Emilie decided to take him at his word; if that bored him it would be his own fault! She told him how paper was made today, how it had been made in the past and how slight was the difference, merely a matter of more efficient machinery rather than a change in the actual process. Once she was over her intense awareness of him her eyes began to glow with the light of an enthusiasm close to passion.
That is how she would look in love, Ambrose thought, his eyes moving from her warm, softly full little mouth to her wide, bright blue eyes, roaming over her high cheekbones, her delicate temples, the fall of silky brown hair framing her face, and then going back to that mouth. It had passion and sweetness and sensitivity, only waiting for the right man to set fire to it.
After dinner George Rendell persuaded Emilie to play the piano for them; the guests all sat at one end of a long, panelled room, the lights dimmed as if in an auditorium, and Emilie sat at the piano at the other end.
‘What are you going to play?’ Ambrose asked, and then insisted on glancing through the music-books she produced. He picked a piece of Chopin she said she knew and sat beside her while she played, turning the music for her, leaning forward every so often to flip the page over. Emilie was deeply conscious of him there, his strong fingers moving just at the periphery of her sight, his gold cufflinks glittering.
‘You’re good,’ he said later, when she had finished playing and everyone was talking again. ‘Did you ever think of doing that professionally?’
She shook her head, bright-eyed from his praise.
‘Another hobby?’ he teased.
‘I’m not serious enough about either cooking or playing the piano to do either of them professionally. You need to be totally committed for that. I suppose I’m too lazy.’ Under her offhand tone Emilie felt guilty about not having the sort of ambition and drive she knew she ought to have. She had been given talents she wasn’t using; she could make a career with either cooking or the piano, no doubt, if she worked at them, but at the time when she should have been giving all of herself to studying she had been too intent on her dying mother to have the energy to spare, and after her mother finally died Emilie had not felt she wanted to do anything at all.
But she couldn’t explain that to him; it was too personal, involved telling him too much, so she changed the subject, asking him, ‘What about you? Don’t you have any hobbies?’
He made a wry face. ‘I paint, with a knife or my hands—just splash oil-paints on in thick blobs. It helps with aggressive feelings, I’m told. I’m not very good. It’s more therapy than art.’
‘It sounds fun to me. I haven’t painted since I left school, and then we just did water-colours, very neat, pale water-colours. I’d like to try oil-painting, especially the way you just described.’ She laughed, and said lightly, ‘Maybe I need therapy!’
He didn’t take her seriously. She couldn’t need help of that kind, this wide-eyed girl barely out of childhood and spoiled by a doting grandfather! What problems could she have?
His voice very casual, he said, ‘I usually paint at my place in the country. I have a house in the Cotswolds, with great views of the Malvern Hills—why don’t you and your grandfather come for the weekend, and I’ll show you what I laughingly call my technique? If you enjoy painting that way, you could start having professional lessons.’
Emilie hadn’t expected that. Her breath caught, there was a beat of time before she could talk, then she huskily said, ‘That would be wonderful, thank you.’
‘Shall we check with your grandfather and see if he is free?’ asked Ambrose, steering her over to where George Rendell was talking to some departing guests.
George was taken aback by the invitation. He had never been invited to Ambrose’s country home before—their relationship was strictly a business one in London—but he accepted.
‘Lovely part of the country, the Cotswolds,’ he added. ‘I’ll look forward to seeing it again. I shan’t be joining your painting class, though, Ambrose, not one for splashing paint around. I’ll just relax by the fire and read the Sunday papers, I expect!’
Ambrose gravely said, ‘You’re coming for the weekend to relax, George. Do just whatever you like.’ To Emilie he said, ‘If it’s cold, in winter, I paint in a conservatory—it gives all the light you need but it is warmer than being outside!’
‘I don’t mind cold weather,’ she said.
‘She doesn’t feel the cold, lucky child,’ said her grandfather, and Ambrose’s eyes darkened.
He looked at her with sombre intensity. Child, he thought; she is a child, he’s right. I’m out of my mind. What the hell do I think I’m going to do with her? I couldn’t marry her, she’s far too young. And if I seduce her, George will take a gun to me. Then his gaze drifted down to that soft, inviting pink mouth again. Come off it, you know what you’d like to do with her! he derisively told himself.
When Ambrose got home that evening he rang Gavin, who was in bed, but was immediately alert at the sound of the familiar voice.
‘Ambrose? Anything wrong?’
‘About the Rendell project,’ Ambrose said curtly. Tve decided to deal with that myself from now on. You can leave it entirely to me.’
Gavin’s voice held suspicion, wariness. ‘Why? Has something happened that I don’t know about? A problem come up?’
Ambrose ignored the questions. ‘You can draw up a new analysis of our manufacturing clients and their current positions.’
‘Anyone could do that for you!’ Gavin muttered. ‘You had an analysis done only six months ago.’
‘And now I want a new one, OK? Just drop the Rendell project, forget all about it.’
‘You can’t——’ began Gavin, anger in his voice.
‘Don’t tell me what I can or can’t do!’
Gavin audibly drew breath, shaken by the crack of Ambrose’s voice. ‘No, of course not, I wouldn’t…didn’t mean…Ambrose, I’ve run myself ragged to get them all to agree to your plans. Some of that board are old friends of his and needed a hell of a lot of persuading. Why are you taking me off the case?’
‘That’s my business. Just do what you’re told, will you?’
Ambrose slammed the phone down, got into bed and sat up against his banked pillows staring at nothing, his face tense and pale.
A child, he reminded himself again. She was just a child. It was crazy. He couldn’t. Shouldn’t. She still had so much to learn about life, about herself, about men—especially men like him. She was gentle, sweet, innocent…He had no right to go anywhere near her.
He had years of experience behind him, in every sense of the word. Other women had taught him what he knew about her sex, not all of them very nice women, some of them not women he would even want her to meet.
She was a sheet of pure white paper on which life had not yet written a word. Heat burned deep inside him, though, at the thought of teaching her, being the first. There was something about that purity, that innocence, that he found exciting.
She
