Lingering Shadows

Instead Lucy discovered that he had rented what he hesitantly described as ‘a cottage’, though not some rough, ill-equipped and damp affair as she had dreaded. No, he had displayed far greater sensitivity than that, and what intrigued and tantalised her even more was that he had also displayed how keenly aware he was of what pleased her. Because the cottage was, in fact, a small country house, not very far from Bath, since, as he told her hesitantly when they arrived, he had thought she might like to visit Bath while they were staying in the area.

‘I believe there are some very good shops,’ he told her, clearing his throat a little uncertainly and looking hesitantly at her in the half-light of the evening.

Shops! Lucy smiled to herself. Giles was far more perceptive than she had realised. There was nothing she enjoyed more than shopping. She remembered for the first time with a faint touch of self-dislike the occasions in the past when she had subtly manoeuvred a previous unwilling escort into taking her shopping, and when she had normally also managed to inveigle him into buying her something.

Her machinations had never bothered her in the past, so why did she feel this unexpected dislike at the thought of cynically coaxing Giles into buying her something? She dismissed the thought, wondering if the ‘cottage’ would be as presentable inside as it was out.

It was set in its own large gardens, and, from what she could see of them in the dusk, they were softly pretty with flowers, climbing roses and clematis, a perfect complement for the softly washed pink-tinged front of the house.

She wasn’t disappointed.

Inside, the house smelled of polish and fresh flowers, which were everywhere, and in her favourite colours as well, she observed as she walked silently through the downstairs rooms and the hall, with its polished floor and rugs, its circular polished table with the huge display of delphiniums, and larkspurs in their lavender-blues and lilacs spiked with white.

The sitting-room was large and elegantly furnished, off-white settees with mounds of cushions, sofa tables with displays of flowers, this time in creams and soft pinks, huge overblown roses that looked as though they had come straight from some country garden.

She touched the petals of one of them. It was still slightly damp, as though it had actually just been picked.

A log fire, a real one, burned in the hearth, the faint smell of seasoned logs mingling with the scent of the roses.

Behind her she heard Giles saying roughly, ‘They reminded me of you, of the colour and texture of your skin, of the way you smell,’ and then he was holding her, burying his mouth in the nape of her neck and then the side of her throat, and she realised that he had actually chosen the flowers himself.

Something inside her, some hard, tight part of her which had never been breached, swelled and ached with the emotion she had locked away inside it. Astoundingly she felt her eyes prick with tears and her heart … her heart, not just her body, ache with feeling.

Giles was pressed up hard against her back. She could feel him trembling, knew how much he wanted her, and yet he still released her, apologising rawly, ‘I’m sorry. That was crass of me.’

Lucy looked at him. One of her flatmates had commented on how attractive he was, how solid and male-looking. She herself hadn’t really been aware of it before, but now suddenly she was.

Angry with herself and for some reason a little afraid, she reacted instinctively, adopting her normal manner of protective cynicism, shrugging as she flicked the petals of one of the roses with her polished fingertips and commenting, ‘Well, there certainly isn’t any need to rush, is there? I mean, we’ve got the whole long weekend. Four whole days.’

The look in Giles’s eyes stunned her.

‘A lifetime wouldn’t be enough for me, Lucy,’ he told her hoarsely.

After that, to be allowed to go upstairs on her own while he unpacked the car threw her a little.

The house had five bedrooms, two with their own bathrooms. She chose the smaller of these, oddly drawn by its softly pretty country décor. The ceiling sloped down to a pair of dormer windows, and it had been papered with a pretty cottagey paper. The bed was high and old-fashioned, with proper bedding instead of a duvet. The floor was carpeted in such a pale peach carpet that it made the whole room seem full of warmth and light.

The bathroom off the bedroom was simple and functional. The sanitary-ware was white and old-fashioned, the bath huge with enormous brass taps. As a concession to modern-day living, a wall of neat cupboards had been installed with, Lucy was pleased to see, mirrors set above them and decent lighting. The floor was polished and sealed, a proper door on the shower instead of the plastic curtain they had in the flat.

She heard Giles coming upstairs and opened the bedroom door.

‘I haven’t booked dinner anywhere for us this evening,’ he told her awkwardly. ‘I wasn’t sure what you’d feel like doing.’

It was obvious what he felt like doing, Lucy reflected to herself. She was torn between irritation and a sudden and sharply unexpected frisson of tension, of nervousness almost. Her, nervous … and of Giles? Impossible.

‘Well, what I feel like doing right now is having a shower,’ she told him coolly. ‘And what I shan’t feel like doing afterwards is …’ She hesitated deliberately, watching him, waiting for him to become either angry or hectoring, but instead he simply looked steadily back at her. ‘I’m hungry,’ she told him pettishly, suddenly unsure of herself, and afraid because of it. ‘And I certainly don’t intend to play the little woman and start cooking.’

She reached out, took her case from him, and then retreated, closing the bedroom door on him. She waited for several minutes, wondering what he would do, and then she heard him going back downstairs.

As she stripped off her clothes and showered she wasn’t sure whether she was pleased or disappointed that he had taken her dismissal so calmly. Most of the men she knew would have been demanding their pound of flesh by now and no mistake.

She eyed herself in the mirrors as she stepped out of the shower. She had a good body; her breasts were perhaps a little fuller than fashion dictated, but her waist was enviably narrow, her legs long and slender, her bone-structure that of an expensive, fragile racehorse. Her skin gleamed with health and with the scented moisturiser she was fanatical about using. She had the beginnings of a soft peachy tan.

There was a hectic flush along her cheekbones and her eyes looked huge, as though she had been on drugs, she recognised tensely. She dried her hair and then took her time dressing and reapplying her make-up.

There was no sign of Giles. The house was so quiet that she even wondered if he had perhaps gone and left her, but when she went to the window and looked out she could just about make out the outline of the car in the darkness.

She opened the bedroom door and walked out. She had been through this often enough before to know what it was all about, she reminded herself as she walked downstairs.

So why was she feeling so nervous … so on edge?

She had almost reached the bottom step when the kitchen door opened and Giles appeared. He had changed too, and his hair was damp as though he had showered. He must, she realised on a small spurt of shock, have used one of the other rooms.

‘Supper’s ready,’ he told her.

Supper was ready. Lucy stared at him. What had he done? Certainly he could not have sent out for a takeaway, not here.

‘I thought we’d eat in the sitting-room,’ he added a little uncertainly.

Lucy nodded, for once lost for words.

An hour later, greedily eating the last of her chocolate mousse, she admitted to herself that she was impressed.

The food, which, Giles had told her shyly, he had brought with him in a hamper from London, had been wildly delicious and, she suspected, wildly expensive. There had been champagne, pink champagne, which she knew others looked down on, but which she loved.

They had started the meal with tiny wild strawberries, and then there had been delicious cold salmon served with delicately flavoured salads, a sorbet laced with something alcoholic, and then proper, darkly bitter chocolate mousse, and she had greedily eaten both hers and Giles’s.

It had been food chosen not for a man but for a woman, and again she was confused by Giles’s sensitivity in so accurately gauging her tastes.

Now, curled up on the settee while Giles removed the remains of their meal, she felt relaxed and replete. She felt, she recognised on a sudden startled stab of awareness, happy.

The scented candles Giles had lit while they ate still burned, filled the room with their fragrance, warm and musky. She breathed it in sensuously.

She was wearing a simple shift dress, simple in design, that was. It had been perilously expensive, so soft and fragile that all she was able to wear underneath it was a tiny pair of briefs.

Now as she moved into a more comfortable position on the settee she was aware of the sudden sharp peaking of her nipples, and the slow unfolding ache of desire inside her.

When Giles came back she smiled languorously at him, her eyes narrowed and mysterious. He came across to her, leaning over her. His hand cupped her face. It felt good against her skin, cool and firm. His thumb brushed the corner of her mouth, tentatively, hesitantly almost. She let her lips part, rubbing the tip of his thumb with her tongue, her eyes closing sensuously, but there was nothing calculated or deliberate about the gesture, she was genuinely aroused, and as she arched up towards Giles she heard him mutter thickly. ‘Oh, God, Lucy …’

He had never kissed her so fiercely before, so hungrily. She heard him telling her unsteadily that she tasted of chocolate, but then she teased him with her tongue and he stopped saying anything.

She had never, she realised breathlessly later, wanted to make love so much with any man. Suddenly she couldn’t wait to be rid of her clothes and for Giles to be rid of his. She could feel how aroused he was and that knowledge excited her.

She tugged impatiently at the buttons on his shirt, spreading her hands flat against his chest, licking and nuzzling his bare throat and then his chest, laughing softly as she heard him groan and felt the sweat springing up on his skin.

He fumbled with the zip on her dress the first time he tried to unfasten it, but instead of irritating her his hesitancy only seemed to sharpen the excitement coiling inside her. When he finally unfastened it and the dress slid to a silky heap at her feet, leaving her body virtually naked, gilded by the light of the candles, its sheen enhanced by the soft cream backdrop of the settee, the dark arousal of her nipples as perfect as the deepest of the velvet-petalled roses, Giles didn’t touch her. He simply looked at her.

Men had looked at Lucy before, but none of them had ever looked at her like this, as though they were beholding a miracle, a vision; none of them had ever looked at her with heaven in his eyes.