Into Temptation (Spoils of Time 03) (14 page)

‘Well – good,’ said Elspeth, wondering at the same time how Celia might react to being referred to as her gran. She didn’t ask him if he had had any more conversations with Celia about his ambitions; the ground was much too dangerous. But she did know he had read a few manuscripts for her and sent reports back.

‘Anyway, like I said, I can put up with it all because I love you. How about you?’

He had said it again. It was – well, it was literally shocking. She felt dazed with it, dazed and incredibly excited and happy at the same time. She stared at him.

‘You mean what do I have to put up with?’ she said, playing for time, still not daring to quite believe it.

‘No, you fool. I meant how do you feel about me? Now I’ve made my confession. I thought you’d go all doolally when I told you.’

‘I did,’ she said finally. ‘Absolutely doolally. I’m just a bit – well, surprised.’

‘I can’t think why. I’ve known it for months. Where’s your female intuition, Miss Warwick?’

‘A bit tentative,’ she said. ‘And why did you wait so long to tell me?’

‘I didn’t want to distract you,’ he said, ‘from your studies.’

‘Oh really?’ she said laughing.

‘But they’re over now. Come on, Elspeth. Do you reciprocate this fine emotion I’m confessing to?’

‘Oh – you know. I quite like you. Considering everything.’ She smiled at him, reached up, stroking his hair, allowing emotion to break through. ‘Oh Keir, of course I love you. I’ve loved you for – well, ever since I first got to know you. I love you very, very much. I can’t believe how much I love you.’

‘Well that’s all fine then,’ he said, his voice filled with satisfaction. ‘But why did you not tell me before?’

‘How could I? It’s for the man to say it first, isn’t it? Only fast girls – well, take the initiative.’

‘Oh aye? Well, I’ve often wished you a bit faster, Elspeth. As you know.’

‘I do know,’ she said.

‘Now come on, and give me a kiss.’

She did; and even in her frail condition, the familiar surge of sexual feeling for him invaded her, pushing into her consciousness, into every area of her body. He felt it, pulled away from her and smiled into her eyes.

‘I really do love you,’ he said again.

She kissed him again; felt his hands moving over her, to the places that were allowed (her breasts, her legs – to a certain point), then to the ones that were not (her stomach, her thighs), felt too frail and too happy to protest. And then suddenly, his fingers were inside her pants, seeking out, with infinite care and tenderness, a place that – ‘Oh God,’ she said, as desire whipped through her suddenly, out of control. ‘Oh God, Keir, no, please don’t, please please—’

‘For God’s sake, woman,’ he said, in between kissing her mouth, her throat, her breasts. ‘For God’s sake. You’re twenty-one. You’ve finished at university. I love you. You love me. You’re not some silly little girl. What are you keeping it for, Elspeth, what?’

And what indeed, she wondered, what? When it was what she wanted, so terribly terribly wanted, and it was true what he said, she was a woman, about to take her place in the world, an adult, a successful, sophisticated adult. Why on earth was she messing about like this, like a silly teenager, when the man she wanted and who wanted her had just told her he loved her.

‘I don’t know,’ she said quite humbly. ‘I really don’t know. Just – be careful, Keir, won’t you? Be very, very careful.’

‘I’ll be careful,’ he said. ‘I promise.’ And yet again, he told her he loved her.

He was careful; he hardly hurt her at all. And careful in other ways too, turning away from her, putting on the – well, the thing that was going to keep her safe. She turned away too, at that point, kept her eyes shut. She didn’t want to see. Even at this stage of things, it seemed a bit embarrassing. Careful too, in the time he took, the long, long time leading her into her excitement until she could hardly wait, hardly bear it. Entering her very slowly, very gently. ‘Tell me when to stop,’ he kept saying, ‘and I will.’ And he did; when finally he was there, in her, and it was lovely, so very lovely, she felt herself easing around him, her entire being concentrated there, in that place, and he was pushing and urging her, and she felt herself moving with him, moving somewhere she didn’t quite recognise but somehow forwards, into greater and greater pleasure, and she suddenly felt a great rush of triumph, of joy at her own courage and the fact that she could feel such pleasure, and pulled away from him, looked up into his eyes.

‘I love you so,’ she said, and ‘I love you too,’ he said, ‘so much.’ And then they moved on into another country altogether.

He was very skilful; she could see that. Even in the sweetness, the gathering and breaking of her first orgasm – ‘Not many people accomplish that,’ he said, smiling at her as she lay back, sweating and panting with relief, ‘not the first time’ – she couldn’t help wondering where that skill had come from and whether it mattered. She decided it didn’t.

‘Really?’

‘Really. I’d say you were a natural, Miss Warwick. Well, I knew you would be,’ he added, with a touch of complacency.

‘Did you?’

‘I did. Bet your gran was a bit of a goer,’ he added, ‘in her day.’

‘Keir! What a thing to say. And how can you possibly know?’

‘Same way I knew about you. Masculine intuition. Now give me a kiss and let’s have a wee kip. After that, I fancy you’ll need feeding. How would you like to have supper at The Trout with your lover?’

Fancy me having a lover, she thought, how very grown up. She smiled sleepily at him and fell straight to sleep.

‘Mummy? I thought you’d want to know as soon as possible. Elspeth’s got a First. She’d have phoned you herself, but she’s with a friend in Devon and didn’t like to ask if she could make another long-distance call.’

‘Oh my darling, how marvellous. I am so very proud of her. As you must be, and Boy of course. Give her my best love. I can’t wait to see her. Tell her I’m writing. Goodness, it reminds me of the day Barty got hers.’

It would do, thought Venetia savagely, she never missed an opportunity to remind them of it. And how they had not got Firsts. None of them. Not Giles, and of course Kit had never finished at Oxford. Just bloody Barty.

And then she struggled to remind herself that they all owed Barty a lot. This never failed to half amuse and half irritate her either, that Barty, who had grown up owing them everything had turned the tables so beautifully – and sweetly – on them all.

‘Now darling, I’m coming to London next week. So boring up here, and I want to go to Wimbledon. Bunny’s off to Henley as well—’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘Of course not. Dreadful, his friends. They just get drunk and talk about the old days. And he rows in some veterans race, it’s all too embarrassing.’

‘Oh I see.’ Poor Bunny. ‘How was Cairo?’

‘Very hot and very dull. The whole thing was a disappointment.’

‘Even the cruise up the Nile?’

‘Oh absolutely. I told Bunny I didn’t want to do that, but he insisted, and of course I was right. And there were the most dreadful people on the boat – that reminds me, Venetia, what about Elspeth’s young man?’

‘What about him? Oh, he got a First too.’

‘How splendid. Good for him. With all those disadvantages. Just shows what Oxford can do. But – shopkeepers. Who would have thought it possible once? How times have changed. I might write him a little note too. He’d be thrilled, I’m sure. What are his plans?’

‘I really don’t know, Mummy. You’ll have to ask him yourself.’

‘Am I going to see him?’

‘If you’re coming to London next week. He’s coming to stay for a few days. Then Elspeth is going up there, and they’re going walking in the Highlands with a group of friends.’

‘A group of friends? I hope you’re sure about that, Venetia. That they’re not going off on their own.’

‘Of course I’m sure. I trust Elspeth absolutely.’

‘How very unwise of you,’ said Celia.

Celia travelled down to London a few days later, spent a few days shopping and visiting and then found herself sitting gazing out of the window at Cheyne Walk, wondering what she could do next. She was hating this; absolutely hating it now. The days of idleness, of too much time, time to read, to shop, to lunch with her friends, to do all the things she had thought she might enjoy. Even riding had lost some of its charms, no longer a stolen pleasure, eased out of an impossibly tight schedule; she had been down to Ashingham for a few days in the spring to stay with her brother, and had ridden almost every day. On the last she had returned to London early, saying she was tired, despite the fact that tiredness was the thing she was most impatient of in other people.

Travelling with Lord Arden, so exciting the first time, moderately pleasing the second, had become a bore on the third. She never wanted to get on another plane or ship or train: unless it had a clear purpose, not just another few weeks filled with vapid amusement. She had always loved business trips, with sightseeing snatched out of the working day, each place more intensely interesting for its professional associations, the experience given a tautness and – well, a point. But just looking at places had come to depress her. And she was faced with an eternity of it, as far as she could see.

She had moved into Cheyne Walk ‘for a few days’, her excuse being that Lord Arden was having several friends to stay for Henley week, and the staff needed a clear run to get it ready. She doubted if anyone would believe this, but she didn’t actually care. Always reluctant to admit her mistakes, and confronted with the biggest one in her life, she found herself careless of people’s awareness of it. It had been a piece both of personal and professional misjudgement.

And she missed Kit – and Sebastian – almost more than she could bear. She and Sebastian had never been apart so long, there had never been more than a few weeks when they had not met, talked, just been – close. She had never thought it would come to this. Some days it was a physical pain, the missing him: on others, a dreadful bleak nothingness. And she was missing Lyttons more dreadfully than she would ever have believed. The ebb and flow of the publishing year, the preparation of catalogues, the publication of the spring and autumn lists, the commissioning of covers, the panic over late manuscripts, it was all so ingrained into her psyche that she could not look out on a summer morning without thinking of a fresh crop of titles, or on an autumn mist without fretting over the cover of a Christmas catalogue. The only thing she still did was read the unsolicited manuscripts that came in. She had found herself insisting on it, had said that was the one thing she was not prepared to relinquish entirely – and had passed some of them on to Keir Brown, whose reports had impressed her – but it hardly filled a great deal of her time.

And so here she was, in the second year of her new life, knowing that if it went on much longer she would die of boredom. A somewhat convoluted thought, she reflected, but who could be surprised at that? Senility seemed to be stalking her as closely as her own shadow.

She picked up the copy of the
Publishers’ Gazette
which had arrived that morning, and leafed through it as she drank her coffee. Pretty poor stuff it was, she thought, grimacing, like everything else that Mrs Hardwicke produced: virtually tasteless. If she was going to spend much time at Cheyne Walk she would get rid of her, and hire a new cook-housekeeper. How absurd it was to expect one person to do the job of both, she should never have allowed herself to be talked into that one . . .

‘Oh my God,’ she said aloud, and put her coffee cup down, read the item again.

WESLEY SIGNS UP ‘DAZZLING’ NEW NOVELIST

David Johnson, the author of
Lock and Key
which is tipped to win this year’s Somerset Maugham award, has been signed by Wesley, who continue to make waves in every area of publishing. Johnson, whose work was described last year as ‘dazzling’ in a rare tribute by Michael Joseph, had so far eluded any long-term arrangement.
Lock and Key
was published by Macmillan, but although several houses have offered for his second book (so far untitled), he had not signed with any of them. However, his agent, Curtis Brown, now announce a three-book deal with Wesley.

‘They excel in every field,’ Johnson told the
Gazette
earlier this week. ‘They seem to me to have the most imaginative editors, the most forceful publishers, the most energetic sales force. I am very happy with the deal.’

Johnson is only one of a series of young writers who have gone to Wesley; starting with the defection of young Kit Lytton from the family house, Caroline Barker has moved from Macmillan with her sagas, and Ann Yorke, the brilliant young crime writer, from Michael Joseph. Who next?

‘Who next indeed?’ said Celia aloud, picking up the phone, and dialling Lyttons number.

‘Jay? Have you seen the
Gazette
? Well, you should have done. Go and get it, find page eleven. Didn’t I tell you to sign that boy up last autumn? Now look where he’s gone, to Wesley, of all places. And Ann Yorke too, I told you she could be bought from Joseph. Does nothing at all get done unless I do it myself? For God’s sake, Jay, are you running a publishing house or a bookbinding warehouse? I warn you, at this rate you’ll be losing Nancy Arthure as well, I heard she was very unhappy about her last cover and indeed her sales. And as for Clementine Hartley, I heard she and Kit had lunch last week. Did you know about that? Yes, of course they’re friends, but I don’t suppose their conversation was entirely confined to the weather and Clementine’s forthcoming holiday.

‘I have to tell you I’m very seriously considering coming in tomorrow and calling a meeting myself. What? Well I know that, but I am still on the board, I would remind you, and I still hold shares. I don’t exactly relish seeing their value dwindle to nothing. I cannot believe you have allowed those two, not just one but two, slip through your fingers. What is going on there, Jay, any work or any thinking at all? I’m sorry? Well I’m afraid it seems to be rather a lot to do with me. In fact, I would suggest you do call a meeting for tomorrow morning and I shall attend it, as it is my perfect right to do. Yes. Yes, please do. I shall hold the morning free. Oh, all right, and the following two mornings as well. Thank you.’