Crap. I’ve just given myself away.
Mona heaves a pitying sigh. “It’s clear what’s happening. You’re in denial. Well, Therese and I will be here to pick up the pieces come January, and we won’t even say I told you so.”
My stomach lurches. Come January. I hate thinking about January as I’ve been myself with Frederic. This is who I am, what I was missing with Adam, and what I will always be. Perhaps in the future I might find someone else I want to be submissive with and share this sort of tender, ferocious relationship. But I feel sick contemplating another man touching me the way Frederic does.
They’re right. I’m attached. I can sense him out there in the garden, the man I’m coming to adore. Even coming back here next week without him is going to be painful. January sits cold and ominous on the horizon.
Silence stretches between the three of us. Then Therese, a smile tugging the corners of her mouth, asks, “So is he a good, um, kisser?”
Her unexpected question forces a laugh from me. “Oh, god yes. Very good.”
They start asking me how it began between us and who kissed whom first and where we go on dates and I share a thoroughly, thoroughly expurgated version of how it all happened. He kissed me and then took me to a Spanish rooftop bar. We’ve been going out to the restaurants near his flat. Sometimes I cook and we just cuddle on the sofa. I get a picture of what a vanilla relationship with Frederic would look like and I want to snort with laughter. It’s much, much better our way.
Mona is asking whether he ever speaks French to me in bed and Therese is screeching at her for being so deplorably nosy when we hear footsteps coming down the passage. I hiss at them to shut up, and a moment later Frederic appears holding a stack of dirty plates. He surveys us one by one, taking in my hot cheeks and Therese trying to hide her giggles behind a cough. She sets Mona off, who grabs a tea towel and starts scrubbing at a non-existent stain on her skirt, her shoulders shaking.
Oh, for heaven’s sake. Sisters.
As Frederic passes me he puts his free hand on the nape of my neck and caresses it briefly. “Minette.” Then he puts the plates down and heads out again. As he disappears into the darkness of the passage Therese and Mona explode with giggles. Frederic is definitely close enough to hear.
I chuck an oven glove at each of them. “Get a grip, both of you, are you twelve?”
Wiping their eyes they hiccup their apologies, but when Mona says, “Je suis désolé,” I’m sorry in French, it sets them both off again. I finish the jug of Pimms and head back out to the garden with it. They hurry after me, still snickering.
“What did he call you? Minette? What does that mean?” Mona asks.
“Kitten.”
“Oh my god, that is adorable.”
We head toward the tables which are almost deserted now as people have begun departing. Lisbet’s talking animatedly to Frederic, holding the Phantom program in her hands, and he’s smiling at her.
Mona says quietly, “You could give him up now, you know. Might be less painful in the long run.”
As I watch he holds out his hand for the program and flicks through the pages, pointing at a picture and telling Lisbet something about it. She listens with rapt attention. Sweet man.
Sweet, sadistic, clever man. Nothing could induce me to give you up before I have to. I’m going to be yours until the very moment you have to leave me. “No, it wouldn’t be easier. Let’s talk about something else, shall we?”
The tea breaks up shortly after that, and once the tables have been cleared and the chairs taken into the house Frederic and I take a stroll through the garden. Though it’s late September there are still plenty of flowers blooming and the grass is a healthy, deep green. We pass the rose folly where I sat, sewing in high summer, and looked up to see Monsieur d’Estang in a blue shirt, holding my notebooks out to me and smiling.
With the air of two people walking aimlessly, we wander into the orchard behind the garden wall, out of sight of the house. Frederic takes my hand. “How was the ambush?”
I lean into him, stroking his forearm with my free hand while my other clutches his tightly. “Mona and Therese in the kitchen? Thorough. They’ve got sex sonar or something.”
“It never occurred to me to speak French to you in bed. Would you like that?”
All the delicious, filthy, kinky things he does say to me swirl in my mind, and I wrinkle my nose at him. “That’s a bit vanilla for you, isn’t it, daddy?”
He stops and tugs me into his arms, his voice growing husky and his green eyes gleaming. “Yes, baby, you’re probably right.”
Chapter Thirteen
Frederic
She comes through the barriers and into the arrival hall at Paddington, a lace kimono hanging off one shoulder and a book bag hanging off the other. Her holdall falls to the ground with a thump and she launches herself into my arms.
“Daddy, I missed you,” she whispers into my neck, pressed so close I can feel her heart thumping against mine. I hold her tightly, my arms wrapped around her and my fingers pressed into the spaces between her ribs.
“I missed you, petite fille.” Every time I put her on that train London becomes a desert, but now that she’s here it feels like home again. The commuting back and forth is hard, especially on her, and I’ve made her promise to tell me if it gets too much. I’m not going to screw up her happiness and her studies just because I crave her in my arms.