‘Four.’ It was not a dream this time either, then. He had been there, he had made love to her—three times—he seemed pleased with her and she, she was still floating. Three times, each time different, each time blissful… ‘The bed?’ he prompted, grinning at her befuddlement.
Bel pushed back her hair with both hands and looked around at the tangle of bedclothes and the tumbled pillows. ‘We will never make it look as it did before,’ she concluded. ‘If you can arrange the covers so it looks as though I was restless and pushed them right off, and pass me that copy of Byron…’ She heaped up the pillows and snuggled back into them, half-sitting, half-lying, then remembered her nightgown, found it on the floor and dragged it on. ‘There. I could not sleep, sat up half the night reading and fell asleep with my book.’
Ashe straightened up from arranging the covers artistically and grinned at her. ‘Very convincing. But I think next time I had better wake up in time to make the bed—or we strip it first.’ He came round to the side of the bed, then bent and kissed her. Bel put up a hand, cupping his stubble-shadowed cheek and enjoyed the rasp of whiskers as she rubbed gently.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. Next time, there is going to be a next time.
‘No, ma belle, thank you.’ Then he was gone, shoes in hand, slipping out of the room. The door snicked shut and she was alone. Bel tossed the volume of poetry carelessly on the covers as though it had fallen from her hand, reached out to pinch the wick of the remaining candle and lay back against the heaped pillows.
Her body thrummed, lighter than air, yet so heavily relaxed it felt she might sink through the mattress. She felt wonderful, although she knew that in the morning she was going to be stiff and perhaps a little sore. It had been a miracle. Ashe had been a miracle. Bel’s lids drooped. As sleep took her again she thought hazily, This is so perfect. So perfect…
Bel floated, blissful, through the next morning. The fluffy pink clouds still enveloped her, the sun shone, just for her, the birds were singing, just because Ashe had made love to her. At lunchtime she received a bouquet of yellow roses with a note that said simply, ‘One? A.’ and rushed out to purchase two new nightgowns, a pair of utterly frivolous backless boudoir slippers, a cut-glass vase for the roses and pink silk stockings. She then went and took refuge in Ackermann’s, browsing through the latest fashion plates until her maid was nodding with boredom and she could hand a note and a coin to the doorman without being noticed.
‘Please see this is delivered,’ she said brightly, without any appearance of secrecy. ‘I should have left it with my footman and quite forgot.’
The man touched his hat respectfully and snapped his fingers for an errand boy. The note, hurried away in the lad’s firm grip said only, ‘Yes. B.’
She, Bel Cambourn, respectable widow, was having an affaire. She had a lover. She was living out her fantasy and it was utterly perfect. Bel drifted round the end of a rack of maps, wondering vaguely whether she was going to exist in this happy blur for the duration of the affair or whether it would wear off. There were doubtless all kinds of things she should be doing, calls she should make, business she should attend to, but she could not concentrate on a single thing other than the image of Ashe, nakedly magnificent—
‘Ouch!’ The pained voice was familiar.
She found herself almost nose to nose with her Cousin Elinor, who had been browsing through a stack of small classical prints. Elinor’s right foot was under Bel’s left. She hastily removed it and apologised for her abstraction.
‘I have decided to create a print room in my small closet,’ Elinor explained, once they had finished apologising to each other for not looking where they were going. ‘I think I have enough now. Do you?’ She regarded a pile of prints doubtfully.
‘How big is the room? I would take a few more if I were you. And you will need borders,’ Bel pointed out, wrenching her mind away from erotic thoughts. ‘I did the same thing at Felsham Hall and bought everything here. They sell borders by the yard.’ She picked up the top print, discovered it was a scantily clad Roman athlete with a physique almost as good as Ashe’s and hastily returned it to the pile. Ashe did not have a fig leaf.
Elinor had found a shop assistant while Bel was recovering her composure and he returned with a selection of borders for the ladies to chose from. ‘You look very well, Cousin.’ Elinor glanced up from fitting a length of black-and-white paper against a print of the Forum. ‘Excited,’ she added, rejecting that border and trying another.
‘I do? Oh.’ Bel bit her lip; she had no idea that her inner state would be obvious. ‘How?’
‘Your colour is better and—I do not know quite how to describe it—you are glowing somehow.’ Elinor put her head on one side and frowned at her cousin.
‘It’s the lovely weather, and I am enjoying being back in London. I did a lot of shopping this morning.’ Although shopping was not a reason for excitement that Elinor would recognise.
‘I wish I could have come with you.’ Unaware she had startled her cousin, Elinor made a decision on the borders and handed her choice to the assistant.
‘Really?’ Thank goodness, her cousin was taking an interest in clothes at last.
‘Yes, I need some stout walking shoes, some large handkerchiefs and tooth powder,’ Elinor said prosaically, dashing Bel’s hopes of fashionable frivolity. ‘Mama is meeting me with the carriage—would you care for a lift home?’
Bel sat on one of the stools at the green-draped counter. ‘No, thank you, I will walk, I need the exercise.’ If truth were told, she was more than a little stiff from last night’s exertions and would have welcomed the ride, but the thought of enduring Aunt Louisa’s close scrutiny was too alarming. If Elinor could tell something was changed, Aunt Louisa most certainly could.
She walked out with Elinor, the porter hastening behind with the packed prints. Sure enough, drawn up at the kerb side in front of the shop, was Aunt Louisa’s carriage with the top down, and there, walking towards her along the pavement, a willowy lady on his arm, was Ashe.
‘Belinda!’ Aunt Louisa.
‘Lady Belinda.’ Ashe. ‘Miss Ravenhurst.’
‘Lord Dereham.’ That was Elinor. Her mama, startled by the novelty of her daughter addressing a man in the street, turned with majestic slowness and raised her eyeglass. Ashe bowed gracefully.
‘Lady James, Lady Belinda, Miss Ravenhurst.’ Ashe raised his hat. ‘Are you acquainted with Lady Pamela Darlington?’
‘No, I am not. Good afternoon, Lady Pamela.’ Bel shook hands with a politeness she was far from feeling. What she did feel, shockingly, was the urge to push Lady Pamela into the nearby horse trough. The pink clouds of happiness vanished.
‘Ha! I remember you.’ Aunt Louisa was regarding the very lovely young woman severely.
Bel found she could not speak. Lady Pamela was pretty, beautifully dressed, totally confident. She shook hands with Lady James without showing any alarm at her ferocious scowl, smiled at Elinor and Bel and chatted pleasantly while, all the time, keeping her hand firmly on Ashe’s arm. From time to time she glanced up at him with a proprietorial little smile that widened as he smiled back. He had all the hallmarks of a man receiving the attentions of a lovely woman, damn him, Bel thought savagely, smiling until her cheeks ached. Behind Lady Pamela stood a maid and a footman laden with packages.
Bel did not know where to look. She did not dare meet Ashe’s eye, terrified of showing some emotion her aunt could read. With her insides churning with what she had not the slightest difficulty in recognising as violent and quite unreasonable jealousy, she did not want to look at Lady Pamela and all the time she knew that simply by standing there, dumbstruck and awkward, she risked making herself conspicuous.
‘We have been purchasing prints for a print room,’ she said suddenly, into a lull in