For Better For Worse

‘Yes, but not as enjoyable as it would have been if you had been there,’ he told her, coming over to the bed and bending his head to kiss her briefly.

‘Did the Lassiters understand?’

‘Yes. As luck would have it, they’d had an extra unexpected guest, a young American lawyer, who’s over here on a year’s sabbatical. She came with Paul Ferrar and his wife. Her parents are friends of theirs.’

‘Pretty, was she?’ Eleanor asked him, and then immediately wondered what on earth was wrong with her as she caught the acerbic, almost hostile note in her own voice.

No wonder Marcus was looking at her like that.

‘Not exactly pretty,’ he told her judiciously. ‘She was very fresh and enthusiastic in the particularly American way. She seemed to find our legal system outdated and old-fashioned. When she returns home, she plans to specialise in international law.’

‘Like you?’

Marcus gave her another thoughtful look. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘How’s Tom?’

‘He’s fine,’ Eleanor responded. Suddenly she wanted to talk to him about her concern for her son; about the doubts and guilt his accusation to her had aroused, but as she started to speak Marcus turned away from her. Her sons were not his problem, she reminded herself, and he had already hinted once today that he thought she was fussing too much; being over-protective.

‘Hang on,’ he told her. ‘I’ll just go and have a shower.’

She lay where she was for several seconds, and then, suddenly restless and wanting to be with him, she got up and followed him.

From the open bathroom door, she asked him, ‘Marcus, this American girl. What was her name?’

‘What?’ He stepped out of the shower, shaking his head, smoothing his wet hair back from his face.

‘The American girl—what was her name?’

He looked surprised. ‘Oh, her… I… Sondra something. Cabot. Yes, that’s it… Sondra Cabot.’

‘Very WASP.’

His eyebrows rose slightly as he smiled at her. Silently Eleanor watched him, wondering if she would ever cease to be slightly astonished by the intensity of her own desire for him. When she and Allan had married, Allan’s body had still had some of the thin gawkiness of youth, and in those days of course people had not been as aware of the importance of physical exercise… the fitness boom had not yet swept the country and she had assumed it was quite normal for a woman not to be particularly aroused by the sight of a man’s naked body, that it was in fact necessary for the man to arouse the woman by touching her.

Of course she had learned long before she had met Marcus that this was not the case, but it was not until she had actually met him that she first experienced for herself her own arousal caused not by Marcus touching her, but simply by her own awareness of him and her desire for him.

They had been lovers for almost two months before he had told her how much it had turned him on to look at her and see in her eyes that she wanted him, and to know that she was doing her best to pretend that she didn’t.

Marcus’s body was nothing like Allan’s. Once, when she had told him dreamily that for her, physically, he embodied all the sensuality and masculinity so admired by the ancient Greek sculptors, he had laughed gently at her, saying that no mere mortal man could hope to rival that sort of perfection, reminding her that he was forty-two years old.

Now he was forty-five and his body still had the power to make her hold her breath at the build-up of a slow, sweet tide of desire he caused to flow through her.

When he got into bed and turned to take her in his arms, she told herself that they could talk about Tom later.

‘Mmm…’ he told her softly as his hand cupped her breast and he started to feather small kisses along her throat. ‘Have I told you lately how very sexy you are?’

Smiling, Eleanor moved closer to him.

‘No,’ she whispered back. ‘But you can tell me now if you like.’ She paused, her voice thickening a little as she added huskily, ‘Tell me and show me…’

Eleanor bit off a sharp little sound of pleasure, voluptuously abandoning herself to the delightful sensations Marcus was giving her as his mouth slowly caressed her clitoris, his tongue stroking delicately over and over her receptive flesh in the way he knew she most liked. In another few seconds, her pleasure would become almost too intense for her to bear and then she would cry out to him that she wanted him; that she needed him; that she couldn’t wait any longer to be a part of him.

She felt the orgasmic tension seize her and trembled deliciously.

‘Marcus…’

She shuddered deeply and opened her eyes, and then froze as she saw their bedroom door opening, wrenching herself away from Marcus’s embrace and pulling up the duvet in one quick automatic reflex action as Tom came into their room.

At her side, she heard Marcus groan. Her own body was reacting rebelliously and angrily to Tom’s interruption, but emotionally she was already responding to Tom’s entrance, pulling on her robe as she slid out of bed and hurried towards her son.

‘What is it, Tom? Are you feeling sick again?’ she asked him anxiously, guiding him back to his own room.

By the time she was able to leave Tom, Marcus had fallen asleep. He was lying on his side facing away from her side of the bed.

Quietly she slid in beside him and tiredly closed her own eyes.

‘Nell, could you spare half an hour? There’s something I need to discuss with you.’

‘Louise—yes, of course.’ Eleanor smiled warmly at her partner. ‘If you want to ask me how I’m getting on with narrowing down the job application lists for the freelancers, I’m afraid I’m going to have to admit that I’m not making very much progress. What with Tom not being very well and one thing and another…’

‘No… no, it isn’t that,’ Louise told her curtly. ‘Well, that does sort of come into it, but…’

Eleanor could see how unhappy and ill-at-ease Louise looked as she sat down, and a feeling of disquiet began to ice up her own spine.

‘Louise, what is it? What’s wrong? Everything’s all right at home, isn’t it… with you and Paul… ?’

‘Yes, of course it is,’ Louise told her almost snappily.

Her question had offended her partner, Eleanor recognised with concern as she saw the angry red flush staining Louise’s skin.

She was on the point of apologising, but Louise didn’t give her the chance.

‘Why shouldn’t everything be all right?’ she demanded almost aggressively. ‘Just because you’ve never liked Paul… Well, he’s my husband, Eleanor, and I think he’s right when he says that your antagonism towards him is bound to affect our business relationship. That’s why I wanted to talk to you, as a matter of fact.’

Eleanor stared at her. It was true that she didn’t particularly like Louise’s husband, but she had certainly never said anything against him, not even when he had tried to interfere in the business.

‘I’m sorry if you think that I’m antagonistic towards Paul,’ she began quietly, ‘and I guess that it’s something we ought to have discussed before—–’

‘That’s not what I want to talk about,’ Louise interrupted her quickly. ‘It’s the business itself.’

A presentiment iced warningly down Eleanor’s spine, her anxiety escalating as she waited for Louise to continue.

‘Paul and I are moving to France.’

Louise couldn’t quite meet her eyes, Eleanor noticed absently as her body absorbed the shock of what Louise was saying to her.

‘It’s something we’ve both wanted to do for a long time. Paul already has business connections there, several of our friends have moved there, and, as Paul says, with 1992 and the effects of the Common Market we owe it to ourselves and to the boys to do anything we can to make ourselves financially secure.

‘I can work just as easily from France as I can from London—more easily really. We’ll be so much more conveniently situated for Brussels, Paul says, than London. This whole country really will become a total backwater. And you’ve only got to think of our overheads here.’ Louise was speaking much more quickly now as her words gathered momentum, her eyes sharp and defiant when she finally raised them to Eleanor’s face.