The Maestro's Mistress (10 page)

Her eyes moved to Xavier’s
profile, travelled over the lithe supple body and the slender powerful hands
placed at ten past ten on the small steering wheel. She found that she could
not keep her eyes off him. Against her will she was fascinated. There was
something unfathomable in those steely cold eyes with their deeply cowled lids.
And his face was disturbingly arresting, troubling even. The long carved bones
were those of a medieval knight, the deep forehead reminiscent of the stone
heroes who lay on marble-topped coffins in great cathedrals.

Something stirred and uncoiled in
her body, something dark and primitive, giving her an uneasy premonition of
some basic and fateful change about to overtake her. Briefly he turned to her,
his lips curved into a smile as though he were relishing a private joke. She did
not smile back.

They were on the motorway, in the
outside lane. Behind them the trail of cars was rapidly swallowed up in the
disappearing distance.

‘It’s illegal,’ Tara breathed,
exhilarated and a little fearful.

‘I know all the radar traps. And
no police car could catch us if we really started moving.’

Tara moulded herself into the
back of her seat and watched the countryside spin past.

‘I love speed,’ he told her. ‘In
the summer I judge the quality of my driving by the number of flies I kill with
the side windows.’

Tara felt a lurch of nausea. The
speedometer now registered one hundred and thirty.

‘Are you afraid?’ he enquired
softly.

She moistened her lips and looked
again into his face. ‘No. Was that what you wanted?’

He laughed. ‘I’m glad you trust me.’

Tara’s fingers were laced
together, her knuckles white. ‘I trust you because you’re the sort of man who
values himself very highly. You believe your life is important,’ she said
steadily. ‘You would never put yourself at real risk.’

His lips curled again into his
habitual enigmatic smile. ‘What a curious little speech.’

Tara judged she had hit the nail
on the head and felt herself relax.

Xavier turned off the motorway at
the next exit, easing the car to a sedate seventy miles an hour. He reached out
and pressed a black button on the dashboard. Music surged from an array of
speakers: Bach, one of the Brandenburg Concertos. Tara’s uncertainties and
unease began to fall away from her with the smooth swiftness of rain coursing
down sheet glass. A spring of sheer joy bubbled up inside as the clear notes of
a flute, oboe and violin intertwined their voices in a musical conversation of
radiant beauty. A smile of pure pleasure lit up her face.

‘I used to play fragments from
the Brandenburgs with my father,’ she told Xavier.

He nodded.

‘Years ago when I was just a
kid.’

‘Before you shot yourself in the
foot,’ he observed drily.

‘What?’

‘Rejected your musical talent and
also
him
for some incomprehensible reason, murdered your future
prospects as a player.’

Tara was utterly dismayed.

‘You’ve been a stupid fool,
haven’t you?’

She flinched, angry and wounded.
‘You don’t begin to understand!’

‘I most certainly do not. Do
you?’

She stared at him, her eyes wide
with pain. ‘No,’ she said in a low voice.

He drew up beside her house and
killed the whining engine.

Tara turned to him. ‘Thank you,’
she said solemnly.

‘Today was helpful?’ he wondered.

‘Yes. Playing for Monica, being
scared out of my wits, realizing how much damage I’ve done… All of it.’

‘So – what will you do with your
life?’

Her eyes swam with tears.’ She
shook her head.

‘I’ll see you into the house,’ he
said.

He stood in the hallway, a tall
impassive figure looking down at her, his face neutral. ‘Will you be all
right?’

‘Yes. Would you like some tea
before you go?’

He inclined his head graciously.

Tara went into the kitchen. The
telephone on the wall rang.

‘Tara – it’s Mum. I’ve had to
stay late at the surgery.’ A pause. ‘Donald has suggested we go and get
something to eat together.’

Tara heard the hesitation in her
mother’s voice. It had the effect of irritating her intensely, just as Bruno
did when he skirted around her, anxious not to offend. ‘Donald’s invited you to
dinner! Well, that’s great. Have a lovely time,’ she said cheerily.

‘Yes, well look…’

‘Mum! You’re perfectly entitled
to go out for a meal without getting my approval. I’ll expect you when I see
you. Right?’ Tara put the phone down and looked at it thoughtfully.

She found Xavier sitting
motionless on the sofa, his hands lightly folded in his lap.

Tara handed him a steaming mug,
then sat down opposite him staring into her own drink. ‘My mother’s got a date
with her boss. He’s a smooth talking doctor who just happens to be a lonely and
available widower. Isn’t that nice for both of them?’ she said sarcastically.

‘It probably is,’ Xavier agreed
evenly.

The bitch! Tara thought, her eyes
narrowing with resentment at the idea of her mother swanning off to some
restaurant with another man when her father was hardly off the scene. She
glanced at Xavier. She sensed that he was acutely aware of the hostility and
bitterness that churned inside her, but that he would probably choose to ignore
it.

She had never come across anyone
like him. His detachment was such she could imagine herself feeling free to
reveal anything to him, however vile or shocking. Moreover, as her gaze moved
from his icy grey eyes to his long slender hands the issue of his sexuality
suddenly crossed her mind, making her wonder how he ever managed to let go
enough to perform the undignified contortions involved in the sex act.

The telephone rang again. This
time it was Bruno, anxious to know how she had gone on at the master class. As
she began to respond in guarded tones, Xavier got up quietly, raised his hand
in a small gesture of farewell, and left the room. She heard the click of the
front door and then the high whine of the Porsche.

‘Darling, are you all right?’
Bruno enquired kindly after she had completed her story and they had progressed
to more general subjects.

‘Perfectly,’ she snapped.

‘When can I see you?’

‘Oh, soon. I don’t think I should
go out too much. It’s not good for Mum to be on her own just at present.’ She
was not sure of her motivation in telling this lie.

‘Yes, of course. What about the
weekend?’

‘Fine. We’ll fix something definite
next time we talk.’

‘Are you sure there isn’t
anything wrong? It isn’t me is it? Have I made you cross?’

Tara grimaced in exasperation.
‘No. No – it isn’t you.’

When Bruno put the phone down he
found that he was taking deep heavy breaths. He sensed that something momentous
had happened, that some fundamental change had taken place which might alter
his life.

The terrifying possibility of
losing Tara spun in his head, and his steps were dizzy and uncoordinated as he
walked down the corridor back to his little room and the book-laden desk.

CHAPTER
8

Georgiana was agitated. The air
around her seemed to crackle with feeling as she walked though the door of Dr
Denton’s consulting room. Denton watched her closely as she slipped off her
shoes and swung her long slim legs onto the leather plateau of the therapy
couch.

‘Can you cure me?’ she asked him
abruptly, her blue eyes wide open and glittering with a mingle of emotions.

He attempted to identify them.
Anxiety? Indignation? Or perhaps something stronger. Terror. Outrage. ‘Do you
consider yourself to be ill?’ he said mildly.

‘If not then why do I come to
you?’

‘To learn more about yourself.’

‘I come because I am frigid,’ she
told him, spitting out the last word with contemptuous emphasis.

This was interesting. Georgiana
had never used that word before. She had told Dr Denton with wistful regret
that she and her husband had not slept together for a time, that he was a very
busy man and did not find it easy to relax, that his tension in turn strung her
up so she found it hard to respond as a loving wife should. She had been
tenderly regretful as she told him this emphasising how much she loved her
husband, how she longed to make him happy, to be the perfect wife.

‘You feel guilty about that?’ he
asked her.

‘I have nothing to feel guilty
about. I have done my very best to make our marriage perfect. My parents used
to tell me that it was the trying that counted, not the outcome. They
understood me,’ she finished bitterly.

Georgiana felt as if the inside
of her head was on fire. Xavier had never understood her. He had been generous
and considerate, but he had never idolized her, placed her on a golden
pedestal. And now he had rejected her very best efforts on his behalf.

She heard again his calm, cool
words; so polite, so controlled and reasonable. Those words rang on in her
head, punishing and humiliating her.

Xavier’s quiet directive had come
out of the blue, just a few days after that last wonderful gift she had offered
him, just as she was congratulating herself on her continuing ingenuity in
breathing life into her marriage.

‘No more charming “gifts” darling
– mmn?’ he had told her. ‘Little games are entertaining for a while, but I
think it’s time to stop now.’ He had taken her gently in his arms, terrifying
her with the prospect of a fresh assault on her virginity – for it was as a
virgin that she saw herself after the years of chastity.

Dr Denton watched her contorted
face. He waited. She wrapped her arms around herself and then, dismissing
Xavier from her mind, embarked on her favourite pastime – taking herself back
to her golden childhood. ‘My mummy and daddy used to say that nothing would
ever harm their little baby,’ she told him. ‘If the cold east wind tried to
touch a hair of her little blonde head they would trap it in a bottle and put
the cork on so tightly it would fizzle away to nothing.’

Dr Denton believed her. Gradually
over the weeks he had come to the conclusion that Georgiana’s problems lay, not
in dealing with the loss of her baby, but in finally accepting the loss of her
childhood. At first he had thought her eulogizing was some kind of fantasy. But
then the picture began to emerge as the truth. She had never known need or
cruelty, there had been no traumas, no illness or untimely deaths. Home had
been a warm pool of love peopled by parents who made a goddess of her.

Clearly Georgiana had had a
wonderful time controlling them. Whatever she wanted they had given her:
approval, attention, love. And material goods – oh, lots of material goods.

The adult Georgiana went about
the world in disguise, presenting herself as an object of beauty and genteel
leisure. Trophy-offspring transformed into trophy-wife. There was no career, no
drudgery of housework, no children.

Dr Denton considered that
inwardly Georgiana’s passivity concealed a ferocious inner drive. Georgiana was
still the narcissistic baby who had sought control of the world and gained it.
Why should she give it up?

A job would have been out of the
question. A job would have made demands on her. Moreover Georgiana would only
be happy as the boss. She must control things. But she had neither the maturity
nor the necessary skills to obtain a position as a leader.

The act of sex would be even more
damaging than a job, far too threatening for her mammoth child’s ego to
withstand. To be penetrated by a powerful man would be deeply painful
psychologically. Maybe physically painful also. And ironically she had chosen
to marry the dynamic, dominating Xavier who would have no intention of being
anything but in full control himself.

Georgiana would have no way of
understanding that. She would, of course, have regarded the snaring of him as a
great achievement. A beautiful girl gets presents. She gets dolls and clothes
and puppies and diamonds. And when she is old enough she must get a man worthy
of her feminine perfection and prove to other women how superior she is.

Xavier must have been a real
catch: brilliant, talented, famous and wildly attractive. An international
hero.  Entirely worthy.

But now Georgiana’s marriage was
faltering as she and Xavier struggled for power and he refused to bow any
longer to the demands of a wife who was a sexual failure and had a
pathologically undeveloped appreciation of the way her fellow human beings
ticked.

Dr Denton found himself
fascinated. He speculated on the nature of her sexual encounters with Xavier
but she remained stubbornly silent on that subject. ‘Do you want to change?’ he
asked her. ‘As a person?’

Her eyelids flickered. A slow
smile crept over her face. ‘No – no, not at all.’