Acts of Love (10 page)

Ben looked across at Arianne. How still she had been all the way to London! Had it been that natural quiet of hers that by contrast had made him recall the life he had once lived with Clarissa? They were off the motorway now, approaching the Natural History Museum in Kensington, the traffic hardly impinging. ‘Where do you live?’

Arianne turned to smile at him. ‘Just drop me off anywhere convenient. I can catch a taxi.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it. Unless you live somewhere outside central London. If that’s the case, I might just beg off.’

‘Mayfair. But honestly I can get a taxi.’

‘No taxi necessary. We’re neighbours. I live in Mayfair too. I’m your taxi, ma’am. Address please?’

‘Three Kings Yard, off Davies Street.’

‘Oh, so we really are neighbours. I keep a small penthouse flat on Piccadilly, overlooking Green Park, the Ritz Hotel end of Piccadilly. I bought it for the underground parking, would you believe?’

There their conversation ended. He turned left into Exhibition Row, at the top of which he entered Hyde Park. He drove the Porsche past Hyde Park Corner and took the exit from the park at the Dorchester. Several smart turns and they were on Davies Street at the top of Berkeley Square. Minutes later he opened the car door for Arianne in front of Number 12, Three Kings Yard.

‘I really am immensely grateful for this ride,’ she told him as she stepped out of the Porsche. ‘But for you, I would probably still be waiting for a train somewhere in the country. But I am sorry that Artemis foisted me upon you. I’m afraid you had little choice but to take me to London.’

Ben laughed. ‘She is a formidable lady, your mother. But, have no fear, if I had not wanted to give you a lift, Lady Hardcastle or not, I would have left you there. But for future reference you could have stayed the night at Chessington Park with your mother and taken the early train to London. You would have been here by eight.’

There was something in Arianne’s eyes, part amusement, part disbelief. ‘Ah. Lady Hardcastle does not like unexpected house guests,’ he suggested.

‘Good guess, Ben. Ten out of ten.’

That was the first time she had used his name. ‘Ben’. It rolled off her tongue pleasingly, lightly.

NEW YORK,
CUERNAVACA,
LONDON

Chapter 7

Arianne closed the front door and leaned against it. She stood in the dark for several minutes before she switched on the hall light. She liked Ben Johnson. She felt good in his company. He was so easy to be with.

She draped her jacket over the banister and walked into the sitting room, where she went directly to the fireplace and put a lighted taper to the tissue paper and kindling. It flared into life. Orange flames licked the blackened bricks. The logs had caught and the fire was blazing when she returned to sit on the settee with a Kir Royale. Champagne and cassis. She closed her eyes to savour the delicious drink. Only then did she realise that she had poured it without thinking. It had been their drink. Hers and Jason’s. She did a double-take at her own extravagance in opening even the halfbottle for herself. She reminded herself that she was living on a shoestring, no matter how it looked to the outside world.

The ride home had been an unexpected pleasant interlude. She had felt good while in close contact with Ben Johnson in his smart Porsche, not unlike the well-being she had always felt in the presence of Jason. There were similarities between Jason and Ben. They both liked fast cars and drove well. They were attractive men with adventure built into their psyche. Although she didn’t know that for sure about Ben Johnson, she sensed it, enough to make a bet with herself that it was so.

Several times she had wanted to speak to Ben, to know more about him than his name and how attached he was to his uncle. But caught in hesitation, she had remained silent and simply enjoyed being with him. It had felt good to have a man in control, someone to care for her once again, even if it was only to get her to London. While she and Ben had been whizzing down the motorway, memories of other times and other places with
another man had preoccupied her. She had yielded to the rhythm of the road, the scent of leather seats, the thrill of a fast car, the dark night and the sound of the violin and Brahms to lull her into a half-sleep where she flashed back in time and to another place where she had also been happy. Cuernavaca.

‘I love you,’ he whispered in her ear.

Arianne turned away from the bookshelf where she was browsing to look at him. She smiled at Jason. ‘I know.’

He took her hand in his and squeezed it, raised it to his lips and kissed it before letting it go and walking a few paces from her to a table laden with books on travel. She had hardly returned to her book-hunting when she felt his lips on her bare shoulder, his hand pushing her hair and sensuous kisses being planted on the nape of her neck, the lobe of her ear, his body rubbing up against her back, then an arm encircling her waist.

She blushed, and went all warm and tingly, and was completely distracted by him. She closed her eyes for a minute to savour his advances and tried to compose herself. They were in a busy bookshop in Mexico City.

‘The people,’ she told him as she turned around in his arms.

‘Who cares?’ He slipped an arm around her shoulders and kissed her again, this time on her lips. Their gaze into each other’s eyes made him smile, and he let her go.

‘You’re right, of course. But it suddenly came over me. How much I love you. How lovely you are, how happy I am to have you for my wife. It’s still a miracle to me how much I love you.’

She placed an arm around his waist, reached up and kissed him on the cheek. Together they walked from the shop, looking at each other with utter devotion. They had purchased nothing. A cab had been parked at the kerb waiting for them. Jason opened the door for Arianne and was about to get in when a flower vendor approached him. He bought an armful of bright blossoms for Arianne and then got into the car to place them in her arms.

‘The airport,’ he told the taxi driver, and then snuggled up close to Arianne.

‘They’re lovely. Lunch was lovely. You’re lovely,’ she told him.

He laughed aloud. ‘I don’t think anyone has ever called me
lovely before. Are you sure about that?’ he teased.

‘Quite sure.’

He stroked her hair, and in his eyes she saw his happiness. She had never seen that look of love in any other person’s eyes, not for her, surely. But neither had she seen it between any other two people either. Sometimes it made her want to weep with joy; at other times it frightened her, made her wonder that so much love between two people might be tempting fate.

‘Having a good time?’ he asked her. Her answer was to kiss him and lean in against him. He placed the occasional kiss upon her naked arm, her cheek, in the palm of her hand, and they rode thus in silence back to the four-seater jet, freshly fuelled and waiting on a runway at the far end of the airport, away from the commercial flights.

Jason’s inimitable charm, and his familiarity with Mexico City airport cut through the red tape. They were quickly airborne and he was piloting Arianne to the final lap of his mystery anniversary present to her. It had been breakfast at dawn in Long Island, a romantic lunch in Mexico City. Dinner? Where next? she wondered. She looked over her shoulder at the cream-coloured canvas luggage trimmed in brown saddle-leather, and wondered what the cases contained.

When he had awakened her that morning with a kiss it had been still black as night outside the window, and all he had said to her was, ‘Happy anniversary. Put on something for very hot and humid weather. That’s all I’m going to tell you.’

‘Sunglasses?’

‘Yes,’ he laughed and chided her, ‘and no more questions.’

They had showered together, soaping each other with a bath gel of almonds. He tore off her shower cap and dropped it on the tiled shower tray. Then, turning the several jets up to full power, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her deeply. With needles of water vibrating against their skin and cascading over their bodies, and the steam swirling around them, he lifted her by her bottom, to impale her, in one swift and powerful thrust, upon his erect and eager penis. She wrapped her legs around him. Arianne threw her head back and the water poured over her face and streamed through her hair. He adored watching her face as he made love to her with slow, deep penetrations, moving her on and
off his penis with a firm grip on her hips. Water, steamy heat, the powerful jet sprays like so many tiny hands sensuously playing on their skin … so many erotic sensations at the same time. They found their rhythm together, and they came in a long, flowing orgasm.

The entire day, from that first kiss upon her awakening, had been filled with sensuous, loving sensations and togetherness. What, she wondered as they flew low over the verdant countryside, was to come next?

They were flying through some turbulence, but Arianne felt no fear when flying with her husband – one of the best pilots, or so the small industry of international private air services told each other. Flying, planes, adventurous travel, vintage aircraft, and Arianne, were his passions, his life. And Arianne didn’t mind one bit being at the bottom of the list. She knew that it was not a matter of priorities, but of passions, deep and long-standing passions that would never change.

She watched Jason, so handsome and sexy. She had got quite used to the other women who flirted with him, the look of surprise on their faces when she had been presented to them. It amused rather than annoyed her that they should think she was not glamorous enough for him, a man with such a Don Juan reputation. The reaction of his wealthy, and usually fascinating male acquaintances on first meeting Arianne amused them both as well: that look of surprise followed by curiosity about the woman who had captured Jason’s heart. The unsubtle sexual sizing-up process, no doubt precipitated by astonishment that he loved her, had married her, and was remaining faithful to his vows.

He had never lied to Arianne. Before he married her he had made it clear that his libido was voracious, that they would have to satisfy it together or, in spite of himself and what he wanted, he might revert to being the philanderer he had been all his life. She had loved him too much not to take up the challenge. Arianne had come a long way sexually to keep her husband, and they both loved her for rising to his needs. Time and sex had done their work well. He had led her down erotic paths that she did not have to learn to enjoy. It came naturally to her, once he had shown her the polymorphous excitements of sexual pleasure. Now they
had become smouldering sexual needs of her own, the more powerful because they were governed by love for her husband and his needs and erotic desires, his restlessness and extravagant nature.

She was overwhelmed by his devotion to her. She never questioned her fidelity to him. Only one thing surprised her in her constant love for Jason: that she could so happily ignore the dark side of his nature. There had been unmistakable glimpses of it.

For no reason at all she bent close to him and kissed him lovingly on the cheek. He turned to face her for only a second. ‘Again, please,’ he asked her with a smile. She did kiss him again and they rode out the turbulence with her hand held lightly on his arm.

Shortly after that they landed on a private grass air-strip cut from an opulent, jungle-like landscape. Parked in bays just off the runway were several vintage aircraft. That they had landed on a friend’s or a client’s estate was Arianne’s guess.

It turned out to be a friend, whom Arianne met when, with a pile of people, children and dogs spilling out of his Second World War, US army Jeep, he drove across the grass airfield to greet Arianne and Jason as they alighted from the Gulfstream. Behind it was a second Jeep empty except for its driver. Effusive greetings and introductions. Instructions about the plane and several bottles of champagne drunk while standing out of the sun and under its wing. Chatter about their flight, excitement at meeting Jason’s wife. And quite suddenly it was over. It seemed to Arianne that before she had hardly had time to talk to anyone, their driver had loaded the luggage into the Jeep and they were settled in it and off, waving goodbye to their host, his companions and his hospitality.

It was unbearably hot and humid still, though it was late in the day and the sky had turned a deep, hot pink-orange and was streaked with strips of pale blue pretending to be clouds. The sun, a deep, golden yellow, seemed to shimmer in its own heat. The luggage was piled in the front seat next to Juan Pedro, whom Jason seemed to know very well. Arianne and Jason, dripping with perspiration, clung to each other as they bounced over a dirt track for several miles before turning on to a paved secondary road. Forty-five minutes later they were driving through the
centre of Cuernavaca, and Arianne had fallen instantly in love with Mexico.

Wherever they went, people waved, called out Jason’s name and shouted greetings in Spanish. Flowers were thrown into the car: someone even ran after it to hand Jason a basket of grapes. Jason, laughing and happy, kept turning back to Arianne to tell her, ‘That’s my favourite restaurant. The best bread is baked there. Our wine shop. The grocer. The best cantina. Look at the church. That’s Oscar, English. Narita, the best party-giver, Spanish from Spain. A fellow American, Abe Scott, painter.’ He stood up in the Jeep and waved and shouted something in Spanish that made everyone in earshot laugh. Taking his seat again, he placed an arm around Arianne and they gazed into each other’s eyes.

‘Is there a poet, a candlestick-maker?’ she asked jokingly.

He kissed her, smiled down at her and, removing the cotton scarf from his neck, lovingly wiped the beads of perspiration from her face. Then he pointed down a side-street: ‘The candlestick-maker. I don’t see the resident poet, nor the writer. Too early for them to be in town. Oh, and that’s the local whorehouse. The prettiest, cleanest, sweetest and sexiest ladies of the night you will ever meet.’

‘And you would know,’ she teased.

‘They miss me,’ he told her, with a very serious face. And now on their way out of the pretty and colourful town, he took her in his arms and caressed her while kissing her affectionately. Love for her seemed suddenly to be bursting from him.

Several miles from town they turned off the road and down a gravel drive lined with the tropical vegetation of Mexico. Yucca ran wild with enormous pandanus and banana trees and several different species of palms, and undergrowth of green that mixed with brightly coloured flowers of which Arianne recognised only a few: hibiscus in abundance, red and white and even a pink; purple and red and orange bougainvillaea running wild as a creeper, wrapping itself around everything. Exotic flowers, with long stamens more like exotic tongues, added floral drama. Jason and Arianne had to shield themselves from the branches that whipped into the Jeep as it sped along the drive to the sound of crunching stones and birdsong.

The house was a hundred-and-fifty-year-old farmhouse, long and low with huge, elegant arches along a deep, open verandah, with five-foot high, wide clay pots in lovely shapes set in the centre of each. They proffered flowering shrubs in a riot of colour. The pitched roof was covered with antique clay tiles.

‘Jason,’ she exclaimed. ‘What a romantic setting, a glorious house.’

‘You ain’t seen nothing yet, kid.’

He hopped from the Jeep, and then, grabbing Arianne by the waist, he swung her from it to set her on the ground, but not before he crushed her to him and covered her face with a rapid succession of kisses. Her feet barely touched the gravel before he swept her up once more in his arms and, carrying her towards the house, said, ‘I believe this is the way it’s done.’

Juan Pedro rushed ahead of them to open the large, arch-shaped screen doors. Jason stepped through them. ‘It’s ours. I bought it for us. Happy anniversary.’ He placed her gently on her feet.

Lost for words, Arianne could do little but take his hand and walk with him through the huge living room. Jason took great pleasure in watching her take it all in. It was simplicity itself, all large, deep and low-slung, with white Haitian cotton-covered sofas and chairs, and Spanish antiques of high quality. Mexican painters: Diego Rivera, Tomayo, hung with Georgia O’Keefes, Miros, a Salvador Dali, Tapies, on the white lime-washed walls with lesser-known Spanish and Mexican artists. She stood before the only American painter represented on the walls, completely enchanted by O’Keefe’s orchid, a portrait rather than an oil-painting of a flower, where she captured its personality as if it were a person.