her mother to admire it.
She had been a fairy-tale bride, or so the report in the local paper had said, her wedding dress every little girl’s dream and most big girls’ as well—at least in those days. She had felt like a princess—a queen—as she’d walked proudly down the aisle on her father’s arm. And when Sam had finally raised her veil after the vicar had married them, and she had seen the look in his eyes, she had felt as if…as though…She had felt immortal, she remembered. Adored, cherished…loved…And it had never even occurred to her that there might come a day when she would feel any different, when Sam wouldn’t continue to look at her with that mixture of adoration and desire.
How naive she had been…How…how stupid.
Her mother, her parents, had tried to warn her that she was rushing into marriage, that she and Sam barely knew one another, but she wouldn’t listen to them. They were old; they had forgotten what it was like to be in love, how it felt to be wanted, to want to be with that one special person so much that you actually hurt when they weren’t there.
She and Sam had met by accident…literally…She had been riding her bicycle illegally through a part of the university campus which was prohibited to students, taking a short cut to a lecture.
At first when she had cannoned into Sam, almost running him down, she had assumed he was a fellow student—although she hadn’t recognised him from her own political history course—albeit rather older than her. And, whilst she had laughed and flushed as she’d apologised, her embarrassment had been caused not by the fact that she had nearly run him down, and certainly not by the fact that she was doing something prohibited, but by the way he had made her feel, by the way her body and her emotions were already reacting to him, by the sudden rush of sensation flooding her mind and her body.
She had later admitted to him that if he had taken her there and then, in the middle of the quadrangle on the short, sweet grass, she doubted that she would have made any move to stop him. That was the kind of effect he had had on her, even though at the time she had still been a virgin and her experience of the opposite sex had been limited to Lloyd’s chastely explorative kisses and attempts at a bit of mild petting.
When she had discovered that Sam was not, as she had assumed, a fellow student, but a newly appointed junior classics lecturer, who had just completed his doctorate at Harvard, she had been completely mortified and shocked.
He had read her a mild lecture about riding her bicycle through a prohibited area and then sent her on her way, and she had not expected to see him again.
Only two days later he had turned up at her lodgings, carrying a book which had fallen out of the basket of her bike. She could remember how embarrassed she had been about the fact that he had discovered her almost in tears over a newspaper story she had been reading.
The article had been accompanied by heart-and conscience-rending photographs of grave-eyed starving children in the Third World, which had made Abbie exclaim passionately to Sam, once he had discovered the reason for her tears, that she could never bring a child into a world where so many, many children were so desperately in need.
‘I expect you think I’m being over-emotional, don’t you?’ she had asked him self-consciously when she had herself back under control, but he had shaken his head.
‘No, I don’t,’ he’d told her sombrely. ‘As a matter of fact…’
He had never finished what he had been about to say because one of Abbie’s fellow lodgers had returned, bounding into her room to request Abbie’s assistance in the search for a borrowed book she had misplaced.
Sam had refused her offer of a cup of coffee, but it had been close to the beginning of the summer recess at the time, and to her astonishment, two weeks later, when she was lying in the garden of her parents’ home sunbathing, he had turned up and invited her out.
He had explained later that he hadn’t felt he was in a position to ask her out before, bearing in mind the fact that she was a student and he a lecturer. When he had explained that he’d felt uncomfortable about being thought of as the kind of lecturer who took advantage of his position to coerce young female students into sexual relationships with him, she had fallen even more deeply in love with him. He was so straightforward, so honest, so moral…Too moral on occasions…like the time he had refused to take her back to his rooms with him and make love to her.
‘You don’t want me,’ she’d accused him tearfully.
In reply he had taken hold of her hand and placed it on his body. The strength and size of his erection beneath her hand had both shocked and excited her, and when he had seen the way her face flushed and she couldn’t quite meet his eyes he had laughed and then sighed, gently lifting her hand away as he’d told her softly, ‘You see, it’s too soon and you’re—’
‘Don’t you dare tell me I’m too young,’ she had interrupted him passionately. ‘I’m twenty…almost…’
‘And I’m twenty-six…almost,’ he had told her.
‘That’s only a difference of six years,’ she had protested.
‘You’re a virgin still, and I’m not,’ he had told her implacably. ‘You’re still playing in the shallows, whereas I—’
‘I can learn. You can teach me…’ she had told him fiercely. ‘You…’
He had closed his eyes then and taken her in his arms.
‘Oh, God, don’t tempt me like that,’ he had whispered to her, and his voice had been shaking—not with laughter, as she had first suspected, but with a mixture of emotions so potentially awesome and mind-blowing that she had trembled with excitement merely to think about them.
She had trembled as well when he had kissed her properly the first time, and for many, many times after that.
But it hadn’t just been sex…desire between them…
Abbie closed her eyes as the still painful memories engulfed her.
The first time Sam had kissed her properly had been on their second date. She had happened to mention that she wanted to go and see A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was being performed traditionally at Stratford, not intending to hint and certainly not expecting him to offer to take her there. The play had simply been extremely well reviewed and she had semi-hoped that her parents might offer to take her as a special treat.
When Sam had rung and said that he had got two tickets, and asked if she would like to go with him, she had been too breathless with excitement at the thought of seeing him again to co-ordinate her thoughts and ask any kind of logical or practical questions. So when he had arrived to collect her, fortunately a little early, dressed in all the formal elegance of a dinner suit, her mouth had parted in a soft ‘oh’ of surprised shock whilst her eyes had registered her shy but very wholehearted and feminine approval of his sensually male elegance.
‘I thought we could go somewhere and have some supper after the play,’ he had suggested, as much to her parents as to her, Abbie had recognised, watching as her mother beamed her approval and her father coughed and muttered something about being sure he could trust Sam to get her home at a decent time.
Fortunately, long, floaty cotton dresses had been ‘in’ that year, and worn for everything from casual pub drinks to far more formal affairs. Hers had been new, the soft mixture of greens setting off her fair skin and blonde hair and matching
