The Ashford Affair Page 29

  She tried to speak but couldn’t find the words. If she said anything, she was going to burst into tears, and that was the very last thing she wanted. She’d thought having it out with someone would make her feel better. Instead, she wanted to crawl into a hole and bawl.

  Jon’s expression softened. “I’m sorry, Clemmie. I mean it. I should have told you. Look, why don’t you go home. Sleep on it.”

  Clemmie wordlessly shook her head, her lips pressed tightly together.

  “I’ll go down with you and put you in a cab.” Jon put a hand on her arm, steering her back around. His voice was low and soothing. “We’ll talk tomorrow. I promise, I’ll tell you everything I can—everything I know,” he amended. “No more secrets.”

  Clemmie looked up at him, green-brown eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses; the small scar by the side of his mouth from the time he’d taken her roller-skating in Wollman Rink in eighth grade and tripped over a daredevil six-year-old; the bits of gray just beginning to show at his temples.

  The crazy adrenaline rush that had driven her through the park dropped away, leaving her tired and cold and shaky. She felt like a melted snowman, all the fight drained out of her. She felt hollow and very, very tired. It was good to be able to lean on Jon, good to have someone to hold on to. She wondered, abstractedly, if the cab ride back to her place might be more than just a cab ride, if they would finish what they’d started last week, blotting out everything that had happened since, the funeral, the relevations, the lies. They could burn the slate clean and start over, skin to skin, in her ridiculous little shoe box of an apartment.

  “Okay,” she croaked.

  Jon squeezed her arm. “Let’s get you—”

  There was a noise in the foyer. The old floorboards creaked as a female voice said, “Hey.”

  Clemmie felt a strange wave of vertigo. The hallway seemed to shimmer in front of her, or maybe that was just her eyes, still stinging from the cold. The cold, that was all. She looked up at Jon, trying to make sense of this latest development and failing utterly.

  Jon’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. In a low, urgent voice, he said, “I meant to tell you—”

  “Hi!” There was a woman standing on the other side of the door. Her hair was still damp from the shower, twisted half up with bits sticking out on top. She wore a pair of yoga pants, a UNC tank top, and she looked very much at home.

  The last time Clemmie had seen her, she’d been wearing a big white dress, a veil, and a whole lot more makeup.

  “Jon! Why didn’t you tell me we had company?” Caitlin padded forward on bare feet. “Hi. Have I met you?”

  Kenya, 1927

  “Quite a spectacle, isn’t it?” Frederick joined Addie at the base of the terrace.

  Above them, on the verandah, Addie could hear the clink of ice against a shaker and the high-pitched clatter of sophisticated conversation. The real spectacle, though, lay ahead, where the Kikuyu were throwing a celebration in honor of the marriage of Njombo. Having patched him up all those months before, Addie felt somewhat of a proprietary interest in the proceedings.

  She’d been told that a ngomo was a thing to behold, but she hadn’t realized quite what was meant until dark fell and, with the torches flaring, the dancing began. The men she knew as farmhands had transformed into warriors, their bodies oiled and decorated with intricate designs in white chalk and red ochre, feathered spears in their hands, clappers at the ankles and ornaments in their ears. Their headdresses were more elaborate than anything she had ever seen in the nightclubs and ballrooms of London, bursting with beads and feathers.

  And then there were the women, oiled, too, decked with beads, bare but for the briefest triangle of grass fore and aft. They swayed unabashedly to the music, hips undulating, breasts bobbing, oiled bodies glinting in the light of the bonfire as the elders sat in their own section, looking on. And all the while the drums beat a primal rhythm as the dancers leaped and swayed, their elongated shadows twisting and swaying, too, all echoed in the movement of the long grass and the branches of the trees, so that all the world seemed swept up in their dance, bending and rolling to the rhythm of the drums, drums, drums.

  “Listen to those drums,” said Frederick quietly, but Addie could feel the words resonating through and around her, everything somehow more pronounced, more vivid, in the light of the flames. “You can feel them beating all the way through you. Can’t you?”

  “It’s … fascinating,” said Addie. Such a drab, safe little word. She felt as though she’d been caught out in some sort of voyeuristic indulgence, there was something so sensual, so erotic about the dance. Frederick was right. The music got right into one, throbbing like a second heart, promising all sorts of illicit pleasures. She hadn’t been drinking, but she felt as though she had, her cheeks flushed, her hands unsteady.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” said Frederick. She was amazed by the urgency in his voice. Addie turned to look at him, the flames playing across his face.

  “But,” she said weakly, “the party…”

  Frederick glanced back over his shoulder, at the verandah where Bea was holding court, playing her admirers off one against the other. Addie was reasonably sure at least one of them was her lover, possibly more. She had missed the cues back in Mayfair, but now she was more sophisticated, she knew the signs.

  “They’re all well entertained,” Frederick said, and held out a hand to her. “Shall we?”

  It was a dreadful idea, she knew, a dreadful, dreadful idea. She and Frederick spent scads of time together—in the coffee shed, in the nursery with the children, walking the fields—but always in daylight and never alone.

  It had been six months since she had come to Kenya, six months of working together, talking together, planning together. Addie had been so smug in their friendship. She had congratulated herself on their maturity in being able to put the past behind them, be the friends they had never been in London, equals now, as they had never been before.

  She had willfully ignored the signs: the extra hours in the field, just to steal a few more moments together; the accidental brush of a hand over a ledger; looking back over her shoulder as she said good night to find Frederick’s eyes on her, his gaze following her as she walked from the room.

  It meant nothing, of course. They were friends, weren’t they? Friends.

  She could tell herself that over and over, as if repetition might blot out the truth: that she had fallen again, and fallen hard, not for a mirage this time, but for the man himself, the man she saw day after day, wrestling with the books, playing with his children. The very thought of it made her heart ache. She didn’t want to think of it, not any of it; if she didn’t acknowledge it, it wasn’t true.

  The drums urged her forward, to the shelter of the laughing darkness. “Just—just a short walk,” she said. “It’s so warm near the bonfire.”

  It wasn’t just the bonfire heating her blood. It was a sort of madness. She itched to move as the dancers moved, to throw herself into the middle of that fiery circle and sway, bobbing in and out of the light of the fire, dancing past the crackling flames.

  Frederick’s hand closed around hers, drawing her forward, and she followed, along the garden paths, past an acacia that dropped pale blossoms onto the gravel path. Behind them, the message of the drums followed, a steady thrum, like the beating of her heart, faster and faster, the air scented with rich perfumes, and Frederick’s arm around her shoulders, drawing her into the darkness, beyond the terrace, past the bonfire, where the trees rustled with the breeze and strange birds calling, urging them on.

  They left the group on the verandah far behind, the sound of sophisticated conversation and glass clanking in cocktail glasses. They might have been anywhere, thousands of years before, the first man and the first woman, cushioned in the warm darkness with only the faint echo of the drums to set their pace.

  She wasn’t sure how it happened, a stumble on the dark path, a pause, but they weren’t walking anymore; she was in
his arms, his lips on her hair, her cheek, her lips, clinging together with all the urgency of the past six months of thwarted desire, working together, dining together, hiding her feelings behind a polite social smile and a briskness she was far, so very far, from feeling.

  “Addie,” he whispered into her hair. The crepe de chine of Bea’s old dress felt like gauze and gossamer, scarcely a barrier; she could feel the press of his hands straight through the fabric, warm on her back, her waist, his lips against her neck. “Addie…”

  Above them, in the trees, a branch cracked, a harsh, unlovely sound. Addie wrenched herself away. “What are we doing?”

  Frederick caught her around the waist, his voice like velvet in the darkness. “Exactly what we’ve been wanting to do for months—years.” She hated herself for swaying towards him, for leaning into the touch of his hands. She hated him for being right. “Why else did you come out here with me?”

  Something about the surety of that statement irked her, especially since it was true. But to admit to it meant—oh, so many betrayals! “For a walk,” she said sharply. “Just a walk!”

  “Don’t lie,” said Frederick. She wished she could see his face, but it was shrouded in shadow. “Lie to yourself if you have to, but not to me.”

  “We can’t—I can’t— You’re married!”

  “So what?” Frederick’s voice crackled with frustration. Even in the dark, she could picture his face, chart each iteration of his expression. She knew him so horribly, painfully well. He jerked a thumb in the direction of the house. “So are half the people back there.”

  “Is that it?” Pain wrenched through her, horrible, searing, wrenching pain. Bad enough to love and love unrequitedly, but worse, so very much worse, to be a tool for revenge. Her voice came out too loud and too shrill. “Just because we’re in Kenya, it makes it all cricket? You may be able to take your marriage vows that lightly, but I can’t. I won’t be—I won’t be your revenge against Bea. I won’t be your plaything.”

  “You little fool,” said Frederick softly. They shouldn’t have, but the words sounded like a caress. He advanced towards her, shoes crunching on the gravel. “Do you really think that’s what this is? Do you really think I hold you so cheap?”

  “I don’t know what to think.” That much, at least, was true. “We should go back—we shouldn’t be out here. No good can come—”

  “Addie.” Frederick’s voice cut her off. The words tore out of him, harsh and raw. “Addie … in England … five years ago … I made a damnable mistake.”

  Addie stood frozen, wanting to hear, not wanting to hear. What good could it do?

  Don’t … Her lips formed the word, but no sound came out.

  Moonlight shone off Frederick’s tortured face. “I was ten times a fool, and don’t you think I know it? Don’t you think I’ve paid the price for it, over and over and over again?” He laughed, low and humorless. “Do you know what it’s been to have you here, in front of me, and know I can’t touch you?”

  Addie stared at him, mouth ajar.

  “Trust me,” said Frederick viciously. “No one has been served a more fitting punishment for a moment’s extreme stupidity.”

  “More than a moment,” Addie heard herself saying. Old hurts rushed to the fore. “If you really felt that way, if you really wanted me then—”

  “Don’t you understand?” His hands were on her shoulders, his voice compelling. “It was all wrong back then, everything. The whole world was topsy-turvy. I didn’t want to drag you down with me. I was just a step away from sticking a pistol in my mouth and pulling the trigger, but then there was Marjorie and all this”—his gesture encompassed the sleeping fields—“and I woke up from my bout of insanity and wondered what in the hell I’d done. I thought I could make the best of it, but then you came back. And now—”

  “There is no now!” Addie’s voice came out more harshly than she’d intended. She felt as though her emotions were scraped raw, all the might-have-beens dancing in front of her—if she’d never introduced him to Bea, but she had, and he had acted on it, and how could she believe him? How could she believe any of it? “There can’t be.”

  “Dammit, Addie.” He sounded so indignant she might have laughed if she weren’t so close to tears. “I’m trying to tell you I love you.”

  “How can I believe you?” Her voice was thick with tears. She tried to pull away, but his hands on her arms held her tight.

  “I love you. I love you,” he repeated, like an incantation. “I love the way you slurp your tea—”

  Addie’s head shot up. “I don’t slurp my tea!”

  “Yes, you do,” said Frederick tenderly. “You slurp your tea and you twist your hair when you’re nervous and you get starchy when you’re angry. I love you for all of it. I love you for being you. I loved you then, when I barely knew you—even if I was too much of a fool to own it—and that emotion is the mere shadow of a shadow to what I feel for you now. We’re meant for each other, you and I, whether you admit it or not.”

  This was a whole new kind of hell, a thousand times worse than hiding her love behind the guise of friendship. This—to bring it out into the open like this—

  “This is cruel,” she said angrily. “I should never have—”

  “Are you telling me you don’t feel the same way?”

  Addie’s hands balled into fists, her nails biting into her palms.

  She hated that she couldn’t answer, that her principles, all the years of pounding propriety into her, bone by bone, all those years of Aunt Vera’s precepts faded before this one, primal need. She wanted him so very badly. It was true, there had been times, these past few months, when Bea was off jaunting, that Addie had pretended it was all hers, that this was their coffee farm, that Marjorie and Anna were their children, that they would have the right to sit on the porch with the owls hooting, her head against his shoulder and his lips in her hair.

  “You see?” said Frederick, his voice low and triumphant.

  “But it’s wrong!” It was all she had left to cling to, that last vestige of principle.

  Frederick cupped her face in his hands. “Right, wrong … What does it matter out here?” There was something so terribly seductive about that notion, thousands of miles away from other people’s strictures, here, in the wilderness, with the drums pounding around them. “Tell me this isn’t right.”

  For a moment, she clung to him, his lips on hers, putting all her tortured feelings into that kiss, all the wishes and wants and might-have-beens. She could feel his body molded against hers, limb by limb, and knew that this was what original sin must have felt like; there was no turning back the clock. No matter what, no matter where she went, she would always remember this, the feeling of this moment. She would never be able to look at him without knowing what his body felt like against hers, his hands in her hair, dizzying and urgent.

  “I’m going home.” Addie pulled away, disheveled and panting, her lips leaving his with an audible popping sound. “I’m going home to England.”

  Home. What a lie! England wasn’t home, not Ashford, not her old rented flat. Home was here, with Frederick. But it wasn’t her home. It had never been her home. She had only pretended it awhile, stolen crumbs from someone else’s life.

  “I’m leaving,” she repeated, “as soon as I can get passage.”

  Frederick stared at her, his chest going in and out, laboring for breath. “You mean you’re running away.”

  The words stung, stung horribly. And who was he to judge? If he hadn’t slept with Bea all those years before …

  “I can’t do this—not to Bea, not to David.” She’d hardly thought about David, not since being here, but now she held him up like a shield. “I can’t go on pretending to be your friend, pretending nothing’s changed, not after this. I’m going home.”

  Blindly Addie turned on her heel. The delicate fabric of Bea’s old frock snagged on an acacia bush, releasing a shower of pale petals.

  “Don’t tel
l me you mean to marry him?” Frederick’s voice was harsh, incredulous.

  “Why not? After all”—the words came out unbidden—“you married Bea.”

  Addie yanked at her skirt, not caring when she heard the fabric rip, and fled back to the house, slippers slapping against the gravel.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Kenya, 1927

  “Your cousin is so deliciously prim,” commented Val.

  She didn’t look prim now. Bea watched Addie coming around the side of the house. Her face was flushed, her hair mussed. Clandestine assignations behind the acacia bushes? How terribly out of character.

  There was a man striding around the side of the house, hurrying after Addie. Bea couldn’t see who it was at first; the flickering firelight played strange tricks. He said something, but Addie shook her head and kept going, leaving him standing alone, near the cookhouse. He turned and Bea recognized him, not by his features, but by his stance, the way he held his shoulders, the angle of his chin.

  She should know. It was her husband.

  “So charmingly untouched,” mused Val, trailing his fingers along the bare curve of Bea’s spine. “Like a flower quivering on the cusp of awakening.”

  Bea turned away, leaning her back against the balustrade. “Don’t, Val,” she said shortly. “She’s not the type.”

  She took a long drag on her jade cigarette holder, feeling the familiar grate of the smoke against the back of her throat, drawing strength from the nicotine.

  Val leaned forward, holding out his cigarette in two fingers. “Jealous?”

  Bea mustered a convincing laugh. “Darling, you are joking, aren’t you?” She was jealous, but not in the way Val meant. She doubted he could understand it; she wasn’t sure she understood it herself. “Raoul, darling, there you are! And with bubbly! What an angel you are.”