, mimicking the
cries of pleasure made by actresses in sexually frank films. She had trained
herself to make all the appropriate noises but in truth her groans merely
reflected her horror at the prospect of yet another coupling, yet another
invasion of her identity and her most deep and private self.

She wished she could switch off:
simply allow the husband she loved to invade her flesh with his and gain the
satisfaction he was entitled to. But increasingly the act seemed an invasion,
not just of the body, but of the soul.

Sex! All that writhing and
groping and stickiness. All that grasping and yelping and clutching. And then
the endless obligatory mutual congratulations afterwards.

The words
ultimate invasion
screamed silently through her mind as he plunged into her. The ultimate
invasion of the self. That was it! That was sex in a nutshell.

Personal identity was hard to
cling on to with a husband as successful and revered as Xavier. Trotting around
in his shadow was one of the problems, although she judged she could deal with
that. But to be expected also to yield up the freedom to guard the privacy of
her own body and spirit was simply asking too much.

And yet he was so gentle and
restrained, just for her sake. She wanted to do better. A wife had a duty to do
better. He was a wonderful husband, she told herself, stroking the long carved
bones of his face. But even as she registered the thought, a spark of hatred
flashed through her head. She was locked to him, her body shackled to his
flesh. He was her friend, her husband, her lover – but he bound her in chains
and tortured her. Regularly.

He expected far too much. And
deserved so much more. How she loathed the guilt and inadequacy he made her
suffer.

Her teeth clamped together like a
vice.

And then – oh mercy, oh joy – he
gave one final thrust and suddenly it was over.

She cradled his head to her
girlish half-apple breasts, blissful with the sense of renewed freedom. It
might be another whole week before she need endure the ordeal again.

She felt his hand stroking her
softly. She breathed in deeply. The release she felt, the incredible relief
became more intense each time he performed sex on her. Sometimes she thought
she would have to run away and leave him rather than go through the awful
charade yet again.

There were long moments of
silence.

‘Do you hate it that much?’ he
asked carefully, sending her into a flurry of confusion. She had never dreamed
that he would guess. No, not that. She had never dreamed that he would confront
her. She had believed things were skilfully balanced. She stared at him,
uncharacteristic anxiety in her wide blue eyes.  Might everything suddenly fall
apart?

‘Do you want to go back to
London?’ he enquired.

‘Yes.’

He nodded. ‘Yes, I see that now.’

She held her breath, her heart
ticking loudly in her chest. She had a swift unnerving image of herself
banished from his court: a queen dethroned. The thought of losing him was like
a dagger in her side. She reminded herself that trotting in his shadow was only
one side of the coin. The flip side was basking in his glory. She could not
bear to be cast off, could not survive outside the role of being his wife and
under his protection. And she loved him. She did. Yes she did!

‘Will you see a therapist?’ he
asked, his grey eyes frighteningly steady. He’d suggested this before, making
delicate allusions to her need to explore the deeper aspects of her
personality. She had suspected that this exploration was basically aimed at
getting her into her into gear sexually. But he had never gone so far as to say
this, nor had he pressed the point about therapy, merely mentioned it once or
twice again in a casually solicitous manner.

‘Yes. Yes, I’ll book an
appointment straight away.’ She tried not to sound too eager.

He nodded. ‘Good. Good.’ His tone
held the measured and courteous tenderness which characterized their
relationship.

‘Alicia will know someone,’
Georgiana volunteered, desperately seeking to retrieve her cool composure as
though wrenching a silk wrap around herself having been caught naked – which
she still was.

He smiled. ‘Alicia knows
everyone.’ His mockery of her rich, idle friend was open but not malicious.

‘It was the miscarriage,’
Georgiana told him, apologetic but on the defensive. ‘Things have never been
the same since then, have they?’

Xavier smiled, his eyes distant
and cool. ‘No. So – that will be your starting point to begin your work with a good
therapist. The miscarriage? Mmm?’

She nodded, half believing her
own desperate excuses, almost certain her husband did not.

Xavier kissed her cheek softly,
left the bed and crossed to the window, staring out. She knew that some kind of
milestone had been reached. She slipped on a silk kimono, covering her
nakedness before going to stand beside him. ‘I do love you,’ she said quietly.

‘Yes,’ he agreed after a long
moment of silence.

A sudden tenderness for him swept
over her and she touched his arm with light fingers.

‘What are you thinking?’ she
asked.

‘The Brahms Fourth,’ he said.
‘I’ve suddenly realized for the first time how I must conduct the final
section.’

‘You’ve done that piece time and
time again,’ she replied, exasperated and wounded.  Bloody Brahms, butting in
and putting the lid on any chance of a further discussion of her marriage.

‘I’ve always taken it too slowly,
too reverently,’ he mused. ‘Now I know.’

Bloody Brahms, bloody Mozart, Schubert,
Beethoven, Mahler, the whole lot of them. Georgiana rang down to the desk and
instructed them to book her on a flight to London.

Xavier watched her pack, his face
calm and abstracted. He handed her into a taxi then leaned down and kissed her.

When she got back to London she
called Alicia and asked her to recommend a good therapist. Then she arranged to
meet her friend for lunch, planning to ask her for advice on a rather more
intimate kind of service.

That had been four years ago. And
Alicia had not let her down Georgiana thought as she went backstage to join
Xavier in his dressing room. In fact her recommendations had led to one of the
most fascinating projects of Georgiana’s life.

CHAPTER
3

Leaving the city centre after the
concert, Tara felt in no hurry to get home – to whichever place she decided
would be home that night. Her head still reverberated with the magical last
movement of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony. She wanted to hold on to thrilling
sensation it had stirred in her, cling to the feeling until it evaporated like
a precious dream in the harsh white morning. She made her leisurely way to the
embankment and stared into the broad glinting girdle of the Thames. Under the
autumn evening sky the shifting water was inky black. The moonlight reflected
on the choppy ripples looked like broken fragments of silver which had fallen
from somewhere high above.

Tara stood and watched the
glittering water now empty of traffic. In her head she saw it reaching away to
Tilbury, then the sea, the oceans and the rest of the globe. Its timelessness
mesmerized her. The stirring closing chords of the symphony tumbled over and
over through her mind.

Various male passers-by eyed her
with speculation – a small, sexy-looking young woman on her own in the heart of
London at gone eleven at night. A variety of possibilities passed through a
number of minds.

Tara was well aware of the
dangers of the big city, having been sternly lectured on them by several people
who had her best interests at heart. She was utterly indifferent. She could
take care of herself. Just let anyone try anything. During her year in London
she had already sent two flashers packing and psychologically crushed a
slavering drunk on the tube who had told her that she had come-to-bed eyes.

She stared into the swollen flow
of water, then upwards to the glitter of the lights strung out along the
embankment. Suddenly she wanted Bruno, wanted his big comforting body, his kind
treacle-brown eyes, his unquestioning devotion.

An hour later she was tiptoeing
down the hallway of one of University College’s residential blocks, a pair of
clumpy ankle-boots clutched in her hand, an expression of wicked stealth in her
eyes. Arriving at his room she scratched on the door with small, short-nailed
fingers.

A rangy and rumpled young man
eventually opened up, blinking in the light as he fixed wire- framed glasses
around his ears. He peered down at Tara and then broke into a smile of delight.

‘Hello there!’

‘It’s only me,’ she said. ‘No
need to look as if you’ve just discovered buried treasure.’

Beaming with happiness he bent
down and kissed her tenderly on the mouth.

‘Well – can I come in?’ she asked
impatiently.

‘Yes. Yes.’ He cleared a space on
the chair for her beside his small desk, both of which were littered with books
and papers.

Tara sat on the bed. Bruno went
to sit beside her. His faced was filled with concern as he tried to read the
expression on her face. He would hate to say anything to upset her. ‘Did you
see him?’ he asked eventually.

‘Yes.’

‘How did he look?’

‘Weary. Resigned.’ Tara screwed
her face up, concentrating on the image in her head. ‘He looked – old.’

‘Well he is in his fifties,’
Bruno pointed out, wanting to reassure her. At twenty Bruno held the reasonable
view that life is basically downhill all the way for anyone over forty. ‘How
long is it since you last saw him?’

‘I’m not sure. Weeks.’  Guilt
squirmed inside her. ‘He looked fine then.’

Bruno reached out and squeezed
her shoulder sympathetically. He knew what it was like to have been the cause –
however reluctantly - of a rift with parents.

‘I thought about going
back-stage, giving him a surprise,’ Tara said regretfully. ‘I almost did. But I
felt…well, I felt shy.’

‘You! Shy!’

‘Incredible, isn’t it. He seemed
so stern and remote up there on the platform. I couldn’t believe he was my
lovely daddy who used to swing me round by my arms until I was all dizzy and
helpless with laughter.’

Bruno smiled. ‘Sweet memories of
childhood.’

‘Oh, there were some pretty good
bits here and there,’ Tara agreed, her face registering a number of conflicting
feelings. ‘It was just so awful that last row. I said some terrible things. I
must have hurt him so badly.’

Bruno’s face glowed with love and
compassion as he gazed at her.

‘I’ll go and see him soon,’ she
burst out. ‘I will, I really will. Before the next Xavier concert at the very
latest.’

‘Aha – Xavier!’ Bruno exclaimed,
his eyes lighting up. ‘The great man himself. What did you make of him?’

‘A master of audience
manipulation. The people in the seats next to me were gawping at him with that
slushy sort of reverence usually reserved for the Royal Family.’

Bruno grinned. ‘But was the music
good?’

‘The music was heartbreakingly
wonderful. I wish you could have been there.’ She smiled at Bruno, her green
eyes slanting up at him from long black lashes, making his heart contract with
desire.

‘So do I.’

‘How was your evening? Did you
get to meet anyone influential?’ she asked him, gently teasing.

Bruno had had to forgo the
concert in order to attend a social gathering in the Law Department, which
offered students the opportunity to meet practising solicitors and barristers
who could well be helpful to them in their future careers. It was a function
students were advised not to miss, which was the only reason Bruno had gone
along.

Bruno Cornwell hated being a law
student. He hated the grindingly boring fat tomes to which he was tethered day
and night. He hated the whole idea of a career in law. Bruno wanted to be a
musician. His parents, who had little interest in music, had been happy to pay
for piano tuition for their son and had dutifully attended school concerts in
which Bruno took part. But when it came to a career they had been adamant.
Music was not a serious occupation: there was no security for an aspiring young
man in the artistic world. Bruno must study for one of the professions. It
might be hard graft and boring for a few years, but it would be worth it in the
end. And after that then maybe he could think about music; performing in
amateur groups and that kind of thing.

Bruno was torn but in the end
hadn’t the heart to go against his parents’ wishes. They had been kind and
loving parents. They were not rich and they had had to make ‘sacrifices’ to
give him a private education. He must get his degree and then somehow find a
way into the world of classical music.