Joan Wolf by A London Season Read Free Book Online Page B

“Let's go into the bedroom,” she said.
    "All right,” he answered, and held the door for her to precede him.
    * * * *
    Laura stayed on at Newmarket for several months. She told her husband and her interested friends that she had not been feeling well and her doctor had prescribed quiet and regular exercise, both of which she was getting at Hailsham Lodge. In reality she could not tear herself away from David.
    For the first time her life Laura found herself emotionally involved with a man; that the man was seventeen years old was one of life's ironies, she thought. Several times she tried to explain to herself what it was about David that so held her. It was, she decided, a quality of tenderness that she had never found in any other man. Perhaps it came, she thought, from his working so much with animals.
    She was endlessly curious about him. He looked as if he should be up at Oxford or Cambridge with the sons of nobles and gentlemen, not exercising horses in someone else's stable. There was nothing coarse about him; he was clearly cut and defined from his chiseled face and sensitive, mobile mouth to his fine, narrow, strong hands.
    "Who were your parents?” she had asked him curiously a week after their first encounter.
    "They were French,” he answered readily. “My father was the steward for a noble family in Artois. He was killed protecting his employer's property during the revolution. My mother died shortly after him. My aunt took me out of France and brought me to England when I was one."
    She looked at him, a puzzled frown between her brows. They were in bed and he was lying on his back, his hands clasped behind his head. The fire lit up his streaked blond head and long, golden lashes. He did not look at all French. She said as much.
    A slow, terribly attractive smile came over his eyes and brows, although his mouth remained grave. “All the members of one nationality do not necessarily resemble each other,” he said gently.
    There was a slight pain inside her chest as she looked at him. “You are so beautiful," she murmured in her throat.
    At that he did laugh. “And so are you,” he replied, and reached for her once again.
    She could not get enough of him. He was tender. He was patient. He was passionate. He was the best lover she had ever had. He was seventeen years old. He did not love her.
    It was the knowledge of this last fact that hurt her the most. He was kindness itself; he would never want to hurt her, but the sight of him, beautiful and, ultimately, inaccessible, did hurt her. It had begun very shortly after her arrival in Newmarket. She had seen Jane's painting hanging over the mantel in David's cottage and had asked him about it.
    "It is magnificent. Who did it?"
    There was a tiny pause. “Jane,” he finally said.
    "Jane?” She turned to him in surprise. “I didn't know Jane could paint like this."
    He had looked at her in a way that was unmistakable and had changed the subject. He did not want to talk about Jane.
    As the weeks and months went by, the shadow of that unspoken name hung like poison over Laura's mind. It drove her wild that he refused to speak about Jane. Every time Laura tried to introduce her name into the conversation, David would give her an inimical stare that said clearly “No Trespassers.” It was Jane who stood between them; it was Jane who gave him that look of untouched purity that she found so agonizingly attractive; it was Jane he loved.
    Spring came and still Laura was at Hailsham Lodge. In a few weeks, Jane would be home from school and David found himself in a dilemma. He wished Laura would go, but he didn't know how to tell her. He wasn't quite clear about his own feelings, but one thing he was sure of: he never wanted Jane and Laura to meet. He never wanted Jane to know about Laura. In some obscure way he felt he had betrayed Jane and the feeling made him uncomfortable. He began to avoid the cottage, staying on later and later at the stables on the