The Art of Love (23 page)

‘Tell me about your work,’ Tara said to Mark two days later, over asparagus soup and freshly baked bread rolls. She suddenly found she was quite interested. Other than Leo she had never spent time with a man who had a profession before. Most of her gentleman friends were like Rodney, destined to be gentleman farmers, or Freddie who seemed to make his money at the stock exchange, although she had only a hazy idea of how.

‘Well, primarily I help people to write their wills, and of course I execute them when the time comes, as I told you. As well as that I advise on contracts and draw up deeds of purchase,’ Mark said, looking flattered at the attention, as she hoped he would.

‘Deeds of purchase?’ Tara said. ‘What does that mean?’ By the end of the evening she was considerably wiser regarding the duties of a solicitor and Mark, in turn, had shown quite an interest in what she had to say about the running of Penge. He really was very nice,’ she thought and she and her mother bid their guests goodbye at the doorstep.

‘Now you must come to our little party on Saturday,’ Mrs Reeves said as they were leaving. ‘Promise me you will.’

‘We would both be delighted,’ Lady Penge said, looking quite enthused by the idea. Maybe what had happened was all for the best, Tara thought, suddenly overcome by weariness, brought on, she thought, by her sustained cheerfulness over the past few hours. If Leo hadn’t left when he had, she would not have looked so bleak and her mother would not have felt compelled to remove them both to the seaside, and Lady Penge would perhaps still be languishing in her bed for half the day, instead of being up and about, quite merrily engaged with life. Tara tried very hard to be pleased that things had worked out as they had, but suddenly a great wave of longing for Leo came over her. Perhaps she would have been quite taken by Mark if she had met him first, but she hadn’t and her heart still seemed to be firmly in Leo’s custody.

‘Mr Mark,’ you have a visitor, Leo heard the maid say from the other side of the parlour door. When he had been told the family were out for the evening, he had decided to wait in for them and had idled away the time reading a book about seabirds. Perhaps Mark would claim that he and Tara had been bird watching when they took their intimate, unchaperoned stroll down below the Canford Cliffs.

‘Leo, old chap, this is a surprise,’ Mark said, entering the room. ‘I thought you had shunned all society for art. I’m sorry I wasn’t home to receive you but unfortunately you chose and evening when I had a dinner engagement to emerge from your hermit’s shack on the mountain.’

‘It’s not a shack,’ Leo growled, looking at Mark through narrowed eyes, trying to decide if his ruddy complexion was a result of wine drunk with dinner or if it owed something to a smear of rouge or paint transferred in a moment of intimacy with Tara.

‘No, no, of course not,’ Mark said placatingly. ‘It’s just a figure of speech. Now, may I offer you some refreshment?’

As Mark poured him a generous measure of brandy Leo eyed him closely. Although it was late his cousin appeared full of energy and was even humming under his breath as might a man in love. ‘Were you out to dinner with anyone I know?’ he asked, trying to sound casual.

‘Quite possibly,’ Mark said, handing him his glass. ‘Lady Penge and her daughter Tara. Lady Tara is to be found in London every spring, perhaps you have come across her?’

Leo had not expected Mark to be quite so disarmingly honest, yet why should he think he had anything to hide? He took his time sipping his drink while he formulated his answer. He had no intention of telling Mark anything about his relationship with Tara, but it would not do to be caught in any kind of a lie. ‘Yes, I know her,’ he said. ‘I painted her portrait for one of her admirers not so long ago.’ He was pleased with the way he had framed that little piece of information. If Mark thought he was just one of many men smitten with Tara he might drop any ideas he had about her. ‘Is she a close friend of yours?’ he asked.

An alarmingly misty smile stole over Mark’s face. ‘I don’t know her terribly well,’ he said. ‘But sometimes it feels as if we’ve known each other forever. She is so easy to converse with, in fact we never stop talking.’ Leo listened with mounting dismay, it sounded disturbingly as if Tara had simply transferred all her affection towards him onto Mark. He recalled the thought that had crossed his mind when he had first arrived on his cousin’s doorstep - he’d thought Tara would like Mark and find his temperament considerably easier to deal with than his own, he’d just never expected them to meet. The only saving grace in Mark’s words was his claim that all he and Tara did was talk. The thought of his cousin even beginning to take the liberties he had with Tara was intolerable.

‘Are you all right, old chap?’ Mark asked. ‘You look as dark as a thundercloud.’

‘You should be wary of Lady Tara,’ Leo growled. ‘She toys with men’s affections.’ That wasn’t perhaps strictly true, Leo thought guiltily as he recalled the lengths Tara had gone to in trying to forestall Rodney’s proposal, but warning Mark off was the best thing for both of them.

Mark laughed disbelievingly. ‘Perhaps she does that in town,’ he said, ‘but I haven’t seen anything such thing down here.’

Mark was quite taken with Tara, Leo saw with a kind of horrified gloom. He wasn’t going to listen to anything Leo said. He tried one last attempt at reason. ‘Lady Tara has a string of gentleman friends,’ he said. ‘Rodney Hulme, the chap your sister’s friend has just got engaged to, my friend Freddie Palmer whom you’ve met, and a wretched little Frenchman called Philippe la Monte. She isn’t very discerning.’

‘As you’ve decided to come out of your cave, perhaps you’d like to grace us with your presence at the little party my mother is holding on Saturday evening,’ Mark said, apparently quite unmoved.

‘Have you invited many people?’ Leo asked, both hoping and dreading to hear that the Penges were on the guest list.

‘A couple of dozen,’ Mark said. ‘It’s just a small crowd. Lady Tara will be here, so there will be at least one person you know outside of the family, although it doesn’t sound as if you like her very much.’

‘I’ll come,’ Leo muttered. If he couldn’t persuade Mark to stay away from Tara perhaps he could warn Tara off his cousin. He decided not to examine his motives too closely. He swirled the remaining brandy in his glass, drained it and stood up. ‘I must be going. I’ll see you on Saturday night.’

‘Good, good,’ Mark said, rising also and seeing him to the door. ‘Oh, I almost forgot, it’s a good thing you stopped in, there’s a letter for you. It was forwarded here from your London address.’

Although he couldn’t recall seeing anything she’d written, Leo knew at once from the handwriting that the missive was from Tara. Fighting back the impulse to rip it open and read it right now in Mark’s front hall, he took the letter and stuffed it into his coat pocket. Whatever Tara had to say he would rather learn in private.

Leo rode swiftly home, every rustle the thin letter made seeming to speak to him. He forced himself to see to his horse first, then he went inside, lit a lamp and threw himself down on his bed to read the letter.

It was so short he’d read it twice in less than a minute, then he crumpled it up in anger and was about to fling it into the darkened hearth but instead he unfolded it and read it one more time. Did Tara really call that an apology? It was a lecture on pride and stubbornness. Her remarks on his setting such store on a man earning an honest living cut deeply, he had indeed said that La Monte should not have too much pride to become a fishmonger, or some such thing. But it was outrageous for her to compare him to that lazy frog. Leo had a profession, one which he had worked day and night to build over the last few years, he did not need to resort to common farm work to support himself. Then there was her last sentence which left him in the greatest turmoil of all.
I hope you take this apology in the spirit in which it is intended
,
and that we can resume our friendship where we left off.
What on earth did she mean by that? Did she want to further their physical relationship? Did she in fact want them to become lovers? The very thought stirred him deeply but pride would not let him seriously consider such a thing. With Tara he wanted all or nothing.

Clothes, Tara, decided, were the best way to get herself into the proper mood for a party. Betty had packed for her and Tara had given her no instructions, being unable to summon any interest in her wardrobe, feeling that all she really wanted to wear was mourning black. But Betty had been her maid for five years, ever since her come out, and apparently she had formed her own ideas on what sort of apparel Tara would need for a quiet few weeks by the sea. Throwing open her wardrobe Tara found silk, satin and velvet evening wear, with matching shoes and boots stored neatly on a little rack below. Her eye was drawn to a deep purple silk under dress which went with a paler mauve overdress in the sheerest of silk and a pair of matching half boots which completed the look. The cut was more modest than what she usually wore in London, which explained why she had not worn it recently, but here in the quieter society of Bournemouth she thought it might be more appropriate, and there was no denying that the fabric was fabulous.

She let Betty dress her and then looked in the mirror and found herself smiling at her reflection in delight. The neckline might be higher than she was used to but the fabric was so fine that it clung to her every curve revealing her voluptuousness despite the modesty of the cut. ‘There’s some violets out the back, Lady Tara,’ Betty said. ‘Shall I dress your hair with those?’

‘Yes,’ Tara said firmly. ‘That is an excellent idea.’

‘We appear to be rather late,’ Lady Penge said disapprovingly as she and Tara climbed out of their carriage.

Tara laughed, ‘Not at all, it is much worse to be early. I expect their closest friends will already be here, but we will by no means be the last guests to arrive.’ Her mother, she reflected, had had little chance to socialize since her father died, really this month in Bournemouth was for the best. Perhaps she might also persuade her to join her in London for the season next year. Immediately Tara’s mind shied away from that idea. London next year, without Leo, did not bear thinking about. She ought to go to Paris instead, but there would be even less opportunity for a chance meeting with him there.

‘Did a goose walk over your grave?’ Lady Penge asked and Tara realized she had shivered. She was saved from having to answer by the Reeves’ footman who opened the front door.

Tara quickly found she was right. A handful of people were in the parlour. The double doors leading to the dining room had been opened and the table moved to one side to create additional space. Clearly more people were expected. A quartet played softly at the far end of the dining room, listened to by a small audience of two; Mark’s sister Caroline and a gentleman.

Mark and his parents came forward to greet them warmly. As Mark took Tara’s hand and kissed it she saw Mrs Reeves’ eyes light up at the sight of her old friend. Then she nearly snatched her hand away. Mark’s kiss was perfectly ordinary, almost perfunctory, his lips coolly inoffensive on the back of her hand but it felt so wrong to be touched by any man other than Leo. She stopped herself from giving such insult just in time but found Mark looking at her a little oddly.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked. He was really quite perceptive, she thought, a quality most men lacked, he would be the perfect man with whom to enjoy a flirtation.

‘Oh, yes,’ Tara said, and cast around for something with which to change the subject. ‘Are those musicians some of the players from Tuesday night?’ she asked. She did not, in truth, recognise any of the players, having barely paid attention to the music let alone the musicians, but it seemed like a reasonable guess.

‘Yes, they are,’ Mark said, taking her arm and leading her in their direction. From the back the man sitting on a banquette, next to Caroline looked disturbingly like Leo. Tara felt a hard knot of misery form inside her. Was she destined to see Leo lookalikes everywhere she went for the rest of her life? She did not think she could bear it. She had to distract herself.

She placed her free hand over Mark’s, where it rested on the crook of her elbow; it was a little intimacy she had practiced a hundred times, and looked up at him. ‘What a wonderful idea to engage them to play this evening! Was it your idea?’

‘No, it was Caroline’s,’ an unmistakably familiar voice said in her ear.

Tara yelped and whirled round. She found herself standing face to face with Leo who had risen from the banquette and now looked at her with unreadable eyes. It really was him! She couldn’t believe it. She wanted to reach out, to touch him to see if he was real and of its own volition her hand seemed to move towards him. Abruptly she snatched it back but saw from the quirk of Leo’s lips that he had noticed her involuntary gesture. ‘I believe you two are acquainted,’ Mark said and Tara felt him shift uncomfortably. Surreptitiously she removed her hand from his and felt him release her arm.

‘Yes we are,’ Leo said. His eyes, which glittered dangerously, never left hers. ‘It is a mild night, shall we take a turn around the garden, my dear Lady Tara? You could tell me what brings you to Bournemouth.’ Tara was too stunned by the coincidence seeing Leo here in Mark’s home to answer and then a ghastly thought struck her. Did Leo think she had followed him here? His question implied that he did and if so, what did he think she wanted from him? An illicit liaison? The very idea, despite, or perhaps because of its scandalousness, sent a shiver of anticipation through her body. Leo seemed to take her silence for assent. He offered her his arm and Tara found herself powerless to resist even so proper an invitation. Without a backward glance at their host Leo led her out of a side door and around to the back of the house, to the evening cool and hush of the garden. They were quite alone.

It was a balmy evening. Tara let Leo escort her along a short avenue of box hedges and down three stone steps to a sunken garden where they were beyond the pools of light thrown from the kitchen windows at the back of the house. Then he spun her to face him, wrapping his arms around her so she couldn’t escape even if she had wanted to. Instinctively Tara placed her hands on his chest, feeling his heart beating through the fabric of his clothing. The beats felt insistent and urgent, making her want to unbutton his shirt and press her cheek against the warmth of his chest.