Page 46 of The Affairs of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #2)

‘I believe you,’ she said. ‘But it’s you who are trifling with me. If you can’t ask me to marry you – and I accept that you can’t – you can’t ask me to respond to a proposal that can never be made. It’s cruel to expect me to.’

‘Oh, damn,’ he said wryly. ‘You’re quite right. I’m a fool and a cad – but you must forgive me on the grounds of inexperience. I’ve never asked a girl to marry me before.’

She flinched inwardly at the word ‘girl’. ‘You still haven’t,’ she pointed out lightly. ‘And please don’t take that as a hint that I want you to.’

‘You’re laughing at me.’

‘No, my dear, at the situation. Which you must agree is closer to farce than tragedy.’

He took her hands and kissed them. ‘You always make me laugh when I particularly don’t want to. It’s most unfair. And here I am, laying out my finest feelings for you to trample on, and you haven’t even said you love me !’

‘Nor shall I,’ she said steadily.

‘But you do ,’ he urged.

She freed her hands and looked away. ‘You make it too hard for me, Richard. Everything is too hard.’

He was silent. Then, after a while, he said, ‘We should go back,’ and she was afraid she had hurt him, and that he was ending their day out of pique.

But when she looked at him enquiringly, he gave her a smile of purest sweetness, and said, ‘The trains will get crowded when everyone comes off the river. We don’t want to have to share a compartment. We should get away before the rush.’

Back at Golden Square, Molly let herself in with a latch-key and said, ‘It has been such a lovely day – I don’t want it to end.’

Richard followed her in and up the stairs, saying, ‘I’ve no intention of letting it end.

I mean to take you out to supper. There’s a charming little French restaurant in Dean Street.

You know the sort of thing – small tables, candlelight, unidentifiable cuts of meat disguised by quantities of garlic . . .’

She laughed. ‘I especially like the garlic! But I’m not sure I ought to dine with you alone in a restaurant.’

‘Are you under twenty-one? Do you need to ask your father’s permission? Then don’t be foolish.’

‘I’d better change,’ she said.

‘It’s not formal,’ he said. ‘They won’t mind me in my blazer and flannel bags, and you look charmingly in that outfit.’

‘If you don’t mind, though, I will change. It’s rather too light and summery. I might stand out too much.’

‘As you please,’ he said.

She went through into the bedroom, and Richard moved about the living-room restlessly, fidgeting with things.

It had been a lovely day, but it had left him in a fret, unsatisfied.

His blood was up, with nowhere to go. And then he noticed that her bedroom door had not caught when she pushed it closed, and was open a crack.

He was suddenly cool, and the hair stood up on the back of his neck.

He stepped to it, hesitated, then pushed it open.

She had her back to him, had taken off her jacket and blouse.

Her chemise was a pale peach colour, edged with cotton lace.

She was reaching up behind to unfasten her necklace, a simple gold chain.

She froze when she heard him come up behind her, then dropped her arms. He stepped close, unfastened the catch, let the chain slip forward, and she caught it in a cupped hand.

Then slowly, softly, he laid his lips on the warm nape of her neck.

She made a small sound, either of protest or despair.

But her breathing had quickened, and he slipped his arms around her waist and moved his lips up the stretch of her taut neck to her hairline.

Then she turned inside his embrace, and her mouth was his.

He kissed her long and deeply. Her arms came up round his neck, he pulled her close against him, feeling the fantastic softness of her half-clothed body.

He had loved her mind since their first meeting, but it was not enough. He wanted everything.

It was agony when she pulled back. ‘No, Richard. No,’ she said against his mouth.

He tightened his arms. ‘Don’t stop. Please, don’t. My darling, my darling.’

She pulled his hands loose. He let her go, but not entirely – enough that she could face him, with a space between their bodies. But his hands remained at her waist. ‘Why?’ he said baldly.

‘You know why,’ she said, low and unhappy.

‘I told you, that doesn’t matter. God! I’ve told you and told you.’

‘I’m too old for you. I’m old enough to—’

‘Don’t say it. Don’t you dare say it!’ He looked down at her angrily.

‘Age is nothing. It’s just a number. It doesn’t mean anything when people love each other as we do.

You think I’m a foolish boy, but you forget what I’ve seen and done.

I’m old in experience. And you, you’re fresh and lovely and timeless and immortal—’

‘Oh, my dear, if only!’ She stopped him, between laughter and tears. ‘Have you thought how it would look?’

‘I don’t care what anyone thinks,’ he said impatiently. ‘I never have.’

‘What about what Chloe would think?’

That gave him pause. Slowly he removed his arms from her, looked at her with a thoughtful frown.

But then he said, ‘I don’t think she would care.

Her music – it makes her different. I can’t find the right words, exactly, but she isn’t entirely of this world.

She isn’t a girl, really – she isn’t any age. ’

‘I know what you mean,’ Molly said, in fairness. ‘But all the same, she is my daughter, I am her mother, and she would be shocked.’

He pulled away from her, stumped to the door, put his arm up on the frame and rested his forehead on it. He was silent a moment. Then he said, ‘If you don’t want me, you only have to say it.’

She didn’t answer. He felt her move up behind him.

Then she put her arms round his waist and rested her head against his back.

‘I can’t say it,’ she said. They were still for a while, just breathing.

Then slowly he turned round and drew her against him, and she let him, rested against him, perilously safe.

At last, with a sigh, she released herself, stepped back, and said, in a steady, neutral voice. ‘This must never happen again. If I can’t trust you to behave, I can’t see you again. Can I trust you?’

He looked steadily into her face for a long time. Then, as if he had had an answer to some unasked question, he smiled, and raising a hand, tenderly drew a thread of hair from her cheek and restored it to its place behind her ear. ‘You know I would never do anything to harm you.’

‘That is not an answer to my question,’ she said, not quite managing to be stern – her voice shook just a little.

‘It is all the answer you can have. And now, hurry up and get changed. All that fresh air has given me an appetite. I could eat a horse – and, given the tendencies of the French, I may well have to.’

He went back into the other room, closing the door behind him.

She turned and looked at her reflection in the wardrobe mirror, and shook her head ruefully.

He always made her laugh – that was the great danger.

Laughter weakened your resolve. And she wanted to be weak: she wanted to have him.

But she mustn’t. She ought to send him away, tell him she wouldn’t see him any more.

But somehow she couldn’t. She thought she would suffer for it in the end, but she couldn’t.