All I Want Is You (25 page)

‘No need for
you
to apologise,’ he cut in. ‘He’s a snake – did you know he was in the Ministry of Munitions?’

‘Yes.’ I hesitated. ‘Lady Beatrice told me.’

‘I’ll wager she didn’t tell you the whole story – that Sydhurst and his business friends made absolute fortunes from the war by getting government money to build munitions factories that either didn’t produce the armaments required, or delivered arms and explosives so faulty they killed more of our own soldiers than they did the enemy.’

I was horrified. ‘Why didn’t someone
say
something?’

He said with scorn, ‘Oh, Sydhurst had too many ministers in his pocket, and the Press as well. The Ministry’s recently been disbanded, but Sydhurst’s got his money safely salted away.’

A powerful man, then, who clearly hated Ash. And he’d recognised me. ‘I’m afraid,’ I said quietly, ‘that soon it will be all around London that I’m from Belfield Hall, and I’m with you.’

He put his arm round my shoulder more tightly and looked into my eyes so I could see the intensity of his gaze. ‘Does it matter to you, Sophie? Because it doesn’t to me. Believe me, it doesn’t matter to me at all.’

The next day Ash had morning appointments as usual, and I resolved to make a secret shopping trip because I wanted to buy the man I loved a gift. Though I’d refused to accept any money from him, I’d saved some of my pay from Cally’s, and I was considering eagerly what I might buy him as I set off in the spring sunshine towards Regent Street.

I don’t know when exactly I started to realise it, but the feeling, when it came, was unmistakeable. I was being watched. My steps slowed, my pulse raced. Could it be James? Yes, of course, that would be it! But then, with spine-chilling clarity, I remembered that James had driven Ash to a meeting in the City.

I tried to thrust aside my misgivings. Our house in Bayswater had been watched for a while, I knew, but that was by Danny’s men, and they’d been after poor Cora, not me. The pavements were busy with shoppers, and I told myself I was being foolish. But I hadn’t gone far down Regent Street when I realised that a sleek car was slowly overtaking me, then pulling to a stop. Prickles of alarm travelled through my veins. The chauffeur, young and black-uniformed, was opening the door for his passenger, and out stepped… Lady Beatrice. She wore a fur coat, and her familiar scent overwhelmed me with memories I would have given anything to forget.

‘Sophie,’ she breathed, ‘oh, my dear Sophie, I made such a mistake in letting you go. I know you’re with Ash now, but trouble lies ahead for him, such trouble. And I thought you of all people must be forewarned because we used to be such friends, you and I!’

She put her gloved hand to my cheek and I couldn’t help but recoil.
Had she been following me? What did she mean – trouble lies ahead?

‘You look thin,’ Lady Beatrice announced as the waiters fussed over us with the menus and napkins half an hour later. ‘You look tired. I’ve been so very worried about you.’

She’d insisted on taking me for lunch in Selfridge’s department store and I agreed, because I needed to know why she had followed me and what she intended. I certainly knew she was no friend of mine. I hardly remember what I ate, but I do remember everything she said and did.

I said, ‘Worried about me? I don’t believe you. At Belfield Hall you were simply using me; you had no concern for me at all.’

Beatrice sighed. ‘I was only doing what I thought best for you – and Ash.’ She lowered her voice as she spoke his name and reached across to touch my hand. ‘I fear, my dear, that you’ve wandered out of your depth with Ash, though I thought you’d had your warning at Belfield Hall. Those letters he made you write to him long ago, the way he used you—’

‘He wasn’t using me to spy,’ I broke in. ‘I was a fool to believe you. And surely –
surely
you can’t still be hoping to marry him?’

A year ago I’d never have dared to speak to her in such a way. She sipped her wine and regarded me carefully. ‘My, you’ve grown up, Sophie. Do I still want to marry him? Oh my goodness, no – both Ash and I have moved on from there, I should hope. He’ll be planning on finding some innocent heiress for a bride.’

My heart bumped to a stop, I couldn’t speak.

‘Though I don’t consider,’ she went on, ‘that such a girl would really suit Ash at all, do you? In fact, I imagine she’d be fleeing home to her mama within days of her wedding night.’

I was wondering with a sudden chill if she’d guessed at his sexual secrets. Had she heard somehow that he would only make love if his partner could not see him or touch him? I didn’t answer.

‘You’ve hardly eaten a thing,’ she went on. ‘I’m so sorry you’re involved with him, Sophie. You know, if I’d had any idea how badly his experiences had
scarred
him…’

‘What do you mean?’ I pushed my plate aside. ‘Are you talking about his hands?’

‘Oh, my dear.’ She leaned across to me, a look of pity on her face. ‘Hasn’t he told you yet? About the war?’

My heart bumped to a stop.

‘He was a pilot,’ she went on, ‘in the Royal Flying Corps. Forgive me, I really didn’t want to be the one to tell you.’

I swallowed, my throat dry. ‘He flew planes? In the war?’

She nodded, and I remembered with a dreadful rush of clarity what Lynton had said, what Mrs Lambert had
said –
So you don’t know, about the war?
Oh God, I should have asked him myself; oh, God, to have Beatrice, of all people, reveal this…

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I breathed. I was sick of these secrets of hers. ‘If you knew all this, why on earth didn’t you tell me at Belfield Hall?’

‘Because he resigned,’ she said calmly. ‘When the fighting was at its fiercest, halfway through the war, he resigned from the Flying Corps and disappeared from public view. And I’m afraid it’s inevitable that ever since then, the rumours have spread that he got out because he was afraid.’ Beatrice was still watching me, looking concerned. ‘Oh, my dear. You
have
got it badly.’

I was thinking, she must have known this all along. And he must already have been a pilot when I met him in Oxford, during all the months that he wrote to me.
I have to go away. But I want you to still think of me, and to think well of me…
My heart was pounding. ‘What happened to his hands?’ I whispered.

Her lips thinned. ‘That was a shock to me, I admit, when he arrived at Belfield Hall. I don’t know how that happened to him.’ She was still watching me carefully. ‘Though it wasn’t when he was in the Royal Flying Corps, that’s for sure.’

‘You say he “disappeared from public view” some time during the war. Where, then, did he go?’ I was gripping my knife and fork so hard they were hurting me.

‘He went abroad,’ she said, ‘that’s all I know, early in 1917. But he simply refuses to talk about what happened to him next. Nor does it help his reputation that he
made so much money out of his business interests round about the same time.’

So did many people, I wanted to say. I was thinking what Ash had said about Sydhurst and his cronies:
He and his business friends made absolute fortunes from the war.
The waiter was hovering to see if I wanted coffee, but I brushed him away. ‘You hate him,’ I said flatly to Beatrice. ‘You hate him – don’t you? – because he refused to take you to his bed at Belfield Hall that night.’

She put her head on one side. ‘You must admit,’ she drawled, ‘that the two of you played a pretty trick on me that night. But, contrary to what you think, I’m one of the few people to be actually on Ash’s side – simply because I think he’s the best chance the Belfield estate has got of good governance. The Duchess, however, still loathes him, and is clinging with desperate obstinacy to her story that he’s not really the heir.’

She sipped her wine again and ran her eyes over my face and figure. ‘You surely realise, Sophie, that your association with him could ruin him? You really will have to pray that the Press don’t get hold of the story. The public are always hungry for any scandal about the private lives of the upper classes.’

I did my damnedest not to let her see how much that hurt. ‘I’m quite sure Ash can look after himself,’ I breathed. ‘You should have told me at Belfield Hall that he was in the war, and a pilot.’

‘And you, my dear – ’ she touched my cheek lightly with her finger and I flinched – ‘should have told me at Belfield Hall that you’d corresponded with him and formed your rather absurd…
infatuation
for him.’ She
sighed. ‘A pity – we used to have such fun those days at the Hall, Sophie, you and I. You know, when Ash has had enough of you, which cannot be long now, you could always be my maid again…’

‘Never.’ I started folding my napkin. ‘I’m going now.’

‘I suppose you’re returning to his house in Hertford Street, are you? But you won’t have that option, my dear, once Ash is done with you.’ Calmly she began putting her cigarettes and lighter into her bag. ‘I’m at Claridge’s Hotel in Brook Street for the next few weeks, should you need me.’

‘I really won’t.’

As if I’d not spoken, she glanced again at my scarcely touched food. ‘Oh, Sophie, you should have eaten more. You really look quite pale – you’re not pregnant, are you? No, of
course
Ash would know better than to get someone of your class with child. All the same, you will let Christopher drive you home, I insist.’

Beatrice sat in the front next to her chauffeur as he drove me back to Hertford Street, and I didn’t say a word. I realised at some point that her hand was on his crotch, and though her eyes were straight ahead she was fondling him, caressing him deliberately into arousal in front of me.

When we got to Ash’s house Christopher stopped the car then came to open the door for me, his face impassive beneath his peaked cap. Beatrice climbed from the car too. ‘Don’t forget,’ she said with her secret smile, ‘that you can always share Christopher with me at my hotel whenever you wish – once you’ve done the right
thing and let Ash get on with his life.’ She stroked her chauffeur’s hip, to draw attention to the thickness of his erection beneath his uniform. When I drew back in revulsion, her smile increased.

I ran into the house, halting when I saw the maid coming towards me. ‘Is the Duke at home?’ I asked quickly.

‘His Grace is in his study, ma’am. Will you be joining him?’

‘Very soon, yes. But please don’t tell him I’m home – not just yet.’

‘Ma’am.’ She bobbed her head and I hurried on.

I went upstairs to the bedroom I’d shared with him since that first night, then I sat on his bed.
You surely realise, Sophie, that your association with him could ruin him?
I tried desperately to refute what Beatrice had said. Didn’t some of the most powerful men in the land manage to keep their mistresses in London houses, while their wives dwelt far away in the country? I resolved:
This will end when Ash and I decide it will end, not when Beatrice tries to wreck our happiness.

I thought I heard the sound of a motorcar pulling away below the window, and swiftly I went to look, wondering if Ash was perhaps leaving in his Daimler, but it was only a taxicab disappearing down the street. I dressed myself quickly in one of the gowns he most liked; it was a frivolous thing of beaded turquoise, short with thin shoulder straps and a low neckline. When he’d first seen me in it he’d said I looked like a flapper, a delicious little flapper. I buckled on some high-heeled silver shoes, painted more kohl on my eyelids and hurried
down the grand staircase, already consigning Lady Beatrice and her malice to the very back of my thoughts – only to realise that Ash wasn’t in his study after all.

He was in the hallway, and he wasn’t alone. There was a girl with him, who was talking to Ash with great vivacity, partly in English and partly in another language – French I guessed. Mrs Lambert was by the door, looking a little bemused; I guessed she’d let the visitor in, and was now wondering what kind of whirlwind she’d released in the house.

Ash had his back to me, and didn’t see me at first – none of them did. The girl had eyes only for Ash. She was younger than me, and exquisitely dressed in a flared green velvet coat with a matching green cloche hat perched on her black curls. She had the sweetest, most mischievous face, and I gathered she was making some kind of appeal to him, for she was gesticulating with her hands, but then she saw me on the stairs in my flighty turquoise dress, and her mouth fell open with a little ‘oh!’ of surprise.

Ash turned to me quickly then. ‘Sophie, this is my ward, Madeline. Will you wait for me upstairs, please?’

I got dressed –
properly
dressed – and waited for him in his sitting room. I gazed at myself in the mirror, and my eyes betrayed my despair that he’d sent me away.
His ward.
She belonged in his world – I didn’t.

When the door opened I was already on my feet.

‘Sophie,’ he began, ‘her name is Madeline Dumouriez; I think I mentioned before that she has been my ward since her parents died. I thought she was staying with
her godmother in Paris, but she’s run away and wants to stay with me. I’ve told her it’s not possible, of course. She’s only seventeen, and she needs a chaperone—’

‘Ash,’ I interrupted, ‘Ash, please listen to me.’ I think my voice must have conveyed my desperation, because he went very still.

He said, ‘Is now the time for this, Sophie?’

I moistened my lips; my heart was thudding sickeningly against my ribs. ‘Yes. I think it is. Ash, I don’t feel it’s right, that I’m living here, with you.’

He sat down facing me, looking almost haggard. ‘I don’t want you to leave,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I had to send you away just then. Madeline won’t be staying here with me, she can’t. I’ll start making some other arrangement for her straight away…’

I put my hand on his arm. ‘No! I don’t mean that you and I shouldn’t be together! I just thought that… sometimes I’m an embarrassment to you, as I was with Lord Sydhurst the other night. And your ward’s seen me here, coming down from your bedroom – your ward! So I wondered if it might be better if I lived nearby, in an apartment, perhaps…’ He took me in his arms, he cradled me, he kissed the top of my head. ‘I don’t want you to go anywhere,’ he said.