Embrace Me (10 page)

‘It’s such a grand day – the sunshine and the warm breeze … why don’t we walk down by the stream? I’ve yet to do that,’ replied Harry, starting for the door. He could feel Havelock’s irritation and didn’t give a damn.

They hardly spoke to one another as they walked through the village and along the footpath by the stream. Gerry Havelock appeared to have calmed down somewhat by the time they arrived at a bench where he suggested they should sit. It was an ideal scene: the opulence of the woods on the other side of the stream, the sounds of birds singing happily in the trees. A fisherman in waders standing mid-stream and casting for an elusive blue trout. The scent of the undergrowth and a field of bluebells was a treat for Harry. It stirred his senses and he was once more aware of how special a place this was.

Gerry Havelock broke the silence. ‘I should be in London, at a meeting in the city.’

‘Then why are you not there, Mr Havelock?’

‘Don’t play coy with me, Chief Inspector! You know damned well why. After I stalked out of our meeting this morning and I thought my exit could be misconstrued. You might believe I dashed away because I aided and abetted Olivia in her escape.’

‘Would you like to tell me why I might have thought that?’

‘Because I couldn’t bear to be questioned about her and this mess she has got herself into. I was rude and I fled. Your invasion of our privacy was bound to uncover deeply buried secrets I thought I’d never have to face again. Secrets that have left scars on me and my family, and all inflicted by Olivia.

‘If she had some to Sefton Under Edge for help it would have been to me and no one else. I didn’t want you to know that, nor did I want to talk to you about Olivia in my wife’s presence. It took me and my family years to get over that particular relationship. We thought we were over her but still she remains under the surface of our skin, and I suppose she always will. I have sought you out because I want to make certain you believe me when I tell you neither I nor my family had anything to do with Olivia’s escape.’

The men remained silent for a while. Gerry Havelock lowered his gaze and placed one hand on his forehead. Harry watched
him for some minutes. Was it just the man’s ego that demanded Harry should believe he was the only one to whom Olivia would have gone for help or was it true?

‘Why should I believe you? Practically every person I have interviewed has said the same thing: she would have gone to them, but she didn’t. If you want me to believe you, you will have to tell me why you and none of the others?’

‘This is off the record, for your ears only and told to you because I want you to stop rooting about in the secret lives of the residents of Sefton Under Edge.

‘I have a son called Raife. He fell in love with Olivia when they were in their early-teens. My wife Cimmy was charmed by Olivia, and mother and son saw to it that she spent a great deal of time with us. Olivia was addictive – one only needed a taste of her to crave more. Raife was hopelessly besotted with Olivia who could twist him round her little finger, while Cimmy thought she had found the daughter she’d never had and was besotted with her. She taught her to garden, Cimmy’s passion, how to be charitable and work for the underprivileged. I was the father figure she’d never had, as well as the dashing, sophisticated, older man she craved. Soon she had us all playing the roles she wanted us to fill in her life.

‘One day I drove her into London. There was such tension between us. I wanted her badly, as I had never wanted another woman. But she was not a woman, she was a tantalising young girl. Once on the outskirts of the city she slipped along the seat closer to me and ran her hand up the inside of my thigh. I thought I was going to explode with lust for her.

‘“I’m in love with you, Gerry, have been for a very long time,” she told me. “I think about sex with you constantly. I’ve seen that same look in your eyes. It’s always there. I love Raife and Cimmy but I can’t bear not to be made love to by you. I want you to take me somewhere where we can have sex, let our passion fly. Please don’t tell me I’ve made a fool of myself.” And tears came into her eyes.

‘We found a small hotel where no one would know us. I have never known sex such as I had with Olivia. Her young flesh, her love of all things sexual to which I introduced her … we drove
each other into a kind of erotic madness. After that first time in London neither of us could keep our hands off the other. We would have sex in the wood, in the garden, in my bed. It was always exciting and dangerous because Cimmy would be somewhere in the house, or Raife or both of them. We would have sex several times a week, anywhere we could find. In my office, for instance, with the door locked and my employees working outside. We longed to spend a night together and when we finally did Olivia wept because she felt guilty and confessed she had fallen in love with me. She wanted more of me than I could give her. She had begun having sex with my son in the hope he would be as thrilling a lover as his father. It was marvellous, she boasted to me, but still she wanted me, and the stable life that Cimmy had. She loved us as a family and had never meant to turn our lives upside down.

‘The pain of loving me got to be too much for her and so Olivia walked out on me. I will never forget the look on her face when she told me, “You are an impossible love. I deserve better than that and so do you.”

‘We saw each other one more time. I told her I wanted to leave Cimmy for her but had not the courage, and could not bear the scandal. I begged her to give me time to ease out of my marriage. But by then she saw the way how we felt for one another as tawdry and fled from me, from Raife, from Cimmy. A light went out of our lives. We each loved her in our own way. When Olivia fled from us and our lives fell to pieces we each came to understand what had happened. We had deceived each other, mother, father and son. Had been disloyal to everything we were to each other, and all for love of a young innocent girl.

‘I never saw her alone again. I tried but she would never allow it. The hunger and love I felt for Olivia never went away. I know it was the same for her. She told me so once when I met her by accident in London. It was in an art gallery in the West End. She looked at me and sadness came into her eyes. “It was the best, our impossible love. It will never go away from me, no matter what time or distance is placed between us,” she told me.

‘“If ever you need me, for anything, promise you will come to me?” I told her then. She replied, “I would go to no one else.”
Then she walked away. So, you see, Detective Chief Inspector, that’s how I know Olivia would have come to me. She would never have approached someone else.’

‘And you never saw her or heard from her that night or at any time since the murder of the prince?’ asked Harry.

‘No! May I go now?’ asked Gerry Havelock as he stood up, visibly upset by the memory of what he had lost.

Harry studied the distress on the man’s face. He felt no pity for him but he did believe his story. ‘Yes,’ he said. And Gerry Havelock walked away, miserable, bereft, but confident of the love he had lost.

Harry sat on the bench for some time thinking about Olivia. What chance had she for a stable relationship with a man when she’d started off as a teenager with a bastard like Havelock? Had he resisted her, not taken her on and taught her the delights of sex, would she have turned out differently? It was an interesting question but unanswerable of course.

There seemed to have been a change in the course of the investigation. His suspects were more co-operative and yet not one of them had volunteered a single clue as to what had happened on the night of the murder that might help Harry to catch his quarry. It was quite extraordinary how this young and beautiful woman affected every person she touched, changed them in some way, set them free as they never could have been without her. She was theirs and they would never drive her from their hearts and minds. In just the short time Harry and his team had been in the village, turning the place and the people who lived there upside down with their questions, there’d been signs that they now accepted and believed that Lady Olivia was gone from their lives forever. With the gifts she had so generously given them, they were now striking out on their own to make richer lives for themselves.

Yes, Lady Olivia Cinders was indeed a fascinating, seductive creature. Harry doubled his resolve to find her and bring her to justice.

Chapter 10

Marguerite was standing by the window of her library, thinking about Olivia, her crime and disappearance. Olivia had always had a sense of self-worth that was awesome because it had not been contrived, she had never had to work on it. She was born with an innate love of self which was why it was so easy for her to love and leave people. She assumed all her friends were like her; when love and lust had run their course, they could always move on. It was the feminist’s dream, true independence, utter non-dependence on a man to make her a valid woman.

Marguerite thought about herself, who and what she had made of her life, now, at the age of forty. A don at Oxford and an international media figure, an author writing scholarly books on American art of the twentieth century and its importance as a sociological phenomenon – not bad going for a lower-middle-class Chinese American girl whose great-great-grandfather had been a labourer on the first railroad crossing from the American mid-west to San Francisco.

All the generations of Chen women before her had served as passive wives, slaves; the many aunts and cousins, nieces who worked for their families and their men, had lived in two worlds: the one their husbands and Chinese family demanded and the intimate relations they had with their female relations, their only social contact that enriched their lives.

It had been the Chen women who had scraped together the money to supplement the scholarships that Marguerite had won to attend Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Love and pride for Marguerite, who could speak for them, live out their fantasies of rising above their station, had given them a
tremendous sense of self-worth. It had changed their lives. They owed each other a great deal.

Her father: a gruff, mostly silent man found little he liked about his beautiful daughter. A man more indifferent to her and her sisters and brothers than unkind, she loved him nevertheless; mostly because he was as kind and generous as he could be to the family, and he supported anyone who needed his help. The sadness was that he did not want his family to rise above themselves; he would only be happy with his children as long as they followed his footsteps as a fruit and produce seller in a small shop in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

Marguerite walked from the window to look in the long narrow mirror framed in a sumptuous pattern of inlaid mother of pearl. It was Damascus work of the eighteenth century and purchased in the very city it was named after when lecturing there at the university for a semester.

She saw in the mirror a woman with a sharp, quick intelligence to match her piquant, exotic looks. A lady with boundless energy, she was analysing herself because she was a woman who believed that people were not always what they seemed. That you must look deep into the soul really to know someone. Even yourself.

Marguerite ran her fingers through her silky black hair and was not displeased when she looked at herself objectively: chic but always subtle, an academic with gloss, impressive certainly. She liked the exotic quality about herself that enchanted people, and enjoyed her own charisma.

She walked back to the open window and sat on the sill, mind drifting back to that first time she and Olivia went to bed together. Too much champagne and cocaine for two women without inhibitions and who were overwhelmed with lust for one another. To this day Marguerite did not quite know how it happened, who was the aggressor or even if there was one. They had made love to each other. It had been thrilling to have sex with a woman. So different. A gentler kind of sex, the other woman’s body as lovely as Venus. It had happened, it had been another sexual sensation, and Marguerite would not have missed it for the world. But they were not lesbians. Both women simply
craved sex, erotic games, and preferred men to women as a rule.

Everyone in Sefton Under Edge and Sefton Park was changing now that Olivia was gone. Marguerite and the others had to come to terms with the fact that she had killed a man, her lover, for whatever reason, and might never be found. Marguerite had invited the detectives for dinner because she wanted to discuss the case with them, have it all out in the open and be done with the horror that had touched their lives.

She saw two figures walking across the park towards her house and recognised Neville Brett and Angelica. She waved to them. Her heart began to race and she felt warm and lustful. Seeing Neville always made her feel that way. For months she had been fighting her attraction to him. It was no secret they had feelings for each other. When in the same room they could hardly keep their hands off one another. They created that special kind of chemistry that exists in dreams but rarely with another human being.

They were in love with each other, the serious kind of in love that lasts for eternity. It had happened to them when Angelica brought him to Sefton Park for the first time. At first Marguerite thought it was only lust and tried to ignore it. But after half a dozen meetings with him she understood that she was in trouble. It was more than lust, it was a oneness she was feeling with him which she had never known with anyone before. She tried to run away from it. Marguerite even went to Angelica and told her she had a positively girlish crush on Neville.

Now, watching them walking arm in arm towards her, she remembered what Angelica had said. ‘I adore him, Marguerite, we have a wonderful time with one another but we are not in love, that’s the sadness of our relationship. We’re best friends who like to have outrageous sex together. I see the way he looks at you, how he adores you from afar. One day we’ll part and because we know that, I see other men, date them, bed them, and never talk about it to Neville. He does the same with other women and is enough of a gentleman to keep quiet about it. I think you should know that he’s worth having a crush on but he will never stand for being made one of your transient lovers.’

That was what worried Marguerite. Neville Brett meant commitment, marriage, a life of togetherness, an erotic closeness she would never want to lose. In fact, she would fight to keep him. Her love for Neville made a mockery of all the things she had been preaching for the last twenty years, most of all her thesis that it was not necessary for a woman to be attached to a man for her to feel fulfilled and take her rightful place in society.

She had been to bed with Neville nearly six months ago. They had shared an erotic experience neither had wanted to end. For three days they hardly left her bed; when they did it was merely to eat or to walk in her rose garden. During their time together they gave themselves up to each other and fell very deeply into love.

It had been Marguerite who back-pedalled as fast as she could away from Neville after those three miraculous days. She moved on to what she knew she felt safe with: handsome young studs in awe of who and what she was.

She could see Neville and Angelica’s faces quite clearly now. They waved at her as they approached the house. How handsome he looked, and how young and beautiful Angelica was. Marguerite’s mind slipped back to the time after she and Neville had had their remarkable tryst. There had been flowers, so many flowers, with romantic cards telling her how much he loved her. His proposal of marriage was made over the telephone out of desperation because she would not see him. Marguerite rejected him, and instead of telling the truth, saying how much she loved him and wanted him for then and always, she gave him the same old rhetoric with which she had influenced and inspired women all over the world.

She well remembered how he had answered her; in fact she had a difficult time preventing those words from ringing in her head: ‘You got it wrong, my dear. What you have been preaching has been brilliant for the unloved woman, the one who has to stand alone without the things she wants, and made those women strong and happy in their lives. But what about the millions of women who have found love with other human beings? They have no need to build walls around themselves and
you forgot that. I’ll wait, take your time. Do some fancy footwork and free yourself from your rhetoric. You don’t have to live as you preached. You have a man who loves you now. Don’t be afraid to experience that love.

Her memories were interrupted by Angelica’s voice. ‘Hello. We’ve come to invite you to lunch. It seems like ages since I’ve seen you.’

Neville gazed into Marguerite’s eyes and raised her hand to his lips. The magic between them was still there, Marguerite realised in confusion.

Angelica asked Neville to help her and stepped in through the window, to sit on the sill facing Marguerite. Neville watched these two women who had changed his life. His admiration for them and the manner in which they approached living, their accomplishments, sense of fun and generosity of spirit, had added a new dimension to his life. He wished that Olivia could be with them but he knew that that was an impossibility, they would never see her again. ‘Any news?’ he asked Marguerite.

‘No. I suppose you’ve heard we’re all being questioned by New Scotland Yard detectives? In fact, I’ve invited them to dinner tonight because I’m fed up with them snooping around and getting nowhere. I intend to ask them for the truth about what happened on the night Olivia allegedly murdered the prince, and then I think we should all be open and above board with them about her. How losing her is affecting all our lives, so that they will understand there is nothing for them here and go away and leave us to mourn the loss of our greatest friend. None of us will ever be the same without her.

‘Will you come to dinner tonight? September and James are coming. It’s going to be rather like laying a ghost. I think we should all be here so that once it’s done we can get on with our lives.’

Angelica had gone pale. Neville took her hand and stroked it. She sighed. ‘I know you’re right, Marguerite. We have to have lives apart from Olivia. Of course we’ll come. I think I’d like to go riding now.’ And she slipped from the window sill to stand on the lawn next to Neville.

‘I’ll come along with you,’ he offered.

‘I’d rather ride alone, if you don’t mind. Why don’t you stay with Marguerite and both of you stop being so silly, wasting your lives apart from each other.

‘Marguerite, if we’re going to pick up our lives and do something with them, you two had better come to terms with love. We’ll all be the better for it.’

She turned to Neville, slid into his arms and kissed him passionately on the lips. Then stepping away from him, she told him, ‘I knew one day it was to be goodbye for us, my dearest lover-friend-mentor, but I did not know how or when it would happen. I suppose this is as good a time as any, and the way you and Marguerite love each other as good a reason. Let’s skip lunch at the house. I’ll see you here for dinner – the Buchanans in full strength.’ And taking Marguerite’s hand in hers, she smiled and squeezed it. Before they could say a word she was gone.

‘Angelica constantly amazes me. It’s always so easy for her to do the right thing at the right time. She’s that way in the operating theatre as well, always totally focused, inspiringly swift and meticulous. She was born to be a great surgeon. I am so lucky to have met you all. I had forgotten how rich and exciting life and love can be,’ Neville murmured.

Marguerite could find nothing to say in reply. She was too overwhelmed by what had just happened. She watched Neville pull himself through the window. A sense of oneness with him wrapped itself around her and she understood that life was giving her a second chance. She and Neville were two vigorous people who would not take from each other’s lives, only add to them. They were successful, dedicated people in their work and neither would infringe on the other. Love would serve only to sustain their working lives. She was no longer the ambitious twenty-one-year-old who got burned by a hasty marriage to a lazy, macho vulgarian that ended five weeks after the wedding. The experience had turned her off marriage for good. Or so she had thought.

Only when she had met Neville had she realised she was tired of the young men who constantly came and went in her sexual life. Only with him did she at last see what she had missed by not
marrying and having children. Fortunately Neville had been more clear-sighted and generous in waiting so patiently for her to come to her senses.

Now Marguerite threw herself into his arms and kissed him all over his face. He swept her up and carried her through the house and up to her bedroom.

There were no words to express the violent passion, the excitement of giving in to love and commitment. Two hearts that beat as one, bodies that felt as if they had been flayed. Wherever they were touched and kissed, licked and sucked, every nerve end was alive with lust. Thought vanished. Naked, they kissed each other’s bodies, licked them, fondled them with hungry mouths, tongues, roving hands and fingers. Neville licked between her labia, sucked on them, nibbled them. While he made a feast of her cunt, she came and her copious orgasm was as nectar to him.

Marguerite lost control of herself and called out, howled her pleasure. She was in that place of no return. So deep in bliss she had to fight to stay alive. To die in orgasm was at the same time to live for a few seconds on another plane. Neville adored her in that state. He turned her round and put her on her knees to take her from behind in deep thrusts while he played with her breasts and tweaked her nipples, licking her back with his tongue. She came again – uncontrollable multiple orgasms that took her breath away. She called out to God between screams of bliss. Lust gone wild.

When Neville came he called out again and again, thanking God for Marguerite. They collapsed on the bed and twined themselves in each other’s arms. Marguerite scooped their lust from her cunt as if it were a golden vessel and together they licked from her palm and sucked her fingers. This was more than nectar, it was the elixir of life. They were born again, together and forever.

Harry walked into the pub which was deserted except for Jethroe at the bar. ‘What will you drink?’ he asked.

‘A glass of fresh lemonade, if that’s possible?’

‘Certainly is.’

Harry watched the publican make the drink and was impressed when Jethroe added sugar syrup rather than granulated sugar that never seemed to melt. Jethroe pulled a pint of bitter for himself and placed it in front of him on the bar. ‘How are things going, sir?’ he asked.