A Secret Garden Affair, page 13
Earlier, while he had helped her carry the dishes of food out here to the orchard, she had asked him about his builder pal and how they knew each other, and he’d said they’d been at school together in Ely. ‘Steve really is a superb builder and very reliable,’ he’d explained. ‘I wouldn’t have recommended him if I didn’t know he’d do a good job for Miss Ambrose.’
‘I’m thinking of having a go at doing some redecorating here,’ Libby had said. ‘Do you think your friend would advise me on the best place to buy the necessary paint and equipment?’
‘Of course he would. He’ll probably get it at trade price for you.’
‘That would be great. Thank you.’
Throughout lunch, and despite Elfrida’s attempts to interrogate him, Dr Matthews had given hardly anything away about himself. He’d been far happier encouraging her to regale them with one amusing story after another. Elfrida was a natural raconteur and had perfect timing when it came to a punchline. She also loved an audience. In return he’d told them a few funny stories of his time as a medical student, of dressing a skeleton – not a real one, but one used for anatomical study – in a suit and then placing it behind the wheel of a car and leaving it to be discovered. Then there was the prank of drinking what looked like a urine sample, but which was actually apple juice. ‘All pretty juvenile,’ he’d finished by saying, ‘but it passed for fun back then.’
‘It was very kind of Miss Ambrose to invite me to join you for lunch,’ he said now, his voice hushed and breaking the drowsy silence between them.
‘Consider yourself honoured,’ Libby replied just as quietly. ‘It’s not something that often happens.’ Then because if they were going to continue talking, she didn’t want to wake Bess and Elfrida, she suggested they went for a walk.
At the sound of Libby and the young doctor rising from their wicker chairs, Elfrida’s eyelids fluttered open and she watched them wander off through the orchard.
Smiling to herself, she closed her eyes and slipped back into the dream she’d been having before the creak of chairs had woken her.
Chapter Twelve
October 1934
Lambert Chase, Northamptonshire
Elfrida
‘Elfrida, you have to let me explain.’
‘I don’t have to do anything you ask of me. Now remove your hand from my arm. Your wife might appreciate you riding roughshod over her, but I do not.’
Nikolai released his hold of me but as we stood on the semi-illuminated terrace, he fastened the powerful strength of his obsidian gaze on mine. Turning my back on him, and resting my hands on the stone balustrade, I stared out at the indistinct shapes of the garden in the shadowy darkness to gather my reeling senses. From the moment he had appeared I had experienced the sensation of endlessly tumbling from a great height, at the same time bracing myself for the inevitable impact, actually wanting it to happen. After all, I had waited an age for this moment, to tell Count Nikolai Demidov exactly what I thought of him.
‘Please,’ he said, ‘just spare me a few minutes. I’m not asking for forgiveness, God knows I don’t deserve that, but I want you to know the truth.’
I twisted round to face him. ‘The truth is you weren’t honest with me and I behaved like a pathetic little fool, drinking in your lies as you fed them to me!’ I flinched, realising that I sounded crosser with myself than him. As well I might.
‘I didn’t lie to you at the time,’ he said, looming over me and resurrecting the memory of how the sheer size of him used to send a thrill racing through my body. ‘What passed between us all those years ago was real,’ he continued, his voice low. ‘I fell in love with you and I believe you fell in love with me. Do you deny that now?’
‘Your arrogance is breathtaking!’
He shook his head. ‘As is your beauty,’ he murmured.
I stared at him, the wind suddenly knocked clean out of my sails, puffed up as I was on a swell of angry outrage and painful regret. ‘Don’t think you can distract me with a few words of misplaced flattery,’ I said. ‘It won’t work. I’m not the silly girl I once was.’
‘You were never silly. Never. But my words are not misplaced; it’s the truth. You are even more beautiful than I remembered. But then I should have known your beauty would only intensify with the passing of each year.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake do be quiet and have some self-respect.’
His face darkened. ‘I lost that a long time ago. Now please, will you let me explain why I disappeared from your life the way I did?’
‘You don’t need to explain anything. You told me you would wait for me while I went about the business of changing the world. And the biggest laugh is, I believed you. I trusted you. Then when I learnt from a friend that she’d bumped into you while you were enjoying your honeymoon, I had to accept that you hadn’t meant a word of what you’d said and once I woke up to that, I put you out of my mind. Overnight you no longer existed. You were just someone I once knew.’
‘Then why are you so angry with me? And why, in a attempt to make me jealous, were you deliberately flirting with those men in there?’ He inclined his head towards the house and the grand salon where I’d been dancing. ‘None of whom is worthy so much as to look at you, never mind kiss you.’
I raised an eyebrow. ‘It clearly worked because you strong-armed me away from them and here we are.’
‘I had to. I couldn’t stand by and watch another minute of you ignoring me. It was too painful.’
A burst of laughter had us both turning to see a group of revellers from the party spilling out onto the terrace. Seeing the fiercely stern look on Nikolai’s face, they instantly fell quiet and moved off further along its balustraded expanse. ‘For the love of God,’ Nikolai muttered, ‘is there nowhere private we can talk?’
I should have left him there on the terrace stewing in his own furiously dark mood, but I didn’t. Instead, I told him to follow me. Knowing the garden at Lambert Chase as well as I did, I had no trouble finding my way down to the glasshouse where I knew we’d be alone. I was, I confess, curious to hear what story Nikolai was going to give for his not having told me about the girlfriend he married only a few weeks after plying me with his cousin’s champagne and taking me to his bed. Although I could not pretend that I hadn’t played my part, since I had been totally willing in all respects. I could not now imagine otherwise to suit my own narrative. But had I known he was on the verge of marrying I would have steered clear of him.
Once inside the glasshouse I shut the door and turned to face him, and God forgive me, but there it was, the electrifying desire I had felt for him before. Was it down to the humid enclosed space that we now occupied? Or the knowledge that we were entirely alone? Whatever it was, I was determined not to let it get the better of me and told him tersely to get on with his explanation.
In the silence, his shoes cracking like gunfire across the tiled floor of the glasshouse, he started pacing, his hands pushed deep into the pockets of his dress suit trousers.
‘I didn’t lie to you,’ he began. ‘When we met I was a free man. I had just broken off my engagement to a girl called Olga. The relationship, if you could call it that, was of our parents making. Our two families, both émigrés from St Petersburg, wanted to make the match between us. I cannot speak for Olga, but as far as I was concerned, I was prepared to marry her to please my parents. It seemed like something that would make them happy after everything they had suffered in fleeing their home and losing so many loved ones in the revolution.’
‘So you were just being the dutiful son?’
‘Is that so very hard to believe?’
I ignored his question and the hurt in his voice. ‘Go on,’ I said, ‘tell me the rest.’
‘I don’t know why, but once Olga and I were officially engaged and our families were planning our wedding, things began to go wrong between us. We found we had hardly anything in common and we didn’t seem able to agree on anything. Olga wanted to be out every night at some party or other, if not with me, then with her friends. We couldn’t even agree where we should live. I wanted to be in New York where I was helping my father run the hotel business. He wanted me there too. But Olga wanted to be in Washington with her family and flatly refused to consider moving away. With no agreement in sight, I began to see a different side to her. When she couldn’t get her own way, she would behave like a child, she would either scream and shout, or sulk and refuse to speak to me. I couldn’t see a future with anyone so self-absorbed or so intransigent. I’m not proud of myself, reneging on a promise, but I didn’t think it would be fair to either of us to marry.’
‘And yet you did?’
He came to a stop and turned to face me. ‘Yes. A few days after I’d said goodbye to you—’
‘As I recall you didn’t say goodbye,’ I interrupted him. ‘You slunk away while I slept.’
He swallowed. ‘Yes,’ he murmured, ‘that was cowardly of me.’
‘I’ll say.’
‘I’m sorry, but I couldn’t face a full-blown farewell. And anyway, I thought I’d be seeing you again when I planned to be in London later that month.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘I received a telegram insisting I fly home straight away where I was greeted with the news from Olga that she was pregnant. She had told her parents before telling me and so there was no question of our not marrying, I knew what I had to do. I convinced myself that a child might be the making of us as a couple.’
‘A happy ending all round then,’ I said. The sarcasm in my voice was as heavy as the muggy air enveloping us.
He shook his head. ‘Far from it. After a difficult birth, the baby … a boy … was stillborn. We both grieved in our different ways, but Olga was left devastated. Understandably she looked for something, or someone, to blame and that was me.’
At the anguish in Nikolai’s face, all my anger drained out of me. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, and meaning it.
‘Ever since then, mentally as well as physically, Olga has been fragile. I thought in time that another child might help, but that side of our relationship was not to be. Since then, my wife has been in and out of various clinics in America and here in Europe.’
‘Is she here in England with you?’
‘No, she’s in a clinic in Switzerland.’
‘Why did you never write to tell me the truth?’
‘Would you have believed me?’
I hesitated, recalling how furious I’d been when my friend Dorothea had so blithely told me about bumping into Nikolai while he was on his honeymoon. ‘I don’t know,’ I murmured. ‘Perhaps not.’
I suddenly felt so petty, accepting that like Olga I had wanted someone to blame for my heartache, which was nothing compared to what he and Olga must have suffered at the loss of their child.
‘Now what?’ I asked in the silence.
‘Now I return you to the party which was held in your honour to celebrate your birthday and I say goodbye,’ he said.
‘Just like that?’ I blurted out. ‘After all these years you simply walk away?’
‘What would you have me do?’
My head told me to say goodbye and go back to dancing and flirting in the grand salon, except there was no point now in making Nikolai jealous. I wasn’t even in the mood to dance because my treacherous heart was beating out the equivalent of an SOS signal for him to take me in his strong arms and kiss me one last time.
Trying to ignore both my heart and my head, I said, ‘Did Mallory know of your broken engagement with Olga when we met?’
‘No. Why would you think he did?’
‘I remember him telling me that he invited you to that party at his villa because he felt you needed cheering up.’
‘That’s true, in as much as when I met him in Paris I was upset that I’d disappointed my parents by ending things with Olga. I was in Europe for a change of scene and to meet up with friends and some of my other relatives.’
‘Such as your cousin whose champagne we drank with such enjoyment?’
He nodded before stepping towards me.
‘But Mallory knows now?’ I asked.
‘Yes. We ran into each other in London a few days ago and after he took me to task for hurting you, I told him what I’ve just told you.’
‘And he suggested you came here to kiss and make up with me, did he?’
‘He seemed to think an apology from me would—’
‘Would what? Have me falling into your arms, eager to take up where we left off all those years ago?’
‘I wouldn’t insult you with such an idea.’
‘Good! Because it’s a terrible idea and so typical of Mallory, him being such an incurable romantic.’
‘I couldn’t agree more. After all, we’re not the people we were eleven years ago.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘too much water has flowed under the bridge.’
‘Turning back the clock never works.’
‘It’s a recipe for disaster.’
‘Of course,’ he murmured, ‘everyone knows that some things are best left to the past. And yet …’
‘Yes?’
‘We might be the exception to the rule.’
‘Well, I’ve always been that.’
He smiled and somehow the gap between us no longer existed, and I was staring up into his face. A face I swore I’d slap if I ever encountered it again, but nothing could have been further from my mind in that instance as I put a hand gently to the back of his neck and pulled him down to me so I could kiss him.
We kissed and kissed, our mouths and hands instinctively seeking out the familiarity of what we had once known. In the decade that had passed since our brief affair I had kissed any number of men, but not one had made me feel the way Nikolai had.
I was so lost in the moment, giving myself to him and greedily taking what I wanted, that I had no knowledge of the glasshouse door being opened. Not until Nikolai, who had hitched up my dress and lifted me onto him, abruptly stopped what he was doing and groaned. ‘We’ve just been seen,’ he said hoarsely.
I peered through the glass into the darkness and knew exactly who had seen us. Knowing that Bess would never say anything, I couldn’t be so sure about the man with whom she was now scurrying away.
‘I’m sorry if I’ve put you in a compromising situation,’ Nikolai said, pulling my dress down to make me decent, and then buttoning his trousers.
‘You haven’t. This was of my doing as much as yours,’ I said.
He pulled me back into his embrace. ‘Can I see you again?’
‘You’re seeing me now.’
‘It’s not enough. I want to speak to you properly. I want to know everything you’ve done since I last saw you.’
‘Hasn’t Mallory told you everything?’
‘He told me you hadn’t married. Is there a reason for that?’
‘Several reasons. None of which has anything to do with you, so please don’t jump to the arrogant conclusion that I couldn’t find a man who lived up to you.’
He smiled. ‘The same old Elfrida, always so ready to put me in my place by puncturing my inflated ego!’
I smiled too. ‘Only for the sake of clarity. I would hate for you to think that I have spent the last decade yearning for you to walk back into my life.’
‘It’s what I’ve done,’ he said. ‘I swear, never has a day gone by when I haven’t thought of you and wished that things had been different.’
In the days that followed, and after I had finished my work at Lambert Chase for Atticus and Leonora, I sent Bess home and joined Nikolai in London for the remainder of his stay. We stayed at the Ritz and to maintain an air of discretion we occupied two rooms with a connecting door. We barely left them, ordering in room service when we wanted to eat. It was the hardest thing to let him go, but I knew I had to. He had to return to Switzerland to collect his wife who, so he was told, was showing signs of progress, and take her home to America on board the SS Normandie.
We had both known our time together in London was limited, that there was no point in making plans for the future. Nikolai would never divorce his wife, not when she was so fragile. I wouldn’t ask that of him, not when he told me that Olga had already tried to kill herself when he had raised the subject of ending their marriage.
For all his duplicitous behaviour in having an affair with me while his wife was in a Swiss clinic, I knew him to be an essentially honourable man. And besides, his life was in New York, and my life was here in England, so it was futile to think of the future. The here and now, living in the moment – and never thinking of the consequences – was enough for me. It was to become the mantra by which I would live the rest of my life.
If that meant I was bound for hell, then so be it. For what it was worth, I knew that Bess was praying hard for me, so I was happy to take my chances.
Chapter Thirteen
July 1981
Larkspur House, Suffolk
‘It really is an idyllic spot here, amazingly unspoilt, and the ideal haven to escape the troubles of the world. In the circumstances I can see why you came here.’
Libby had just told the man standing next to her all about Marcus and her aborted wedding day. There was no real reason why she should have shared with him something that was so personal, or painful, but it had been a natural progression of their conversation since leaving Bess and Elfrida sleeping in the orchard. While she didn’t want to become defined by what Marcus and Selina had done to her, Libby knew that for some time to come it would have a bearing on almost every aspect of her life. It would affect her every thought and her every decision. How could it not?
