The Winter Folly (6 page)

In the car, heading back towards the motorway, Grey said, ‘Oooh, he likes you!’

‘No, he doesn’t,’ Delilah said stoutly, but feeling a pleasurable sense of awakening excitement nonetheless.

‘He does! And did you see? No wedding ring.’

‘His type often don’t wear them,’ replied Delilah, trying to concentrate on the winding country roads.

‘But still, he’s not. I could tell. He had a lonely air about him, definitely craving female company.’

‘I should think the man who owns Fort Stirling is fighting them off!’

‘Mmm, don’t think so. Grey’s inner voice is never wrong, remember? You wait and see, something might be cooking there. I’m serious.’

She’d changed the subject but, back in London, things kept popping into her consciousness to remind her of John Stirling and the day she had spent in his magical home. She picked up a
stray back copy of the magazine and saw it contained a feature on that very house. When she opened her post a few days later, she discovered she had an invitation from a friend to stay the weekend
in a hotel just near Fort Stirling. Then in a biography she was reading she found a reference to the Stirling family of Northmoor, Dorset.
Weird
, she thought.
But it doesn’t mean
anything. Just synchronicity, I guess, but still . . .

In the week since the shoot, the break-up with Harry had somehow lost its sting, as though her day at the old house had set her free, and now she couldn’t quite remember why she had cared
so much. There were other men out there, after all, other possibilities, other potential lives, all waiting for her to walk out and take whichever path she wanted.

‘Delilah?’ It was her assistant Roxie, putting her head round Delilah’s door.

‘Yup?’ She glanced over from her screen where she’d been absorbed in a portfolio sent to her by an aspiring photographer.

‘You’ve got a visitor.’

She frowned over the top of her black-rimmed glasses. ‘Who? I’m not expecting anyone.’

‘His name is John. He’s sitting out in reception.’

‘John?’ she echoed. She was bewildered for a moment, then thought,
Could it be?
She stood up, grateful suddenly that she’d dressed up for a cocktail party she was
planning to go to after work and was wearing a navy silk Alberta Ferretti dress with a silver tweed blazer over the top, and her long fair hair was freshly blow-dried into loose waves. She put her
glasses on the desk. ‘Okay, I’ll go out and see him.’

Her stomach swooped pleasantly when she saw John Stirling was sitting there, one leg lazily crossed over the other knee, in dark trousers, a shirt and a very well-cut jacket, flicking through a
magazine from the coffee table. He looked up as she came over, and stood up at once, a smile lighting up his expression, making his slightly angular face suddenly handsome. She noticed the dimple
in his left cheek again, and the way it was rather winsome and boyish.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I hope you don’t mind me dropping by. I’m on one of my very rare visits to London and was walking through the square when I suddenly thought . .
. why don’t I drop by and ask when the house is going to feature?’

She smiled back, awkward but pleased. No one just dropped by like that for such a flimsy reason. There were plenty of ways of finding out which issue Fort Stirling was going to appear in.
‘Well, it’s lovely to see you. Come into my office.’

‘Or . . .’ He looked thoughtful. ‘We could go out for a spot of lunch if you’re free.’ He consulted a chunky wrist-watch. ‘It’s almost one.’

Excitement sparkled through her. ‘That sounds lovely. I’d really like that.’

‘Good. Me too.’

They’d gone out to a nearby French bistro that Delilah knew, and sat outside watching London go by while they ate buttery garlic snails and then bloody chargrilled steaks with hot salty
chips and peppery watercress. All the while they talked about nothing and everything. He was a good listener and wanted to know about her home back on the Welsh borders, her family, her job, her
life. She told him about lots of things, but not about Harry, and he told her about his life in the country and that he was divorced. They sat there all afternoon, Delilah ringing in to say she
wouldn’t be back in the office, and then she ditched the cocktail party too and they went to a bar near Regent Street and talked on all evening. By the end of the night, they both knew that
something had started.

It had been dizzying and delightful as she began to fall in love. He drove up to see her twice a week until one Friday night they kissed under a street lamp by Embankment tube station, oblivious
to the people all around them. He came back to her tiny west London flat and they had frantic, clothes-tearing-off sex in the sitting room, before moving to the bedroom for long, tender hours of
delicious lovemaking. She loved his smell, the feel of his skin, the muscled hardness of his back and thighs, and the way their bodies fitted together so perfectly. She was exhilarated at the
rightness of it all, and he couldn’t take his hands off her or keep his mouth from hers for any length of time. They wanted nothing more than one another, talking and laughing and confiding,
and always ending up in bed again. He stayed the entire weekend and the flat, usually her haven, was empty and soulless when he’d gone. When he returned, he had a bag with him.

‘I don’t need to go back for a while,’ he said. ‘They’re filming something at the house. I’ve left my cousin Ben in charge. He works for me. He can handle it
all.’

‘That’s wonderful,’ Delilah said with a smile, an effervescent excitement bubbling inside her. ‘I’m glad you can stay.’

He gazed at her hungrily. ‘I can’t keep away from you. You’re lighting up my life, Delilah. You’ve changed everything, you don’t know how much.’

She felt reborn into happiness, Harry forgotten in her passion for John. He was funny, charming and witty, with a soulful side that intrigued her. He didn’t speak much about himself or his
family, and gave her only sketchy details of his history when she pressed for them, telling her that his father was ill with encroaching dementia, and that his mother had died years before, though
he didn’t elaborate. He had no brothers and sisters and he felt the weight of his great inheritance: the house and all that came with it. It was no wonder, she thought, that he had a tendency
to spells of silence, when a dark mood descended on him and he seemed to vanish inside himself. When she asked him what was wrong, he would always snap out of it, smile again and tell her that it
was nothing. But every few nights he was rocked by bad dreams that made him convulse, twist and cry out in his sleep, and he would wake panting and wild-eyed, in a panic that he could not describe.
Then she would hold him and soothe him until it had passed and he fell asleep again.

The return to Fort Stirling made Delilah feel as though she was in a fairy tale. John drove her back on a frosty autumn day so that they could spend a weekend there, just the
two of them, and the house looked impossibly beautiful against the sparkling icy parkland. When the gloomy afternoon fell, it was cosy inside with the lamps lit and the fire burning. The
housekeeper had left a stew bubbling and potatoes baking. They drank wine in the small sitting room at the back of the house and made love in front of the fire.

Lying in his arms afterwards on a pile of cushions and watching the dancing flames, she said with a studied idleness, ‘That portrait hanging in the hall – is it her?’

He stiffened slightly. ‘Who?’

‘Your first wife.’ Earlier in the day, when John had gone to fetch something, she’d been looking at the pictures and had noticed the pastel and watercolour painting of a woman.
It had a chocolate-box quality: the hair too blonde and smooth, the eyes too big and the mouth too cupid-bowed to be entirely plausible as a true likeness, but there was nevertheless a defiant air
about the face. Underneath a small gold plate read
Vanna Ford Stirling
. It was obvious she was American, just from the way she’d kept her surname like that. Delilah had stared at it,
curious. John had told her that his first wife was called Vanna. They had been married for four years and had split up amicably over a decade ago. She lived back in the States now, and had
remarried. She was probably signing herself Vanna Ford Stirling Smith, or whatever her new name was.

‘Vanna?’ John relaxed. ‘Yes, that’s her.’

‘Isn’t it a bit strange to keep a picture of her hanging up?’

‘Not really. Once a Stirling, always a Stirling.’

She paused and said lightly, ‘Why did you two split up?’

‘Usual reason. We married too young. She fell out of love with this house, and eventually with me. And I couldn’t blame her. I can hardly bear this place myself.’

‘That can’t be true,’ Delilah murmured, nuzzling his shoulder. ‘It’s glorious. And it’s your home. You belong here.’

‘So they tell me,’ he said wryly.

‘Do you really not like it?’ She couldn’t understand it. The house enchanted her. Everywhere she looked, she saw something beautiful, and each time she passed a window she was
dazzled by the views across the lawns, parkland and woods.

He thought. ‘I like parts of it. But . . .’ His gaze slid to her and then away again. ‘These old houses are saturated with the past – it’s hard to escape it, hard
to make the place your own.’ He’d squeezed her hand. ‘But your enthusiasm is helping me to look at it through fresh eyes. Forget the things I’d rather not remember.’
He fixed her with a serious look. ‘I don’t want you thinking that Vanna means anything to me. She doesn’t – not in that way. It was all a long time ago.’

‘I won’t,’ she said, happy that she had nothing to fear from the past. She had not really felt menaced by the spectre of an ex-wife, but it was good to be reassured.

When they went up to bed, there was a beautiful package with her name on it nestling on her pillow. Inside was a ring, an antique aquamarine set with tiny flickering diamonds.

‘Will you?’ he said, his eyes hopeful and yet trusting. ‘If you can bear a miserable old cove like me?’

‘Of course, of course I will!’ She burst into tears of happiness and hugged him.

The wedding was held as soon as they could arrange it, a small ceremony at a London register office with only close friends and immediate family, mostly Delilah’s.
John’s father, he said, was too ill to attend.

‘Don’t you have anyone else you’d like to come?’ John shook his head. ‘I can’t be bothered with all my aunts and uncles and cousins. I like to keep things
quiet with just friends. Do you mind?’

‘Of course not,’ she’d said. ‘I’ve got enough family for both of us. You can have as many of my relations as you’d like and you’re very welcome to
them.’

Despite the grey skies and squalling winter rain, the day was all she wanted: romantic and stylish, with a lunch at a very expensive hotel after the ceremony. Then they went to Hawaii for three
long and delicious weeks of honeymoon. John taught her how to surf and they spent all day on the beach before returning to their luxurious chalet at the hotel for baths, dinner and bed. She really
couldn’t imagine it was possible to be happier. At night, he told her how much he loved and needed her.

‘You’re the light of my life,’ he whispered. ‘I mean that.’ ‘I love you too,’ she replied, overwhelmed with the bliss of being married to a man she
loved and who needed her so much. His mordant wit charmed her; even his black moods were interesting and a little romantic. She felt certain she could make him happy and help him forget the misery
of his childhood. Together, they could face anything.

But as the end of the honeymoon approached, the atmosphere changed. John stopped smiling and joking, and his periods of silent withdrawal became longer. The mood became heavy and no matter how
much she tried to bring peace and good humour to the situation, she couldn’t defuse the tension. They had never rowed, not seriously, but she had the sense that something was building and it
was beyond her control to stop it.

The night before they left, John seemed keyed up in a way she’d never seen before and, on an impulse, she arranged for them both to have massages in the hotel spa to relax him. Afterwards,
back in the chalet as they prepared to go for dinner, she thought he seemed calmer, though his grey eyes were still flinty in the way that signalled he was not at ease. She kept up an easy chatter
to divert him while they got ready.

‘I can’t quite believe that on Monday I’ll be back in the office as usual,’ she said lightly, putting on her earrings in front of the mirror. The aquamarine in her
engagement ring looked even bluer against the tan she’d acquired, and her face was glowing with the effects of sunshine and seawater. She could see John behind her, leaning against the wall,
his hands thrust down low in his pockets. He looked strained. ‘It’s been so wonderful here, I haven’t given home a thought. Goodness knows what’s waiting for me when I get
back. My inbox will be a nightmare.’

John glanced up at her reflection and their eyes met.

Why is he so tense and unhappy?
The massage obviously hadn’t worked as well as she’d hoped. She felt a rush of love and tenderness for him, wanting to take him in her arms
and soothe all the bad feelings away.

He said, ‘It doesn’t matter really now, does it? You won’t be there for long. How long is your notice period? A month?’

She pushed the back of her earring on and shook out her hair. It fell thick and fair over her shoulders. The sun had lightened it several shades, and her freckles had come out. ‘What do
you mean?’

‘You’ll be resigning when you get back, won’t you? I thought you might do it before we left but you had so much on with the wedding, I didn’t bring it up.’

She stared at him, startled. They had talked only vaguely about what would happen when they returned but she had assumed that the arrangement they had before the wedding would go on for a while
longer: London in the week in her little flat, Fort Stirling at weekends and holidays, with John going back when there was an urgent need for him to be there. She’d grown accustomed to his
being able to do what he wanted, leaving his cousin in charge when necessary so that they could be together. When John had talked about how they would live at the house, she’d pictured them
there at some unspecified point in the future, when she felt ready to give up her London life or when circumstances decreed it. They’d agreed before the wedding that Delilah would come off
the Pill and they would let things take their course. She was thirty-four and ready for motherhood when it came, but she had the vague impression that it could take a few months for the
Pill’s effects to wear off and so didn’t expect to become pregnant immediately. She turned back from the mirror to face him and said slowly, ‘You mean – stop
working?’