The Millionaire Affair Page 17

  They moved on.

  ‘Terrible old rogue he turned out to be, too,’ he added ruminatively. ‘Sold Versailles to a man from Massachusetts, then had to flee France when the man turned up to take possession.’

  Lisa gave a choke of laughter. ‘Is that true?’

  ‘Probably. We have our share of rogues.’

  He took her arm and led her round a corner where a tall Ming vase presented a hazard.

  ‘Nicki,’ he said very deliberately, ‘isn’t one of them.’

  Lisa stopped dead so abruptly that it was clear his caution in navigating her round the heirloom had been wise.

  ‘I’m afraid his brother was, a bit,’ said Pauli sighing. ‘We loved him, of course. But Vladi was not always terribly scrupulous. Especially in his dealings with women. Nicki is different.’

  Lisa was uncomfortable.

  ‘Count—’

  ‘My dear, call me Pauli. There are too many counts in this house. Especially when all the family gets together.’

  ‘Pauli, then. I don’t think you should be talking to me about Nikolai.’

  ‘I don’t say anything behind his back I haven’t said to his face,’ his grandfather said reasonably. ‘They were very close, Nicki and his brother, even though they were so different. When Vladi died, Nicki dropped his own life and took over Vladi’s role. He’s put the estate in better order than poor Vladi ever managed, I may say. He works round the clock. But he won’t let anyone get close to him. It seems as if he has put a lid on his feelings and no one is going to be allowed to lift it.’

  ‘I—’

  He ignored the small, embarrassed protest.

  ‘Mind you, I’m not saying he’s a saint. He’s had his girlfriends, and I’m sure one or two of them got hurt. He’s as hot-blooded as the rest of the Ivanovs. Only no one has touched his heart. But he has never made promises he can’t keep. And he doesn’t lie.’

  There was a difficult silence.

  ‘But he plans,’ Lisa burst out.

  Pauli blinked. ‘Does he?’ he said, fascinated.

  ‘All the time. And he watches me as if I’m one of his blasted animal subjects. He might as well bring his binoculars.’

  Pauli choked, and turned it quickly into a cough.

  ‘Um. Yes. I can see that would be very—disconcerting.’ He looked at Lisa’s mutinous expression and decided that he had said enough. ‘Well, now, let’s find you that hat.’

  He found Tatiana and his wife in the rose garden.

  ‘Either Nikolai is in love for the first time in his life or he’s gone mad,’ he reported. ‘I’ve no idea what Lisa feels for him. Leave them alone.’

  His wife opened her mouth.

  ‘Nothing we can do about it,’ he said sternly.

  She shut it again.

  ‘Do you promise, Marie?’

  ‘But I like her.’

  ‘So do I,’ agreed Pauli. ‘But he’s a man, and he has to sort it out for himself. And if I’m any judge,’ he added with glee, ‘he’s going to find it the hardest thing he’s ever done.’

  For the rest of the day either Lisa avoided Nikolai or he avoided her. She wasn’t sure which. It meant that she braced herself for war every time a footstep came down one of the raked paths or a door opened. War never came.

  She went to bed with a tearing headache and lay awake between her tapestries for most of the hot night. Every time she closed her eyes she could feel Nikolai watching her, his breath against her skin. And then she opened her eyes again and she was alone.

  ‘I’m going mad,’ she moaned.

  She gave up on sleep as soon as it was light and slipped out of the château. There was a hill to the east of the park, and she just kept walking towards it. The sun rose, pulling a heat haze off the dewy ground. Soon Lisa began to sweat.

  She pulled off her cotton sweater and tied it round her waist, leaving her arms and throat bare to the now burning sun. The ground climbed. She thought she heard a river, and thirsted for water. But she didn’t know how far below it was, and all the time something urged her on.

  And then she pulled herself up over a rise at the very top of the hill and saw it below her! There indeed was a river, curling lazily through the valley like a strip of silver ribbon. And on the opposite bank a walled castle, all rose-red stone and turrets, like a picture from a medieval Book of Hours.

  Lisa forgot she was tired and thirsty. She sank onto the dusty earth and stared at the little magic fortress. Suddenly, sharply, she wanted Nikolai to be here, sharing it. She wanted him so badly she thought he must hear her thoughts.

  ‘Nonsense,’ she told herself. ‘Too much walking in the sun without a hat.’

  But she was not really surprised when she heard a horse’s hooves.

  Nikolai came bursting through the trees and leaped off the horse. Lisa didn’t move. Even when he looped the reins over a bush and strode towards her she just sat there, as if she was expecting him, smiling at him dreamily.

  Nikolai knelt down beside her, his eyes hard with anxiety.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I wanted you to see this,’ she said, as if she were excusing an inopportune phone call.

  Nikolai cast an impatient look across the valley.

  ‘Yes, beautiful, I’ll buy you a postcard,’ he said with supreme indifference. ‘Why on earth did you wander off like that? I thought something had happened to you.’

  Lisa tipped back her head and smiled straight into his eyes.

  ‘I think it has.’

  ‘What?’ He leaned forward, searching her face. Gently he pushed back her hair, so that he could look into her eyes without interruption. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ He sounded worried.

  ‘I was sitting here wanting you. And here you are.’ Lisa was smug. ‘Of course I’m all right.’

  Nikolai shook his head. ‘You shouldn’t say things like that if you don’t mean them,’ he said, half-laughing, half-serious. He slid an arm round her waist and tried to help her to her feet. ‘Can’t you stand?’

  Lisa laughed up at him. ‘Make me,’ she said naughtily.

  ‘Oh, Lisa,’ It was a groan. ‘Did you have anything to eat before you left?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Or drink?’ He sounded despairing.

  ‘Not since last night.’

  ‘Right. The first thing you need is several litres of water.’ He began hauling her to her feet, looking at the horse with a considering eye. ‘Do you ride?’

  ‘’Course I do, Count. Doesn’t everybody? Buses and rollercoasters a speciality,’ said Lisa. It struck her as exquisitely amusing. She said it again. She couldn’t stop laughing.

  Nikolai sent her a harassed look. He got her up and locked an arm round her. Then he unhooked the bridle and began to scramble them all haphazardly down the slope between the trees. The horse, much better behaved than Lisa, followed obediently. By contrast Lisa kept wanting Nikolai to stop and kiss her. She said so several times.

  ‘One day—’ said Nikolai between his teeth, tried almost beyond endurance.

  But then the slope lessened and Lisa caught sight of his goal. It was a small lake, fed by the rushing stream she had heard earlier. Nikolai marched her to the bank and dropped her unceremoniously. Then he knelt and caught some water in his cupped hands.

  ‘Drink,’ he said curtly.

  She did. It made her realise how thirsty she was. She knelt and drank avidly, straight from the stream. The water was so cold it set her teeth tingling. But it was like wine.

  Eventually she raised her head. It was like coming out of a dream. Or rather a nightmare, in which she had made a public fool of herself.

  ‘Ow,’ she said, with feeling.

  Nikolai was rather pale, in spite of his outdoor tan. ‘You were dehydrated. It does odd things to people. Don’t worry about it. You weren’t responsible for anything you said.’

  ‘But—’ Lisa fell over the words. She felt crippled by shyness. ‘Oh, hell!’


  She looked at the lake. It was in a clearing, the trees gold with the satiated excess of summer. Filtered sunbeams struck green rainbows off the leaves. Willow branches hung into the water. But the surface was a dark mirror, an alternative universe below the still water, showing a silent landscape and two unspeaking figures turning to each other.

  At the bank, the water lapped gently. Out on the little lake a breeze riffled the water into movement. But the shadow landscape stayed still. And so did Lisa and Nikolai. Neither spoke.

  Lisa thought, I want him. I need him. I can’t just stand here not telling him. But shyness locked her tongue as if she were a schoolgirl on her first date. She despised herself from her heart. But there was not a thing she could do about it. And Nikolai made no move to help her.

  At last he said in a constrained voice, ‘I must take you back. You’ve obviously overtired yourself.’

  She thought, He doesn’t want me.

  He had to know what she wanted. Heaven knows, on that scramble down the wooded hillside she had told him plainly enough. But his grandfather had said he didn’t make promises he couldn’t keep. Presumably that included not letting women who had fallen in love with him burn their boats when he didn’t love them in return.

  She said with a painful smile, ‘Not only civilised, an honourable man.’

  Nikolai closed his eyes, as if he was in pain. ‘Lisa—’

  But she had turned away. ‘I think you’re right. I feel very strange. Take me home.’

  He put her on the horse and led them back to the château without further argument.

  Lisa was put straight to bed by her concerned hostess. She slept heavily through the sultry afternoon, but was eventually persuaded down to join the party for drinks by the pool.

  She saw at once that Nikolai wasn’t there. Véronique was, however, her muslins transformed for the cocktail hour by the addition of several gold chains and rings.

  ‘If you’re looking for the heart-throb, he’s gone off to see some boffin,’ said Véronique. She was plainly not pleased. ‘Some Englishman he knows from his research who is having a holiday round here. You’d think it could wait—especially as Edmond has come to take me back to Paris this evening. But, no!’

  ‘The man rang him. He said he had the answer to Nikolai’s question,’ said Countess Ivanova temperately. She patted Lisa’s hand. ‘Are you feeling better, my dear?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ lied Lisa.

  She thought she would never be fine again. This was worse than when Terry had left.

  Because I wasn’t in love with Terry, she thought suddenly. The implications of that made her start to shake.

  She accepted the champagne cocktail that Pauli gave her. But she didn’t touch it. She listened to the lively conversation between their hosts and various other guests from the locality. Even when it was in English it made no sense to her.

  I’m in love with Nikolai Ivanov.

  It was wonderful. It was terrible. It was hopeless.

  Lisa sat very still and hugged the knowledge to her at the same time as she acknowledged that it was quite, quite useless. Still, he had held her. She had made love with him. She would know love for the rest of her life.

  When Véronique’s husband came and sat beside her, Lisa looked up, her eyes shy and yet filled with such tender joy that it made him blink.

  ‘We haven’t met,’ he said. ‘Edmond Le Brun.’ They shook hands. ‘I gather you’re a bond trader.’

  He was a nice man. He brought her out, asked her questions about her work. Soon she was talking freely, making them all laugh. Herself again. Well, nearly.

  ‘It sounds very stressful,’ said Pauli. ‘How do people stand it?’

  ‘Drink, mostly,’ said Lisa coolly. ‘Some drugs. Crazy partying is obligatory. But the really hot traders get a buzz out of it that’s better than all the drink, drugs and parties together.’

  ‘And are you a “hot trader”?’ asked Véronique. Her voice was edged with spite.

  Lisa grinned. ‘I am this year.’

  ‘And do you use drink and drugs?’ she drawled. ‘Or is the buzz of success enough?’

  ‘She dances,’ said a voice out of the darkness.

  Lisa’s heart turned a slow, dangerous somersault and came to rest somewhere in the region of her toes.

  Nikolai strolled forward. He was wearing dark trousers and an open necked cream shirt. Lisa looked at the strong brown column of his throat and was engulfed by lust.

  He smiled down at her, his eyes a stranger’s. Lisa’s heart went into retreat.

  ‘Dances like a dervish and fights like a fiend. Which, to be fair, she warned me about. Isn’t that right, Lisa?’

  ‘Right,’ she said gaily, bravely.

  Her heart crept under a stone and stayed there.

  No one seemed to notice. Nikolai’s arrival had added spice to the party. The noise level rose. Twilight closed in. A buffet was set out, wine flowed. Someone put on some music.

  Véronique drifted over.

  ‘We have to be going,’ she said, though her husband was doing an athletic merengue with the publisher daughter of a local landowner. ‘So nice to have met you. Will you be here for the harvest?’

  Lisa shook her head. ‘Shouldn’t think so.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a shame. It’s a real crowd-puller.’

  Lisa smiled with an effort. ‘Really? Very traditional, is it?’

  Véronique gave a husky chuckle. ‘The best tradition is the sight of Nicki stripping off and mucking in with the workers. Scrumptious. Women come from miles.’

  Lisa flinched. She knew that Véronique was spiteful, and she knew that she was possessive of Nikolai. But there was still enough in the nasty little remark to hurt. She’s telling me I’m just another pathetic groupie, Lisa thought. The trouble was, Véronique was probably right. Though Nikolai was too civilised to say so.

  She looked up and saw him in the light of the newly lit candles. He was watching her, his face grave. Lisa couldn’t bear it.

  She raised her voice slightly. ‘I only came to help Tatiana. I don’t fit in here and I don’t want to. I won’t be back.’

  He turned away.

  CHAPTER TEN

  LISA did not see Nikolai again. She left quite deliberately before he had come up from his own house in the morning. That, she reasoned, would spare them both embarrassment. And worse than embarrassment.

  After yesterday, by the lake, she was almost certain that he knew she loved him. He was too experienced to have missed it, even if she hadn’t known it herself. And he had made it plain that he was not going to take it further.

  Lisa thought she understood him very well. She even admired him, in a tortured sort of way. For him, a night in bed with a lady who knew the score was one thing. Kissing a woman vulnerable with unrequited love for him was something quite different. Oh, yes, in his own way, Nikolai Ivanov was an honourable man.

  ‘Makes a change for you to be breaking your heart over an honourable man,’ Lisa told her reflection in Countess Ivanova’s cheval glass. She was trying hard to be bracing. ‘All you’ve got to do now is get over him.’

  She certainly did her best in the next couple of weeks. To her inexpressible relief there was an emergency meeting of Napier Kraus chief traders in New York. Then a conference was put together in Sydney to discuss the East Asia crisis. Lisa went.

  Nikolai worked like a demon, putting the estate paperwork and maintenance plan in order for when he was in Borneo. When he wasn’t working he was preparing for the expedition. Eventually he announced that he was going to London to meet the rest of Sedgewick’s team.

  ‘Oh?’ said his grandfather. He had been expecting this, though he wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone, not even his wife.

  Nikolai looked at him narrowly.

  ‘They have all been on expedition together before. The only one I’ve been with is Pinero. We need to do some training together.’

  ‘Of course you do.’

  ‘You’re
an old fox,’ he informed his grandfather, undeceived. ‘All right. Lisa has gone off the loop again. Won’t answer any of my messages. Her office says she’s been away, but she’s due back this week. God knows if she’ll talk to me.’

  ‘What are you going to do if she won’t?’ asked his grandfather, interested. He had never seen Nikolai like this.

  White teeth flashed in the tanned face. ‘Hunt like I’ve never hunted before.’

  Pauli believed him.

  It was the weekend of the Notting Hill Carnival. Barriers were going up to mark out the route of the big procession and there was a buzz of anticipation. The smart Palladian streets emptied as many residents left for the long weekend, to get away from the noise of a two-day street party that boasted it was the largest outside the Caribbean. Well, in Europe anyway.

  And what would Lisa do? Nikolai couldn’t make up his mind. Party? Well he had seen her do that. Or run from the fun? He had seen her do that too.

  She was still not answering her telephone. So he rented a car and took up a look-out post in her street. With so many residents in flight he had never found parking so easy.

  Lisa got off the plane from Sydney and went straight to her mother’s house. There had been a panic-stricken phone call at four in the morning. It would have taken a harder heart than Lisa’s to ignore it.

  Joanne was sitting at the table—still strewn with the debris of several days, from the look of it. She didn’t answer the bell and she didn’t get up when Lisa let herself in with the key from under the flowerpot.

  ‘Kit’s gone,’ she announced tragically.

  Lisa’s temper snapped. ‘Thank you, yes, it was a good flight. And, no, I’m not in the least tired.’

  ‘What?’

  Lisa gentled. ‘Snap out of it, Mum,’ she said wearily. ‘Kit isn’t a child any more. Where has she gone?’

  ‘That man—’ Joanne shed angry tears.