Embrace Me Read Free Page A

listened to what the local policeman had to say and then told him, ‘I’ll get someone,’ and handed the phone back to James.
    ‘Well, that was lucky, it was my cousin Jerry. He’s only a constable but smart as a whip. He should be here in half an hour or less. He says no one should touch the car and he wants someone to stand guard till he gets here. It can’t be me, I still have a job to do. People depend on their postman.’
    ‘You carry on, Arthur, I’ll get the stable lad to come and stand guard,’ offered James.
    While Arthur pedalled away to return the bicycle to Miss Plumm, James placed his arm round Marguerite’s shoulders and together they walked back to the Range Rover to wait for the stable boy he had called to arrive.
    ‘Do you think someone is lingering in the woods?’ she asked.
    ‘No.’
    ‘And you don’t think we should speculate further?’
    ‘I think we should put it out of our minds. Come to the house for breakfast. I’m famished and I don’t imagine you’ve had anything to eat this morning?’
    ‘No, not yet.’
    While he was calling the cook, Mrs Much, Marguerite studied James. She heard him order breakfast for six to be served at the round table in the oriel window of the great hall.
    He usually ordered meals to be served there, when informality was called for, or in the library where a table was placed in front of the fireplace. The morning-room was another favourite place; the landing at the top of the grand staircase yet another. The dining-room, dominated by a cherrywood table that could seat twenty-eight people or when extended forty, was always resplendent with the family silver and reserved for the evening meal, whether it be James dining on his own, with Angelica and September or a group of friends. It was a family tradition that had not been broken in five hundred years.
    Whenever she contemplated James, Marguerite could not understand why she could not be faithful to him, why she didn’t want him for a husband. She knew he was special: a brilliant mind, a man who wore his heritage quietly and with a style all his own – more casual and bohemian than stuffy and arrogant. His and his sisters’ ways seemed to make them more grand, infinitely more remarkable than their peers. James’s was a grand life lived casually. She marvelled that he, Angelica and September lived in or used every one of Sefton Park’s forty rooms. She adored their flair and panache.
    Very nearly every time they were alone together Marguerite wanted James sexually. Her enchantment with their erotic life never wavered. They had come to accept that theirs was sexual love, rich in lust, governed by a genuine deep feeling for each other that would never happen again for them with other partners. A love that lived and flourished in their erotic souls and could go nowhere else. It was an unfettered emotion undisturbed by the outside world, not even the admiration they felt for each other’s lifestyle and work.
    Jealousy over other lovers was not an issue. If anything, seeing each other with other lovers only excited their passion for each other, fed their lust and triggered their imaginations. The occasional lovers who came between them only made them burn with the heat of renewed desire for each other. They were both content with the erotic life they had together, though this had come sooner to Marguerite than it had to James.
    As he put his phone on the seat of the Range Rover, she slipped her arms around his waist and rubbed herself against him, asking huskily, ‘We’re only four, why did you order for six?’
    ‘Your young lover of last night? The uninvited guest who might appear? You know what our house is like,’ he answered.
    ‘Rick’s fast asleep and he’ll be gone as soon as he wakes.’
    James took her roughly in his arms. His passion for her aroused, he kissed her deeply, nibbled hungrily on her lips and then firmly put her from him and stepped away. Marguerite sensed an unease between them