Farm Fatale (7 page)

    She looked round Basia's minimalist kitchen with loathing. Had generations of families broken bread here? Of course not. For a start, no bread, not even of the pita variety, was on the list of Ayurvedic foods for Pita personalities. Families, in any case, were not encouraged—particularly Guy's.

    His former wife, Marina, and daughter, Iseult, were emphatically persona non grata in Roland Gardens. The entire point of Samantha's designer overhaul had originally been to expunge any reminder of her predecessor. Samantha had watched the council cart off Marina's squashy sofas and sheepskin rugs with a sense of immense satisfaction that had lasted until Basia had replaced them with vintage iron garden furniture painted a space-age silver and a coffee table made from a life-size elephant head in chicken wire.

    Samantha's attempts to expunge Guy's family had met with mixed success in other ways as well. His maddening refusal to break off all diplomatic contact with Marina had been compounded by his insistence that Iseult be allowed to keep her old bedroom in Roland Gardens. Yet it was here that, in Samantha's eyes, Basia had scored her only real designer triumph—the complete removal of all Iseult's hideous posters from the walls, and in particular the one from the Bank of Ganja, signed by the Chief Hashier. The price sticker that remained on one of its peeling bottom corners never failed to remind Samantha that in certain contexts, £3.99 was actually an awful lot of money.

    She contemplated Carinthia's bedstead again, noting jealously that it looked even bigger, bouncier, and more glamorous than that traditionally belonging to the pea-troubled Princess in the fairy tale. Christabel…Carinthia. The names were similar. Did her new role, then, mean a whole new place to live? Samantha was not a religious woman, but she believed in destiny. Particularly if that destiny moved Guy out of Marina and Iseult's clutches and into the middle of nowhere.

    Meeting Guy in the bank was a perfect example. That it was fate, and not merely being "between films," that had put Samantha behind the switchboard had been obvious the minute her future husband hoved into view across the marble wastes of the mezzanine. Fate had then prompted the subsequent realization on Samantha's part that marrying someone as rich as Guy would remove once and for all the humiliating necessity for her to traipse around to auditions all day long. Fate's final tour de force had been to slip into her head the story about researching the part for the film.

    The wonderful thing about fate, Samantha considered, was that not only did it conveniently explain away one's less laudable actions, it also meant that one was rarely wrong. Viewed in this context, the hiring of Basia did not, as Guy insisted, amount to giving her license to vandalize while being paid hundreds of thousands of pounds for the privilege, but was, in fact, a logical progression along destiny's path. Fate had
of course
inflicted Basia on the house in order for her to create an environment so impossible to live in that Samantha would be forced to move.
To the country.

    Samantha gazed dreamily at the kitchen's shiny aluminum ceiling, reflecting both in it and on the fact that the wonderful thing about acting was its unexpectedness. One's life could change in an instant. From millennium minimalism to medieval manor house in the blink of an eye…

    
It is here, she thought excitedly, in the rustic dream that is her
thick-walled, fifteenth-century manor house, where brilliant sunshine
floods the stone flags of the hall, that celebrated actress Samantha Villiers
takes a well-deserved break from the set of her latest blockbuster film. A
lavender-scented silence pervades the ancient dwelling…

    She'd have to talk Guy round, of course. Samantha's lion heart sank slightly at this. Even one such as she, who, alongside generosity, placed optimism as her most marked characteristic, knew that convincing Guy to uproot himself from his clubs, his gym, and most of all the City office where he spent practically all his time would not be easy. She had no idea what he thought about the countryside; perhaps, like herself, he'd never even been there. Which meant there might at least be the possibility of an overnight conversion like her own. But Basia's conversion would be his first concern. The first problem he would raise, Samantha knew, was having one very large and expensive house on their hands already. Roland Gardens was fast taking on the aspect of a very ugly and very uncomfortable albatross. Persuading Guy to leave London would take every trick in what was becoming a very well-thumbed book. She looked at her slim sliver of a watch. She had two hours to think of something before he came home.

***

As far as convincing Guy to do things was concerned, Samantha had learned that crotchless lace was more persuasive than any amount of cold logic. Her argument for leaving Basia's urban sanctum for something significantly more Carinthia D'Arblay Sidebottom therefore rested principally on a number of points, including a plunging black lace bra with feather trim and nipple holes, a pair of split-crotch knickers, stockings, garters, stilettos, and a satin wrap trimmed with marabou feathers. Given this abundance of plumage, Samantha felt like a raunchy half-plucked chicken as she arranged herself on the daybed in the upstairs sitting room, stared at the wire-wool goat, and thought of lavender-scented silence and waited for Guy's return. And waited.

    "I'm home, darling." There was a thud as his Louis Vuitton gym bag hit the kitchen floor. The lavender-scented silence dispersed as a waft of aftershave the olfactory equivalent of a twenty-one-gun salute drifted up the stairs. "Everything all right?" he called.

    Damn him, why didn't he come up? She heard him rummage in the cupboard for a glass, then rattle it under the ice dispenser of Basia's wardrobe-size refrigerator. He had already dubbed the blasted-steel edifice A Fridge Too Far.

    "Wonderful," trilled Samantha, immediately switching the charm on to full. "How was the gym?" Considering Guy was down a staircase and round a corner, striking a balance between irresistible and audible was not easy.

    "Resting heart rate of sixty-five," Guy called back. "Fittest fiftysomething on the block, I am. Been busy, darling?"

    A scuffling sound as he picked up one of the country homes magazines from the kitchen table. Samantha rolled her eyes impatiently. "Come upstairs, darling," she called.

    But Guy seemed absorbed in whatever he was reading. An incredulous snort reached her from the basement kitchen. "To shift hard-water deposits from the bases of bathroom taps, scrub with an old toothbrush dipped in vinegar…" Guy yelled up the stairs in astonishment. "What's all this about?"

    "Christabel," shouted Samantha, as sexily as she could. They were at least getting on to the subject.

    "
Christabel
?" echoed Guy disbelievingly. "Who the hell's that? New cleaner or something? Must say it would be nice to have something slightly foxier to look at than Consuela."

    Samantha's lips tightened. Not now, not ever was the time to point out that Consuela's lack of foxiness was the whole point of her.

    At last, Guy jogged up the steps and appeared in the sitting room. "Bloody hell," he said as his gaze descended from the curls tumbling seductively round her face, past her exposed nipples to her fishnetted thighs. As Samantha, running her tongue round her lips, lifted her legs and slowly placed a stiletto-heeled foot on either side of the daybed, he registered the knickers as well.

    "Shall we go into the bedroom?" she purred.

    "No," gasped Guy, tearing himself out of his clothes. "Stay right where you are."

    Like hell, thought Samantha, sitting up so quickly on the daybed that it felt as if she had left half her back behind.

    Five minutes later, she was slipping her bra straps off her shoulders and admiring herself in the unframed mirror that stood propped against the wall at the bottom of the futon. Beneath the sheer fabric, her breasts rose full, ripe, and brown—the breasts, Samantha thought smugly, of someone ten years younger. Which they could well be—who knew what or who the plastic surgeon had stuck in there.

    In her best Mrs. Robinson fashion, she peeled off the fishnet stockings and, pushing a hand through her rumpled auburn hair, smoldered at her husband in the mirror. She had sneaked this into the house in blatant contravention of Basia's rules; its life-or-death necessity was the one thing on which she had stood firm.

    Guy, reflected behind her on the futon, was standing pretty firm himself. His stiffly erect penis protruded beneath the swollen roundness of his stomach.

    Samantha turned and gave him a burning look from beneath her eyelashes. "I'm a lioness," she informed him in a sibilant hiss. "Hunting for my prey." Her bracelets and watch rattled loudly together as, snarling, she pretended to slash at the air with a paw. Guy grinned appreciatively and grunted in reply. Lion Hunter, Samantha knew, was his favorite game. If this didn't persuade him, nothing would.

    But even
here
Basia had managed to bugger things up. The slow, threatening big-cat lope toward Guy, in which the sight of her thigh muscles flexing was central to building up his excitement, was perfectly possible on the thick-piled carpet of old. Even if Marina had put it there. Post-Basia, emulating the Queen of the Jungle was less about growling, more trying not to squeal as the bare beech boards, chosen for their knotted qualities, pressed agonizingly into Samantha's bony knees. Guy, however, noticed nothing of this; his attention was fixed unwaveringly on her breasts as, swaying and spilling generously out of the feathered bra, they approached him over the futon.

    Breathing in short, excited bursts, Guy squealed in excitement as his wife cuffed him with a heavily beringed hand. Springing forward, he clamped both hands on Samantha's breasts; she, in turn, locked both legs round his waist so he fell back onto the mattress. A sharp crack beneath announced that Basia's futon base had possibly been the first fatality of the jungle attack. Samantha slid her hips along Guy's thighs until she was sitting on his stomach and bent over to push her nipples in his face. His eyes bulged with mingled terror and excitement.

    "Before I kill you, there's something I have to ask you," she growled.

    Guy groaned in disappointment. "But I've just got myself all psyched up for a hideous and painful death."

    "I have to talk to you about Christabel." Having discussed the significance of the part, it would be easy to move on to moving to the country.

    Guy, however, had other significant parts in mind. "Oh,
Christ
. Not her again. Do we have to?" As he wriggled in frustration beneath her, she clenched her thigh muscles tighter. "OK," Guy groaned, half anguished, half ecstatic. "Talk to me about her. Who is she?"

    "A temptress. A schemer. A marriage wrecker."

    "Bloody hell." Guy looked impressed. "Well, she'll certainly make a change from all those healthcare program breast-checking videos."

    Samantha looked stony. For reasons utterly unconnected with the ailing National Health Service, being reminded of her lapse into private healthcare was not something she appreciated.

    "When did you audition for this one?"

    "Last week."

    "You auditioned for a marriage-wrecking temptress last week?" In Guy's bright blue eyes, the faint light of recognition shone. "But you only had one audition last week."

    Samantha nodded.

    "The one for the TV drama?"

    "That's it."

    "But you always said TV drama was the lowest form of thespian life apart from tampon ads."

    "Well, even the most experienced actress needs to extend her range from time to time," purred Samantha. "Besides, you never know who might be watching."

    "Like Steven Spielberg, for example?" Guy snorted.

    "Very possibly." What exactly was he finding so funny? Her clenched thighs, she was uncomfortably aware, were beginning to develop a cramp.

    "And you say the part is a femme fatale and a schemer? Helen of Troy and all that?"

    Samantha jerked her chin up and down, noticing that, for some reason, the corners of Guy's mouth were quivering.

    "So you're not talking about that part as a pub landlady in
Peak Practice
?"

    "It's not
Peak Practice
. It's
Country Clinic
."

    "The same, isn't it? Doctors shagging each other in hayfields?"

    Samantha blasted her husband with a glare somewhere off the bottom of the Kelvin scale. "Why do you have to be so bloody
reduc
tive
? It's a jewel of a role. The possibilities are
endless
. And every part is open to interpretation." Samantha stopped and sighed theatrically. "That's one great thing I learned from Hughie…"

    "From what I recall about Hughie," Guy sniggered, seeing the undefended goal posts before him, "his parts were open to more than bloody interpretation."

    Samantha's nostrils flared. Yet she was determined not to lose her temper.

    "So where does the lust come in?" Guy persisted.

    "My character, Christabel, the
barmaid,"
Samantha sniffed with dignity, "has an adulterous fling with one of the doctors. He's an alcoholic."

    "But why are the consequences far-reaching?"