Visconti's Forgotten Heir(62)

‘I want to stay up and wait for Daddy,’ the little boy protested sleepily as she was helping him into his pyjamas in the room that the housekeeper had prepared for him next to Magenta’s. He was already rubbing his eyes to try and keep them open, but Magenta smiled understandingly.

‘I’ll send Daddy up to see you as soon as he comes in,’ she promised, and was startled to realise how much she sounded like a normal wife and mother, in a normal loving partnership, waiting for her devoted husband to come home.

She knew, though, that Theo would be asleep in seconds after all his excitement that day—riding in the limousine, splashing about in his pool and hitting balls about on the tennis court with her until they had nearly laughed themselves hysterical.

‘I don’t even know if he’ll be coming home tonight,’ she whispered, kissing the little boy who looked so much like Andreas with her throat contracting. But already she was saying it to herself.

The sun was throwing its colours over the evening countryside when she stepped out onto the terrace, with dazzling gold already turning to pink by the time she’d crossed the lawn and reached the honeysuckle hedge.

The resident thrush was singing from the uppermost branch of an ancient larch tree, and the air was mellifluous with humming insects and the gentle gurgling of the brook.

She deliberately avoided looking at the lovers’ seat. She didn’t want to remember what had happened the last time she had sat down on that seat. Nor did she wish to remember what had happened in the house behind her when she had been here last—the torrid passion she had shared with Andreas that had finally shocked her into remembering.

The thrush had stopped singing and the sun was a big red ball through the trees by the time she made up her mind that he wasn’t coming home tonight. With an agonised sigh she decided to go back inside—but she’d only made it to the end of the honeysuckle hedge before being brought up fast in her tracks.

‘Andreas!’ It was more of a gasp than anything else as every cell in her body went into meltdown from his devastating and achingly familiar presence.

English in all but looks and name, he was still wearing the short-sleeved white shirt and sleek grey trousers he’d worn for business that day—although he was tieless now, and his shirt was partially unbuttoned as usual. The perfect tailoring seemed to have moulded itself to every contour of his superb masculinity, and Magenta could only stand and gaze up at him, her lips parted in the sensual paralysis that seemed to have invaded her body.

‘I didn’t think you’d be out here...’

He too seemed unable to speak fluidly, or like her, to move. He took one stride forward—and Magenta didn’t know how it happened but the next second she was in his arms and their hungry mouths were fusing, tasting, devouring each other, while their breathing came hard and impassioned and their faces were illuminated by the crimson glow of the setting sun.

Andreas’s lips moved to her neck, her throat, her shoulders, and she was glorying in their ravaging possession, giving herself up to their mutual hunger, to everything she had been wanting, craving, needing, over the past lonely weeks. She didn’t care about the past—about yesterday—nor even tomorrow. All she cared about was that they were both here—now—tonight—and nothing in the world could prevent what was going to happen next.

When he drew her urgently down onto the grass beside the lovers’ seat she was more than ready for him, helping him as he tugged at her briefs and taking him into her with a cry of pleasure that came from the depths of her soul.

Her climax was swift and sweet, coming with his in a burst of pulsating sensation that was as glorious and spectacular as the sunset. It had all happened so fast that when she turned her head and looked at the red ball again through the trees it was still hanging on the edge of the horizon, like a silent witness to their reckless and unrestrained passion.

‘I’m sorry,’ Andreas said, breathless. ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’ Already he was getting to his feet. ‘I just couldn’t stop myself.’

Magenta was breathing as rapidly as he was as she struggled to find her voice. ‘Neither could I.’

‘Then there’s no harm done?’ he suggested.

She couldn’t look at him as she brushed down the fabric of her crushed dress.

‘No.’ Why was he saying that? ‘Why should there be?’ she managed to say casually, though she was hurting inside after having dared for a few moments to imagine that everything might have changed.

‘Why, indeed?’ He gave her a sort of ruminative half-smile, his eyes appearing dark and reflective, but then he seemed to gather control of himself as he finished adjusting his shirt and trousers. ‘So it really doesn’t matter?’