The Sweet Caress (11 page)

‘I’m not sure,’ she said again.

‘Now you’re being ridiculous. Of course you want to see me. You’ve had more than four years to make up your mind about that. Why are you calling me if you don’t want to see me? I certainly want to see you. You were incredibly clever in your vanishing. I never considered calling off the hunt but I could find no trace of you anywhere. You must have planned your departure for a very long time.’

Candia listened for a trace of anger in Pierre’s voice. There was none. But then Pierre never showed anger; he practised sweet revenge.

‘Actually, I haven’t spent four years making this decision, Pierre. When I felt like it I simply picked up the telephone, punched in your number, and we’re talking. It’s as simple as that.’

He laughed at her. In the past that had always undermined her confidence. Today, it strengthened her.

‘I’ll call you in a few days and we’ll arrange to meet,’ she told him.

‘I would rather it was today,’ he insisted.

‘If you ever want to see me again, Pierre, don’t take that menacing tone with me. We can’t always have what we want when we want it. It was you who taught me that. Fifteen years! It was a long lesson. Remember, my dear, I’m no longer running away. I’ll call you when I’m ready to meet you. Or you can always call me.’ And she put down the phone.

During the following weeks Candia laughed and danced, shopped, went to restaurants, the theatre, opera, the ballet with her girl friends and a string of eligible men. But in
those moments when she was alone or bored with the company she was keeping, an invisible screen of steel would for a few seconds drop down to cut her off from the present and her mind would drift away, unconsciously trying to break through the mist of those lost years. At those times Candia had only one thing to cling to, a large iron key. She always carried it with her in her handbag, would fondle it as a Greek or a Turk might his worry beads. She had no recollection of what door it opened but it soothed her to caress it with her fingers. It had been the only item found lying next to her when she was rescued in Central Park; it must have fallen out of her handbag when the muggers ran off with it.

Pierre called every day, and showered her with gifts. Casablanca lilies, perfume, a Hermes shawl, a ring of jade and diamonds and matching earrings, a pair of ancient Greek gold bracelets, chocolates, champagne. She accepted his gifts with a degree of indifference.

Several weeks went by before Yves called. His voice was like ice when he asked to meet her. Ever since she had spoken to Pierre, she had known it would not be long before Yves learned of her return. She suggested it was not a good idea to see him.

‘Why not?’ he demanded.

‘Because we have nothing to say to each other,’ she told him.

‘How can you say that? You behaved very badly.’

‘What? I walked away from a partner who was using me as a front for drug trafficking. You deceived me, you used
our
company and
our
assets for your own corrupt ends and you would have happily seen me go down with you had you been caught.’

‘You ruined me when you walked off with that cash from the safe. I nearly lost my life over it. I had to go into hiding until I could raise the money to replace what you walked off with. And that legal document severing our business
arrangement that you left in the empty safe? Beneath contempt.’

‘Did I do that? How very sensible of me.’ She told him she had no recollection of walking off with the money, and while she did remember discovering he was a drug dealer, instructing her lawyer in Hong Kong to do what was necessary to dissolve her partnership with him was a blur.

Yves then resorted to charm to try to persuade her to meet him. She hardly heard what he said. She kept wondering what she had done with the money he said she had taken. And
when
exactly had she taken it?

‘Yves, what’s the point of this conversation?’ she interrupted him. ‘It’s over, it’s done with. Consider yourself lucky that I only took what was rightfully mine and no more. I sought no revenge for your disloyalty to me. What do you hope to gain from a meeting with me?’

‘We had a good thing going in antiquities, and I miss you. I would like to invest with you in antiquities again. We made a great team. I can’t match your connections or your expertise.’

Candia felt nothing but contempt for him. Did he really believe that a few flattering words could make up for what he had done and persuade her to trust him again? His arrogance was matched only by his greed.

‘If you ever call me again, Yves, or dare to seek me out in any way, you have my word I will go directly to Interpol and tell them everything I know.
That
is a promise. And if by chance our paths do cross, I shall expect you to behave impeccably and give no hint that we are anything but former business partners who have gone our separate ways by mutual and amicable agreement. I hope I have made myself clear.’ And with that she ended the call.

Candia’s next step on the path to sorting out her business life was to get in touch with a company called La Pyramide. Over a period of ten years or so, she had bought several small but elite auction houses in Paris, Lyon, Nice,
Amsterdam, Singapore and Hong Kong. She placed them under a parent company called La Pyramide, of which she was managing director, but each auction house was allowed to function independently, employing hand-picked specialist staff. La Pyramide operated a profit-sharing scheme which ensured the incentive was there for them all to become rich and successful. She was viewed as a mysterious shadow working in the background of their lives, never interfering in the day to day running of the group. She was, in fact, one of La Pyramide’s best clients because for years she sold her antiquities through the company.

When she made her first phone call to the head offices of La Pyramide in Lyon to speak to the deputy managing director and explain what had happened to her, she was astounded to learn that during her lost four years the company had been enormously successful. Clearly her strategy of non-interference had worked beyond anyone’s expectations. She flew to Lyon the very next day.

For two days she studied the company’s books, read the report on its long-term plans, its current progress and results. It was then that she understood that she had not been in contact with La Pyramide since that day she walked away from Pierre. During a boardroom lunch at one of Lyon’s four-star restaurants, she drifted off for a few minutes: why had she abandoned La Pyramide as well? Where had she been? How had she lived? Had she been happy? She opened her handbag and took out the mysterious iron key and absent-mindedly fondled it. She had no way of knowing that it opened the front door to Rose Cottage because the tag no longer hung from it. She could not remember taking the key from her safe deposit box in the bank in Hong Kong
after
she had ridden down the hill from Pierre’s house on the funicular because her memory was blank from then on.

In her absence, La Pyramide had been clever about their managing director. They portrayed her to their shareholders
and the public as the beautiful and reclusive woman of power and ideas who knew how to make things work but preferred to do so out of the limelight, a woman who did not insist on anonymity, merely privacy. That suited Candia.

Having now fully returned to her old life, the old yearning for a thrilling sexual life once again surfaced, and she decided to get in touch with an old flame she had met when she was still with Pierre some five years before.

His name was Lord Rupert Hethrop. He was young and handsome, a passionate but discreet libertine, and a member of the House of Lords. His erotic adventure with Candia had been brief but unforgettable, and he had wanted her again ever since. Consequently, when he heard her voice on the telephone, nothing else seemed to matter but to have her by his side.

Driving to Gloucestershire to the stately house he lived in, Candia was as excited about a liaison with Rupert as he was. She remembered him as a thrilling lover, wonderfully well built with a youthful and muscular body. He had enormous sexual stamina and her orgasms with him had been powerful and lengthy.

She drove through the open iron gates and up the three-quarter-mile drive which was surrounded by glorious English countryside. Peacocks roamed the lawns and perched on the low branches of ancient elm trees. When she pulled up in front of the hundred and four roomed Jacobean mansion, Rupert himself opened the door to greet her. He swept her off the ground and into his arms, both of them laughing.

In the house he placed her on her feet and walked her to his library, a large and handsome room containing wall-to-wall shelves of books. Two fireplaces, on opposite sides of the room, blazed and crackled with flames, emitting a delicious warmth.

He took her coat and her hat and returned to take her in his arms and kiss her. ‘I’ve never forgotten that night with
you. It stalks me. Tell me you do at least remember it as vividly as I do.’

‘If I didn’t remember it I wouldn’t be here,’ she told him, a hint of sweetness in her voice, which made her answer all the more seductive.

‘Why didn’t you let me see you again?’ he asked.

‘There was only ever really room for Pierre in my life then,’ she answered honestly.

‘And then you simply vanished off the face of the earth. I never thought I would hear from you again. Oh, I’m so happy you’re here.’

‘So am I,’ she answered.

He placed an arm round her shoulders and drew her to a table laden with stacks of books, silver-framed family photographs, Ming vases, and a large silver tray. On the tray was an ice bucket chilling two bottles of vintage champagne, two crystal champagne flutes, crisp linen napkins edged with lace, Crown Derby plates, a platter of smoked salmon sandwiches, and a bowl of Belgian white chocolate truffles.

He offered her a glass of champagne and a bite-sized crustless sandwich, buttered and thick with smoked salmon. ‘I sent the servants away. I wanted you all to myself,’ he told her.

Candia picked up the platter of sandwiches. ‘Why don’t we move this feast over to the fireplace and turn it into a picnic?’ she said with a smile.

She went round the room pulling cushions off sofas and chairs and flinging them down on the floor in front of the fire. Then she watched him arrange them comfortably. She was struck by his good looks, not glamorous cinema star good looks but sensuous, decadent, virile handsomeness. He had fine sandy hair and brown eyes, somewhat delicate features, and that long, lanky, muscular body she remembered so well, now dressed in buff-coloured corduroys and a navy blue cashmere V-necked jumper.

‘We both know what this visit is about,’ said Candia as she finished her sandwich, emptied her glass of champagne and handed it to Rupert.

She crossed her arms in front of her and raised the cream-coloured jumper she was wearing from her body, over her head, and threw it on to a chair. She unbuckled the clasp that held her cream-coloured paper-thin leather skirt wrapped round her body and let it drop to the floor. She stood naked before Rupert except for lace-top stockings and pale brown leather boots. He pulled her into his arms, lifted her up by her waist and placed his mouth on one of her nipples. He sucked it hard, nibbled it, bit into the swell of her breast until she begged him to stop. When he did, it was to lie her on the cushions on the floor, placing several under her bottom to raise it. He went on his knees in front of her and pulled the boots off her feet. Then he spread her legs wide and feasted his eyes on her most intimate self. He was mesmerised by her sex and tore himself away from her only long enough to stand up and undress.

Rupert was as she had remembered him, incredibly sexy with a large penis, beautifully shaped and erect above large and succulent testicles. Down on his knees again and between her legs, he told her how lovely she was to look at, to taste. Fondling her cunt before he placed his mouth upon it to lick and caress it with his tongue, he could feel her give herself to him. He reached for the bottle of champagne and poured it between her soft, fleshy, cunt lips and then drank from her. And so began their journey into the land of erotica where only Eros is king.

Here was a country Candia knew well, a king she adored and respected and subjugated herself to willingly. The rewards were as no other in life. She closed her eyes and forgot the world and her role in it and drifted into her sexuality. The lick of Rupert’s tongue against those most intimate, soft, warm lips, the way he fondled them between his fingers, circled and then slipped those same fingers into
Candia to massage her most tender flesh lit a flame of passion in her that made her heart race and her soul soar. She leaned forward and caressed Rupert’s head before she grabbed him by the shoulders and dug her fingers into his flesh as she came in a long and powerful orgasm.

Rupert sucked deeply, drinking every drop of her. Then he took possession of her with one hard thrust. Candia called out in delight, surprise, and pain at the assault of a penis of such length and breadth.

Candia had not forgotten how divine it was to be riven by Rupert. His thrusts had always been deep and he had a rhythm that, combined with his incredible staying power, was pure ecstasy for a woman like her who gives herself over completely to the sexual experience. With his hands on her waist he pinned her to the cushions. With his mouth he sought out her lips and kissed her deeply and with great passion. He sucked her nipples and licked her breasts, never missing a beat as he thrust into her. He drove her over the edge with desire to come and never stop coming. Soon she passed that moment of no return in sex, and now she was flying free in her lust. Candia adored a man’s sex, it was a joy for her to have it take possession of her. When Rupert moved from her cunt to her mouth and deep into her throat, a joyful sexual madness gripped them both and they entered another world where nothing could touch them except each other and the gods.

Chapter 7

Rupert and Candia had breakfast in the dining room, impressive with its silken walls hung with paintings, the Queen Anne silver, its oriental carpets, and a table that sat twenty-four comfortably with a view of the formal gardens. The servants were back, but they were nearly invisible. After breakfast the two of them walked through the gardens and Rupert saw Candia to the car. He seemed nervous, on edge even, but not until he opened the car door for her did he speak of the night before. ‘It isn’t going to happen for us again, is it?’ he asked, rather bravely she thought.

‘Why do you ask such a thing? Last night was marvellous, we were wonderful together.’

‘Because when I looked in your eyes, and I did, many times, there was expectation, you wanted more, you expected more, not sex, something else. In the midst of divine orgasm you drifted away from me and I sensed you were searching for someone else. Pierre?’

‘I don’t think so,’ she answered.

‘It wasn’t the sex, or me, I know that much.’

‘No, it most certainly was not the sex or you. It’s me. I seem to have lost something and I keep searching for it. I’m sure it has to do with those lost years. And you’re right, Rupert, last night, glorious as it was, won’t happen again for us.’

On that night when Rupert and Candia were lost to the world on a cloud of sexual lust, Luke Greenfield awakened from a deep sleep calling out, ‘Jessica, Jessica.’ He turned
on the light. He felt cold to the marrow of his bones and yet he was perspiring. He went to the bedroom window and looked out into the darkness. A full moon was casting an eerie white light over the apple orchard, making it look like a field of abstract sculptures.

He went from the window to the bathroom where he splashed his face with cold water. Then he returned to his bed to speak to the missing Jessica. In the two and half months since she had vanished from his life, he often spoke to her. He would always tell her the same thing. ‘Whatever has happened to drive you away from me, don’t worry, we’ll find each other again. Be well, my heart.’

The following evening Luke had dinner with the sheriff. Dinner once a week had become a habit for Luke and Bridget since Jessica’s disappearance. It was not Luke who tended to relive those horrible first days after Jessica’s disappearance, but Bridget and Cissie. Neither woman had realised how much Jessica had added to their lives until she had gone missing. They were comforted by Luke’s certainty that wherever she was, she was all right. Whatever she was doing, she had to do. That she would return to him more whole and a better person than she already was, he had no doubt.

Luke met Bridget at the police station. He had planned to take her to dinner at a small restaurant he and Jessica had been very fond of. It was several miles outside Newbampton in a wood that ran down to the river. It was an old boat house of infinite charm, which partially hung over the river. The food was cooked to order and was delicious, and the couple that ran it were warm and welcoming. He cooked, they both served, and she played the violin in a far corner of the restaurant when she was not waiting table.

Luke entered Bridget’s office and sat down while she finished her call. Then she tilted her chair back and positioned her hands the way she did when she was pensive about something – she placed the tips of her fingers together
and moved them to and fro against her lips.

‘I got a table at the Boathouse. Ready to go?’ Luke asked.

‘Do you mind if we have a word first?’ she said.

‘No, of course not. What’s on your mind?’

‘I would like to go over Jessica’s disappearance again.’

‘Again, Bridget? We’ve been over it dozens of times, I’ve been over it a hundred times in my mind, and still she’s gone and we can’t trace her.’

‘This is important, Luke.’

Something in Bridget’s face and the tone of her voice told him this was not a friend talking but a sheriff. Luke remained cool, collected. Too many times during the last few months he had raised his hopes that there was some sighting of Jessica only to have them dashed to the ground.

‘Sorry, Bridget, of course.’

‘Good. Now, you did not realise anything was wrong until Jessica and Mr Tucket the salesman did not show up in the Mercedes by nine o’clock that evening. You assumed they had car trouble and so had been delayed. By eleven you were seriously worried and called the New York showroom. It was of course closed and there was no emergency service number so you were stuck until morning. You called Mr Tucket who said that he had spoken to Jessica before lunch and arranged to meet her at the showroom at three. She never showed up. Mr Tucket claims he was about to call you to find out if you were still interested in the automobile. Then you called me.’

‘That’s about it,’ confirmed Luke.

‘We assumed Jessica had had an accident. There could be no other explanation because we know you were happy in your marriage and she was very much in love with you, her life, and Newbampton. I swung into action. We checked every hospital in the city. No Jessica Greenfield was admitted on the day of Jessica’s disappearance. We checked under Jessica Johnson. Nothing. We checked for anyone admitted who did not or could not give their name.
Nothing. We checked the morgues in New York and New Jersey and, thank god, came up with nothing. Then we waited for her to make contact with us. She never did. I felt I might have been wrong about Jessica not really having amnesia and thought she might have regained her memory on that trip to New York and felt compelled to go and pick up the pieces of those lost years before she could come back here. You didn’t agree that that could have happened. You asked me to keep investigations open and I have, pulling in a great many favours in the process.’

‘So many dead ends, Bridget. But I couldn’t give up, any more than you could. I asked you what was left for us to do. I remember your very words: “It’s a long shot but we could check out every person who was admitted to casualty or taken by ambulance to a New York hospital on that day, with or without a name.” Hence the private detectives as well as your friends on the force.’

‘The longest shot of all,’ said Bridget.

‘What exactly are you saying?’ asked Luke.

‘Her real name is Candia Van Buren. She was mugged in Central Park at around two thirty on the day Jessica disappeared. She was taken unconscious with head wounds to Mount Sinai Hospital where she was attended by a Dr Twining, a neurologist. When she regained consciousness, though she was severely concussed and badly bruised, she knew exactly who she was. That was verified by her banker, a Mr Holeness. Within a few hours it became evident that her head injury had caused her to lose her memory. She had no recollection of the last four years of her life, not the vaguest idea what she was even doing in New York. Luke, that means that she could not have been an amnesia victim when she arrived here in Newbampton. As we both suspected but never openly admitted, she invented her memory loss then.’

Still cautious, unwilling to allow himself yet to believe that Jessica had been found, Luke asked, ‘How can you be
sure Candia Van Buren is Jessica Johnson?’

‘I’ve just returned from a meeting with Mr Holeness at the Chase Manhattan Bank. He verified from Jessica’s wedding photograph that the bride was indeed his client Candia Van Buren. He told me he accompanied her from Mount Sinai Hospital to Kennedy Airport where, against her doctor’s advice, she boarded a Concorde flight to London. She lives in a house in Knightsbridge and has a flat in Hong Kong. She’s a dealer in Chinese antiques. To his knowledge she is not and never has been married. And she has not regained her memory.’

Luke lowered his head and placed his hands over his face. Bridget remained silent while Luke gained control of himself. When he finally looked up, it was to see Bridget with a tumbler of Scotch in her hand. She gave it to him and he drank half of it down in one swallow. She smiled at him.

Luke smiled back. ‘Come on, I’m going to buy you the best the Boathouse can produce. Bridget, you are the greatest policewoman ever.’

‘I know. How do you think I got to be sheriff of Newbampton
and
its environs? Now it’s up to you to get your wife back where she belongs, Luke.’

All the way back to London Candia kept thinking about what Rupert had said about her searching for someone. It was very difficult to work out even for herself, never mind to express to anyone else that her body and her heart and her soul seemed to be searching for something, or someone.

Rupert had suggested it was Pierre. She wondered if that was possible. Was she lying to herself that it wasn’t, out of some sort of false pride? She was enjoying her life and her work, but she sometimes felt she was travelling through the days like a sleepwalker, there but not there. Last night with Rupert had been terrific sex, naughty and adventurous, but as she thought about it now, she began to think that the libertine’s sex had always only seemed right with Pierre.

She pulled the car to the side of the road and used her mobile telephone. ‘Where are you?’ she asked, without even bothering to say hello.

He laughed at her and she found his laughter sensuous.

‘It’s now or never, Pierre,’ she told him, feeling very much in control and enjoying every minute of it.

‘Now! Now!’ he pleaded.

‘Well then?’

‘I’m in Juan-les-Pins. I’m staying in a friend’s house. It’s quite glorious. I’ll have a car and driver waiting for you at the airport.’

‘I’ll make the next plane.’

‘You won’t be sorry,’ Pierre assured her.

‘Oh, I know I won’t.’

Candia dialled Air France. There was just enough time to pack a bag, pick up her passport and make a dash for the next plane to Nice.

Pierre was a very wealthy and spoiled man. He had a network of friends who could afford to indulge their vices. A libertine needs several things: time, wealth, discretion, an adventurous, amoral mind, and a taste for both sadism and masochism, as required. The house Pierre was staying in belonged to an American media mogul, Axel Winwood. He was not there but due to arrive the following day.

The house was palatial, with thirty-six rooms, and typical of the grand 1920s French Riviera houses. As the iron gates swung open and the car covered the short distance to the villa with its terraced gardens leading down to a private beach, a surge of excitement went through Candia. She was going to see her once so beloved Pierre. She almost laughed aloud and had to ask herself if that was happiness or nerves.

Pierre was standing on the top terrace. A warm wind was coming off the Mediterranean, ruffling his silver hair, which he always wore quite long, and rippling his grey flannel trousers and the white shirt he was wearing. She called his name and ran into his arms.

They walked into the house, directly to the suite of rooms he had been given. She told him about her life, the success of La Pyramide, the sex with Rupert the night before. Only that seemed to interest him. Then finally she told him she had no idea where she had been or what she had been doing for the last few years because she had been mugged and had lost her memory. He seemed fascinated by that, even moved when she told him how it sometimes unnerved her to think she had lost a whole segment of her life.

Then he told her, ‘I never knew you could be so devious, so calculating as to plot to walk out on me the way you did. There are many things I want to know but the first one is why did you do it, and in such a cruel manner?’

‘Because I will not die in lust for you,’ she answered boldly.

‘You came very close,’ he told her, excitement in his voice.

Candia was shocked. ‘And you feel cheated!’

‘Yes, I do actually. I thought you loved me more than life itself.’

‘On the contrary. I realised you didn’t love me enough for me to live for you,’ she replied.

‘We could have talked this out. I never knew how much I would miss you until you were actually gone. I tried to find you, I was still trying to find you when you called. Four years, for Christ’s sake. Where did you go? What did you do? How did you get out of Hong Kong without leaving a trace?’

‘I told you, I don’t know. The last thing I remember was sneaking out of your bed and riding down the funicular.’

‘Don’t play that game with me, Candia,’ and he went to her and pulled her into his arms and kissed her passionately.

Candia felt herself giving in to Pierre, she was helpless to control her hunger to have sex with him. Within seconds he had control of her erotically and they both knew it. He whispered sweet nothings to her, which she had once taken as declarations of love and passion for her, then he
undressed her and carried her to the bed where they indulged themselves in sexual acts that brought them orgasms strong and long and powerful. Such ecstasy seemed only to drive them on to seek greater, more violent moments of bliss together.

Pierre marvelled that she always wanted more. That was why he loved her, why he used to bring handsome young studs in to service her in ways that his sexual appetite demanded, why at times he had been passionately violent with her. He had always known she wanted genuine love and had for years pretended that that was what he was giving her. Now there would be no more pretence. She had come back and he would enslave her again. Her punishment for leaving him would be the cold truth. She would be nothing more than sexual pleasure to him and he wanted her to know that and to live with it, to feel it every waking moment of her life.

In the early hours of the morning, he carried her into a sumptuous bathroom – black marble and solid silver taps, a sunken bath. He had drawn the bath for her and filled it with gardenia- and almond-scented oils. He placed her gently down in the water and sat on the floor at the edge of the bath, squeezing water over her from a large sponge. Pierre was a man who enjoyed revenge and revenge was what he was thinking about now.

‘Why have you come back to me, Candia?’

‘To lay a ghost, Pierre,’ she told him.

He was amused. ‘You’ve become more bold, more witty, but then you always did have some wit about you. That’s really quite funny.’