Summer's Awakening (32 page)

'I was both,' she said stiffly. 'What else would you expect? Did you really suppose I should enjoy it?'

His eyes glinted, laughing at her. 'I did,' he answered softly.

Before she realised his intention, he put his hands on her shoulders and drew her firmly towards him.

'Maybe you'll like this better,' he said, as he bent his head.

Summer recoiled and attempted to turn her face away, but his right hand came up from her shoulder and his palm turned her face back to his. She had a last glimpse of the amusement in his eyes before his mouth touched down on hers and, instinctively, she closed her eyes.

There was nothing boisterous about this kiss. He put his mouth lightly on hers and for a few moments he didn't even move his lips but just kept them warmly in place while his palm cradled her cheek and the tips of his fingers caressed the soft places behind her ear.

When his lips did begin to move it was with the utmost gentleness, like the feather-light circling of his fingertips at the back of her ear and down the side of her neck.

Gradually, with such subtlety that she was hardly aware of the transition, the persuasive pressure increased, coaxing her closed, still lips to respond to the movements of his. Without consciously ceasing to resist, she found she was no longer being subjected to a kiss. Somehow she was participating.

How long it lasted, she never knew. It seemed to go on for ever... but also to end far too soon.

When James took his mouth away from hers, she was in a daze of pleasure such as she had often imagined but never experienced. Slowly she opened her eyes and came down to earth.

'That wasn't unpleasant, was it?' he asked, his hand still on her neck.

She shook her head, still half-entranced by the magical feelings induced by his skilful kissing.

He looked down at her, no longer smiling. While his right hand fondled her neck, his left stroked and smoothed her shoulder. She had the impression he was debating whether to kiss her again. At that moment there was nothing she wanted more than to repeat the experience.

He confirmed her intuition by saying, 'No, I think not.' And then, after a slight pause, 'But I hope that's erased the experience you didn't enjoy, and that now you'll accept that it wasn't my intention to scare you the other night.'

After a demonstration which she knew in her bones had been far beyond Hal's capacity to send shivers of delight coursing through her, she could only give a small nod.

'Good.' He took his hands away and thrust them into the pockets of his pants. 'We can't do what's best for Emily if we're not
en rapport.
I hope from now on we'll have a more relaxed relationship. Goodnight, Summer.'

Turning, he strode to the door and held it open for her.

It was in the grounds of Thomas Edison's winter home that, a few days later, Emily had her first serious recurrence of asthma.

They had left Sarasota early in order to stop at Fort Myers en route to a lunch party at Naples. The home of the great inventor, the father of electric light, the cinema and the gramophone, was in itself quite remarkable. It was one of the first prefabricated buildings in America. Constructed to Edison's design and built in Fairfield, Maine, in 1885, the house had been transported to Florida by four schooners, and was still furnished as he had left it at his death in 1931.

After touring the house and museum, they were taken round the garden of which the most outstanding feature was an enormous banyan tree, brought as a present from India in 1925 and now three hundred and ninety feet around the trunk.

The garden had been Edison's hobby. It was full of rare trees and plants which he had begun to plant almost a hundred years earlier. Suddenly, while they were part of a guided tour, Emily began to have breathing difficulties.

If she had had her aerosol with her, she wouldn't have panicked. But the long interval since her last attack had made her feel she was cured. The puffer was in her bedroom at
Baile de Sol
and she was in Edison's garden, beginning to wheeze and terrified that, without it, her airways would cease to function.

Afterwards Summer wondered if, by herself, she could have pulled Emily through the horrible bout of dyspnoea. The child was pale, with beads of sweat on her forehead. All at once, on a warm sunny morning, her skin was both cold and clammy. She was gasping for air, the skin round her neck sucked in with the effort of breathing.

It was James who convinced her she could survive the attack. Completely calm, he emanated quiet confidence.

Because it was evidently something in the garden which had triggered the attack, the first thing to do was to get her away from the irritant. As she couldn't walk when she was wheezing without increasing her distress, James picked her up and carried her back to the car, talking reassuringly as he did so.

'You drive, will you, Summer? The keys are in my right-hand pocket. I'll sit behind with Emily. There'll be a pharmacy in town where we can get an inhaler.'

At the wheel of an unfamiliar car, with Emily gasping for breath behind her, Summer forced herself to be, outwardly, as calm as James. To drive too fast, she realised, would only increase Emily's fear. They had to get to a pharmacy as quickly as possible but not with a reckless haste which might cause an accident.

Fortunately, the Edison house was only a mile out of town, and it wasn't hard to find a pharmacy.

She jumped out and went swiftly in. Interrupting a customer who was talking to the pharmacist, she said, 'Excuse me, there's a child having a bad attack of asthma in the car outside. We need a bronchodilator in a pressurised inhaler—quickly.'

A few minutes later the worst was over.

Her eyes closed, her lips pursed round the mouthpiece of an inhaler similar to her English one, Emily was beginning to relax, her terror subsiding as the drug opened her narrowed airways.

'She may like a glass of water—asthmatics often feel thirsty after an attack,' the pharmacist said to Summer, as they re-entered his premises.

When, having paid for the inhaler, she returned to the car with the water, Emily was lying back with her head on her uncle's shoulder.

It was obvious that, but for her tan, her face would have been ashen. She looked exhausted. But when Summer offered her the water she sat up and drank it thirstily.

'Thank you.' She gave back the glass, her voice a hoarse croak. Suddenly her lower lip trembled. 'I was so frightened,' she whispered, and began to cry.

James drew her into his arms, looking down at her curly head—she was hiding her face against his chest—with a strange expression on his face.

'Poor old Freckles... it wasn't very nice for you. Never mind: it's all over now, and whatever it was which set you off is probably something quite rare which you won't come across very often.'

Her throat tight with tears of sympathy, Summer watched him comforting the child, his voice unexpectedly tender, his long fingers gently stroking her mop of red curls.

It was then that her mind acknowledged what her heart had known since his second kiss. She had fallen in love with him; and that complex process had not begun a few nights ago in the library at
Baile del Sol,
but months ago in the library at Cranmere.

From the moment when he had swept open the double doors and their eyes had met for the first time, she had known that here was the personification of the man of her day-dreams. No longer a figment of make-believe, he had become real flesh and blood. That was why it had wounded her so terribly to overhear his derogatory comments about her to Dr Dyer.

Since then almost everything she had learnt about him had affirmed that it wasn't merely a physical attraction but that, in many other ways, he matched up to her ideal.

Deep down, she had even accepted those lacerating remarks he had made on the Grand Staircase. He had been speaking the truth. Why should a man who respected his body have felt anything but contempt for a girl who was wrecking hers? How would she have felt about him had he turned out to be an alcoholic or a drug addict? Exactly the same as he had felt about her then.

Even her furious indignation at being kissed in the swimming pool she could see now for what it had been—a piece of self-deception. What had
really
upset her that night had been that he had reappeared before she was ready for him; before she had completed the programme of self-improvement at the end of which she had hoped to stun him with her glamour.

Now, watching him wipe the tears from his niece's cheeks with a clean white handkerchief, she was pierced by a sharp pang of longing to change places with Emily and reel his strong arm round her own shoulders.

When Emily was feeling better, he said, 'We'll go back to Sarasota and have a quiet lunch at home. The Hamiltons will understand if I call and explain. We can go see them some other time.'

Although she had been looking forward to the lunch party at Naples, Emily didn't protest at this change of plan. Clearly the unexpected and severe attack of her former malady had taken a great deal out of her.

Later in the day Summer seized the first opportunity to speak to him privately to say, 'I know what you must be thinking—that it was incredibly careless of me to let Emily go out for the day without her puffer. You don't have to reprimand me—I already feel terrible about it.

'I wasn't intending to reprimand you,' he answered. 'Emily isn't a small child, too young to be responsible for her own welfare. From now on it will be up to her to make sure she always has an inhaler with her. But as it's so long since she had an attack, and she's clearly much fitter and healthier than she was in England, it was natural for both of you to feel she had probably outgrown her asthma.'

His leniency surprised her. She had expected a blistering dressing-down, even the threat of dismissal. She had been worrying about it all the way back from Fort Myers.

'I think we should try to find out the cause of today's attack,' he went on. 'It's possible now, by means of blood tests, to check people's sensitivity to a much wider range of allergens than by the old skin-prick test. Today's experience suggests that Emily's atopic. About ten per cent of people are severely atopic and have the kind of immediate reaction she had at the Edison place this morning. As soon as we get to New York we'll get an allergy specialist to look at her. We'll fly from Tampa tomorrow. You won't need to pack much, but you'll want warmer clothes in New York. You can buy them at Altman's on Thursday.'

With these casual instructions, he uprooted them for the second time.

But this time she didn't mind. She had been happier in Florida than at any time since the loss of her parents. But she was looking forward to experiencing what was said to be one of the most exciting cities in the world, and she hoped that in New York they might see more of him than they had during their time in Sarasota.

It was strange to remember that only a short while ago she had felt she could never forgive him for those scathing things he had said about her, and that she would derive great satisfaction from having him want her, and rejecting him.

But hurt pride and vengeful feelings had no place in her heart now that she knew she loved him. To win his love—and it still seemed about as unlikely as going to the moon—had suddenly become her dearest wish.

Summer and Emily were lying on the floor in Emily's bedroom, their pointed toes touching the carpet behind their heads in a position called The Plough, when there was a tap at the door.

Assuming it must be Victoria, and wondering why the Spanish maid was interrupting their pre-dinner work-out, Summer left it to Emily to call out, 'Come in.'

When an amused male voice said, 'A very neat pair of backsides,' her feet swept in a rapid arc from the floor behind her to the floor in front of her.

It wasn't Victoria. It was James. How typical of him to catch her with her bottom stuck up in the air and a hole in her exercise tights.

'James!' With a shout of delight, Emily sprang up from the floor and rushed to embrace him.

In her two years in America, she had grown several inches but not filled out very much. Now almost sixteen years old, she looked, in her pale blue leotard and darker blue leg warmers, like a young, gracile ballerina.