Lots of Love (62 page)

‘What have we been making, then? Merry? Hay while the sun shines?’

He leaned towards her and bit her lower lip, the sweat that was already forming on his upper lip touching saltily against her teeth. ‘I love you.’

Ellen pulled back, staring at him. ‘Do we love each other?’

‘Oh, we do.’

‘If this is love, I didn’t love Richard.’ She started to cry.

He reared out of the bath and took her into his hot, wet, slippery arms.

‘If this is love I’ve never done it before either. Ssh, baby. Ssh.’

They hugged tightly, consumed by steam and terror.

Suddenly Spurs pulled back, staring at her intently. ‘We’re not making believe at all.’ He started to laugh. ‘We’re making love. Don’t you see? We’re making love! Two fucking virgins.’

Ellen found herself laughing too, dancing around the tiles, her face wet with steam and tears.

‘Will you come to the bower o’er the free boundless ocean?’ Spurs sang the jig he and Rory had played earlier.

‘
Where the stupendous waves roll in thundering motion

To love Ellen the queen,’
he bastardised,
‘the dear love of our lathers
.

The boilers in Eastlode Park chugged and rattled in overtime that night as the bath in the bridal
en suite
was topped up with hot water again and again. Then the shower powered out its hot flow for hours.

When they finally fell back into the bedroom, Spurs and Ellen were as wrinkled as raisins.

‘If we can’t grow old together,’ he kissed her creased hands, ‘this is the next best thing. This is what you’ll be like old. I’d love to know you old.’

‘Will you come away with me?’ She pressed her crinkly thumb to his lips and watched his silver eyes.

‘To see the World?’ He dipped his face so that the thumb traced his nose and forehead, tangling into the wet curls.

She nodded, goosebumps edging between the wrinkles.

Spurs pressed his face to her belly. ‘You are my world. I don’t care where the fuck I go or where we are. Where are we?’

‘The most expensive hotel in England.’

‘Can we stay here for ever?’

In the early hours, while Spurs napped on a
chaise-longue –
they still hadn’t got round to using the bed – Ellen dialled an outside line.

‘Hi,’ she whispered. ‘I booked a flight a few days ago in the name of Jamieson . . . BA373 leaving on the twentieth. Yes, thanks . . . That’s right. Is it possible to get another ticket? . . . Yes, I’ll hold.’

She looked out of the window, at a beautiful park emerging slowly from the dawn mist, its ancient fat-trunked trees and metallic lake, which had been the backdrop to ancient hunts, gallant duels and small-waisted damsels giggling beneath silk parasols as they threw scraps at swans. And the huge bedroom – once the master’s chamber in this grand old house – now housed the most beautiful and noble sight it had ever seen. Naked and glorious, lit by the blond morning haze, Spurs slept more soundly than he had in all his life.

Ellen abandoned the piped classical music in her ear to fetch the note that had been thrust beneath their door. It was a polite message from the porter, explaining that when they had fetched the Gardners’ luggage from their car, they had only found the items that were now outside the room.

Ellen opened the door a fraction and dragged in two smart carrier-bags. One contained her surf kite, an ancient jumper that Snorkel slept on when she travelled and a pair of very cracked flip-flops. The other housed her neon pink fins.

She pulled on the fins, flapped back to the phone and gave her credit-card details. Then she flapped to the window and struck a pose.

‘Do you really love me?’

Opening his silver eyes, Spurs smiled a wide, sleepy smile. Then he saw the flippers and laughed so much that he fell at her webbed feet. ‘I love you, Little Mermaid.’ He looked up at her. ‘I love you.’

‘What
are
you doing?’ Spurs yawned, watching her over a freckled arm. Behind him, the sun had risen another twenty degrees above the lake and was pouring sharp gold light through his hair.

Ellen blinked in amazement, suddenly seeing the young Spurs with his blond curls and dangerous smile. For a moment, she was too blown away to speak.

‘Am I dreaming?’ He eyed her groggily, still surfacing from sleep.

‘I was the one about to ask that.’

‘Yeah, but I’m the one whose world has just turned upside down.’ He pressed his smiling mouth to his forearm.

‘No.’ She cleared her throat, wishing he hadn’t chosen quite this moment to wake up. ‘I really
am
doing a hand-stand.’

‘Why?’ He rolled over on the
chaise-longue
so that his face was upside-down too, and they regarded one another across the vast room, blood rushing to their heads.

‘Because you’re right. The world has turned upside-down. I thought it would make more sense from this angle.’

‘Does it?’

‘No.’ The sides of her mouth turned down, creating a topsy-turvy smile. ‘I still don’t want to wake up – and I haven’t slept a wink all night.’

‘I’m not surprised. Bloody hard to sleep at that angle.’ He raised his eyebrows towards the floor.

Ellen took a deep breath, forcing herself to start breaking the spell. ‘Was this a one-night stand?’ she asked.

‘A one-night hand-stand?’

‘If you like.’

‘Well, we made love standing up.’

‘True.’

‘And I have asked for your hand in marriage.’

‘You didn’t mean it.’

‘You’re wearing my ring,’ he pointed out, head still lolling from the
chaise-longue.
‘Do you have any idea how desirable you look right now?’

Ellen looked down at the signet ring on her finger, hair falling across her face. Naked and inverted, she felt a blush steal across her skin. ‘I just need to know where we stand.’ Then, realising how stupid that sounded, she laughed. A moment later, Spurs had rugby-tackled her and they fell to the floor together in a shrieking tangle of legs, arms and hot skin.

‘And I won’t stand for this sort of talk.’ He kissed her face. ‘Last night was ours.’

‘And who does today belong to?’ She surfaced from the embrace and propped herself on one shoulder to look down at him, hating herself for still trying to break the spell.

‘The highest bidder, I guess.’ He clearly didn’t want to talk about it.

But Ellen had to. For all the giddy, delirious happiness she was feeling, she knew that if she didn’t resurface and start breathing again she would drown.

‘Now that we’ve been to bed together, should we pretend it never happened?’

‘We didn’t go to bed together.’ He reached up to kiss her again. ‘We didn’t even sleep together. We just made a hell of a lot of love.’

Ellen laughed into the kiss, feeling his teeth against hers. ‘And did we make believe?’

‘Maybe a little.’ He ran his hand up her side.

‘So we’re still in Never Never Land?’ she said, gently pulling away.

He nodded. ‘We should never have done this because we can never take it back.’ He cupped her head and drew her ear down to his mouth. ‘I love you.’

‘I love you too.’

For a moment they clung to each other, heads pressed into the crooks of necks, letting the fairy tale blot out reality.

‘It’s a weird feeling, isn’t it?’ he whispered. ‘Not like I expected at all. It’s like fear, only nice. Can you feel it?’

Pulling away, Ellen looked at the silver eyes and was almost wiped out by their intensity. She felt a great churning inside, fear blending with almost overwhelming happiness. ‘I feel it.’

They stared at one another, ribcages touching, great anvil-and-hammer heartbeats exchanging high fives beneath the bone and sinew.

‘So it wasn’t a one-night stand?’

‘No.’ Spurs blinked up at her.

Ellen pressed her forehead against his, breathing him in, a smell already so familiar and precious. ‘Did you know that we were going to spend last night together when you decided to bring me here?’

She felt the forehead move from side to side. ‘No. I just thought that if I spent all the money you’ve saved up, you might not go away. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing.’

‘Well, you’re certainly the Spurs of my moment.’

‘Am I?’ He started to kiss around her ear. ‘Then we’ll have to make this moment last for ever.’

Feeling her cheek reddening against his, Ellen thought about the extra ticket. ‘How do you mean?’

‘I can’t let you go. I’m not going to let you go.’

She shivered with happiness. ‘You don’t have to. We can go away together. We can—’

‘No.’ He pressed his fingers to her mouth. ‘I can’t go away.’

‘Do you want me to stay?’ She jerked her head back, struggling to look him in the face. But he carried on holding her so tightly that she felt her ribcage groaning.

‘If you do,’ he muttered, ‘we’ll have to keep it a secret – “us” a secret.’

‘For how long?’

There was a long pause. When he finally spoke, the words were barely audible. ‘For ever.’

She laughed, wondering why he was teasing her. ‘So the wedding’s going to be pretty low-key, then?’ She rubbed her ring against his neck.

His hot skin leaped as the gold touched it. ‘We can never marry. That was the make-believe.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘In the fairy tale, we get married and have babies and make love until we’re very, very old.’

‘I thought I swam back out to sea?’ She was struggling to understand what he was trying to tell her.

He didn’t answer.

‘Spurs, you have to explain what’s going on.’

For a moment, she felt the sinews of his neck harden against hers. Then he let out a long sigh. ‘Let’s not talk about it now, little mermaid. I can’t bear to talk about it now. Besides, if your legs are going to dissolve into the sea, I think I should part them a few more times first.’ His hand was already sliding downwards.

Ellen wriggled, desperate to get to the truth before she lost all care and tipped into the pleasure zone again. ‘Spurs, I need to know—’

A knock on the door made them both jump.

‘Let’s tell them to go away.’ He held on to her wrist: to open the door would be to let in yet more reality.

But Ellen broke free, grabbed a towel and went to answer a second knock.

‘Your breakfast, Mr and Mrs Gardner.’ A liveried room-service waiter rattled in a trolley laden with silver-hooded goodies.

As she stood back to let him pass, Ellen had a vague recollection of Spurs ticking everything on the breakfast chit before hanging it outside their door in the early hours, dragging her with him so that they’d almost been locked out of their room during a protracted kiss on the landing.

‘Is everything to your satisfaction?’ The waiter arranged their feast, then loitered for a tip, eyeing the perfectly made bed in surprise.

Spurs had retreated, naked, behind the
chaise-longue
and pulled the long lining muslin from the curtains across him like a mosquito net. Only his head poked out, silver eyes assessing the fully laden trolley. ‘Impeccable.’ He smiled from his tent.

‘Thanks.’ Ellen found her purse and discovered that all she had were twenty-pound notes.

The waiter took one without batting an eyelid, clearly accustomed to tips at least as large, and nodded politely as he retreated from the room.

‘Did they remember the Frosties?’ Spurs came out as soon as they were alone once more, pulling silver domes from plates. ‘Yum, smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, kedgeree, bacon – oh, God, kippers. What
were
we thinking of?’

Ellen watched his excited appraisal, knowing that he was trying to spin out their happiness for all it was worth. And suddenly, as he looked at her suggestively over a jar of honeycomb, she didn’t want the bubble to pop either. She didn’t want to think about the ticket she had bought, about going away, secrets and lies, feuds, fairy tales or harsh facts. She just wanted him to touch her again. Right now, she wanted to make the Spurs of the moment last every precious second.

He looked up with a wicked smile. ‘Lie back on the bed.’

She did as she was told, catching his eye and smiling back as he started to lay strawberry slices along her thighs.

‘These are my strawberry fields for ever.’

When Pheely emerged from her magical-garden gate into a sharp, sunny morning to stretch deliriously under the lime tree, she didn’t notice at first that there was something odd about the Goose Cottage barn. It was the best of June mornings, already as crisp and fresh as a lettuce heart, dusted with dew and sparkling under a Wedgwood blue sky. Wood-pigeons called sleepily from the firs along the Lodge Farm drive, the banks of foxgloves outside North Cottage buzzed with bees and one of Hunter’s bantams strutted along the lane, cocking its head at Pheely and, she was certain, winking at her.