Exit Unicorns (Exit Unicorns Series) (29 page)

“Jamie.”

He started, scattering papers onto the floor, where a few caught the faint summer breeze and drifted dreamily out the door.

“Yes,” he said more sharply than he’d intended, feeling like a child who’s been caught out with its hand in the cookie jar.

“It’s a lovely day,” she said, leaning into the doorframe, tanned and slightly flushed from the sun, hair in an untidy ponytail, long legs bare and dusty.

“It is,” Jamie agreed carefully.

“It’s only that—well I thought a picnic would be nice. We haven’t had a picnic all summer.”

“We haven’t?” Jamie said incredulously.

“No,” she said almost shy, a long ringlet of loose hair blowing across her throat and causing Jamie to swallow hard.

“Well then we must fix that now, today, in fact this very minute,” he stood, thinking it was quite possible he was about to take complete leave of his senses.

“I’ll pack the food if you get the horses,” she said, and Jamie, knowing her idea of a good meal was an extra spoonful of peanut butter on her bread, was tempted to say no. There was such an eagerness in her face though that he merely nodded and headed out to the stable to get the horses.

He had determined, some short time ago, that a man of his years and experience ought to be able to draw and keep the invisible line between propriety and the seduction of a teenage girl. No matter how aggravating and bewitching said girl was.

It was rather easy to be noble, Jamie reflected wryly, when the object of your indecent lust was not in view and an infinitely more delicate matter when her lovely denim-bottomed self was only feet away adjusting the stirrups on her saddle. Looking altogether too alluring in her thin cotton shirt, the color of late summer delphiniums, her hair a slovenly mess of curls that served to make her look like a hungover nymph the night after a particularly decadent bacchanal.

They rode in silence, the air heavy with thoughts unspoken but sensed nevertheless. Past a gurgling brown brook, through a field dark with dying heather, into a pine wood where the smell of sap, flushed out with the heat, was sticky and ripe on the air.

Pamela, cantering slightly behind and away from Jamie, found herself in an altogether unwelcome flux of emotion. There were only a few weeks left to the summer and then they would be back in Belfast and she would have to make a choice. To stay under this man’s roof, to be wrapped in the warmth and headiness of his governance or to keep the silent promise she had made to Casey with a single kiss. She could not keep a foot in each world, not with the earth threatening to crack apart beneath her. She could not continue to pretend that she was in any way the equal of this man who rode beside her with effortless grace.

His was a terrible beauty, an aching, tearing thing that was best left alone. She could not stay, even if her dreams, pale in the light of reality had been tempered by respect and care. Even if—she gave a weak smile as Jamie turned, gilt eyebrows lifted, green eyes soft—even if the man could have her very soul if he but asked. For he would not ask, of that much she was certain.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Jamie’s voice intruded on her musings causing her to flinch guiltily and flush. “Though perhaps they’re worth more. To judge by the look on your face I ought to have offered a hundred pound or so.” The knowing grin on his face hit a nerve and made her retort more stingingly than she’d intended.

“Perhaps your Lordship there’s not enough money in all your overflowing coffers to make me spill my private thoughts.” So saying she flashed him a look of icy disdain and spurred her horse to gallop.

Racing full tilt without a care for her safety was the only way it seemed she could outrun all the yearning in her soul. If only she could always go far enough, fast enough to obliterate the hold he had over her.

She didn’t see the tree until it was too late to veer away, the young whip-like ends of its arcing branches catching her full across the face, blinding her and completely unnerving the horse who threw her instantly.

Jamie was upon her in seconds. “Pamela are you alright? Blink if you can’t speak.”

He felt the length of her body with light, deft hands. “Nothing’s broken.”

“I—I,” she stuttered, trying vainly to draw breath, feeling as if a very large fist had mashed her kidneys.

“I think you’ve knocked the wind from yourself.” Jamie helped her into a sitting position then rubbed her back in great broad circles until she at last drew in a shaky breath.

“There now, there’s a girl, are you hurt anywhere else?”

“No,” she replied with what dignity could be salvaged in her current position, “and please don’t address me as if I were one of your great bloody, broody mares.”

Jamie’s relief quickly turned to anger.

“What the hell were you doing, spurring him on like that? You could have broken his leg and your own bloody neck in the bargain.” He looked at her in exasperation as she gingerly clutched her ribs with one hand and bit the back of her other to refrain from laughing.

“Women,” was Jamie’s final and inadequate pronouncement as he got to his feet and scanned the horizon for the horse.

“He’ll go to the pond; he drinks like he’s a camel about to cross the desert. We’ll find him there. Besides it’s a lovely spot for a picnic,” she cast a glance at the basket his obedient gray mare carried. “Please don’t be angry, Jamie.”

“Come on then,” he said in as short a tone as he knew how to manage.

She wanted to scream at him, to ask why his memory held no echo. That she had laughed because they had, so precisely, been here before. Instead, she mutely took his hand up into the saddle.

The pond sat in the middle of a glade of pine, a still body of water, murky brown and edged with grass bent over and wilted from the heat. The air, strong with resin, was still and heavy.

Jamie helped Pamela down from the horse, found a shady spot to tether it just as her own horse, aptly named Lickety-Split, ambled into the clearing, reins dangling, blowing drops of water off his lips and looking supremely pleased with himself. Jamie unsaddled him and tethered him near his own horse.

When he turned back, a blanket had been spread upon the burned grass, food laid out that was in quality and form, rather alarming. Item by item his consternation grew as each toothsome delicacy was revealed in all its aphrodisiacal glory. Oysters, gray, chill and raw, figs melting in their own sugar, strawberries with a complement of Devonshire cream and a bottle of Chateau du Papillon Blanc 1954 (a very good year, though hardly the picnicker’s choice). The food of seduction, not subtle and somehow all the more effective for it. And in the midst of it, Lolita, bare feet limned with dirt, nose dusted with freckles, a strawberry tucked in her cheek along with a flush that told him she was frightened of her own audacity.

“What, no peanut butter and jelly?” he asked lightly, finding a seat on the grass beyond the blanket.

“No, I thought a picnic called for something a bit grander.” Still flushed and uncertain, she poured two glasses of wine near to overflowing and handed him one.

“Tell me about her, Jamie,” she said quite suddenly, nibbling on a fig in a manner as to make him believe that her virtue, such as it was, had better make a run for its life.

“About whom?” he asked, quite used by now, to her abrupt turn-abouts in conversation.

“The woman who taught you the art of love.”

The opening gambit, a bold move, designed to knock distracting pawns off the board with one sweep. Jamie decided to play.

“What makes you think I know anything about the art of love?” he asked, reclining on his elbows, a look of curious amusement on his face.

“Even a girl of twelve knows the difference between a man who simply loves a series of different women in his life and a man who adores the entirety of female kind and knows—yes knows,” she stated, emphatically ignoring his grin, “how to really love a woman. And that would indicate to me—” she paused to take a swallow of her champagne, blissfully unaware that near to five hundred francs of bubbles had just slid down her slender throat, “that a woman taught you the finer points. Oh, the instinct was there from birth, I’ve no doubt, but only a woman could have brought it into full flower.”

“Indeed,” replied Jamie, feeling rather like a petunia must with a brimming water can poised above its wide open head.

“Yes,” she replied, warming to her subject and Jamie noted with a twinge of alarm, filling her glass for the second time. “You see, my father, who I might add, attracted women in only slightly smaller droves than yourself, told me that for a man to truly love a woman, love her as she needs to be loved, must be loved in order that she not wither away on the stem before her prime. For her to blossom fully,” (all these metaphorical flowers, Jamie mused, were making him feel a bit like a bee who’d overdone it on the nectar) “she must have a man who knows how to respond innately to her cues without needing to be given point for point instructions.” This last given added emphasis by the tossing back the remains of her second (or was it third?) flute of Chateau du Papillon Blanc, 1954. She was beginning to sport a perilously reckless glint in her eyes.

If he’d the sense of a tiny, wee gopher, Jamie reflected later, he would have taken his pieces, one by one, without hurting or alarming her, off the board and made it clear he could not be a partner to this game. A woman was truly one of the great luxuries, the necessities a man simply could not do without. And a woman such as this one, fine and rare, eloquent and bold, was rather like having a case of the very best scotch set in front of an alcoholic with the three day shakes. Surely though her question was harmless, she had asked and he struck into obliging by a combination of the sun’s fist, alcohol and a lurking weakness, would answer. Anything would be easier than watching her toss back champagne and oysters, with one sinuous toss of shiny black curls, as if she’d been fed them in her crib.

“Her name was Clothilde and she was thirty-one and I was eighteen.”

“A-ha, a Frenchwoman, the best of teachers.”

“Your father’s sage wisdom again?” Jamie commented with a light sarcasm.

She nodded, taking the time to finish her delicate munching on a whisper-thin slice of toast burdened with paté. “He said that every woman should have an Irishman at least once, and every man, a Frenchwoman—a ripe one, I believe were his exact words.”

“Have?” Jamie inquired.

“In the biblical sense of course,” she said sweetly.

“Of course,” he echoed rather stupidly, wondering if somehow the alcohol she was drinking was affecting him.

“Please continue,” she prompted, as if he were the rather slow schoolboy he presently felt himself to be.

“As I said, her name was Clothilde and she was a lady in the grandest sense of the word, the French sense if you will—”

“Ah, I see it, four impossibly perfect Chanel suits in sensible colors, black of course for lunch meetings, Mainbocher for days in the country, Dior for evenings out and very special occasions. But nevair ze frippery of say a St. Laurent, no—no St. Laurent is ze stuff of dreams, not hard-line serious couture. She knew the perfect wines, her Brie was always just the right temperature, her servants knew their place and she had a collection of lingerie that would give a harem the night sweats.”

He had best, Jamie thought with some alarm, hide what little was left of the champagne. He was slightly amazed by her assessment of Clothilde, she’d come very close and indeed her servants had known their place. Unlike, it would seem, his own employees.

“She was a Madame, not some inconsequential mademoiselle.”

“A married woman, Jamie? My respect for you grows immeasurably.”

He eyed her with mock sternness, “One more interruption and I’ll not give you another word of my lurid tale.”

“I shall be a paragon of silence, pray go on.” She made a creditable attempt at seriousness, spoiling the gesture by lying down on her front, hands propped into fists under her chin. The Queen flashing the Bishop a naughty bit of leg, he supposed. He sighed and resumed his story.

“Her husband died in his eighties, most honorably acquitting himself to the end, dying in a manner entirely befitting a French gentleman of his means and advanced years. Meaning of course that he died in his mistress’ arms.”

“Was she very beautiful—Clothilde I mean?” Picking the crown off a strawberry, Pamela had apparently forgotten her recent vow of silence.

“In a refined manner, like purest Meissen china, looks very fragile but in reality is tougher than hell.” Memory, rather than distraction, bore him along on his tale now. “Her hair was very pale, ash-blonde I suppose you’d call it but her eyes were dark, so dark there seemed hardly any separation between pupil and iris. She did wear Chanel and Dior and, just for your note, she thought St. Laurent was a genius. She had that certain something, a grace of carriage, a presence, a bit like Grace Kelly after she became the Princess of Monaco.”

His mind, aided by the champagne, was drifting back along the current of recollection, to that summer in the south of France. Clothilde de Rengac had been a friend of the family, her father having done business with two generations of the Kirkpatricks. As a child he’d admired her from afar, she was quiet, not easy to know and he suspected later, stifled by rank and religion. As he’d grown, his admiration had become more frank. She had never, for all her formality, condescended to him. His opinions she listened to with interest, finding them of worth, never dismissing him as a child. They’d spent hours discussing poetry, music, authors and philosophy as well as lighter topics.