Those Wicked Pleasures (42 page)

The idea occurred to her while discussing travel plans with Nancy: it was a simple thing, Nancy asking her where she wanted to stay in Paris. ‘The Raphael.’ Having said it, Lara felt no pain, no feeling of loss for Evan. Simply how pleased he would be to know she was going there again. They had travelled to so many places, where she had been happy. She would like to revisit them with her
friends, her children, the family. Thus did she make up her mind to retrace the journeys she had taken with Evan. It would be the exorcising of the power of their love and of her holding back from finding another.

David, Martha, their children and Lara’s children, made a trip to the farm in Kenya. It was a great success. She entertained the entire family in the manor house in Gloucestershire, the first home she had made for them. There was not a trace of Evan there, which both surprised her and enabled that too to be a successful, happy time. Rome she visited alone. There she dated a count, and forgave Roberto. Then Paris with her usual entourage, and they all stayed again at The Raphael. Sailing around the Greek Islands on a black schooner, with Max and her children, she retraced a route she had taken with Evan. The past did not sail with them. With this new stability as part of her character now, she was even more happy in those places than she had been with him. No longer was there the need to lead the secret life they had somehow reconciled themselves to. There were not even ghosts to be laid now. He had been right. Dead is dead.

She had fame and power, success and happiness. She still remained, as all her family had managed to, in the public eye, but lived a very private life. She was not averse to suitors and enjoyed her flirtations, but was biding her time for love. It was during these best of times that she returned to Morocco for the first time since her dramatic escape from Jamal, simply to bring Karim to his father for Karim’s birthday. A trip that she undertook for the boy’s sake.

The one night she stayed at The Mamounia, Jamal paid her a visit after Karim was put to bed and proposed that she should go back to him. He made all the right sounds, was charm and kindness itself. He told her of his remorse at what he had put her through, used every ploy he could
to assure her he was a changed man. Having found out the hard way how really evil he could be, she endured it as an arduous confrontation that could have no effect on her whatsoever. Lara was amazed that he should think that she still loved him.

She was surprised when he appeared at the family villa in Cap d’Antibes two days later. Then he told her, ‘I am so proud of what you have done with your life. Of the successes you have achieved where governments have failed. I could never have believed you could be the woman you are. Take me back. I will make it up to you.’

That was difficult, because she knew he was telling the truth and because they had a wonderful son. And there was one thing about Jamal that had never died for her: the sexual attraction. It was still there.

‘It must have been a time of laying ghosts.’ That was what she was telling Julia over lunch at the Harvard Club on her return from Morocco. She had been recounting the surprise created by Jamal’s reinvading her life after all the years that had passed, and all the acrimony. Her amazement at how a man could so distort his own perception that he could believe she loved him still. For that was what Jamal kept insisting.

When Julia thanked her for the lunch, Lara said impulsively, ‘Let’s make the next one at Harry’s Bar in Venice. Just the two of us, on a long, long weekend of fun.’

‘No, not Venice. I have a surprise for you about Venice. But you must wait another few days before I tell you.’

Chapter 28

Lara listened to the rain beating against the window. There was a clap of thunder and a flash of lightning that lit up the sky, the Grand Canal, and the other palazzos along it.

Her room was sumptuous with antique Fortuny fabrics, silk damasks of plum and coral and ruby red. On a green marble floor stood the gilt-canopied bed whose four posts in voluptuous twists and turns displayed golden putti, naked babes with pudgy arms, rounded tums and cherubic faces of impish disposition. The bed had held Venetian princes during its long chequered existence. It was draped in velvets and brocades, and a bedcover with a finely embroidered field of silk flowers, faded now: daisies, roses, honeysuckle, jasmine and lilies; a mélange of blossoms still with some colours vibrant among them. There were cushions of silk and satin, bound in antique silk ropes, with braids, fringes and tassels. The furniture was mostly Venetian and of venerable age, featuring marble from quarries worked out hundreds of years before. There were chairs of breathtaking elegance, sensuous in form and covered in period tapestries.

The atmosphere of this huge, beautiful room, with its twenty-foot ceilings and leaded glass windows looking out on the Grand Canal, was made even more romantic by marble vases filled with long-stemmed roses and lilies,
by the paintings on the walls: a Donatello, a Raphael, a Caravaggio, in sumptuously carved and gilded frames. There was a nearly life-sized bronze of a naked youth, and on either side of a huge Venetian mirror a pair of blackamoors, sixteenth century, gilded and painted, with turbans encrusted in rose-cut diamonds. Their luminous black faces were sculpted in shiny-smooth flawless black marble.

Another ferocious clap of thunder and bright streaks of lightning, almost directly overhead. The lights flickered. The noise had hardly abated when, with a gentle knock at the door, Roberto walked in. Vivaldi floated up from the ballroom below. How handsome Roberto was, disguised in an eighteenth-century costume of ice-blue silk breeches, a brocade waistcoat and a period jacket of black and gold, topped off with a powdered wig. He wore elegant pointed shoes, with ribbons that crossed the foot and huge diamanté buckles. A black mask covered the top half of his face. It was fashioned entirely of glass beads. A smile danced about his lips the moment he saw Lara in her costume.

‘Fantastic! Really, you look amazing.’

‘And you.’

They did a turn-around for each other. ‘A devil this weather, isn’t it? Pity. But we did have four perfect sunny days.’

‘The best party ever, Roberto.’

He beamed. ‘I’ve come to tell you I’m going down. I must be there to receive my guests. They’re just arriving. Don’t rush.’

‘I don’t know how you did it, getting seventy people together from all over the world. And what a combination of people! Not a dud in the crowd. What organisation it must have taken to give us these four days in Venice. The luxury of it all, and the thoughtful touches. The
flowers and the candy, the gifts and … and! You must have been months working it out.’

‘I was. I promised myself I’d give the best party ever.’

‘Well, you certainly have.’

‘And I hope this ball will be the best any of us ever attended.’

‘Well, kiss me for luck,’ said Julia, who floated through the door, already masked. She was dressed in silver and white, with a necklace of extravagant diamonds – the only thing about the costume that was not eighteenth century. The three abandoned themselves to a few minutes of mutual admiration. A few more kisses then, high on the expectation of fun, Roberto and Julia were summoned by the major domo.

Several other guests, like Lara, were staying in the palazzo. Others had been put up at the Gritti Palace, only minutes away by gondola. So far it had been the most fun and glamorous party Lara had been to in years. Truly Roberto had thought of everything. From the moment they had boarded Concorde in New York, it had been round-the-clock entertainment: food, wine, shopping trips, tours of Venice, lunch in Torcello, Murano, Burano, the Lido. The sun had beamed upon them and the nights had been soft with the warmth of the breezes. The usual hordes of tourists, as if by divine dispensation, had not materialised, even in the first days of June.

Lara jumped suddenly, surprised by another clap of thunder. The lights went out. No surprise. They had come and gone for the last hour. It posed no problem. Her room had been lit by dozens of fat white church candles placed in tall gilded wooden torchères. Slimmer ivory candles glowed in wall sconces dripping with rock crystal that sparkled like diamonds. Others twinkled in silver candelabra set on tables. This time the lights did not come back on.

Lara went to the window. She could see little. Venice was seemingly under a black-out. Far down the Grand Canal, somewhere near the Piazza San Marco, there was a slash of lightning in the black sky. It glowed for a second. A dramatic night for a ball. The weather seemed to add a frisson to the event. She watched with fascination the water gushing down the window panes. Another flash of lightning, shooting almost through the window. It gave her a moment to see, approaching the landing of the palazzo, several gondolas. Guests huddled under canopies with side-curtains stretched over the boats to protect them from the storm. The lanterns on the gondolas cast a yellow light on the masked revellers who were now bouncing out of the boats and up the stairs. Umbrellas billowed protectively in the white-gloved hands of the bewigged, liveried footmen. The guests hurried in to the ball.

Several boys with blackened faces and dressed as blackamoors, holding red silk umbrellas in one hand and lanterns lit by candles in the other, appeared at the entrance to the palazzo to light the way for the guests. Three more gondolas arrived. Lara saw flashes of pink silk and emerald green velvet and gold lamé as the ladies’ gowns were caught by the wind. The men in black capes, one of white satin even, looked handsome, mysterious, dashing. It was the mask that made Lara feel truly liberated. No identity to deal with; a release from restraint. Tonight there were to be more guests, a hundred in all. What if, under their masks, they all felt as she did? It promised to be a night to remember. The very anonymity of the masks would provoke liaisons, invite sexual encounters that might throw inhibitions to the wind.

It was time to go down to the ball. Lara checked herself in the mirror for the last time. A woman knows when
she looks spectacular and when she just looks well. Spectacular, declared her reflection. Her dress was modelled on an eighteenth-century Venetian ball-gown. It had been painted several times by several different old masters. That gown had once adorned a famous lady of dubious reputation. Some had considered her the most perfect Venetian beauty of her time. Lara had had it copied down to the last detail which included a fantastic mask of egret feathers. She looked sensuous and exciting, and very risqué. The bodice was cut so low that the swell of her breasts showed nearly to the edge of the plummy-coloured nimbus circling her nipples. Such a tight bodice and pinched-in waist accentuated the sweep of the voluminous skirt, billowing out over a hooped under structure. From her wrist hung a black feather fan mounted on ivory. The wickedly sexy gown and mask might have wrung an invitation from the Marquis de Sade himself to partner her to the ball.

She fingered the feathered mask and laughed. She could be as provocative as she liked tonight: no one would know who she was. Lara had chosen not to wear a powdered wig, but to have her own hair dressed in the eighteenth-century style favoured for such an event, a labour of some hours. But now, looking at herself, she thought it had been worth it. The dress was of black silk taffeta and nearly strapless except for tiny drapings of silk on the shoulders. She wore diamonds, and the pearl choker Emily had given her as her first piece of serious jewellery.

Something drew her eyes to him as she was descending the grand staircase into the marble hall. He was standing at the bottom of the stairs. Waiting for someone? What a pity. Their gazes met behind the masks. They were able to lock into each other’s thoughts immediately and each recognised their immediate attraction. Was it the allure
of a virtually faceless physique? Perhaps the masks themselves induced some strange compulsion.

He was tall and slim with honey blond hair, lots of it, and smouldering brown eyes behind the slim strip of his mask. The black eye-band did little to hide the fine, sensitive, incredibly sensuous face. He emanated an erotic, even raunchy, masculinity, and the promise of youthful flesh. It excited her, this young flesh.

He watched her walk down the last few steps. They smiled at each other and he was enchanted by the sensuous green eyes, the sexy pout of her upper lip. He lowered his head as if in a bow. And then, before she traversed the last step, he dropped to one knee. Raising the hem of her gown, he kissed it. That eloquent, antique gesture! Then, standing up again, he offered her his hand. She took it. He kissed hers in turn and then spoke to her for the first time. ‘I think you shall be mine.’

Lara was seduced by his youth, his charm, his sureness. ‘Have I nothing to say in the matter?’

‘Oh, yes. Everything. But you are a woman, a very sexy and beautiful woman, and you will play games with me before you will consent to be mine.’

She laughed, catching at once the special tone to it. It had a lilt, a note she had almost forgotten. It was the laugh of a young heart. People had commented on it when she was a girl.

He never relinquished her, not for one dance, even with his hostess. He was young, she could see it even with his mask in place, sense it by the way he moved. But she had understood that at once by his honesty, his audacity. She sensed, too, the purity of his spirit, that only comes with youth.

They danced and they danced and they danced. There was something in the way he held her, the way she felt in his arms. She wanted never to leave those strong, sure,
young arms. She felt the years dropping away from her. She felt she belonged to him. As if she had missed something all of her life by not having met him before. It was lunacy but she did believe that he was right: in some way she was his. The mask was her saviour; she could hide behind it and flirt with him. She could say and do whatever foolish thing the moment inspired in her. The mask gave her courage to make a fool of herself with this delicious young man.

His timing was perfect. At the very moment when her thoughts were of them, he told her, ‘We can tell each other everything. Or nothing. But we don’t have to confess. I hate confessions. I don’t want to tell you all my secrets and I don’t want to know yours. Does that make sense?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Good, then we understand each other. To have you in my arms is to be ruined for any other woman.’

‘Then perhaps I should tell you that I feel I fit into your arms as I have never fitted another’s.’

With raised eyebrows he smiled, an expression that left her weak-kneed. Then he told her, ‘I know. That’s because you know I love you. That you are mine and will be the great love of my life.’

They were interrupted by the end of the music and the beginning of an entertainment. He was well spoken and full of charm. He seemed to interest and amuse everyone. But he never for a moment let her drift away from him.

The ball was as Roberto had wanted it to be. A glamorous and fun ball, that would be talked about for years to come. The palazzo and the costumes, the wine, the menu, the music, the dancing and good company, the timing of events, were only the basis. A group of Shakespearean actors performed scenes from
The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Othello
.
To off-set Othello’s jealousy came the jugglers and magicians. Two Russian ballet dancers out-Shakespeared the actors by dancing Prokofiev’s
Romeo and Juliet
. Gypsy violinists alternated with the orchestra. Fortunetellers roamed among the guests, shrewdly predicting what they wanted to hear. All through the night, the storm raged, to add claps of thunder and streaks of lightning. Incessant wind and rain beat dramatically against the windows.

They were dancing again, and he whispered in her ear: ‘I want us to go home to bed.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Yes, just like that. You can’t tell me that’s not what you want?’

‘No. I can’t tell you that.’

‘I’m going to marry you, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

She could not help laughing. He too thought himself quite funny, and laughed as well. ‘As soon as possible,’ he assured her.

‘Oh, but you want the wedding night first? Well, I like a man who knows what he wants and goes after it.’

‘When I saw you at the top of the stairs you quite took my breath away, I was so attracted to you. You looked wickedly sexual to me, but you also seemed to reach out to me with love. Come to me. Let’s make love together. I know you are my happiness, and I think I could be yours. Can I be so wrong about that? Surely not?’

He took her hand and was leading her from the ballroom. She stopped him. ‘And what if you’re right?’

‘Then the gods at last have blessed us.’

‘Behind this mask is an older woman.’

‘Behind this one is her hungry lover, her future husband.’

‘You assume a lot.’

Walking through the reception rooms on the arm of the young man, Lara was not unaware of the wanton atmosphere. At midnight, the hour to unmask, most of the guests had chosen to keep themselves concealed behind their masks. Now, the early hours of the morning incited couples to behave rather more than flirtatiously with their semi-mysterious friends. In the upstairs hall, away from the eyes of the other guests, the young man quite gently pressed Lara against the wall. Tilting her chin up, he placed his mouth upon hers and gave her a tender, lingering kiss. His lips found the side of her neck. He removed her earring. He licked the lobe of her ear, sucked gently on it and ran the point of his tongue behind it. She closed her eyes. Her breathing quickened with the thrill of such affection. They feasted wordlessly upon each other. His tongue licked the small hollow at the base of her neck. Passionate kisses, strong young hands caressing her arms and bare shoulders triggered in her the urge to cry. Not out of sadness, more out of a sense of relief that he had arrived in her life, this masked stranger, able to draw from her a youthful freshness of spirit.