The Sweet Caress (15 page)

‘I think not.’

They were interrupted by the waiter bringing coffee. When he withdrew from the table, Candia caught Luke off guard by asking him, ‘Are you married, Dr Luke Greenfield?’

‘I was. Twice, in fact.’

‘Well, maybe you will be lucky the third time,’ she said with some sympathy in her voice.

‘I don’t intend to try. You see, my second wife was everything to me. She still is.’

Candia seemed touched by that, enough to stop asking any more personal questions. What she said was, ‘Luke Greenfield, I think we must find you a marvellous place to live where you can love like that again.’

Chapter 9

Candia never had more fun on the Riviera than she did zooming through the villages along the coast between Nice and Cannes, up through the hills above. Luke was filled with enthusiasm for everything they did, everything they saw. She laid before him the hidden Côte d’Azur, the romantic, poetic Riviera that he had always imagined it would be. They house-hunted but found nothing that satisfied him.

The weather was glorious, winter sunshine every day, hardly any wind. And the light was luminescent. With the top down, she drove him everywhere in the Jaguar. There was a charm about them that people took to and they became quite used to the idea that they were perceived as lovers involved in a great romance. After several days together, they stopped correcting people’s assumptions.

Axel called every night. He was no less wonderful, she was no less in love with him. She missed her sexual life with him and as the days passed she wanted him in her bed, yearned to be riven by him while he told her how magnificent she was, how much he loved her. And she spent every day with Luke, growing closer to him, wanting him. Several times she had very nearly told him how she felt about him, but there was Axel to think of, Axel to love and be loved by.

One day when they were walking through the narrow streets leading to a marina in Cannes, it suddenly came upon Luke. He turned Candia round to face him and kissed the tip of her nose. ‘I know why we can’t find a house for
me. I don’t want a house. I’m going to live on a boat in the marina in Juan-les-Pins. It would be perfect for me. Private, close to you, easy to get to Nice when the hospital needs me. Actually I could sail there. And there will be an impermanence about it to remind me that I have to leave here in a few months – little more than two, actually.’

‘That’s a brilliant idea, Luke. Why didn’t I think of it? You’ll be spoiled for choice because everyone wants to rent their yacht in winter, or at least those who haven’t sailed them to warmer climes.’

She grabbed his hands and brought them to her lips and kissed them. And then as if she had been burned she dropped them and all the enthusiasm went out of her face. She stepped back from him. ‘Luke,’ she called out.

‘What’s wrong? Are you ill?’ he asked, pulling her into his arms and embracing her. She regained her composure but remained enveloped by him. For a fleeting moment he thought she might have recognised him. Luke calmed himself, he was playing such a dangerous game with her. Their happiness was at stake, he would take no chances. He said no more but just held her in his arms and waited for her to speak.

‘That was very strange. When I was kissing your hands, the scent of them, the texture of your skin, the taste of you, it touched my heart, my very soul. It sent a chill of pleasure through me. I felt I had done that before, many times. I wanted to go further. I don’t want to embarrass you, but I wanted to make love to you, Luke. That’s what made me cry out your name.’

He pulled her into a doorway, took her tightly in his arms and kissed her passionately. They had a hunger for each other that left them shaken and not so much embarrassed as confused as to what to do about their feelings. He took her by the hand and leading her back into the sunshine told her, ‘This calls for champagne and roses.’

That made her laugh, and together they walked into a
bistro, ordered a bottle of Krug, and drank it at a small table overlooking some of the most glamorous and costly yachts in the world. He left her for a few minutes when a friend of hers walking past stopped to chat to her. When he returned, his arms were filled with white roses. Introductions were made and the friend, an eyebrow raised, left them to join her husband on their yacht.

‘She’s a terrible gossip. She’ll have us an item way before we are one. Would that bother you?’ she asked seductively.

‘What would bother me would be never to see you again,’ he told her.

Luke knew they were getting too intense. He also knew about Axel Winwood. He had actually been present one evening when he had called. It had been a torture to see her eyes light up with delight at the sound of his voice. She was candid with Axel, told him she missed him less because she had made a new friend whom she was helping to settle in. He was more than a friend, damn it, he was her husband, and she loved him more than she could ever love Axel Winwood!

Luke wanted to cool what was happening to them. He wanted nothing to jeopardise the progress Candia was making to regain her memory, so he changed the subject and went back to talking about finding the right boat for him.

It was a three-masted black schooner with coral-coloured sails. The captain lived on board and the crew of five lived ashore. Owned by a famous Greek shipowner, the
Hesperides
was kept in pristine condition. The sailing yacht had been built in 1928 and boasted too many sleeping cabins for Luke’s needs but he was won over by a library, a saloon-cum-dining room, a large galley, too many bathrooms, a swimming pool and the price.

Candia organised his move, and after meeting the
Hesperides
’ cook they went on a shopping trip for stores for the galley while the captain made arrangements to sail the
schooner from its mooring in Cannes to one in Juan-les-Pins. They sailed just after lunch. Candia and Luke stood in the bow of the schooner in jeans and warm jumpers. Luke was wearing a leather jacket that Candia then Jessica had bought for him on one of his birthdays. She remarked how handsome he looked in it. As the schooner headed into the wind, Candia shivered, so he took off the jacket and insisted she put it on.

She wrapped it tightly round her. It felt like a second skin to her. She smiled, feeling absurdly happy to be dressed in something he had worn. She pulled Luke close by the sleeves of his jumper.

‘I don’t know what I would have done without you, how I could have found myself,’ she told him. She kissed him on the lips, licked them and ran her fingers through his hair. Then she released him, turned round and leaned back against him. He held her tight and so they remained as the yacht followed the rugged coastline of pine trees and palm trees, sumptuous gardens, and multi-million-pound villas.

That evening they dined on the
Hesperides
, celebrating his first night on board. Later he watched her drive home to the Temple. The next day she arrived to swim in the heated pool and then drove him to a small restaurant along the coast towards Monte Carlo.

‘We’re getting out of hand,’ she told him.

His heart sank until she qualified the statement. ‘I’m taking too much of your time. I think about all the marvellous things we could do together, what fun it would be to show you this and that. I want to add to your life, not distract you from it. So I’ve worked out a schedule to ration your time otherwise I know I’ll swallow you up because I’m so happy being with you. You will never hear from me until one o’clock. I’ll come over or call and if you’re free we might do something together.’

‘And the evenings?’ he asked.

‘Oh, well. I would say that’s up to you.’

He knew the seductive smile that followed those words only too well. She was coming closer to him. ‘Fair enough,’ he told her.

‘Are you happy, Luke?’ she asked.

‘Yes, very. But I always have to remind myself that this life I’m living is far from the norm for me. Newbampton, Massachusetts, is not Juan-les-Pins and I have a life and work there that suits me down to the ground.

‘Newbampton! I don’t believe this!
You
live in Newbampton?’

‘Do you know it? Have you been there?’ he asked. Here could be the moment of truth.

‘No, never. I know nothing about it. Except there is a house there called Rose Cottage. Do you know it? Is it beautiful? Is the rose garden as marvellous as it is supposed to be? I’ve often thought one day I might go and see it.’

He told her about the town, its charm, how happy he was living there, about Wesson College and the fame of Newbampton’s hospital. She seemed eager to hear everything but showed no signs of ever having been there. Luke asked her how she happened to know about Rose Cottage.

Candia was pensive and silent for a few seconds. Then she took his hand in hers and said, ‘Let’s go back to the
Hesperides
and I’ll tell you all about it.’

For the first time she offered him the wheel of the car and sat in the passenger seat. She was silent all the way back, leaning against him and humming a pretty French song that was all the rage in France at the moment. Once the
Hesperides
came into view, she sat up. He pulled up to the gangway and cut the motor.

‘You should have told me you were such a good driver,’ she said. She pecked him on the cheek and got out of the car.

In the saloon, she asked, ‘Can we have coffee and some of those strips of orange peel covered in chocolate?’

Luke went to the galley and returned with the chocolate
bits, telling her that the steward would be bringing the coffee. When he did, Luke told him that he and the captain could go ashore for the evening, he did not intend to go out again.

They drank their coffee and munched on the chocolate strips. After the captain and the steward had left, Candia went to Luke who was sitting on a deep, comfortable sofa. She raised his legs and drew them along it, and placed a pillow behind his head. Then she lay down in his arms, her back against his chest.

‘About Rose Cottage in Newbampton, Massachusetts. It’s a house I have never seen but it has always played a big part in my life. I have a strange and marvellous story to tell you about it. It’s a story I have never told another living soul. It started a long time ago with my mother, when I was a young child. Now when I look back on it, I realise that life’s little games can take you over, mould you and your lifestyle without your even being aware of it. But before I tell you my Rose Cottage story, I want you to know I have always loved being a part of it, still do.’

It would have been impossible for Candia to tell the story of Rose Cottage without revealing a great deal about her own life. That was how Luke learned about Pierre Lavall and the Baron Yves Marmont. It would have been dishonest for him not to admit to himself that he was shocked to hear some of her story: how she had been manipulated by love from a man who had only been interested in seeing her die for him in lust.

Luke was more in love with her than ever, for now he knew what had made her run away from Hong Kong. In his view her return to face and reject Pierre once and for all showed strength and courage, for to rid herself of what she had once only been able to run away from could not have been easy. He now knew those many secrets she had hidden from him in Newbampton when she had pretended to be a victim of amnesia. That mysterious quality she had about
her, her exotic looks and charm, the sensuality that like a siren called men to her, he now understood where it all came from. This sensitive soul with the clever, bright mind and sureness of spirit that she had never surrendered, this was Candia, this was his wife.

The revelations stopped when Candia told him about losing her memory of the last four years of her life. She turned in his arms to face him and kissed him on the cheek. ‘I don’t know why I did that, told you my life story, except that I never want to hide anything from you, Luke. Or maybe it’s simply because I know you love me.’ Her last words were little more than a murmur. Exhausted, she fell asleep in his arms.

Much later, when he awakened, she was still there and still fast asleep. He carefully unwound himself from her and carried her to his cabin. There he undressed her, put her to bed, and crawled in next to her. Silently he wept. They had come so far and still they were not there.

In the morning he woke up long before she did. He bathed, dressed and went to the library to work on his paper. He ordered breakfast for them to be served in the saloon but when he went to fetch her, she was gone. Not a note, not the least sign that she had ever been there.

Luke sat down on the bed, his hands over his face. Had she told him too much? Would he ever see her again? It took him several minutes to compose himself. He knew he had assumed too much, expected too much too soon. It was always going to be a waiting game. He left the cabin to breakfast alone and return to his work.

Candia left the
Hesperides
as quietly as she could at about nine o’clock. No one saw her, and that was just as well. The last thing she wanted was to talk to anyone; she needed some space and to be alone. In the morning sunshine she drove to a small workmen’s cafe. Several men were devouring huge breakfasts and drinking coffee laced with the cafe’s special pick-me-up brandy. She knew from past
experience that proprietors of places such as this did not encourage ladies like herself but that didn’t bother her. She knew how to get what she wanted without offending anyone.

There was a moment of silence when she entered the cafe but that was because the men had paused to give her an admiring glance. The din of workmen talking shop and politics and the clank of forks and knives on thick white plates resumed and Candia went to the service bar and asked if she might have breakfast.

The woman behind the bar was as rough as her customers and grouchily told Candia, ‘There’s nothing fancy here, but look around, we do the best breakfast in the area – that is, if you want to eat what the men eat.’

‘I’ll be happy to. You don’t mind, do you? But I’m really hungry.’

The woman pointed to a table where two men were eating. The third chair was empty. Candia went to the table. The men ignored her until she politely asked, ‘Do you mind if I share this table with you?’

Somewhat brusquely one of the men said, ‘It’s unoccupied, isn’t it?’

Candia sat down. She had been thinking of nothing but Luke Greenfield since she had awakened and he had not been by her side. She was reliving her feelings about him from the very first time she saw him in the Temple and all the days and evenings they had spent together. Every time she saw him she knew they were getting closer and closer. He had a powerful, solid presence that excited without his having to make an effort and she had been drawn to that. Why had she not realised from the first that there was a sexual attraction there? Or had she always known it and put it out of her mind because she was so happy with Axel?