Acts of Love (31 page)

‘But he isn’t, and therefore we aren’t.’ Her answer was spontaneous. It did manage to revive her. She rose from the bed. Picking up her handbag, which he had brought in with her dress, she walked into the bathroom and closed the door.

When Arianne opened it again and stepped into the room Ahmad was already dressed.

‘I’ll see you home.’

‘That’s not necessary.’

‘I insist.’

Her home, his gift to her, was no more than fifteen minutes away from that room. It seemed a million miles from Claridge’s
to Number 12, Three Kings Yard. They stood on the doorstep and Ahmad handed Arianne the Fabergé framed photograph he had been carrying for her. She took it and they gazed long and hard at one another for some time in silence.

She looked at the photograph, the happiness that shone on their faces. ‘They were the best of times, weren’t they?’ The question hung heavy between them.

‘Were they?’ He threw the question back at her.

‘We can at least part as friends,’ she suggested.

‘No. I don’t think so.’

‘Don’t say that. Maybe in time, we will be able to see each other again.’

‘No. We’ll never see each other again.’

‘Can you be so sure?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Then this is it. You having nothing else to say to me?’

‘Only that you are not free to marry Ben, and never will be.’ And with those words Ahmad turned his back on Arianne and walked away.

Chapter 21

‘You are not free to marry Ben. You never will be.’ Those words kept ringing in her ears. The hatred in Ahmad’s eyes, where once there had been passion and love, made Arianne tremble. It shattered her. She had stood up bravely to his abominable behaviour in the suite at Claridge’s. But now this. Was it true? Was she not free to marry Ben and leave the past thoroughly in the past? And what about all those other horrid things he had said to her, about herself and Jason, their marriage and the
ménage à trois
?

Her hands were shaking so badly it took her several minutes to place the key in the lock. At last she managed it and was inside the house. She closed the door and leaned against it, trying to suppress panic. She took several deep breaths. She must compose herself. A feeble attempt. She was unable to control the shaking. To hold her nerves in check as she had while avoiding rape and attempting to keep her illusions about the two men she had loved for so long and so well, was no longer possible. How cruel and vengeful of Ahmad to destroy all those happy years for her. To tear away the veil and expose his and Jason’s black core, their damaged souls. To leave her only hard and ugly accusations that she would never be able to confirm or deny about her husband and her marriage.

She walked to the dining room, turned on the light and placed her handbag and the framed photograph face down on the dining table. She could not bear to look at it. A deep and troubled sigh escaped her. She covered her mouth with her hand, trying to suppress another. It worked, and she walked to the console from where she took the cut-glass decanter of brandy and poured herself a large measure. Arianne had to hold the snifter with both her trembling hands to control the glass. She lifted it to her mouth and drank. The bite of the brandy felt good in her mouth; the
warmth seemed to calm her. She walked from the dining room through the hall and into the sitting room and sat on the sofa. She felt terribly cold – the sort of cold that comes with shock. Not even the cashmere and fur car-rug seemed able to warm her. She lit the fire and then sat shivering in the darkened sitting room. She had to put her life together, to understand just where she was, who she was. It was like running a motion picture,
The Story Of A Marriage
, backwards, and viewing it without rose-coloured glasses. Not a good idea. It raised too many questions that could not be answered without Jason and Ahmad. And that meant questions that would never be answered because Jason was dead and she would never see Ahmad again. It left her alone to face herself without them as props and with all her flaws showing.

Several hours later she was still in the dark, watching the flames leaping in the fireplace and casting dancing shadows in the sitting room. She felt her self-esteem had been seriously damaged by Ahmad and his warning. She suddenly rallied. Ben. To lose Ben, never to experience the new kind of love and hope and happiness they wanted to share with each other, was too much even to contemplate. She rose from the sofa and placed two more logs on the fire. She would fight for Ben. Love had chosen. Nothing Ahmad might say or do could change that. She sat on the sofa once again, huddled under the car-rug, and tried to think constructively about her horrid experience with Ahmad.

There had been no surprises for Ben when he met Ahmad at Claridge’s. He had known what the man looked like from the framed photographs at Number 12, Three Kings Yard. He expected an urbane man, a charmer, an Arab Don Juan. He felt no jealousy when he saw the joy in Arianne’s eyes at meeting Ahmad, nor at her enthusiasm for him when she introduced the two men. He was not even surprised at the intimacy and attachment so obviously displayed by them both. Arianne had not concealed from him the importance of her friendship with Ahmad. Ben had needed no intimate details of their past relationship, nor did he want any. He had realised what their relationship had been by merely listening to Arianne when she spoke about her husband, her marriage, and their relationship with Ahmad Salah Ali. He also understood that Ahmad was
history, part of her past, but that she wanted him as a friend and part of their future.

Ben saw Ahmad as a quite remarkable and interesting man, certainly someone worth knowing. A man of substance, but a rather dangerous womaniser, a devil in Savile Row clothes, who played with evil and people, a dilettante. But on first impression he was a man more complex than he ever let on, a man who wore his charm to mask his emotions. Here, thought Ben, is a man who could be as formidable an enemy as a friend, and far more ruinous than Arianne ever realised.

But Ben had liked them together. Theirs was an immensely close relationship. One with great depth, loving even. An enduring friendship. Why then, when Ben walked away from them and into the spring sunshine, did he have an impulse to turn back and rejoin them? Fear of losing her? No. There was no danger of ever losing Arianne. During the several minutes he waited at the entrance to Claridge’s for the black Bentley to arrive, he sensed that something was very wrong. Not between him and Arianne, or even between Arianne and Ahmad. It was much bigger and more complex, his sense of foreboding.

The open door to the Bentley and his colleagues was a distraction. He joined his friends and would-be partners and was swept into their company. It was not until they were on the private jet, having smoked-salmon sandwiches and champagne while flying to Dublin, that that sense of foreboding returned. But not for long: conversation and high spirits suppressed it. He and his friends had formed a consortium. The object of this trip to Ireland was to buy a stud farm. These days had been set aside for viewing the country, investigating several prospects, visiting going studs, and looking over stock. It was an exciting project. All the men, veterans in the horse business in one way or another, were seriously interested in making a good purchase during the next few days. Millions of pounds were involved. They had been a long time getting the whole project together. Hopes and ambitions were soaring. But, interested as Ben was, he found himself drifting away from the business at hand.

His distraction was annoying to him because he found no basis for concern. It did not arise from any doubt of Arianne’s ability to handle her meeting with Ahmad, or the next few days
she had expected to be seeing him. Nor was he concerned about her breaking the news of their coming marriage. Ahmad had had years to offer her marriage, if that was what he had wanted. It seemed irrational to him that he should feel Arianne needed him, that he should be there at her side.

All through the day and into early evening, Ben was haunted by an inexplicable unease. It was at the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin during an alcoholic dinner with his colleagues and his Irish hosts that he suddenly felt threatened – but not by them, nor by anything to do with the business in hand. Ben was not a man to entertain imaginings. He was, nevertheless, convinced that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. That he was unprotected. That he and Arianne were vulnerable to some dangerous force. Once that thought took hold, he knew he had to return to London and Arianne.

Ben boarded the plane. His sense of something ominous engulfing them did not vanish, but his unease did, because instinct approved his decision. He would be close to the problem, if indeed there was a problem, and ready to confront any harmful force that might threaten him or Arianne. All the way in from Heathrow airport, calm and control of his imaginings prevailed. The closer the taxi came to Three Kings Yard the happier he was for having acted upon his impulse.

In Dublin, it had crossed Ben’s mind that he might be overreacting to an irrational fantasy. He had even questioned whether he was conjuring up this sense of something menacing because he was a man in love who had left his lady with a formidable Don Juan. Those doubts once formed were immediately discarded, never to return. Ben knew himself to be secure and emotionally stable. Hence it was easy to eliminate such thoughts.

The taxi pulled into Three Kings Yard. If there had been any doubts about his breaking away from his deal in Ireland to return to Arianne, one look at Number 12 would have dispensed with them. There was only one light on in the house, the dining room light. The draperies were open and no one was in the room. It was well after midnight. Was Arianne upstairs asleep? If she were, she would not have left the dining room light on.

Ben opened the front door. He was as quiet as he could be in closing it behind him. Standing in the small front hall, he was
able to look into both the dining room and the sitting room. The dining room was empty, the sitting room in darkness; a fire burned in the hearth. Odd to have a fire on such a warm spring evening. He took several steps into the sitting room. In the firelight, he saw the silhouette of Arianne sitting on the sofa, wrapped in the car-rug. She was staring into the flames. ‘Arianne,’ he called, as he walked towards her.

She did not turn to look at him. She hadn’t heard him. ‘Arianne, it’s me. Ben. I’m home.’

She turned to look at him. ‘Ben?’

He sat down next to her. She took his hand. ‘Why are you sitting in the dark?’

‘I didn’t expect you. I expected a call. You said you would be two or three days. Oh, I’m so happy to see you.’ She placed her arms around his neck and, pressing her lips to his, she kissed him. Ben thought he would never forget that kiss. It was filled with love, affection, and there was about it a sense of gratefulness, sublime togetherness. He stroked her hair and kissed her on the cheek, then on one hand and afterwards on the other, before he rose from the sofa to switch on a lamp. Turning to look at her now, he smiled. She returned his smile, and he was aware in her eyes of the love she felt for him.

He placed a log on the fire, not because the room was cold – it was in fact very warm – but because it was obvious that that was what Arianne wanted. He removed his jacket, his tie and opened the first two buttons of his shirt. Then once more he sat down next to Arianne. He took her hands into his and rubbed them warm. ‘Are you so cold? It’s quite warm in here. Do you want to tell me about it? Why you’re sitting in the dark? Why you’re so cold when it’s such a warm and balmy night?’

A wan smile. But a smile it was nonetheless. Ben was glad of that. Arianne rose from the sofa and removed the cashmere rug from her shoulders and draped it over the arm of the sofa. She sat down next to him. ‘I’m feeling less cold,’ she told him. She leaned into Ben. His arm around her warmed her now and he rocked her gently. They remained like that in silence for several minutes. He sensed their togetherness had taken them over: Arianne seemed comfortable enough now to talk about what was troubling her.

‘How long have you been sitting here in the dark?’

‘I don’t know. Hours? Yes, hours.’

‘Why?’

‘A bad day. No, much worse, a horrid, upsetting day. Things did not go well with Ahmad. He quite shocked me. He never wants to see me again, and I certainly never want to see him again.’

‘Oh! I’m sorry. I know how much he meant to you, how much a part of your life he was. Is it because of us?’

‘Yes. He was mean and cruel to me once I told him we were going to marry. He behaved like a madman. Not at all like the Ahmad I have known.’ Arianne released herself from Ben’s arms. Turning to face him, she added, ‘I handled him the best way I could because I wanted to save our friendship. But that was impossible. I realised that only when I was made to listen to the things he had to say about us, you and me, and my marriage, about Jason. He was hardest on me, painting a picture that tore my self-esteem to shreds. The abuse and vile behaviour continued. I was actually scared he would hurt me. I fought against him until he released me. But I was never safe from him until I was here at my own front door and he walked away from me. And he went only after one parting shot. The one that devastated me. I have been sitting in the dark trying to work out what he meant by it. “You are not free to marry Ben. You never will be.”

‘At first I thought he had said it for spite, or maybe to frighten me. I guess he had a sense of rejection, because he refused to accept that the past really was just history for me. Or maybe he couldn’t handle my being in love with you and wanting to be your wife. But he sure looked like he knew he was right. When he spat out that declaration he sounded sinister. And, Ben, it was a declaration, nothing less. He frightened me with those words, shattered me. I was no longer afraid of Ahmad. The shock that
we
might not ever be together, that all our dreams of a shared life might never happen, took over. I felt cold as death. Hence the brandy and the fire and sitting in the dark.’

‘Try and put him, this day, the things he said, his need to hurt you, out of your mind. I wish I could have saved you from this. But I felt like an intruder at that meeting between you. I did believe that, as your greatest friend, he would be happy for you.’

‘Put the things he said about me out of my mind? Not easy. Some of them were very cruel, Ben. That I have been nothing but an instrument of his and Jason’s will. That they had deliberately used my love to corrupt me. And that I had obeyed their every wish, their every command and loved every minute of it, revelled in the erotic world they created forme. That their greatest joy was to see what a magnificent sexual animal they had turned me into, that that was what kept my marriage together.

‘I had to work that through. And moments of truth, the sort that burn deep, and open your eyes. Truths I had never faced before confronted me. Truths I could no longer ignore. Suddenly I saw things in a new light and very clearly. The reality of my life was spread out in front of me as I have never seen it before. Not the pretty picture I thought I was.’

‘The bastard, the fucking bastard.’

‘Yes, he certainly is that. How did I not know he was a cruel devil of a man? Why didn’t I see it? Or did I see it, know it all along, but blind myself to it, out of obsession with Jason and my marriage? Or was it because of the pleasure I discovered in the erotic, anything sexual?’

‘Never mind. It hardly matters. It’s over; it’s all behind you.’