Summer's Awakening (34 page)

'What's this?' he asked, picking up the box containing the shell.

'It's
Lyropecten nodosus,
the lion's paw. Please be careful how you handle it. It's quite fragile.'

'Shells usually are. What makes you think I might damage it?'

'I didn't think that.'

'You must have done, or you wouldn't have warned me to take care. I'm aware that, in your eyes, I'm a reprehensible character, but my faults don't include careless handling of other people's treasures,' he said dryly.

It was always like this whenever they were alone together; he would say something disconcerting-—often deliberately, she suspected—and watch her reaction, his tawny eyes narrowed and mocking.

Now, to avoid meeting that sardonic gaze, she resumed her embroidery. Fortunately, she was working on a piece of background, filling it in with plain tent stitch which didn't require the concentration of some of the more complicated stitches she had learnt at Erica Wilson's five-day needlework seminar on Nantucket, the summer before last.

Emily had known that Summer longed to attend the seminar. She had told James who had booked one of the forty places, paid the fee and arranged for them to be in Nantucket at that time. He had told Summer to regard it as a birthday present.

For her twenty-fourth birthday he had given her a shagreen case containing a mother-of-pearl thimble, scissors with mother-of-pearl handles, an eighteenth-century sewing tool called a tambour hook and two snowflake-shaped pieces of nacre on which to wind off lengths of thread. He had seen it in an antique shop in Paris and thought it would please her. It had.

'How could I think you reprehensible when you've been very kind to us both?' she answered.

He replaced the box on the bed and moved to sit down on the sofa.

'I don't think you've ever forgiven me for not wanting Cranmere.'

'But you didn't sell it after all. I understand you're having it converted into a kind of very grand condominium.'

'How did you find that out?'

'I hear from old Mr Renfrew, the archivist, occasionally.'

'If you had asked me, I'd have told you what was happening there. Rather than sell the place outright to a sheik or a pop star, I decided to make it available to people more likely to have heard of Vanbrugh and who would appreciate his genius. I've had it divided into eighteen apartments. The conversions and the legal arrangements have taken some time, the first buyers are moving in shortly. One apartment is being leased for four years. The lease will expire shortly before Emily's twentieth birthday. From then on it will be hers, if she wants to stay there sometimes or even to live there. But she doesn't seem nostalgic for Cranmere.'

'No, she isn't—she loves America. But perhaps if she goes back to England later on, her feelings for Cranmere may revive. What is it about her that you want to discuss?'

'At present she's set on becoming a software engineer... a professional programmer,' he added.

Emily's future was safer ground; she put down her needle and looked up.

'Although I don't share your mutual passion for computers, I can speak some of the language. I do know the difference between hardware and software and RAM and ROM. I'm not totally bletcherous,' she told him, using a pejorative term she had picked up from
The Hacker's Dictionary,
a printout of computerese compiled by computer buffs at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other computer science centres.

James laughed. 'I'm sure you're not. I'm glad you don't share our mutual passion, as you call it. I agree with Professor Weizenbaum of MIT that computer enthusiasts are always in danger of thinking that everything in life is, or should be, computable. I don't want Emily developing that kind of tunnel vision. So far she hasn't because you've been opening other horizons for her. However, I do wonder if we should start thinking of getting her into Vassar or one of the other women's colleges in a year's time. What do you think?'

Summer said, 'I feel she should go to college. Apart from the academic advantages, I think people make valuable friendships during their college years. But Emily's very resistant to the idea. She says she would rather spend the time in Italy or France, learning to speak the language really well.'

'That's another possibility which I don't dismiss,' he replied. 'I wonder if her resistance to college is because she's afraid of losing you? I'd like to be able to assure her that, if she does go to college, you'll still be with us to keep her company in the vacations. Obviously you can't commit yourself too far ahead. But, providing you don't want to get married, are you prepared to stay with us as long as Emily needs you?'

'I should think, if she went to college, she would find pretty soon that she didn't need me,' she answered. 'If things go as I hope, I shall have my career launched about the same time that she's ready to try her wings. I've sold some embroidered belts to an accessories shop on Madison Avenue. It's a long way from earning my living as a designer, but it's a start.'

'How much did they pay you for them?'

She told him, adding, 'And they'll probably sell them for ten times as much. But at this stage the money is less important than getting my name known. I had some labels woven to sew on everything I make. I'm hoping whoever buys the belts—if anyone buys them—will ask if I make other things.'

She pushed the frame aside and rose to show him the labels. They were slips of cream satin ribbon with
a Summer Roberts design
written in black.

'I hope you don't think I'm spending more time on this than on Emily. I'm not, I assure you. I only do it in the evening or when she's busy with written work.'

'It may not be mutual, but I have a high regard for your integrity,' he said. 'If it isn't Cranmere which makes you doubtful of mine, perhaps you still hold it against me that I once caught you skinny-dipping and kissed you.'

She was standing near him, and she forced herself not to move away too rapidly.

'That was a long time ago. I'd forgotten it,' she said untruthfully, returning to the dressing stool.

He said, 'I'm told that a woman never forgets her first kiss... or first lover. But although you've undoubtedly been kissed many times since I introduced you to the pastime, I have the impression you haven't had a lover.'

She tried not to blush, unsuccessfully. 'I—I think that's my business.'

'It makes you a
rara avis,
which is always better than being one of the herd. Does Emily discuss sex with you?'

'She discusses love. At present she's very romantic.'

'As you're her principal influence, I imagine she would be.'

'I don't know that I'm particularly romantic,' she said coolly. 'I think I'm more of a realist.'

'Then you don't recognise your own nature. That piece of embroidery you're working on is a romantic concept. The swirling lines. The colours. The jewelled effect.'

He glanced round her bedroom at the personal details which weren't part of the basic décor. Postcards from the city's art museums; a pen-and-wash drawing she had bought from a students' stall near Columbia University over on the West Side; a single, exquisite spray of white lilac from Trousselier on the Boulevard Haussmann in Paris where they had spent a few days last autumn. Flowers from Trousselier were said to be so realistic that they would deceive a bee, and the spray beside Summer's bed looked as if it had just been cut from a bush.

'Everything in this room indicates a romantic temperament. Let's hope neither you nor Emily is ever disillusioned,' he said. 'In my opinion, love is very overrated. I agree with Thomas Carlyle.
Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.'
He stood up. 'It's time I left you in peace to get on with yours. Goodnight, Summer.'

'Goodnight.'

She watched the door close behind him, then slowly resumed her embroidery. Her mind was never at peace after a
tête-à-tête
with him. He was right; she hadn't forgotten the night he had kissed her in the pool, but she was surprised he remembered it.

Why did he think love was overrated? Had he ever been in love?

She found it difficult to imagine James in the grip of an overwhelming emotion which made everything else in his life seem relatively unimportant. He was not a cold man; if he had been she wouldn't have loved him. Many times, in his treatment of Emily, he had shown his capacity for tender loving care. He had even, on that one occasion in the library at
Baile del Sol,
shown tenderness towards Summer. But although, for some time afterwards, she had hoped for a repetition of that sweet, soft, sensuous kiss, he had never repeated it.

Occasionally he had looked at her mouth or her body in a way which had sent a tremor of excitement through her, but on the few occasions when she had tried to make it clear that she found him attractive, there had been no response to her tentative overtures. Tentative because, with him, she lacked the confidence she had gained in her relationships with other men. Not only that but it was manifestly obvious that he wasn't the type who would have any doubts about his ability to make a woman want him if he wanted her. He was the least diffident person she had ever met. His assurance was part of his charm, and she knew she could never be comfortable with a man who lacked self-assurance. She didn't want to be bossed, but she did want to feel protected; and James was a man who, if ever he loved a woman, would never try to dominate her, except in the bedroom.

But how could you hope to win the heart of a man who didn't believe in love? she thought forlornly. And who had proved that he didn't by still being unmarried at an age when most men were not only husbands but fathers.

Why did he think love overrated? Because he had never met a woman who stirred him to the depths of his being? Or because he had, but she hadn't felt the same way?

To her it was almost inconceivable that any member of her sex could resist him if he exerted the full force of his charm. Unless he had fallen for someone who was already married. The thought of a younger, more vulnerable James loving someone who could never be his filled her with a strange pain.

She couldn't bear to think of him being hurt although, of the two possibilities, that one was the more hopeful, from her own point of view.

If he had once been in love, there might come a time when he would experience again the need to share his life with someone else. If he had never loved at all, it might be that life's best gift would always be the one thing which was withheld from him.

Later, when she closed her boxes and put them away, she spent a few minutes gazing at the lion's paw shell. For some time she had had it in mind to make the shell the centrepiece of an embroidered choker to wear with a very plain dress.

She had noticed in portraits of beauties of the eighteenth century that they sometimes wore ruffles round their necks with revealingly low-cut bodices. She also admired the Edwardian-style dog-collars of pearls brought back into fashion by the Princess of Wales. Some day, she was going to create a wonderful, dramatic collar to wear with a deep
décolletage.

Her room had a bath with a hand-shower for washing her hair. As she lay in the warm, scented water looking down at her firm, flat stomach and her breasts which now fitted into pretty, airy lace bras, she wondered who her first lover would be, and where he was at this moment.

She wanted to believe he was here, in the apartment; that the first man ever to kiss her would also be the first to take her to bed with him.

She wondered how James would react if, after her bath, she went to his room and said, 'May I spend the night with you?'

Would he look startled... amused... intrigued? It probably wouldn't be the first time a woman had offered herself to him, but perhaps never so directly. How would he handle a situation like that? Would he send her away? Or invite her in?

Only the sudden realisation that the water in which she was lying had lost its heat roused her from her pipe-dream; one of the many fantasies about James in which she indulged when alone.

As she rose to her feet and reached for a shell-pink bath towel, its thick pile luxuriously warm from the heated rail, she wondered how much longer she would have to go on repressing the restless longings which only he could fulfil.

But although she yearned to feel his lips on her mouth and his long lean hands caressing her naked body, she knew she would never have the courage to put her fantasy into practice.