Solsbury Hill A Novel (25 page)

Mead lifted her chin and kissed her.

There was a knock on the door and Eleanor startled. A kitchen girl called out to say she’d leave the tray and Mead stepped into the hall to get it.

“I ordered us some dinner,” he said. “There are lamb chops with greens, the requisite mashed potatoes, and some squash soup.”

“Yum,” she said.

“Let’s start with wine,” he said and opened the bottle of a French blend.

“Chocolate and plums,” she said, tasting it. “Some tobacco zing and a smidge of dirt.”

It was so rich, the wine, she could almost chew it in her
mouth. She tasted the color she saw on Mead’s lips, the deep red almost purple stain, and drank enough that her mouth was saturated with berries and ferment, and then she wanted to taste a wine-rich kiss with him.

He stood from his chair and came around the table, offered his hand, and there in the middle of the room she rose on her toes and tasted him, tasted the alcohol and behind that the berries and behind that she felt the warmth of down like a soft pillow it was safe to fall into. And she fell, and he drew her firmly against him so she could feel his blood surge and his heart pounding fast with desire. It was good he was strong, good he had a hold of her, because she’d have dropped to the floor: her knees giving way, her womb contracting.

She tried to think, tried to think about the lamb and the mashed potatoes under the silver domes on the plates on the table, but he moved forward with her. He’d moved beyond the tender kiss to one that suffused her even though his lips were his, and hers were hers, and their tongues were only barely finding each other. The pervasive feeling was separateness, even as she lost herself for moments. He nipped at her lips with his teeth and then his mouth opened just enough that she sensed how great it was.

He lifted her off the ground.

A man had never lifted her off the ground, she’d never allowed it. She’d always pressed her feet into the floor, but Mead lifted her up and she wrapped her legs around him. His
hands supported her as he held her in the middle of the room and his fingers moved against her bottom, pressed gently toward the middle point, where she was soft and pliable.

His right hand settled on her left hip bone, his left hand held her hand, and they waltzed in small circles around the room. He was bare-chested. She wore her thin top and lacy knickers. He hummed a Scottish tune into her ear, and it tickled but she didn’t squirm away from it, and soon the tickle became an unwinding thrill. With his fingers pressed against her spine, he guided her where he wanted her to go, made it easy for her to follow. Her hand slid below his lower back.

Tension. Taut and tender. Fragile and crazy with vigor. There were things to talk about. Through her brain snapped the thought like a flash of light in the back of the eye: they had things to talk about. They knew enough to be dangerous to each other, enough that embarking on a journey high on that bed, a bed so high above the ground there were three stairs to climb to it, could prove unwise. It flashed through her mind as the dancing became more like dervish swirling and she pressed, climbed up the front of him. He kissed her lips and neck and then at her ear exhaled something with glittery wings that made its way down her spine. She’d never felt so wild, on the inside.

On the outside, he lifted her onto the bed and watched as she pulled the thin tank off over her head. He seemed older,
looked at her as if he might be choosing something. The right thing. He tasted one breast and then the other, dropped onto his elbows and framed her face in his hands. He held her still and moved slowly.

In the morning, they’d taken a bath and were standing in front of the mirror. She watched as he kissed her neck, then draped a linen towel around her shoulders.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen herself in a mirror.

He loved the taste of her, he whispered.

They looked beautiful, side by side: her long blond hair and pale fresh skin, his dark hair, tanned flesh, and structured body. Tall and taller, there was something simple and balanced between them. And she felt a wave of sadness inside the pleasure.

In the weeks she’d been in Yorkshire, she’d slowed down enough to feel. And this gesture, draping her with a plain soft towel when she was damp and slightly cold, reminded her how she had coped and set herself to the beat and rhythm so easy to fall into in New York City. Moving and producing and clipping through on pavement with high heels.

“Do you feel like an orphan?” she asked him. As it tumbled out she heard the empty sound of the word, but before she had a chance to explain he answered.

“I am an orphan. A foundling, really. Always have been. My father lives without me in the north, and Alice was more than a mother to me but still not my mother. I am an orphan.”

He cupped her breasts in his hands and kissed her again.

She reached her arms behind to pull him closer.

“Sometimes I think we all are orphans, really,” he said. He watched her face in the long, cloudy mirror. “But that might be sour grapes in me. My father couldn’t raise me after my mother died, but they loved each other deeply, I can feel it inside. Maybe Alice told me, but still I feel it. That’s all there is, for me. I’ve never known it any other way.” Mead’s breath changed. She felt it through her bare spine against his chest. “Now you,” he said.

“My parents were good to me.” She caught hold of Mead’s eyes in the mirror. “But it’s weird not having them. My father disappeared inside himself or something else after my mom died, but I’ve been making the best of it. Because they were good, they were good to me . . .”

“And the good of it shows on you.” He smoothed his hands across her belly and held her hips.

As if the molecules of her flesh and soul had rearranged, she felt open and clear. Though light-headed from a long night of lovemaking, her head spinning with remnant desire, she felt awakened as if some combination of the moors and Mead had stirred the sleeping soul at the base of her spine.

“I think my mother might have had some kind of crazy love,” she said.

“This kind?” Mead whispered just below her ear and, as he whispered, his lips brushed that stirring skin at the side of her neck.

Now Eleanor turned and peppered Mead’s face with kisses and his eyes and then his neck. “Maybe this kind,” she whispered amid kisses, “yes, maybe. Maybe I
am
at a crossroads. Maybe I’m choosing.”

In the narrow space between the mirror and the tub they stood. She rested her cheek against his chest. “My mother came back here for a reason. I remember the day she left, that last day. I didn’t remember for long time, but I’ve been remembering things, while I’ve been here. She was happy to be leaving and I thought she shouldn’t be. Shouldn’t be leaving and I begrudged her it, that day. She was looking forward to something.”

He could see her well-rounded bare bottom in the mirror behind her and the way her spine held strong and stable amid the fall of blond ringlets and curls.

Her skin was still damp. She sat down on the edge of the tub and said, “Emily made a choice to stay with her brother and it killed her. Catherine, maybe she made the wrong choice.”

“She never let go of Heathcliff,” he said.

“And that killed her.” Eleanor was trembling.

Mead started kissing her brow, to quieten her.

“Do you think I can choose and not choose the wrong thing?”

Mead wrapped a robe around Eleanor’s bare shoulders and sat beside her. “May I tell you something?”

She nodded, tears on her cheeks and a solid bewilderment in her eyes.

“There’s a love here that can be transporting, it’s true,” he said. “The moors are strong and fierce and wild. And, fine woman, so are you. But it takes more than crazy love to withstand the moors. Crazy love on these moors will kill you. It can’t be ’bout choosing the right love, my love. It’s all about choosing yourself, finding what’s true inside you.”

Wiping away tears, she said cheerfully, “I know that. I know what it takes to withstand love on the moors.”

“Do you?” He stared into her face.

Her head bobbed with a few short bobs. “Mm-hmm. I do.”

“Well, then. That sounds good.” He paused between his words, slowing things down, making them last. “Would you mind if I carried you back to that bed and had my way with you?”

I
n the kitchen at Trent Hall, when they arrived home, they found a note Gwen had left in bright red pen on butcher paper so Mead wouldn’t miss it. She reminded him of a meeting he had with the rapeseed buyer in Thirsk.

In the aftermath of lovemaking they were floating half-high in air. They’d never got around to eating their dinner
the night before, so they scrambled some eggs and ate day-old biscuits, then Mead headed off to get his things together for the day’s journey.

Just after the back door slammed, the phone in the downstairs hall rang, loud and shrill, seven or eight times before Eleanor found it and grabbed it.

“Trent Hall,” she said into the big old Bakelite phone.

“Is there an Eleanor Abbott?” Gladys’ voice was tentative.

“This is me, Gladys.”

“Eleanor, my God. You answered the phone. I’ve been trying e-mails and finally remembered you gave me this number. Just in time. I’ve got news. Harrods wants a big old piece of you, and I set up a meeting, was just about to cancel it, but great, there you are. Can you make it?”

“Today?”

“I set the meeting for tomorrow, but I can change it. They’ll send a car for you, wherever you are.”

“No, God, I’ll take the train.” A wild shift in thinking, she’d lost track of time. “Is everything going okay, there? Production and . . .”

“Absolutely great. You doing okay?”

“I am, actually.”

“You sound good. Your voice sounds good and a little English the way you answered the phone. So you’ll make it to the city? Listen, I’ll make a res at some hotel and text you with it.”

“Just overnight. I’ve got to get back to a few things here.”

“Right. Just tomorrow, one meeting. It’s not even necessary, but since you’re there . . .”

“It’s mind-bogglingly great. Harrods, Barneys, this is just insane.”

“Just what you deserve.”

“Thanks, Glad. I better get going.”

“You coming back soon?”

“Hmm, define soon.”

It took three minutes to fold her few things and put them in the suitcase. The sky was bright with new winter light outside her windows and the ground had a thin slick cover of frost. She kicked the suitcase closed and went to the barn-library to find him, but Mead’s car was already gone.

Granley took her to the local train and in York she changed to an express that went almost straight to the heart of London. She wore the only suit she had, the suit she’d worn in York with Miles, but had the taxi drop her at a shop in Knightsbridge, near the hotel, where she bought some fancy, high-heeled pumps for the meeting the next day.

After touring Harrods’ many halls, the buyer took Eleanor to a local stand, where they ate fish and chips in a cone of newsprint. The head buyer was almost as young as Eleanor and her energy was high. She wanted Eleanor to understand that a deal with Harrods was “massive,” that her line was “brilliant,” and that everyone who’d seen it was “keen” and
excited as hell. Eleanor was already unaccustomed to such electrified enthusiasm. Though she could hardly believe it was happening, what she’d dreamed of for as long as she could remember, it was odd to have it come at the exact moment when she cared about it least of all.