All I Want Is You (21 page)

Then I heard him coming back and I could hear his housekeeper asking, ‘Are you sure the young lady doesn’t need anything else, my lord?’ She sounded kind and anxious.

‘I think we’re all right for now, Mrs Lambert.’ He was coming towards the bedroom now and I tried desperately to compose myself. ‘I’ll let you know,’ he added to his housekeeper, ‘if I require anything.’

Handcuffs?
I thought bitterly.
A whip?
Then the door was opening, and he stood there with a large water jug that steamed lightly and some folded towels. What? I pulled the dressing robe even tighter around me and swiftly shut my eyes, pretending to be asleep. But I heard him come up to the bed and put the jug on a small table there.

‘I know you’re awake. Please let me see to that bruise,’ he said.

‘Leave me alone.’ I shrank away.

‘Do as I say, Sophie.’ With dawning disbelief I saw him dip a towel in the water, then he squeezed it out, eased my robe aside and held the towel like a compress against my bruise. The water was warm, it was scented faintly with lavender oil, and after a few moments he dipped the cloth in water again, squeezed it out and pressed once more. Still I refused to move or say anything.

At last he broke the silence. ‘How did this happen?’

Oh, God, questions. To make matters worse, there’d been a hint of tenderness in his voice that if I listened to it would simply rip me apart. ‘It was a stupid accident,’ I said. ‘I tripped, that was all.’

‘While you were being pursued.’

This time I said nothing; he too was silent a moment, still sitting beside me, still dipping, squeezing, pressing. Then: ‘I’ve been talking to Cora,’ he said.

I closed my eyes in despair – what had she said this time? I swallowed and nodded. ‘Is she all right?’

‘She’s relatively sober now, if that’s what you mean. She’s capable, at least, of a certain amount of rational speech. She told me that you helped her. That you’ve
always
helped her, even though she’s rarely returned the favour. She confirmed what you told me earlier – that you helped her escape from some men who were after her tonight. Were they drug-dealers?’

Interrogation time.
I pulled myself up against the pillows and I stared down at my hands. ‘I would imagine so, yes.’

‘She also told me,’ he went on, ‘that you’ve never slept with a single man since you came to London. Not one, despite all the offers you must have had from the men who watch you on stage night after night… Jesus, Sophie.
Jesus
.’ Suddenly on his feet, he swung around and went to pace the length of the room, then turned back to me, his face haggard. ‘Why, in the name of God, did you tell me you’d been living as a whore?’

My throat was quite raw with emotion. ‘Well, let me see,’ I said. ‘Could it be because someone –
you
, let’s say – simply assumed I was a whore? Maybe I didn’t like to disillusion you.’

He closed his eyes. ‘Oh, Sophie.’ He drew his scarred hands through his hair. ‘Oh, Sophie.’

I’d tried to sound haughty and sophisticated like
Pauline Moran, but I was shaking inside. Oh, God. I should have left Cora here and run like hell, run anywhere; instead of which I’d let him see, yet again, how utterly powerless I was to resist his merest touch. Nothing had changed.

Does he know how very beautiful he is?
He must know. That night when he was in the audience at Cally’s, the other girls hadn’t been able to stop talking about him. He was always beautiful, even at his most hateful, even that night in the dirty street behind Cally’s theatre, when he’d shoved coins into my pocket and brought me to an excruciating climax.
All I want is you.

And I was in his power once more. What a mess. I swallowed and said, ‘I didn’t mean to play games with you. I came to London to earn my own living – to be a dancer. Cora is my friend, but she’s so vulnerable.’

He nodded, pacing again with his hands in his pockets, concentrating on every word. ‘You said you felt you were being watched. That was why I told James to look out for you. Why are those men after her? Who are they?’

I hesitated.

‘Tell me,’ he said.

‘There’s a man called Danny. He’s no good for Cora – he gives her drugs, Ash, but she loves him, so much—’

‘Sounds like he’s her pimp,’ he broke in harshly. ‘You’ll have to face up to the fact that there’s no hope for her if she’s in the grip of a rogue like that.’

My heart turned over in despair. ‘I can’t leave her. I’ve got to help her.’

‘Do you really, truly think she wants to get away from him?’

‘Yes!’ I cried. ‘Of course she does!’

His mouth thinned a little in scepticism, but after a while he said, ‘Then I’ve a suggestion, though it’s an idea I don’t expect you’ll like. I think she should go into service, somewhere as far as possible from London and from this… Danny. She could even work at Belfield Hall.’

‘
No
.’My outburst was instinctive. ‘No, she’s a dancer, a talented dancer!’

‘She’s also a cocaine addict and a whore.’

My mind whirled desperately.
She’s Cora. She’s lovely and she’s my friend.
‘Ash,’ I begged. ‘Please listen. If she could get back her old job at Mr Calladine’s, but perhaps find somewhere safer to stay…’

I’d heard there were charity homes for girls in London, but already he was shaking his head. ‘She’d still be within his damned reach if she was anywhere in London.’

‘Please, Ash. She loves dancing. Being a servant would destroy her!’

‘I just don’t understand you.’ He looked perplexed and almost angry. ‘Why show such concern for a girl you can’t have known for long, and who seems to be marked from the start for trouble?’

I didn’t say anything for a moment. Then – ‘She reminds me of my mother,’ I breathed. I hadn’t even thought of it before, but it was true. Cora was sweet and loving and hence so terribly vulnerable, just like my mother, whom I’d been unable to help.

He was silent a moment before replying quietly, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

Suddenly he caught hold of my hand and threaded his fingers through mine. I was immediately aware of my betraying pulse as it raced at the faint slide of his thumb over the veins at my wrist. ‘Don’t,’ I breathed wretchedly. ‘Please.’

‘You hate me so much, Sophie?’

I tried to pull my hand free and failed.
Mr Maldon, Mr Maldon.
‘Please don’t do this,’ I whispered.

He loosened his hold but still didn’t release me, and oh God, I’d have been devastated if he had. I scanned his beautiful big bedroom with a sense of utter desperation. What had Ash done in the past? What had scarred his mind as well as his hands so very badly? There was nothing I longed for more than being in his arms again; nothing I wanted more than to feel his lips, his exquisite body against mine. But it wouldn’t do. I was no good for him, he was no good for me.

He looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘Clearly you can’t go back home,’ he said, ‘so I suggest you spend the night here.’ He was getting up and folding the damp towel. ‘I hope you’re not going to object.’

‘But—’

His face betrayed tension; anger even. ‘Has it occurred to you,’ he broke in, ‘that you might be a target yourself, after helping Cora to escape from that man of hers this evening?’

Suddenly a wave of fragility swept over me; I fought it down. ‘I need to be on my own,’ I whispered. My body felt cold even as I said it.

His face was bleak. ‘Of course.’

He took me to a guest suite, and oh, my, it was beautiful. To my amazement the calm housekeeper, Mrs Lambert, was there for me, even though it was two in the morning. I was a mess, my hair was wild and as for my state of undress,
God, what she must think?
, but then I remembered how at Belfield Hall the most important lesson we servants had to learn was to act as if we’d seen nothing and heard nothing of the goings-on above stairs, and to be invisible. That was what Mrs Lambert was doing. Being invisible; while I, instead of being a scullery maid and the lowest of the low, was – however briefly – the Duke of Belfield’s whore.

I sat on the edge of the perfectly made bed while Mrs Lambert – didn’t the poor woman sleep?
–
fussed gently around me, all the while being so motherly, so sensible that I really, really wanted to cry. She’d even filled the sunken marble bath in the adjoining bathroom with hot, scented water for me, so I dipped myself in it quickly, well aware of how late it was, but she appeared untroubled by the hour, simply busying herself around the place while I bathed.

Then she came to me with warm towels, smiling. ‘Is your injury a little better now, Miss Davis?’ She also handed me some slippers and lovely pyjamas in pale cream silk after I’d dried myself.
Pyjamas – exactly my size. Did he keep clothes here, for his mistresses?

‘Your bruise,’ she added.

Of course, she knew all about it – she’d provided Ash with the warm water and towels. ‘Thank you, much better,’ I said quickly. ‘And I’m really sorry to have kept
you up so late. But before you go, could you tell me how my friend Cora is?’

‘She’s sound asleep,’ Mrs Lambert soothed. ‘I gave her a warm bath, poor girl, then a little supper and put her to bed. You mustn’t worry about her. His Grace will make sure she’s well taken care of.’

She was about to leave, but I barred her way. ‘Please. He told me you’ve worked for him for many years. Will you tell me what happened to his hands?’

Mrs Lambert’s face was suddenly shadowed, her lips pressed together.

‘I really need to know,’ I floundered on. ‘But all I’ve been told is that he might have been in a car accident…’

‘A car accident? So you don’t know about the war?’

What?
‘No.’ I felt as if iron clamps were squeezing my lungs. ‘No. I don’t know anything about the war. Please tell me!’

But she had already opened the bedroom door to leave, and she hesitated only briefly, though I saw that all manner of emotions were crossing her intelligent face. ‘I think,’ she said quietly at last, ‘that you ought to ask him yourself, my dear. Now, try to get some sleep.’

Then she left me.

That night I dreamed my old dream: that Ash was in pain, and crying out to me for help. I wanted to get to him but I couldn’t move and when I awoke I was shaking, because, oh God, it had all been so real, so terribly real.
I’d left him alone, the man I loved. I’d left him alone, and in my dream he’d said he needed me.

Swiftly I pulled the dressing robe he’d given me over my pyjamas, then tiptoed along the corridor to his room – I was good at remembering directions, it was something that Belfield Hall had prepared me for. I knocked on his door then waited. Nothing. Silence. But a light was on, I could see it under his door. Perhaps he was asleep. What on earth was I doing here? What would he think I was doing here, calling on him in the middle of the night?

Coming to him for more, he’d no doubt think. But he was in pain; I somehow knew from the depths of my being that he was in such pain. I opened the door and went in to find the elegant sitting room empty, although a single lamp burned on his desk. On it were stacks of correspondence; I could see he’d clearly been working, even after I’d left him. At the far end of the big room the curtains across the doors to the balcony billowed in a
current of air. I padded quickly across the luxuriously carpeted floor to see that those doors were half open; the balcony was bare to the elements. I slipped outside.

A chill wind blew across the rooftops and a lone car went by in the street below. I looked around, and when I couldn’t see him, I began to fear the most terrible things in my mind. Gripping the cold iron railings I saw how far it was down to the pavement; then I realised that a few yards away from me a spiral metal staircase rose to another, smaller balcony on the next level. I hurried over to it. The rain had started again but I hardly noticed; I climbed the staircase with fear in my heart, but he was there at the far end, with his hands thrust in the pockets of his jacket, and an expression of the greatest despair on his face that I had seen, before or since.

I stood there, at the top of the steps. ‘My God,’ I breathed. ‘My God, Ash.’

He whipped round and saw me. ‘Sophie.’

I was already stumbling towards him. ‘Ash, what are you doing out here?’ I must have been frozen, but I don’t remember even thinking about it. ‘It’s three in the morning, you’re soaking wet…’ I must have sounded like a stupid, coaxing nurse or governess, but I didn’t know what else I could say or do.

‘I often don’t sleep.’ His expression was still harsh but he didn’t move as I drew nearer.

‘So instead you come out
here?
In the cold and the rain?’ I was babbling now in my distress, because I couldn’t bear to see him like this, alone and in such agony of spirit. Whatever had befallen him since the day I met him in Oxford all those years ago, whatever sins
could be laid at his door, every fibre of him spoke to me of raw courage and silent honour and terrible mental torment. ‘You hate yourself so much,’ I whispered. ‘Oh, Ash. Why?’

‘Go inside, Sophie.’ He had suddenly realised, I think, that my dressing robe and pyjamas were getting soaked through, my short hair was plastered to my face. ‘Do you hear me?’

‘No,’ I said steadily. I’d thought, with sudden lacerating perception, that he wanted to die out here. Not by leaping from the balcony – nothing as showy, or as childishly
look-at-me
as that – but by simply staying out here in the elements all night, trusting,
hoping
that the wind and cold rain would somehow reduce him to elemental parts also and bear him away on the night for ever. Away from his pain. Oh, God.

‘I’m not going back in there,’ I went on, ‘unless you come inside with me.’ My teeth were chattering, and I knew that
I
was no temptation; I must by then have looked more like a bedraggled street beggar than a siren of the night. But I had to try. I didn’t know what else to do, you see.

‘Sophie—’ he began.

‘I’m not going in, Ash,’ I repeated. ‘Not until you do too.’ Fresh gusts of rain were battering both of us now, and below us London, with its spires and steeples and skeins of twinkling lights, was made murky by the downpour.