The Marrying Game (22 page)

In the middle of March, Nancy reported to Rufa that she was progressing extremely well. ‘He won’t hold out for long. As soon as the weather gets warmer I’ll leave off some underwear. He’s just trembling on the brink of asking me for a date.’

‘It’s a large and commodious brink,’ Rufa said. ‘He doesn’t seem in any hurry to topple off it.’

She was very pale, with bright, feverish eyes. This evening she had a dinner engagement with Adrian. Its significance was not visible to the naked eye, but there had been hints that it would mark an important stage in their courtship. Each meeting with Adrian was wrapped around a small test, and she had passed each one triumphantly. Her responses to art, music and food had been spot on.

Now he was drawing aside another veil, by taking her to dinner with his sister, in Holland Park. The revelation that he had a sister at all had been, in itself, shockingly intimate. Her name was Clarissa Watts-Wainwright, and, as far as Rufa could gather, she was at the centre of Adrian’s private circle. She suspected this was the final inspection, before the runways were cleared for sexual contact. So far, Adrian had kissed her cheek on meeting and parting – with almost imperceptibly increasing warmth. Rufa (though she had said nothing to Nancy, who would never understand) was anxious to know how she would react, in the unimaginable event of Adrian making a pass.

She liked him. She was attracted by his cool cleanliness, and his self-containment – she could not have
endured
a man who pawed her about. Deep down (and she would never have admitted this to Nancy in a million years) she was very anxious to know if her urge-free body would submit happily to sex with him.

The affair was black-tie. Rufa had cooked her first two professional dinners (for a charming, scatty acquaintance of Polly’s, bristling with titles) and had invested her earnings in a long sheath of midnight blue chiffon. This way, she did not feel so guilty about Edward’s diminishing money. Thinking about Edward at all made her sore all over. She bitterly regretted their quarrel.

Roshan, who was acting as her lady’s maid, pinned her long hair into a loose knot at the nape of her neck. ‘Remember, darling – if things are proceeding too slowly, pull out the top pin, and the whole lot will fall down, to ravishing effect.’

Wendy sighed. ‘You’re exquisite. I wish the Man could see you.’

‘He’d sell the dress right off your back,’ Nancy said sourly. She hated seeing Rufa decked for the sacrifice.

Two or three lunches into the relationship, Rufa had told Adrian something about the real situation at Melismate. He knew enough now to send his car round to Tufnell Park. He never came himself. Nancy was disgusted by his snobbery. Rufa saw it differently, and appreciated his tact.

Arriving at the huge, stuccoed house, she felt she had shed Tufnell Park entirely. Adrian – sharp and clean as a polished blade – came into the hall, to kiss her cheek and peel away the ruinously expensive pashmina Roshan had made her buy.

He murmured, ‘You’re beautiful.’ She entered the drawing room on his arm.

Adrian’s sister was a female version of Adrian: less obviously good-looking, but formidably immaculate, and with the same very clean shade of grey hair. Rufa noticed, as she was introduced around the room, that everyone else knew each other. She was the youngest here by at least twenty years. One of the other women raised her eyebrows meaningfully when she offered her hand. This told Rufa, more plainly than the plainest words, that she was being presented, officially, as Adrian’s next consort. Clarissa Watts-Wainwright reinforced this, by continually scooping her into the conversation during dinner.

Nancy would have hated the tedium of such compulsory refinement – ‘buttock-clenching’, as she called it. Nancy was useless at any sort of clenching. Rufa felt she was good at it. She had never been afraid of hard work.

At the coffee stage, there was a movement back to the drawing room. Adrian appeared, with the pashmina. He draped it around Rufa’s shoulders, and led her outside, on the pretext of admiring the communal gardens.

Holding his arm, shivering slightly in the raw spring evening, Rufa looked out across rolling lawns and shrubberies, ringed by banks of glowing, golden windows.

‘You’re cold,’ Adrian observed. He uncurled her passive hand, and put his arm around her. ‘I shouldn’t expose a creature like you to the elements. You belong behind glass.’

She was not going to argue with this, but couldn’t help thinking how Nancy would have laughed to hear it.

‘You shocked me,’ Adrian said, ‘when you told me you had never been to Paris. It’s an appalling gap in your education.’

‘I’m afraid it’s full of gaping holes.’

‘Don’t apologize for your ignorance. I rather like it. It means you’re unspoilt. Thanks to your astoundingly peculiar upbringing, you have a rare form of innocence. I now find I can’t endure the idea of your seeing Paris without me.’

His voice, in the huge, still garden, was very quiet. He spoke close to her ear. Rufa found she was holding her breath. ‘Do you have any plans for the weekend after next?’

A weekend meant sex. Rufa was suddenly frightened. If she could not handle it, she would be trapped. ‘You know I never have plans.’

In the darkness, she heard the smile in his voice. ‘I thought you might be doing one of your dinner parties.’ He was amused by her genteel little ‘job’.

‘I don’t have anything lined up,’ Rufa said. ‘Except the dinner for Berry and Polly. Which you’ll be eating.’

‘Yes, and I admit, I’m curious. I don’t often meet women who can cook. But my weekend in Paris doesn’t depend on your performance. Will you come?’

‘I— I’d love to.’

‘Good. Though there’s nothing in Paris – or out of it, for that matter – to compare to you. I haven’t said it often enough. I dislike stating the obvious.’

His face was moving towards hers. Time slowed. She was aware of the sharp definition of his features. His lips were cool. Rufa was very still, willing herself to relax. After the initial shock of contact, she found that she could bear this easily. It was even pleasant.

For one mad second, she wanted to giggle. Beyond the act of sex, which she now knew she was unlikely to fail, lay the wild relief of saving Melismate.

‘Don’t do it, darling – please don’t do it! He’ll lock you away in a glass case, and you’ll never see daylight again!’

Nancy, in a storm of shocking pink towelling and hot red hair, flung herself across Rufa’s bed.

‘Get off my dress,’ Rufa snapped. ‘What’s the matter with you? This weekend in Paris is everything we’ve been working for. I’m positive Adrian’s planning to propose.’

‘You’re not in love with him!’

‘Nance, I am not having this conversation again. I like him, and that’s enough. You’re not in love with Berry.’

‘Berry’s different,’ Nancy said. ‘And so am I. Please, Ru – listen to me – see some sense, before it’s too late! You’ll never be able to handle it.’

Rufa snatched her chiffon dress from under Nancy’s body. ‘I know what I’m doing. I might not be insanely in love with Adrian. But I’m not the type for wild passion.’

Nancy sighed heavily. ‘Yes you are. You’re exactly the type. The second you meet someone you really fancy, you’ll go berserk.’

‘I’m far too sensible to do anything of the kind,’ Rufa said. ‘Some of us have a measure of control over our emotions. I know I lost it with Jonathan, but that was years ago, and it was nothing more than delayed adolescence. Adrian understands me. He shares my tastes. He can give me the kind of security I’ve always wanted – and he’s already hinted he knows I come in a package with Melismate. He’ll turn it into the most gorgeous house in the world. This won’t be any kind of sacrifice.’

‘Bollocks,’ Nancy snapped. ‘You’re just trying to talk yourself into it. You’re determined to come out of this smelling of roses.’

Rufa worked the pins out of her hair. As Roshan had predicted, the heavy skein of auburn fell picturesquely over her pearly shoulders. ‘I’m not riding roughshod over his feelings, if that’s what you mean.’

Nancy snorted crossly. ‘I don’t give a shit about his feelings.’

‘No – you don’t give a shit about anyone. When I marry Adrian, you can stop trying to overturn poor Berry’s entire life.’

‘He’ll thank me for it. You’re just getting squeamish because you’ve decided to like that bitch Polly.’

‘She’s not a bitch, actually.’

‘Not to you. She looks at me as if she’d brought me in on the bottom of her fucking shoe.’

Rufa was not going to be drawn into an argument about Polly. ‘Look, what is this? The Game’s nearly over – I thought you’d be pleased.’

‘Adrian’s as old as the hills, and the original toffee-nosed git. You know perfectly well he’ll make you miserable.’

‘I can take care of myself.’ Rufa sat down in front of the badly lit mirror to smooth away her mascara with oil and cotton wool.

Nancy leapt off the bed. ‘Ru, listen to me. Forget your usual argument about Berry being a perfect gent. Suppose I got a proposal out of him, and he agreed to take care of Melismate, and all that jazz – would you still go after Adrian? Would it make a difference?’

‘Obviously. But Berry will never propose, so why are we arguing?’

‘That’s all I wanted to know.’

Chapter Thirteen

‘YOU TWO WERE
having a bit of a spat last night,’ Max said. ‘Is the famous Marrying Game running into difficulties?’

He was leaning against the counter in Wendy’s kitchen, nursing a mug of tea and staring, with naked admiration, at Nancy’s denim-clad bottom as she bent over the washing machine.

She slammed the door and stood up, brushing back her long hair. ‘The only difficulty is that it’s going too well. If I can’t do something, damn fast, Ru’s going to make a really dreadful marriage.’

‘You shouldn’t try to stop her,’ Max said. ‘Let her make her own mistakes. She can always divorce him, when she’s spent all his money.’

Nancy smiled. ‘That’s what you’d do, is it?’

‘Of course.’

‘I don’t think getting divorced is exactly a barrel of laughs, darling. And just imagine how badly Rufa would handle it.’

‘True. Heaven save us all from serious types.’ Max’s bright, pagan dark eyes raked over her slowly. ‘How come the two of you are so different?’

He could say anything to her, and, these days, it all meant the same thing. Every remark, however innocuous, was a gate standing open. Nancy felt the sex
blasting
off him in waves, and was amazed by her own strength of mind in resisting him. She fancied him desperately. Sometimes, lying late at night upon her chaste single bed, she raged against Rufa and her blasted Marrying Game for standing in her way. But so far she had always managed to deflect Max, without absolutely putting him off.

She smiled, dropping her gaze as she did so. ‘We’re more alike than we seem.’

This was meant to mean: I’m more of a prude than I look, and less easy to get into the sack than appearances suggest.

Such a waste, Nancy thought regretfully, watching Max covertly as he weighed up the likelihood of seducing her, and decided to go back to his work upstairs. For the first time in her life she had to hold love at bay, and waste no more languorous afternoons in a lover’s arms.