The Maestro's Mistress (17 page)

The Mozart tinkled and thundered
capriciously. A young woman nearby got up and stumbled out, obviously ill.
Georgiana almost envied her the early escape. She felt sorry for the girl as
well, just as she felt sorry for the majority of women who were physically
unremarkable. And how awful it must be to be small and dark and so top heavy.

At the end of the concert she
took a taxi home and opened a bottle of Bollinger. Xavier was particularly fond
of Bollinger, relishing its yeasty fragrance and doughy aftertaste. Georgiana
would have preferred something a little lighter, but tonight was to be one
hundred per cent geared to
his
preferences.

She drank two glasses herself and
felt suitably unwound.

It never occurred to Georgiana
that her chosen methods of seduction were clumsy and crude, cringingly
commonplace. Ultra stylish – and much admired – for her taste in clothes and
her amusing dinner parties, Georgiana was little more than a child when it came
to sexual sophistication. She was sure she was doing everything that was
expected and that it could not fail to please.

Arrayed in a peach satin
nightdress and a cloud of
Jolie Madame
eau de toilette, she waited for
Xavier to return, mercifully oblivious of the disastrous mismatch between the
scene she had set and the emotional upheavals of Xavier’s day.

He did not return until four in
the morning, looking uncharacteristically haggard and exhausted.

Georgiana, stretched out
languorously on the sofa saw him stare at her blankly. It was as though she
were someone he had seen once or twice before but could not quite place.

Having waited in a state of
tension for him since midnight she was inwardly incensed. He had been with one
of those girls: one of his own choosing, at his own instigation. An assignation
that had nothing to do with her, Georgiana, his wife.

She fumed. She willed herself to
be calm.

‘You’re still up,’ he said.

‘I wanted to see you. I never see
you these days.’ She smiled. She tried to recapture the feelings and demeanour
of the young bride Georgiana who had been so in love with her stern, famous
bridegroom.

‘No. I’m sorry about that.’ He
sat down, his upper body slumped forward, his long arms hanging between his
legs.

‘You’ve been working so hard,’
she chided him sweetly. ‘You’re getting to be a complete workaholic.’

Xavier looked at her, noted the
brittle, girlish coquetry glittering in her eyes. His mind was full of Tara and
their child, he did not want to think about Georgiana. He had lost all
motivation to expend mental energy on her problems. He suspected she had not
been very happy recently and maybe not very well. He wished she would get a lover
or a potential new husband. He wished she would go away somewhere else and be
happy. Or simply dissolve.

‘Have some champagne,’ she said,
coming across and sitting beside him.

He took the glass.

She raised her glass and clinked
it delicately against his. ‘Happy New Year, darling.’

‘Happy New Year.’ The response
was merely automatic.

‘A new year, a new start,’ she
said.

‘Yes.’ If only she knew. He
considered the kindest way to tell her.

‘I do love you very much,’ she
said, sounding a little pathetic.

He said nothing.

She put her glass down and placed
her hand on his crotch.

Xavier could not have been more
surprised and dismayed if she had pulled a knife on him. Slowly she began to
rotate her hand, her blue eyes staring into his.

Xavier felt revulsion. He wanted
to swat her off like a troublesome insect.

Still smiling she slipped her
arms out of the straps of her nightgown and allowed it to slither down to her
waist. Her small, girlish breasts gleamed like creamy pearls in the soft light
from the lamps.

Xavier thought of Tara’s breasts,
heavy and voluptuous like ripe fruits trapped in an invisible net. Vaguely he
registered Georgiana getting to her feet, wriggling out of her gown and
presenting her perfect, unblemished body to him.

She stood for a moment,
triumphant and yet uncertain. And then, incredibly, she was taking the
initiative, reaching for his hand and guiding it between her thighs.

Xavier felt the texture of her
flesh, greasy and perfumed, anointed with some expensive lubricant. His hand
rested in hers and then as she withdrew it so his own dropped away from her,
dead as a stone.

Georgiana looked down at him in
bewilderment. Her face showed the pain and confusion of a child who has tried
so hard to please, only to be rejected.

Reluctantly, and with a huge
effort of will, Xavier forced his mind to focus on the woman before him with
whom he was sharing this awful moment. Holding back the impulse to fell her
with a single violent blow he schooled himself to be gentle, for it was not her
fault that he no longer felt any emotion for her. Instead he pulled her to sit
beside him on the sofa. He let his arm rest around her shoulders.

And then he told her.

She sat very still, unflinching,
wordless. Her face became closed and unreachable.

He guessed she had simply shut
him off. His wife had an awesome capacity to ignore that which did not please, nor
fit with her view of the world. ‘Georgiana,’ he said, shaking her shoulder.
‘You must listen.’ There was no kind way to do this. He must be honest.
Speaking the truth was often brutal and cruel, but he had never shied away from
it.

‘This isn’t some sudden whim of
mine. I have been thinking about it for some weeks. I have hardly slept.
Georgiana!’

Her face was white as death, the
china blue eyes blank and staring.

He lifted her in his arms and
shook her as though attempting to wake someone from drug-induced sleep. She was
limp and yet in some way ferociously resisting him.

‘Our marriage has been sick and
ailing for some time now,’ he informed the beautiful marble-like features. ‘We
are not doing ourselves any good to go on in this way.’

It was like trying to communicate
with a corpse. He groaned with weariness and mounting frustration. ‘For God’s
sake, Georgiana. Our marriage is dead!’

He fancied he saw a flicker in
the blue stare.

‘We shall see each other, still
be friends,’ he coaxed, cringing at the notion. ‘And you will have nothing to
worry about regarding money. You can have everything you want.’

Still nothing.

His patience was at an end. ‘Tara
is having my child,’ he said, the cruellest cut of all.

There was a long silence.

Suddenly she let out a chilling
and primitive scream. A howl of animal rage. Just one. And then she pressed her
lips tightly together. There was not another sound.

He could do nothing with her. She
was encapsulated in some impregnable world of her own. He gave up. He picked up
the crumpled nightdress and manoeuvred it over his wife’s body, moving her
limbs as though she were a doll.

He carried her to her room and
laid her in bed. She turned on her side and closed her eyes, shutting him out.

He had wondered for some time now
if Georgiana was biologically ill. He had no idea how serious it might be.  He
would make contact with her therapist and ask his advice.

He sat beside the bed, keeping
watch over her. In his mind he was several miles away in a clinical hospital
room where a small marvel of female humanity was suffering in the struggle to
save the life of his child.

CHAPTER
14

Saul’s house on the outskirts of
Oxford was a mock Tudor pile set in four acres of ornamental garden.

Tara chuckled with mockery as he
drove the Porsche through the tall wrought iron gates which opened
automatically and then closed with a ringing clang behind them.

‘Shut up,’ he growled, loving her
refusal to be impressed with the trappings of success. ‘I don’t take it
seriously either.’

‘But you bought it.’

‘I have to have a place somewhere
outside London.’

The drive was a smooth grey road,
bordered on each side with tall bushes whose glossy leaves gave every
appearance of having been polished by hand. The road swooped and curved, revealing
glimpses of spreading lawns beyond the thick foliage of the bushes. Tara
registered the trailing branches of weeping willows, the stiff fingers of a
huge monkey puzzle tree. There was a distant glint of turquoise water promising
the opportunity of some relaxing swims.

The grey road ended in a circular
gravel sweep. The house presiding over it was huge with a high front door of
heavy oak, arched and studded like the entrance to a castle.

Tara stared at it and then burst
into laughter. ‘Will the staff be lined up waiting? Is there an evil, jealous
housekeeper who will strike terror into my bones?’

Saul smiled. ‘There is Mrs
Lockwood. She comes in every day from the village where she lives happily with
her husband and children. I very much doubt her capacity for serious
wickedness.’

Inside the house smelled of
beeswax polish and freshly cut flowers. The huge hallway was panelled in dark
oak. There was a cream and dusky pink marble floor, on which one solitary
silken rug from the former Persia lay in softly glistening ripples.

Tara looked around her. For a
moment it was hard to think of anything suitable to say.

Saul took her in his arms and
kissed her face. He then took her on a tour of the house. It was vast.

‘Who dusts the skirting boards?’
Tara enquired, having regained her usual spiky assurance.

‘Not you.’ He spoke in a manner
which prohibited all challenge. ‘Mrs Lockwood organizes people to come in and
do all that, also the cooking. I’d advise you simply to steer clear.’

‘So what do I do all day? Apart
from being a brood mare?’

‘Oh – I have a few plans,’ he
said softly.

‘What about the promotion job
with the orchestra?’ she asked tentatively.

He looked down at her. ‘No.’ His
eyes were hard.

‘No longer on offer? Don’t get
the idea my brain’s about to turn to porridge just because I’m pregnant.’ She
stared up at him with challenge.

His face was stripped and
austere. You almost lost this baby, Tara. There is no question of taking any
risks. You need peace. You need calm and rest. Then after the baby – well…’ His
hand curved in an upwardly spiralling gesture, suggesting the possibility of
all manner of interesting heights to be scaled.

She realized there was little
point in protesting. And secretly she was relieved. Just at the moment she
wanted to concentrate on very little besides loving Saul.

In the huge main bedroom Tara
rushed at him like a playful calf, surprising him with a sharp lunge, catching
him off balance so that he fell onto the king-sized bed. Kneeling over his hips
she declared love on him with a vengeance.

Their lips and tongues entwined.
He gazed at her with his mysteriously remote yet deeply sensual eyes. She could
feel their hearts beating in rhythm, their breathing perfectly synchronized as
they lay together like one body.

‘How did you get so bony?’ he
murmured, his fingers tracing over the spikes of her rib cage.

‘How do you think?’

‘Pining?’

‘Shame on me,’ she said. ‘When
were you going to come for me?’

‘When you’d had long enough to
sweat.’ He smiled at her. He loved all the verbal fencing. She was so sure, so
resilient. But then suddenly her breath-catching young vulnerability would show
through the self-assurance like a flash of naked flesh beneath torn fabric.

She narrowed her eyes
dangerously. ‘I’m going to make
you
sweat.’ She reached down.

He grasped her hand, stilling it
and holding it prisoner.

‘Oh!’ Her eyes widened with
understanding and horror.

‘I’m sure I don’t need to remind
you what the doctor said,’ he told her, his eyes suddenly icy.

Tara recalled the interview with
the gynaecologist before they left the hospital.

He’d been a smooth, patronizing
jerk. On one occasion he’d even referred to her as “the little lady”. And he’d
made coy remarks about play pens when he meant vaginas.

‘Wise to leave the play pen empty
for the next month or so if you want to make sure it’s going to be full later,’
he had jested.

Tara had taken this as a warning
to refrain from strenuous sex. At least for a while. If possible. With Saul
lying next to her now she didn’t believe it was.

‘You’re not suggesting we don’t
make love for weeks and weeks,’ she gasped in horror. ‘My God, I’d go mad. I
couldn’t bear it.’

His eyes held hers, compelling,
magnetizing. He was in total, awe-inspiring control. ‘You are having a child,
my darling. That means you yourself are no longer a child. You have to learn
patience and restraint. I’m quite used it,’ he informed her. ‘A little more
privation will make very little difference. Besides which, anticipation always
sharpens up the appetite.’