All I Want Is You (13 page)

‘You wrote to me because I told you to,’ he interrupted. ‘And I wrote back, only for a while, but all your letters were waiting for me when I…’ He seemed to be gathering his thoughts. ‘When I returned to London.’

My cheeks burned. I was desperate to say,
I lived for your letters. I read them over and over again. I imagined you speaking the words you wrote aloud to me…

But I said nothing, because suddenly I saw his hands – oh, dear God, his beautiful hands. They were badly scarred, they had been burned, I thought; the skin across the backs of them was ridged with mottled white and red
tissue. I tore my eyes away, but I felt sick at the thought of the pain he must have endured as they healed.

I swallowed to ease the ache of my dry throat and remembered what I wrote to him.
I don’t know where you are now, and I wish I did. I wish you had written back to me. I wish you had come for me.

He was watching me, appraising me with those unreadable blue eyes. The faint lemon scent of the soap he used brought back wave after wave of memories of the day my mother died. He was saying softly, ‘I’m so very sorry I was unable to reply to all of your letters, Sophie. Have they treated you well here?’

I thought of Robert cruelly telling me my father was not my father; I thought of Beatrice’s maid Margaret, showing me those pictures and teaching me pleasure. I thought blindly of Lady Beatrice herself, and of her plan to give me to this very man, and I saw it for the madness it was. I blurted out – I couldn’t help it – ‘They hate you here, Your Grace. All of them hate you, except Lady Beatrice…’

I broke off, for I’d heard footsteps approaching, I thought I heard Mr Peters’s voice, and I ran. Anguish tore through me still from the sight of his scarred hands.
What had happened to him? Who had done that to him?
I wanted to hold his poor hands in mine; I wanted to soothe them with my lips. I’d hoped so much to one day see him again. But not like this. Not like this. I felt quite sick with shock, sick with loss.

Lady Beatrice was excited that night when she came upstairs at last. As I attended to her in her bath,
sponging her shoulders and washing her hair, I was very quiet but she didn’t notice. She told me what had happened at the evening meal.

‘They hate Ash so much, Sophie! But he was utterly polite all the way through, especially to the wicked old Duchess.’ She chuckled. ‘And there was something rather odd. Peters offered him lemon-barley water – apparently it’s what Ash drinks now – but he chose soda water instead. Old Peters looked quite shocked. The Duchess had already asked for lemon-barley, but when Ash asked for soda water, she looked absolutely furious and almost knocked her own drink over! Pour in some more of that bath oil, Sophie, will you?’

I reached for the crystal bottle and poured the expensive unguent into her water, but for once I was clumsy, I had trouble concentrating, because I didn’t know what to do next. I suppose I still couldn’t believe that the man who was my Mr Maldon could be the man Lady Beatrice had described – someone who had used the cruel war to make money; someone who was capable of coldly taking an innocent girl’s virginity under the eyes of another woman as a casual piece of entertainment, a gift.

But I had to believe it, I had to accept I had built a fantasy of him in my mind; I had been wrong to think him honest and strong and kind.

Beatrice stretched out her smooth legs in the water as I soaped her feet. ‘Then the topic of the estate’s debts came up, and death duties,’ she went on. ‘How bored I am with death duties. Since the war ended, it’s all anyone talks about. But oh, Sophie…’

I was passing her the sponge now so she could soap her own breasts; I saw how her nipples tightened and her eyes gleamed. ‘Sophie, Ash was
magnificent.
He said that practical steps have to be taken. He pronounced that we’re no longer living in the Victorian age, and that if necessary land from the estate will have to be sold. He also said that the miners ought to be given the increase in wages they’re demanding. You’ve heard, I suppose, that the miners are on strike again? At that the Duchess said to him, “You’ll sell my husband’s land and support those wretched miners over my dead body.” Ash said, “I sincerely hope not, ma’am, since my mind is already made up on both matters.”

‘The Duchess was
speechless
, Sophie!Then Ash said he would get electricity up and running throughout the house, he would install a hot-water boiler in the kitchen – “We are, after all, in the twentieth century, not the eighteenth”, he said – and I thought the Duchess would quite simply faint!’

I broke in, ‘What happened to his hands?’

‘What?’ She frowned slightly. ‘How do you know about his hands?’

Oh, God, a mistake.
‘I heard about them in the servants’ hall,’ I lied. ‘Someone noticed that the backs of his hands are badly scarred.’

She reached for more soap. ‘He dismisses it as some kind of accident.’

‘A motorcar accident?’

Again, that sharp look in Beatrice’s eyes. ‘Quite likely. What does it matter? Who cares?’ Still reclining in her bath, she pulled my face down to kiss me on the lips,
and I shivered when I saw the hunger in her eyes. ‘Oh, little Sophie. I cannot wait to see his face when I offer you to him tonight.’

Tonight.
My lungs felt as if a great weight was pressing on them. I could hardly breathe.

‘Yes, tonight,’ she went on. She was stepping out of her bath now, wrapping herself in the thick towel I’d held out. ‘He needs to return to London in a day or so; he has his own business affairs to deal with, he said, besides all the legal matters concerning the estate. So I’ve asked him to visit me in an hour—’

‘An hour?’ My heart was hammering painfully.

‘Yes, I told him I have some ideas for saving the estate that I want him to hear. But we’ll get that over with very quickly. I’ll have you concealed in my bedroom; I’ll pretend I need something from there, then we’ll come out together, you and I, in our new lingerie from Paris, and I’ll make a present of you to him.’ She almost danced with happiness. ‘Now it’s time for
you
to get ready. Your turn for the bath, little Sophie…’

She broke off suddenly. ‘Sophie? You’re very quiet. Is something the matter?’

‘I can’t do it,’ I whispered. ‘I’m sorry, my lady, but I cannot do it.’

There was a long, long silence, in which all I could hear was the ticking of the ormolu clock on her mantelpiece. ‘My God,’ Lady Beatrice breathed at last, ‘is this supposed to be a joke? I thought you were desperate to get to London and kick your legs around on stage in some stupid show…’

Suddenly she gave her dark smile. ‘You’ve seen him,
haven’t you? You gave yourself away with your question about his hands. You’ve seen him.’ She’d dropped the towel and was pulling on her silk flowered kimono.

‘Yes,’ I whispered back, helpless.

‘Does he repel you, with those scarred hands of his? Is that it?’ She was reaching for me now but I shrank back from her, suddenly hating the way she smelled of cigarettes.

‘He doesn’t repel me,’ I said. Indeed she was so, so wrong to think that. What I wanted was to hold his poor hands and kiss them and I didn’t care what he’d done. I only knew now that I’d lived for him for all these years, I loved him, and I couldn’t let myself be presented to him as a whore. ‘He doesn’t repel me but, my lady, there must be something else I can do to earn my freedom. You see, I’ve met him before.’

She stared at me, speechless.

I stammered on, ‘I met him four and a half years ago in Oxford. He was kind to me, though I’d no idea who he was, and I can’t—’

‘
Be quiet
.’ She was pacing the floor, as she did when agitated. She suddenly turned on me. ‘Listen to me, you little fool. You’re going to do
exactly
as I say. Or I’ll accuse you of stealing, do you understand?’

Bewildered, I shook my head. ‘You know very well that I haven’t stolen anything.’

She pulled me closer, so I was face to face with her. ‘Didn’t you realise,’ she went on in a suddenly husky voice, ‘didn’t you realise how easy it would be for me to ruin you, sweet Sophie? You like to secretly borrow books from the old Duke’s library, don’t you?’

Colour slowly flooded my face. ‘Yes, but I take such care of them, and I always put them back.’

‘What if some went missing, though? What if, for example, some valuable editions of old poetry somehow found their way to a bookseller in Oxford?’

I felt sick. ‘No. My lady, no—’

‘Your word against mine,’ she interrupted calmly. ‘If you don’t do
exactly
as I say tonight, I’ll see you accused of theft. I’ll ruin you, Sophie. I mean it.’

She smiled because she thought she’d won. She talked as if nothing had changed, as if she and I were the best of friends. She insisted I bathe myself in her bath, using her perfumed oils, though that night the rich scents made me nauseous. I let her wash me and dry me – she did it with such care – then she rouged my nipples and dabbed some of her patchouli perfume at my pulse points, but all of her attentions were hateful to me.

I stood deathly cold with a towel wrapped around me while she chose garments for herself – a delicate brassiere and lacy French knickers in palest blue. She chattered on as if nothing had happened, as if she hadn’t just held the threat of prison over me.

‘Now I think,’ Lady Beatrice mused, fastening her cream stockings to the suspenders that lay against her gleaming thighs, ‘that you’re frightened, because Ash is so beautiful. Isn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ I whispered.

She smiled in satisfaction. ‘Yet you were thinking – for a reason I simply
cannot
understand – of turning my present down. But I won’t let you.’ She thrust
champagne in a crystal flute at me. It tasted odd, but her eyes were on me, all the time.

‘Drink,’ she said.

I did so, for I hoped in despair that it might help to numb me for all this. She began to work on me then, dressing me like her in a satin bra and knickers, only mine were in dusky pink. She helped me smooth on my stockings, and she herself eased the pink satin garters over my thighs. At last she made me sit in front of her dressing table and started applying her own make-up to my face – powder, mascara, lipstick.

I remembered the first time she’d done this, when I’d been so excited. Now I felt sick with dread. She drew me up and kissed me on the mouth and I was shivering with rage and despair.

She poured me more champagne. ‘Drink up, Sophie,’ she murmured. ‘He’ll be here any minute. Drink, I said. Drink it all.’

I swallowed the champagne, still aware of that faint, odd aftertaste. I felt shaky and strange. She was watching me. She took my glass. ‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘Go into my bedroom – yes, as you are.’

I stumbled towards her bedroom door on the high heels she’d made me wear, in the pale pink lingerie she’d made me wear, my painted nipples still tight from her caresses, my cheeks still flushed with hating her.

Yes, hating her for what she’d done to me.

Your own fault, Sophie
, my inner voice whispered.
Your own fault, you little fool, for wanting more. For always thinking you were worth more.

Oh, Mr Maldon.

I sank back on the bed, feeling light-headed and floating and unreal. My legs looked long and smooth in the new silk stockings, the pink garters a teasing contrast to my pale thighs. Beatrice was my enemy, yes; but even so I felt an insistent ache bloom low in my stomach, and as I ran my fingers over my most intimate place, through the satin of my underwear, I felt hot desire unfurling through every vein. I compressed my burning breasts with my palms, trying to cool them.

Oh, God, any minute now I was going to show my Mr Maldon that I’d repaid his long-ago kindness to me by becoming a whore. I stumbled to the door, which was still half open. ‘I can’t do it,’ I called to her in despair. ‘And the drink. You put something in my drink…’

She marched across and jabbed one finger at me. ‘Those books. Remember?’ she hissed. ‘Now get out of sight. He’ll be here any minute.’

I realised she must have heard footsteps coming along the corridor because she pushed me back into her bedroom, into the darkness there. Losing my balance, I stumbled against the side of the bed and found myself on my knees, with my arms flung out in despair across the satin bedspread.

He was here. My Mr Maldon – Lord Ashley, the new Duke of Belfield – was here. My man with the blue, sad eyes. And what had they done to him? What had they done to his hands? An accident of some kind, Beatrice had said dismissively, but I knew there was something else, something that had happened, to make him stop writing to me.

I heard Lady Beatrice go to open the door to the
corridor outside. ‘Come in,’ I heard her say in her seductive voice.

Though I myself was in darkness, I found that if I turned my head I could see it all, for she’d only half closed the bedroom door. I saw him enter; I saw her stand on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek and my skin prickled with heat. Oh, God. If a man could be described as beautiful, then he had beauty. I’d seen many men, of course, I’d seen many male guests from afar, but none of them struck me to the heart as he did. All I could think of, in my pitiful naivety, were the pictures in that book of my mother’s that I’d loved, the tales of King Arthur’s knights, because to me he was like the drawings of those knights: proud yet somehow so sad.

He still wore his black dinner suit, of course, but he’d unfastened his black bow tie, so it hung loosely around his neck. Against the white starched linen of his shirt collar, his skin looked almost golden, but was faintly blue-black around his jaw where stubble was starting to grow.
If I get the chance, I’ll eat him for breakfast
, Harriet had murmured in the kitchen. I remembered the American and what Beatrice had done to him in the dark. Shivering, I turned away with my thighs tightly pressed together; but the muscles of my belly still clenched, and my secret parts felt molten.

Sweet Jesus, I was on fire for him.

Beatrice’s back was to me now and I couldn’t hear quite what she was saying, though I think she was offering him a drink.