Farm Fatale (45 page)

    "But
where
?" Matt asked himself fretfully. "Rome's been done to death, Paris is too girly, New York is boring, boring, boring.
I know
," he shouted, clapping his hands. "Let's go to Istanbul."

    "Er…" stammered Rosie, her thoughts flying to her plants. Mrs. Womersley had not directed her helpful all-watering hose over the garden wall recently.

    "Or if I may make an alternative suggestion that may fit better with your schedule, sir," murmured Murgatroyd in silken tones. "I've got a very nice fish pie in the oven. It will be ready in half an hour."

Lunch was served in a tiny octagonal room in the tower. Dancing excitedly ahead of her up the stone spiral stairs, Matt explained to Rosie his plans to open Ladymead to the public eventually. "But this tower is all mine. Out of bounds to visitors. But not," he added, flashing her a smile that made her swallow hard, "for friends."

    Seated at the circular oak table, the perfect size for an intimate lunch
à deux
, Rosie dug her fork into a fish pie that made even Ann's at the Barley Mow seem oddly lacking something. Matt launched immediately into a stream of music-business anecdotes that left her wide-eyed, open-mouthed, bent double with laughter, or frequently, all three.

    "You've never heard that before? But it was all over the papers," he exclaimed in amazement when Rosie professed complete ignorance of the drummer, the tadpoles, and the bath full of cleaning gel.

    "Sorry, I don't read the papers," Rosie mumbled.

    "Why be sorry about that?"

    Rosie sighed. "It used to drive my boyfriend—
ex-boyfriend—
mad. He hated it that I couldn't have picked Dr. Phil out of a lineup. Or that I didn't know Pee-Wee Herman's real name."

    "Or that you didn't know who I was. Although I suppose the problem there was that he thought you did."

    "Hmm," said Rosie, reluctant to be drawn into discussing the matter.

    For a moment Matt looked as if he were about to discuss it anyway. Then, to her relief, he bounced up and, lunch being over, offered to show her over the rest of Ladymead.

    "Smart, isn't it?" he said proudly as they admired the goings-on of Mount Olympus painted on the ceiling above the staircase. "Took three years to finish. Apparently the artist put some of the Ladymead servants in as well. That toothless old crone in the corner is supposed to be the housekeeper and that fat bloke next to Zeus is the head gardener. He was massive on trompe l'oeil as well…Oh, yes, I
can
pronounce it." He laughed at Rosie's stare of surprise.

    Rosie blushed. Once again he had read her mind. But she was surprised that Matt seemed to know so much about his pictures. Enough to be irreverent about them.

    "Not bad," he said when Rosie paused on the wide stone stairs to admire a classical landscape. "The main reason I bought it was because I thought the crapping dog at the front was funny."

    Rosie peered. Sure enough, before the depiction of an ivied, crumbling Forum during a golden sunset was a patch of white, which, on close inspection, proved to be a very obviously defecating Jack Russell.

    "Cross-looking Dutch people," he said, grinning when Rosie exclaimed at the workmanship on some seventeenth-century portraits from the Netherlands. "But you're right, they are exceptional," he added with quiet pride. Rosie looked at the pinched and disapproving faces above the starched white ruffs and was strongly reminded of Mrs. Womersley. Whom she had seen neither hide nor hair of— apart from twitches of Number l's curtains—since returning the suit. It was tempting to conclude her neighbor was trying to avoid her.

    This uncomfortable thought was soon dispelled by the joy of exploring Ladymead. Rushing around like an excited child, Matt pointed out everything from the hand-painted Japanese wallpaper in the salon to Queen Victoria's bed.

    "Only she never slept in it," he told Rosie. "They did the whole place up for her visit, but then one of the kitchen maids got typhoid and she never came. Bummer or what?"

    Rosie, her nostrils filled with smells of wood, furniture polish, dust, and age, hurried in Matt's wake as he disappeared down endless twisting corridors, his hands never still from drawing her attention to yet another Ladymead delight. He tapped at windows to point out the beveling, showed her the cast-iron detail of the door locks, gestured at a series of perfect vistas. They passed a wonderful trompe l'oeil hat, ribboned, flowered, and "hanging" in perfect eye-deceiving detail from the back of a door. "And see that enfilade of doors there? Each one framing the one after it. Top stuff, isn't it?"

    He drew her attention to the wide and sweeping park, pointing out the landscaping, the crescent lake, the clump of three oak trees planted by two Bonsanquet sisters in memory of themselves and a third, who had died. "And see that little stone doorway over by the temple of Diana? That's the icehouse, which I've converted. It's my studio now. Bit on the nippy side, but the acoustics are phenomenal. And this is the pub." Matt grinned, taking her into a small sitting room whose every wall bristled with carved paneling in dark wood. Each panel, she saw, held the exquisitely rendered head of a sternlooking bearded gentleman. She looked round. There seemed no evidence of drink whatsoever.

    "Why's it a pub?"

    "One of the former owners bought this lot wholesale from a German monastery," Luke explained. "It's eighteenth century. But it always reminds me of the 'Elizabethan bar' in some pompous, provincial hotel. Believe me, I should know," he added ruefully. "I saw enough of them." Then he darted off again.

    "And here's the chapel," he announced, opening a pair of double doors that stretched to the height of the ceiling at the end of a long corridor. Rosie had no idea where in the building they now were. Ladymead inside was every bit the warren the outside promised it would be.

    "How incredible," she said, "to have your own chapel. A bit like owning God."

    "I think that was more or less the idea."

    The chapel was seventeenth century and very ornate. Although now almost sated with the variety and beauty of Ladymead, Rosie nonetheless found she had room for one last expanse of carved and gilded wood, another eye-tanglingly geometric marble checkered floor, and a final explosion of garish painting behind a heavily decorated altar. All, not that she'd ever say it, just a trifle…
vulgar?

    "Bit Donald Trump, isn't it?" Matt grinned, reading her thoughts again.

    Finally, he took her back to the tower.

    "My sitting room," he declared, opening a linenfold paneled door to reveal an imposing but intimate room with a Tudor fireplace and vast, comfortable-looking sofas. "Not that I do all that much sitting in it. Except to watch the telly or a movie," Matt said, revealing with a flick of a small, silver remote control how a huge, flat state-of-the-art TV was concealed behind a sliding panel in the wall. "And this," he added, disappearing up a further flight of narrow spiral stairs, "is my bedroom."

    Rosie hesitated before following him up. Matt beckoned her with the disinterested enthusiasm of a stately home room steward, pointing out the plaster animals, birds, and flowers molded on the low ceiling and the rose tree and lamb panel over the fireplace, picked out in reds and golds. "Restored to their original colors," Matt said proudly. From the deep-silled latticed windows, their panes dimpled and curved with age, Rosie looked across the green and rolling valley to see, in the distance, the top of the spire of Eight Mile Bottom church.

    "And this is my bed." As Rosie glanced hurriedly away from the huge four-poster, something between her navel and her pubic bone plunged downward while excitement mounted in her throat.

    He was, she saw, looking at her, watchfully from narrowed eyes, his lips curved in a heavy, sultry smile.

    "Look inside the canopy. It's carved there as well."

    Striding over, he positioned her in front of him and pointed up inside the bed. His fingers, though holding her with an almost infinite lightness, scorched into her shoulders. It was with a mixture of excitement and fear that she saw the carvings were extremely explicit. Figures with enormous breasts and colossal penises; frequently both.

    Quite suddenly he spun her round and kissed her. It happened almost before her brain registered it. Her body, on the other hand, had no such problems. Her lips burned and a feeling of urgent need began to build within her.

    "Oh," she gasped.

    She watched, heavy with longing, as the lips approached again. Contact was explosive; they pulled eagerly at her throat, her lips, her cheeks, her hair. Finally, his tongue still eagerly exploring her mouth, he pushed her closer to the four-poster and in one fluid, practiced movement laid her down. She blinked up at him, modestly averting her gaze from the priapic penises above his head. Although why, as he expertly slipped off her top and began licking her nipples, she had no idea. There was nothing modest about what he was doing.

    "I fell in love with you the first time I saw you," Matt murmured, his dark, tousled head still busy with her breasts. "Standing outside the door of that stupid bloody house."

    "In love with me?" Rosie giggled, arching her back with pleasure as his hand trailed liquid fire between her thighs. "But you can't be in love with me."

    "Why not?"

    She gasped, stiffening with pleasure as his sure fingers touched places Mark had hit but only intermittently. Places she had been too shy to show him. Places Matt knew apparently by instinct. "Because," she murmured, "you're, um…"

    "What?" He raised himself on his elbow and traced her lips with his fingers.

    "Er…" What was she trying to say, anyway? That she'd heard his heart was broken? "Too rich and famous," she finished flippantly.

    He rolled his eyes and lowered his mouth on hers again.

    "There you were, looking almost as scared as I was," he growled, coming up for air and removing the rest of their clothes. "Only a million times more beautiful. That suit was sensational. Gucci, was it?"

    "No." The aching, longing cavern within her seemed to be expanding into infinity. Then, gloriously, sliding slowly into her, Matt filled it. Rosie pushed herself fiercely, rhythmically against him. She was floating, soaring, rising to join the gods in the sky above the staircase. And not the ones who looked like head gardeners at that. "Mrs. Womersley," she gasped as fireworks exploded behind her eyes.

***

Matt having finally, reluctantly, but apparently unavoidably disappeared into his icehouse studio, Rosie was driven home by Murgatroyd. She stared, unseeing, as the village reeled past the window. Had any of it really happened? Firmly in the yes camp were a certain light-headedness and a throbbing rawness between her thighs. But had he
really
said he loved her as well? "
I fell in love with
you the first time I saw you
…" Rosie heaved a sigh of happiness so loud and prolonged that Murgatroyd flashed her a concerned glance in his mirror. Rosie blushed as she looked back at him, then smiled.

    Passing The Bottoms, Rosie spotted Iseult wandering down the winding drive and crashed back to earth. She looked, Rosie thought, both bored and impatient. Guiltily, she remembered the demo tape still in her bag. She had completely forgotten to hand it to Matt, understandably enough, though, given the circumstances. There had been other matters in hand, after all.
Damn
, though. Iseult would be so disappointed.

    Still, there was always tomorrow, Rosie thought happily. Or, there was always Murgatroyd. He seemed to sit in on the studio sessions, after all. She blushed as she looked at the back of his chauffeur's cap. The front, she had noticed, bore the Ladymead lamb. He drove smoothly along, not revealing through so much as a glance in the mirror what, if anything, he knew of the afternoon's activities.

    Sliding her hand into her bag, Rosie closed her fingers round the plastic oblong. "Murgatroyd?"

    "Yes, madam."

    "Could I possibly give you a demo tape?"

    "I wasn't aware that madam had singing ambitions."

    Rosie laughed "Not me. It's a friend. She's very keen that Matt should listen to it. Could you slip it in somehow?" She looked down, blushing, and immediately regretting her choice of words.

    Murgatroyd, however, did not miss a beat. "I'll try my best, madam, though slipping things in isn't as easy as you'd imagine with Mr. Locke."

    Rosie stared, embarrassed, out the window. What exactly was the butler implying?

    "People try all the time, though," Murgatroyd continued. "One chap trained as a stove repairman for the sole purpose of penetrating the country houses of people in the music business so he could give them his demo tape."

    "Really? How amazing. What happened?"

    "Unfortunately, it seemed he was better at fixing stoves than he was at writing songs, madam."

Mark now found it impossible to believe that he had ever thought Samantha was attractive. Day after grinding day stuck with her in what was actually the gazebo but what she insisted on calling the film development unit had, far from stoking his lust with her proximity, almost driven him to contemplate murder. The fact that she insisted they occupy chairs with "Star" (hers) and "Director" (his) on the back had not improved matters. Worse even than this, though, was his increasing suspicion that her film connections might not be all she made them appear. There was something about the way she kept referring to Glynnis Paltrow and Brad Reeves that smacked of a less than intimate knowledge of the Hollywood scene, despite her constant Hollywoodese references to actors as "talent" and frequently expressed desire to cast Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and someone called Kevin Spacek in the film.