A Dark and Distant Shore (68 page)

He had had many mistresses over the years, most of them beautiful, some of them amusing, a few of them clever, but his love had been reserved only for her. However confused his mind, however difficult his life, he had never deviated. Nothing she could say or do would ever change his feeling for her, although she might drive him to anger or even despair. For he knew her through and through, far better than she knew him. He had a kind of instinct where she was concerned. Even from five thousand miles away he could tell, without conscious thought, how her mind was working. The difficulty had always been that he didn’t know, until too late, about the circumstances that provoked her mind to action. It was the only thing that frightened him.

He needed to have her alone, which was why he had borrowed this isolated house from one of the officials at the embassy, and was prepared to hold her here, ruthlessly as some feudal lord, for as long as he had to. He would have been prepared, if necessary, to lock up her only protector – her footman McClure – in one of the attics. But he had a feeling it wouldn’t be necessary. He had observed that lanky Highlander carefully in Paris, and suspected that the only thing he cared about in the world was that his mistress should be happy; he suspected, too, that McClure remembered that she
had
been happy during that strange, dreamlike week in June 1815.

Now looking at her, Perry could see he wasn’t going to have to fight after all. No tantrums, no resistance, just a calm content as if she had come home after some long, stormy voyage. When she had fled from Paris so quickly, he had known that her defences weren’t impregnable, but he hadn’t dared to hope that she would destroy them of her own will.

Oh, Vilia, my very dearest. Why
?
Tell me why.

He moved at last and knelt beside her, taking both her hands in his own hard grip. And then, just as he was about to speak, her eyes came round to his, wide and clear, candid as a child’s. For a long time, they remained there, their gazes blending in a communion far beyond words until gradually, he sensed a change in her and said, softly, ‘There is a room prepared for us. Come, let me show you.’

The phrase echoed oddly in her head as he led her upstairs in the shelter of his arm. Something to do with Kinveil. Something to do with Mungo. Something to do with happiness. Across the years, her own voice came back to her. ‘There’s nowhere as fine as here. Come, let me show you.’

She turned and smiled up at Perry Randall as he closed the door behind them. And then he took her in his arms, where she belonged.

Day followed day, and night night, separately and independently beautiful, like baroque pearls strung on a thread of purest happiness.

It was as if they had dropped out of the world, out of time. Everything conspired, even the soft September weather, to foster the illusion of having been born anew into a landscape of sun and clear skies and gentle breezes, where there was no pain or heartache and never could be. They rose late, drowsy with pleasure, and broke their fast on coffee and fruit, warm rolls and fresh sweet butter, then rode through the peaceful countryside, or explored the ancient streets of Montfort, with its centuries-old church and little cemetery in an arcaded gallery. Sometimes they went no further than the gardens of the house, strolling the hours away, hand in hand along grassy paths heavy with the scent of late roses, and cool with the hiss and tinkle of fountains. And sometimes they went nowhere at all, but sat on the balustered terrace of the house, not speaking, or thinking, or even moving except when, now and again, their eyes met and locked, smiling.

Perry was forty-five and Vilia thirty-nine, but age had nothing to do with anything that concerned them. Vilia had always been Perry’s grand passion, while she, who had thought him her first and only love, now knew that he had also become, by some strange alchemy, her second and last love. There was, to begin with, a kind of wonderment in the discovery that this stranger, who in Paris had set her pulses tingling with his sheer, animal magnetism, should have lips and hands so familiar, and should know so well how to rouse her with his very first touch. Caressed into delight again and again, brought with passion and tenderness to the knowledge of continuing joy, she gave herself up to him completely. Often enough before, she had lived each day as if it were the only day of her life, because she would not otherwise have had the strength to see it through to its end; because tomorrow was unthinkable, and the next day, and the day after that. But here, in the house called the Chaumière de la Reine, yesterday and today and tomorrow merged into one another, day into night into day again, a single blur of love and joy and fulfilment, without beginning and without end.

Perry, himself enchanted out of touch with past and future, saw and marvelled at the change in her. The just perceptible lines of care and sadness and self-will vanished almost overnight, to leave her smooth-skinned and ageless. Even the flawless grooming, a deliberate statement of her attitude to the world, was abandoned. She began to tie her hair loosely, so that fine, sunstreaked tendrils curled round her forehead and her neck. She cast aside the formal trimmings and chemisettes and neat pelerine collars of her gowns, and wore them low-necked and frivolous and summery. She looked fresh, and young, and vulnerable. With a touch of sadness, he recognized that she had been transformed, not into the girl she had been, but into the girl she might have been if the circumstances of her life had been different. Loving and giving, free, happy. Such a waste – all those years of loneliness.

Everything was perfect, too perfect, and he couldn’t bring himself to talk of the things that had to be talked about. Not because they were unpleasant – far from it – but because they involved decisions, and arrangements, and all the ordinary commerce of the world that, for the moment, was too well lost. There was time enough, he thought.

They talked very little, and mostly of nothing. From fear of dimming the iridescent bubble of their joy in each other, they asked no questions except unimportant ones. She said once, ‘How was Gideon? Will he be all right?’ and he replied, ‘Oh, yes. A nice boy, my darling. Young, but he’ll grow up quickly in America. Don’t worry about him.’

On another occasion, out of some fugitive train of thought, he asked about Sorley. ‘Is it fair to him? To keep him slave to Vilia Cameron for all these years? Does he have no life of his own?’

She gurgled delightfully. ‘I suspect he has a very active life of his own! It’s funny, though. We never have anything that could be called a conversation. Sometimes I talk to him as if he were a kind of confessor, or even just part of the furniture. And all he says is, “Yes, Mistress Vilia”, or “No, Mistress Vilia”. But he comforts me, I suppose because I know he’s entirely on my side. He has no sense at all of what’s right or wrong. In fact, I think the christening fairy must have forgotten morality altogether when she was bestowing his birth-gifts on him. I’m sure he approves of
our
relationship in a way no self-respecting pillar of the kirk would do for a moment. Dear Sorley – I can’t imagine life without him.’

Once, carelessly, Perry mentioned that he had been to Marchfield and seen Shona and Drew, and for a moment all the cares of the world came back. But he was quick to say, ‘I can’t imagine how you can bear to have them in the house. Do they dote
all
the time?’ And she laughed, and the moment passed.

After the first few days of hunger for each other, intense and insatiable, they ventured into new fields of pleasure. It began when, one evening, blushing like some innocent bride, she asked shyly that she should be allowed to sleep alone. It was so unexpected that, for a moment, he didn’t grasp what she was trying to say. Then he took her in his arms, his eyes dancing, and said, ‘Do you want to? For five whole nights?’ So he taught her what she had never known – how she could give
him
pleasure – and taught her, too, some of the games lovers played. Deliberately, he made it all light-hearted, and she responded, and they laughed a good deal. Afterwards, their relationship was the richer for it.

But the time came when he had no choice but to talk about the future. It would be the end of this idyll; he simply hoped that, understanding now how much they needed each other, she would accept that the future could be an idyll of another kind.

When she opened her eyes one morning, he was there beside her as on other mornings, his dark head propped on one fist, the single waving lock drooping as it always did. His grey eyes were smiling into hers, and the long humorous mouth was disarmingly curved. He kissed her lightly on one sleepy eyelid, and she wriggled and stretched like a kitten, and then moved her body into the curve of his and closed her eyes again.

‘No,’ he said, laughing. ‘Pay attention. I have a business, and money, and a house in Boston and another in New York. All of them are empty and meaningless without you. And so am I. When will you marry me?’

It wasn’t fair, he knew. Her mind was slow to wake in the morning, and that was why he had chosen it. He wanted an answer uncomplicated by thought, by all the obstacles he knew that, given time, she would raise.

The translucent green eyes opened again. ‘Marry you?’ she repeated hazily. And then, after a long moment, ‘Why?’ He knew, then, that she had indeed been living in a state of thought suspended, and hadn’t given a moment’s consideration to anything beyond the present.

He swung himself on top of her, and then, at once, inside her. His hands caressing her, his mouth hovering over hers, he whispered mockingly, ‘You ask why?’ It wasn’t what she had meant, and he knew it wasn’t, but it was one kind of answer.

A long time afterwards, while they lay, bodies still locked, in temporary peace, she opened her eyes and murmured, ‘America? Couldn’t we... Isn’t it possible... Couldn’t you come back and settle in Scotland?’

His hard jaw tightened, but there was a smile on his face as he said, ‘Oh, no, my darling!’ and began, tantalizingly, to move again. And even as her body responded, swift and achingly impatient as it always was, even as she opened her lips to his and sent her hands straying over the long, flexible muscles of his back, she breathed, ‘Damn you, Perry Randall. Oh, damn you! Damn you!’

And that, he knew instinctively, meant
Damn you for making me love you. Damn you for making me need you just when Kinveil is almost in my grasp.

Another man, knowing it, might have been harsh with her, but he loved her too much. Even so, there was a controlled violence in him as he took her, this time, that he had never let her sense before.

He recovered himself quickly. Why, after all, should he be hurt by a truth he had already accepted? He had learned, within limits, to laugh at himself, and knew that he had been suffering from injured vanity. Not one of the more constructive emotions. Half dreaming, he lay beside her, marshalling his forces for the next stage of the battle between himself and Kinveil.

She, diverted by this new facet of him, turned her head in the web of shining hair and said pensively, ‘Isn’t it strange? We know so little about each other, in spite of everything. Even the most ordinary things – like what size of gloves, and what kind of music, and birthdays...’

His eyes crinkled in lazy amusement. ‘Eight inches, and Vivaldi, and March twenty-fifth, 1790.’

‘March? Really?’ She raised her head and dimpled at him, looking absurdly youthful. ‘Do you believe in the stars? Why should all the men I love have been born in March?’

He raised a quizzical eyebrow.
‘All
the men you love?’

‘Well, there’s you,’ she said mischievously. ‘And Theo, and Gideon, and Drew...’

It was as if the sun suddenly went out, and the sounds of the countryside faded and the air closed in about him, thick and suffocating.

The words defied utterance, but he spoke them at last. ‘Drew? I thought he was born earlier in the year.’

She might have deceived him if she hadn’t still been languid with pleasure, if she hadn’t been gazing straight into his eyes, if she hadn’t been so close to him that her hair was brushing his cheek and her perfume filling his nostrils. But when his meaning reached her, he saw the warmth fade from the fine-textured skin and her eyes turn blank.

She said, ‘No. I had a very difficult time with him. He was late. He was overdue.’ She laid her head back on the pillows, as if there was no more to be said.

A lifetime later, he raised himself and leaned over her, but she turned her face away and he had to wind his hand in the silver-gold tangle of her hair to force her to look at him. He said, ‘When was he born, Vilia? Don’t lie to me. I can find out easily enough.’

‘The eighteenth of March. He was late. He was overdue.’

His eyes went on staring into hers, grey as ice floes, and she knew he was working through the calendar, carefully, laboriously, week by week. She could imagine how his mind must be recoiling from it, but all she saw were the hard lines of his face, the set jaw, the deeply incised brackets round his mouth, and the two short vertical creases between the dark brows. She felt sick, horribly sick, and there was a lump in her throat, obstructing her breathing.

‘Two weeks, almost three weeks late if he was Andrew’s,’ he said at last. And then, through his teeth, ‘He’s
my
son, isn’t he?
Isn’t he, Vilia
?
’

She tried unavailingly to shake her head. Tears, spilling over, ran down her temples and into her hair.

He had her by the shoulders now, his grip so powerful that it seemed thumb and fingers must meet through the soft cavity below her collarbone.
‘He
– is – my – son!’

And then he flung himself away from her, and when she opened her eyes again he was standing beside the window, his back to her, the long, limber body haloed in the sunlight that was streaming in as it had streamed in every morning for three uninterrupted weeks of happiness. She supposed, dully, that it was fear of this that had led her to block out the world so completely. It had been foolish, because the contrast only made it worse.