All I Want Is You (29 page)

He let out a low oath, but it was a sound of need, not of horror. Still astride him, I started easing down his pyjama trousers so our naked bodies met, and his stiffened penis was pressing tantalisingly along the moist folds of my sex. All the while the tension inside me was unfurling unbearably. Then he cupped my bottom with his strong hands and lifted me over him then lowered me, so I could feel his erection surge up inside me, filling me, making me cry out his name aloud.

I flung my arms around his neck. I rubbed my naked breasts against his chest; I was gasping for breath as he thrust his length into me, again and again. My legs were still spread wide, and suddenly I felt his palm grinding deliciously against my exposed sex; my eyes met and held his burning gaze, and my climax roared through me as he pounded into me. Only when I’d finished, when I could take no more, did he pull me down to his side and pump his seed over my thighs, the pearly liquid glistening on my skin, while his face was tense with pleasure. I was stunned. I was shaking.

He’d let me look at him. He’d let me touch him.

I didn’t want a single clumsy word of mine to spoil this moment. I’d stopped moving, breathing even; I simply leaned my cheek against his hard chest with my eyes closed, my arms clasped round him, and I felt his arms around me.

‘Sophie,’ he said quietly.

I looked up, almost afraid.

‘Thank you.’ He kissed the tip of my nose, then my eyelids; he pressed my face to his, so our foreheads were touching.

‘Any time.’ I held him tightly.

‘Don’t leave me,’ he breathed.

Oh, Ash. Oh, my darling.
‘Never,’ I said steadily.

We left Belfield Hall that day. How did I get out without being seen? It was simple, really; it turned out that Ash had ordered all the staff to be outside at ten to have their photograph taken, which was quite a ceremony. A dozen chairs were brought out for the more
senior members of the staff – Mr Peters, Mrs Burdett and Cook – and the older housemaids and footmen sat on either side of them while the others stood behind, all except for the boot boys and the youngest of the grooms, who sat cross-legged in front of them. James had brought the photographer from Oxford to the Hall, and everyone folded their arms and looked very solemn, apart from a cheeky boot boy who grinned away at the camera. The framed photograph is still on the wall, in the servants’ hall.

So while they were all outside I slipped down the servants’ stairs to the rear courtyard, where James was waiting for me with the car. I jumped in the back, and ducked low; I think James found it all a huge joke, which reassured me. Then he took me to Oxford, to the hotel where Ash and I had stayed, and I was served coffee and tiny cakes in the private sitting room, just like a lady.

Ash arrived an hour later, with James. We drove back to London, and Ash was very quiet, but he kept his arm around me. My heart was full. Mine. He was my Mr Maldon. But what now?

The answer to my question came soon enough. When we turned into Hertford Street there were photographers everywhere; they were clustered around Ash’s house, perching on railings, almost clambering on one another’s shoulders in their eagerness as the car rolled up.

James was swearing under his breath. ‘Damned journalists. What shall I do, Your Grace? Run the bastards over?’

I was afraid it was because of me, but I was wrong – though it took me a few moments to absorb what they were actually saying. They were calling out, ‘Your Grace, there are rumours that you once had an affair with Lady Beatrice. Are the rumours true?’

I looked at them wildly, then at Ash. There had been some terrible mistake, surely. Ash could just tell them they were wrong. Couldn’t he?
Couldn’t he?

Why didn’t he speak?

Ash looked calm but pale. He said, ‘Back up, James. Get us out of here. We’ll go and stay at a hotel for the night.’

James drove us to a hotel in Belgravia, and Ash still said nothing to me, but once he’d settled me in our private sitting room I heard him on the phone in the bedroom, and he sounded so angry. He was talking to the newspaper editors, I gathered, and then he was ringing someone else. I heard him say her name – he was ringing Beatrice.

Then he came back to me. He must have seen my expression.

‘Sophie,’ he said.

I was slowly backing away from him, my hands outstretched to ward him off. ‘You were speaking to Lady Beatrice.’

‘Sophie. Listen…’

I shook my head. ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ He was coming closer but I pushed him away, trembling. ‘You and her. You and her, years ago.’ I felt quite sick; I was looking back through
everything
in the new knowledge that she and he had been lovers – when?Before I’d even met him?

‘Listen.’ He sounded desperate. ‘I can’t think of anything to say that will make it better for you. But the Press are my enemy, because they’re hand-in-glove with Sydhurst. Even so, I can’t deny that what they were saying is basically true.’

My brain was reeling; bile was rising in my throat. I whispered, ‘Was it… was it when she was married to Lord Charlwood?’ I didn’t really want to know any more, but I couldn’t stop the words tumbling out.

He dragged his hand through his hair. ‘It was when she was married to Lord Charlwood, yes. She was never much of a one for loyalty, was Beatrice. We happened to be both in London, and it really meant very little to either of us. She was bored with Maurice, and I had no reason to feel any sense of loyalty to him. But since then, as you know, Beatrice’s ambitions began to focus on me rather more, chiefly because I’d inherited the dukedom. I told her I wasn’t interested. And now she’s getting her revenge.’

Ash and Beatrice. Beatrice and Ash.
He tried to touch my shoulder but I broke away like a cornered animal.

‘There’s worse to come,’ he said flatly. ‘Beatrice has apparently been telling the Press about you and me – including the fact that your mother was briefly Lord Charlwood’s mistress when you were a girl. I’m afraid it will make life difficult for you, Sophie—’

‘Not for me,’ I broke in. I’d drawn myself to my full height; I think every part of me was filled now with dreadful certainty. ‘Ash, I must leave you. This is…
impossible
.’

He looked frozen. ‘You promised you would stay.’

‘That was before all this. This has made me realise that I’ve got to leave you, for your sake as well as mine. I’ve realised that I can’t simply erase everything that’s gone before – my poverty, my mother’s disgrace. It’s no good. I don’t fit into your world. I’ll always be a
liability to you.’ I was already walking towards the door, but I stopped and turned. ‘Ash, you must defend yourself against the wicked rumours that you were a coward. If people knew that you’d been shot down and were a prisoner of war – if they knew how you’d suffered in that camp…’

His reply was swift and sharp. ‘I’ve told you, I won’t lower myself to their level.’ Suddenly he came closer to me and cradled me against his body, and in a terrifying moment of weakness I let him. ‘Listen,’ he said more softly. ‘Listen. Forget about Beatrice and me – it meant nothing, to either of us. And it doesn’t matter a damn about your past. I will protect you. Sophie, you must believe in me – I beg you.’

Oh, God, I couldn’t bear this. His story of the war last night had both shocked and grieved me, yet had in no way harmed my love for him – rather the contrary. I had agreed to continue being his mistress, lowly as I was. But he and Beatrice. He and Beatrice…

The shock of it had reminded me of everything else that widened the gulf between us. Of the vicious gossip that would flare and burn and torment him repeatedly if I stayed in his life, exactly as Beatrice had warned me; of the way the Press, encouraged by men like Sydhurst, would always be probing his defences.

I was a weakness he couldn’t afford. ‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered.

And I left.

As before, I found a room to let, this time near St Pancras where lodgings were cheap. Once I was there I
scarcely glanced at my surroundings but sank down on the little bed and clasped my arms around myself.

I could hear Beatrice’s bright, brittle voice ringing in my ears, that time at Belfield Hall when I’d asked her in my naivety if she’d met him. ‘Oh,’ she’d said, ‘I met him briefly a few years ago in London…’

Then a pause. That long, lingering pause. Oh, God, what a fool I’d been not to have guessed. How Beatrice must have laughed at my stupidity. I had to find a job again, I had to earn my living somehow. But first… I had to see her.

She’d told me she was staying at Claridge’s Hotel, so I hailed a taxicab to Brook Street. How I had changed, I reflected bitterly, as I paid the driver and nodded haughtily to the top-hatted doorman at the hotel’s entrance when he held open the door for me. How I had changed, from the shy little scullery maid I had once been.

Inside the hotel’s smart foyer the staff called me ‘madam’, and someone rang up to see if Lady Beatrice would receive me. The answer must have been yes, for a liveried manservant escorted me immediately to Beatrice’s suite on the first floor. On the way we passed a maid, who stood back with her eyes lowered to let me pass, and I thought,
I used to be like you.
Almost I wished I still was.

Beatrice opened the door. ‘Sophie.’ She looked me up and down, then beckoned me in.

‘You must have been expecting me,’ I said steadily. ‘After what you’ve done.’

She sat down and pointed to a seat opposite her. ‘My,’
she said, ‘you’re quite the young lady now, aren’t you? I hope you’ve enjoyed yourself with Ash, Sophie my dear. Because you could never have kept him – you realise that, don’t you? “The Duke and the chorus girl who was once a scullery maid”
–
imagine if that particular story were to escape.’

I ignored her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d had an affair with him?
Why?
’

‘Perhaps because I didn’t really see that it was any of your business.’ Her tone had changed; suddenly she rose, walked to the window then turned on me sharply. ‘As for you, don’t try to preach to me about truth and honesty. At Belfield Hall you tricked me utterly, with your pretence of leaving him. Yet here you are now, his slut…’

I too had got to my feet. ‘At Belfield Hall you pretended you hardly knew him. You let me think his burns were most likely the result of a motorcar accident. Even when we talked about him in London, and you admitted he’d flown aeroplanes in the war, you made out that he’d hardly been in any danger. But he went on to fly for the French, and was shot down and taken prisoner. You made out that he was a coward – how could you?’

‘My, my.’ She drew on her cigarette. ‘He
has
been opening his heart to you. And yes, I have heard that he didn’t have the easiest of times for a while – but as soon as he could, he travelled straight to America rather than return to England again. Don’t you find that odd?’

‘The war was over,’ I cried. ‘The war was
over
by the time he went to America. And in the prison camp, he suffered terribly. The things they did…’

‘So you think he’s a hero?’ she mused. ‘Then explain this to me – why on earth doesn’t he tell everyone about his oh-so-daring adventures with the French air force?’

I caught my breath, remembering what he’d said to me.
I betrayed them, Sophie.
‘Because he’d rather forget the past,’ I said. ‘He’d rather forget
you
, that’s for sure.’ She repelled me so much now with her expensive scent and her cigarettes that I was finding it hard to stay in the same room as her.

‘Poor Sophie.’ She spoke mockingly. ‘There you were, thinking you could hold on to the new Duke of Belfield, when your experience ranges from the role of scullery maid to playing the whore in Cally’s Chorus Line.’ She paused to stub out her cigarette then went on thoughtfully, ‘For a while I gave Ash exactly what he wanted.’ She smiled. ‘Sensual heights, sensual depths – dear little Sophie, you’ve no idea – and I enjoyed his rather astonishing virility. It’s quite true that once my tedious husband was out of the way, I wanted to be his wife – but not any longer, since he’s somewhat diminished himself by his dalliance with you.’

‘You’re wrong, as usual. Because I’ve left him.’

Her head jerked up. Her eyes narrowed.

‘It’s true,’ I said shortly. ‘And I’m going now. I just wanted you to realise that your stories about his cowardice are utterly false.’ I turned to make for the door.

‘Did he give you a good pay-off?’ she called. ‘I hope so, because how else are you going to live? Will you be selling off your memoirs,
My Lover the Duke?
No, of course not, because you still think you love him, don’t you? And if that’s really so, then you’d be as well to remember, Sophie,
that he’s losing money hand over fist with those precious coal mines of his – hasn’t he told you?’

I turned back to her slowly.

She smiled. ‘Oh, my dear, I don’t suppose he discussed his… business affairs with you – you’re for entertainment, that’s all. But you ought to know that his Midlands mines could bankrupt the entire Belfield estate. He should have done what the other owners did and either sell them off or shut them down, just as soon as the government passed them back to him – they’re a poisoned chalice.’

‘He has money,’ I broke in. ‘Money of his own.’

‘Ah, but he’s already spent most of that on setting Belfield Hall to rights. It’s an expensive business, having an estate to run.’ She paused. ‘There is an obvious solution open to him, and he knows it. He needs, more than ever, to make a rich marriage. Admittedly that will be easier for him, now that you say you’re out of his life. But you’ll have to pray the Press don’t find out about your friend Cora. Oh, my.’ Her eyes glittered. ‘I can just see the headlines: “Duke has affair with chorus girl whose former roommate is a sensation in Soho”…’

I felt the blood leave my face. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You don’t know?’ She looked amused. ‘Your Cora is working now at a “gentlemen’s club”.’ She gave the words a mocking emphasis.

‘How do you know? Have you been following her?’

‘Not personally; I employ people for such… distasteful tasks. She’s a dancer, I suppose – of sorts – but the ingenuity of these nightclub owners knows no bounds, my dear.’