Page 99

He glanced around. He had forgotten about the tumbled drawers and the scattered clothes.
She unbuttoned his shirt front. “Jesus, that was some fall,” was all she said. Then she helped him up and led him to the bed. He sat on it. She pushed him backward, lifted his legs, and rolled him onto the mattress.
“Don’t go away,” she said unnecessarily. “I have some liniment in my room.”
She was back in minutes, closing the door behind her and giving the key a swift turn. She unbuttoned his Sea Island cotton shirt and slipped it from his shoulders, tut-tutting at the sight of the four bruises, now turning a fetching blue, that adorned his torso and ribs.
He felt helpless, but she seemed to know what she was doing. A small bottle was uncorked, and gentle fingers rubbed liniment into the bruised areas. It stung. He said, “Ow.”
“It’ll do you good, take the swelling down, help the discoloration. Roll over.”
She eased more liniment into the bruises on his shoulders and back.
“How come you carry liniment around?” he mumbled. “Do all your dining partners end up like this?”
“It’s for horses,” she said.
“Thanks a lot.”
“Stop fussing—it has the same effect on stupid men. Roll back.”
He did so.
She stood over him, her golden hair falling about her shoulders. “They hit you in the legs as well?”
“All over.”
She unbuttoned the waistband of his trousers, unzipped them, and eased them down and off without a fuss. It was no strange task for a young wife with a husband who drank too much. Apart from one lump on the right shin, there were another half-dozen bluish areas on the thighs. She massaged the liniment into them. After the sting, the sensation was of pure pleasure. The odor reminded him of the days when he played Rugby at school. She paused and set the bottle down.
“Is that a bruise?” she asked.
He glanced down toward his jockey shorts. No, it was not a bruise.
“Thank God,” she murmured. She turned away and reached for the zipper at the back of her cream shantung dress. The filtered light from the curtains gave the room a low, cool glow.
“Where did you learn about bruises?” he asked.
After the beating and the massage, he was feeling drowsy. His head was drowsy, anyway.
“Back in Kentucky, my kid brother was an amateur jockey,” she said. “I patched him up a few times.”
Her cream dress slid to the floor in a pool. She wore tiny Janet Reger panties. No bra strap crossed her back. Despite the fullness of her breasts, she needed none. She turned around. Rowse swallowed.
“But this,” she said, “I did not learn from any brother.”
He thought fleetingly about Nikki back in Gloucestershire. He had not done this before, not since marrying Nikki. But, he reasoned, a warrior occasionally needs solace, and if it is offered, he would be less than human to refuse.
He reached up for her as she straddled him, but she took his wrists and pressed them back on the pillow.
“Lie still,” she whispered. “You’re far too ill to participate.”
But for the next hour or so she seemed quite content to be proved wrong.
Just before four she rose and crossed the room to open the curtains. The sun had passed its azimuth and was moving toward the mountains.
Across the valley Danny the sergeant adjusted his focus and said, “Cor, you dirty bastard, Tom.”
The affair lasted for three days. The horses did not arrive from Syria, nor any message for Rowse from Hakim al-Mansour. She checked with her agent on the coast regularly, but always the answer was “Tomorrow.” So they walked through the mountains, took picnics high above the cherry orchards where the conifers grow, and made love among the pine needles.