Forbidden (2 page)

Walking down the remaining flight of stairs and through the drawing-room, the space where, once, magnificent long barges had been housed by a wealthy lord so that he might go from his country house by river to visit his sovereign at Windsor, Amy was once more aware of her headache and that feeling of unease.

While making coffee, she kept wondering what had happened to give her such a sense of anguish. A restless night. No more than that. She walked with the coffee
jug in her hand to sit down in the wing chair at the end of the long, two-hundred-year-old oak table. Years of bleaching and scrubbing had made the surface resemble cream-coloured satin. She ran her hand over it, a habit of hers. She liked the feel of the smooth wood, the solid earthiness of the country kitchen table. Amy placed the jug on it, and then her hands to her temples. She rubbed them gently, trying to concentrate on what was disturbing her. A breakthrough. It had been a dream that had vanished from her mind.

It came back slowly, in fragments. A young man. People on the lawn. Then her clouded mind cleared and all of her dream came rushing back. Jarret! Jarret had come back to claim her. This was the first time Jarret Sparrow had slipped into her dream life. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, he had brought his wife and a son with him. The wife
he
had never made her, the son
she
had never given him. She poured herself a cup of coffee and was shocked to see that her hand trembled as she relived that dream.

Amy felt as if she had been assaulted. It had forced itself upon her, violated her against her will. ‘Out, out,’ she wanted to shout, and wipe it out of her mind. But the dream had happened and Amy had never been good at blocking things out. She didn’t much like the fact that it could upset her as much as it had. Was that indicative of something? She had, after all, been through with Jarret for more than twenty years.

She spoke aloud. ‘You were a dream and nothing more. You died and were gone the moment I opened my eyes.
A dream … you forget a dream. You don’t try and deal with it.’ Amy smiled, feeling better. When she raised her cup to her lips, her hand was as steady as a rock.

Amy drove her battered four-seater 1937 Lagonda Rapide up to the entrance of Claridge’s. The well-worn and shabby-looking soft top of black duck was down. She drove the car open even in quite cold weather, putting the top up only in the rain.

Cars had never meant much to Amy except as a means of getting from A to B until this royal-blue tourer with its long bonnet and spare wheel in place on the running board had one day been driven up the drive to her house. It was love at first sight. She saw the Lagonda more as a magnificent piece of mechanical sculpture than an automobile. The owner of the car had wanted a Paul Klee watercolour she owned and loved. She’d swapped it for the car.

Amy, her white silk headscarf rippling in the wind, driving her vintage sculpture on wheels, was always a treat to see.

She and the doormen at Claridge’s had an arrangement; or rather Sir Charles Henry Grenfell had one. He was the car’s former owner, the man who had been so persistent in trying to obtain the Klee for his collection. Amy and Charles had become passionate lovers after the swap. He wanted marriage, she didn’t. Now they were friends though he, still in love, believed one day they would return to each other as sexual rather than the platonic lovers they had become. On
instructions from Sir Charles, who had for years kept a suite of rooms in the hotel, whenever Miss Ross drove into Mayfair the doormen were to see to her car. That posed no problem for them. They were besotted with Amy’s car. The Lagonda Rapide was a universal object of desire.

Amy went through the usual formalities with the doorman.

‘Good morning, Mr Craven.’

‘Good morning, Miss Ross. Good drive into town?’

She would always give a brief traffic report. He would always comment on the weather. And all this while she was still in the driver’s seat, parked in the space where the taxis were meant to deposit or pick up their passengers, or double parked next to some elegant Rolls-Royce.

‘Do you think you can do something with the car for a few hours, Mr Craven?’

‘I think I can manage that for you, Miss Ross. Shall I send it round for a wash? If you gave us the day, she could have a good polish too.’

‘A wash will do. I must think of sending her away for a few minor repairs.’

They exchanged smiles and he opened the door. Amy slipped from behind the wheel and the doorman reminded her, ‘She really deserves a new top, Miss Ross.’

The two stood looking at the car together. ‘I know, Mr Craven, she deserves everything: shinier chrome, a new paint job. But really I love my car the way she is. She wears her age with such elegance and without face
lifts. We both know I’ll hold out until it’s a dire necessity to replace the top.’

‘So much more stylish this way,’ another voice agreed.

Sir Charles Henry Grenfell stepped up to Amy and untied her white silk scarf. He slipped it from her head and bent down to kiss her on the lips. Placing an arm around her shoulders, he walked her away from the doorman, saying, ‘Thank you, Craven.’

Amy ran her fingers through her hair: shoulder-length, a rich chocolate brown, shiny, healthy-looking in a tumble of soft waves she wore parted to one side and just off her face. It fluffed up and framed her creamy-coloured skin. It was a face still beautiful and seductive, possibly even more so for its maturity: just a hint of a few laughter lines at the corners of the eyes. She smiled now at Charles.

Amy Ross was a woman who looked fifteen years younger than her actual fifty-eight. She had a great deal going for her: a stunning bone structure, the sort that never ages; a long and slender neck, still taut and smooth like the rest of her body. All six feet of it. There was something Junoesque about Amy Ross: the way she walked on those long shapely legs that seemed to go on for ever, the slender yet shapely figure with pronounced hips and a sensuous bottom, an ample bosom. When she entered a room or walked down a street, there were always heads that turned in admiration for a second look. She had about her a look of health and femininity, a quiet but sensuous strong beauty that men wanted to possess, at the very least caress, and women to emulate.
But the most seductive thing about Amy Ross was the challenge she presented to men: an independent, intelligent beauty who was not easily available.

Charles adored Amy Ross’s looks, the way she dressed, the way she moved. With the grace of a long-legged, elegant animal: a gazelle or giraffe, he often teased her. There was never a time when they met that his heart didn’t skip a beat on seeing her. Today she was dressed in one of the little black silk dresses she was so fond of wearing in the city, a Jean Muir, with over it a black cashmere shawl draped casually around her shoulders. She wore a pre-Columbian gold necklace: a thick, pure gold ring with a large fertility frog in the centre, an antiquity he had bought her one Christmas. She also wore high-heeled black alligator shoes and carried a minute black alligator bag on a gold chain.

‘You look ravishing.’

‘You always say that. You must have seen me in this outfit a hundred times.’

He gave her one of those looks that she understood so well. Often when he looked at her that way, she too wondered why they could not make it work. It had been so good for them, their sexual togetherness, the way they loved each other. But platonic love and friendship were all she wanted from him now. He was less happy with it than she and lived in hope that things would change.

It was always the same on meeting, one brief glance into each other’s eyes, just a hint of question and pain in Charles’s, and then it was over, and they were left to enjoy each other’s company.

They walked arm in arm into Claridge’s. Heads turned. They made a handsome couple, the young baronet and the tall American art historian. She remained, for the young and very eligible aristocratic English girls, the older woman who had a hold on the just as eligible Sir Charles Henry Grenfell, a mystery to them and a threat to their happiness. Several of them smiled and greeted the couple. Amy, as usual, looked embarrassed. She always looked just a little timid or withdrawn when she was out and about in public with him, especially in his circle of friends. They were not hers.

That had not always been the case. It was Amy’s nature to remain in the background of things. She enjoyed being the observer rather than the observed, there but not there. But for a period of time after she and Charles had met and fallen in love, they were very social; that had been part of their problem, perhaps. They had led his way of life and not hers. But love had taken over and she’d allowed herself to be drawn into the social whirl she had happily retreated from many years before Charles appeared in her life. It was inevitable Amy would finally tire of the fun; it was too much yet somehow not enough to satisfy her. She returned to what she already knew made her happy: work. It was more fun than fun. Living a very private life and not being gossiped about was very important to her feeling of well-being.

They lunched on paper-thin slices of smoked salmon draped like silk over a white dinner plate, and from a bird’s nest of twigs, they plucked quail’s eggs to be peeled
and dipped in celery salt. Roast pheasant with all the trimmings to follow, accompanied by Louis Roederer Cristal. A discerning drinker, that was Amy Ross’s favourite champagne. She felt about a glass of that in the same way she did about a glass of the best of the clarets: a Margaux, Petrus, Pichon-Longueville, or one of the great white wines: a Chassagne-Montrachet or Chablis Grand Cru. A little of the best of everything was the way Amy liked to live. She was not a greedy lady, didn’t have to dine in the grand manner often, but that did not prevent her from enjoying treats like this when she got the chance.

Over tiny pots of hot chocolate soufflé with hot chocolate sauce dribbled over them from a small jug alternated with a trickle of double cream poured from another, Amy told Charles, ‘The most decadent, obscene extravagance – how else to describe this pudding?’ She raised her chin and gave him a light and sexy laugh, plunging the tiny spoon into the pot with one hand while still pouring cream with the other. He could never resist her laughter and raised his glass in a toast.

‘To all the decadent, obscene extravagances of our past, and in the hope of more in the present and future.’

Charles was clever enough not to force the issue and wait for Amy to raise her glass in affirmation that there was still hope she would return to him in that way. He instantly drank his champagne while gazing into her eyes.

The toast made was a
double entendre
, one half of which hinted at all things sexual, and they both knew
it. Amy was saved from an awkward moment by the appearance at their table of a man. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with dark hair gone salt-and-pepper colour and touched with distinguished white at the temples. His face was pleasant and kindly, with brown eyes behind fashionable, round, steel-rimmed glasses. One look showed he was American: Brooks Brothers button-down blue shirt and J. Press tweed jacket worn with a very smart tie and grey flannel trousers. Very East Coast, New England.

He began by speaking to Charles who replaced his empty glass on the table and rose from his chair.

‘I am sorry about this intrusion but I would have known the lady’s laugh anywhere.’ With that the newcomer turned his attention to Amy. ‘Hello, Amy. Do you remember me? Peter Smith? It’s been a very long time.’

Amy was surprised but delighted. The moment he had appeared at their table she had felt there was something familiar about him, but had not had the least idea who he was. Until he spoke her name, and gazed into her eyes.

‘Peter Smith! How extraordinary to meet like this after … how long?’

He smiled at Amy and then returned his attention to Charles who was still standing, napkin in hand. Peter Smith thrust out his hand. ‘Pete Smith,’ he said, and the two men shook hands.

‘Charles Grenfell.’

Then, turning back to Amy, Peter answered her. ‘How
long? Well you might ask! A wife and six children ago. Thirty years or near on. I hope you’ll forgive me but I’m at the next table and your laughter drew my attention. I simply couldn’t resist coming over to say hello.’

Charles called a waiter to bring a chair. ‘Please join us for coffee?’

‘I’ll sit down for just a minute but I won’t stay, thank you. We’ve only just ordered our dessert. Oh, my mistake. You say pudding for dessert in England. My daughter Cosima, who studied here, would have corrected me.’

Charles liked the man. There was something wholesome and real about him, and though very American, there was an edge to him that one found only in those who travelled with respect for other cultures, absorbed the best of what they found abroad and used it to enhance their lives. Charles could see he was one of those who always gave the best of themselves in return.

‘Do you come often to London, Peter?’ asked Amy.

‘Yes, I have done. I like London, and England. And you?’

‘I live here. I have for more than twenty years.’

There was an awkward few moments while they both searched for something else to say. But as youthful memories resurfaced, Amy realised that she had lost something when, grabbing at life with both hands, she had abandoned Peter Smith in her wake.

‘What are you doing here in London, Peter?’ asked Charles, cutting into the embarrassed silence that had taken hold round the table. That seemed to revive them.

Peter answered, ‘Cosima is making her debut in
Lucia
di Lammermoor
at Covent Garden tonight.’

‘How wonderfully exciting!’ There was enthusiasm and genuine delight in Amy’s voice.

‘Many congratulations,’ offered Charles.

‘How thrilling for you to have a daughter with such talent.’

‘Yes, thrilling. Not bad for a simple Long Island farmer! But, hang on, she’s not singing Lucia yet. I mustn’t linger though. This is her celebration luncheon party, and then we must all go upstairs and nap to be fresh for the big night. Cosima’s instructions.’