‘I’ve decided to stay with my friend in town on the weekends,’ Libby explained to the assembled company at Willoughby Square. ‘Now that it’s summer, there’s so many invites; picnics and parties and dances, and it’s such fun to get ready then go home with one’s chums isn’t it?’
‘I would never have dreamt of going out without my dear Arthur.’ Millicent quivered magnificently at the head of the breakfast table. ‘Certainly I wouldn’t have been gallivanting to all hours as if I were still unwed.’
Libby couldn’t imagine that Millicent had ever once gallivanted. She wasn’t the gallivanting sort. ‘Freddy’s in Spain,’ she said evenly. ‘Besides, it’s the nineteen thirties. Times have changed.’
If possible, Potts, hardly a paragon of virtue himself, was even more disapproving than Millicent. ‘This will not end well, sweetling,’ he’d warned later that same Friday afternoon when Libby dashed back to Willoughby Square for long enough to snatch up her small weekend case.
‘Oh, Potts, I don’t know what you mean,’ Libby said, as she primped her hair in front of the mottled hall mirror. ‘Or are you simply passing on a message from your spirit guides?’
‘I see things,’ Potts said, coming up behind her. He wasn’t drunk, for once, but so pale and trembling that he did rather look like a ghostly apparition in the glass and Libby couldn’t help but tremble too. ‘I see angels on your shoulder, Elizabeth.’
‘Angels? That’s a good thing, surely?’ Libby insisted. ‘Angels are on the side of right.’
Potts shook his head, assumed a pained expression, even when Libby stuffed a half crown in his shirt pocket because she wanted to be gone. Didn’t want doubt and uncertainty dogging her when she was so happy, already hoarding the forty-eight hours she’d spend with Hugo.
And when she walked through the door of the flat, Hugo was waiting for her. How she lived for the smile that slowly crept over his face as he got up from the chair where he sat and walked over to her. As he came closer, the early evening sun backlit him so he rather looked like an angel himself.
‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said, taking her case so he could place it on the floor and pull her into his arms. ‘I always forget how beautiful you are. Then each week you take my breath away all over again.’
‘I’m many things, beautiful isn’t one of them,’ Libby scoffed because certainly no casting agent or director had ever thought so. At best, she’d got ‘pretty’ in an offhand voice.
Hugo cupped her face in his hands, though Libby had learned by now to ward him off until she’d checked he hadn’t been up to his elbows in a car’s innards and had missed a streak of grease or oil when he’d washed afterwards. ‘Quite beautiful,’ he declared. ‘All of you. Every single inch of you.’
Hugo was already unhooking her dress, kissing the hollows and dips of her collarbones, the curve of her breasts. Dropping to his knees to pull the material free of her hips as if Libby were some sort of goddess.
Then he slipped down her knickers so he could worship her there and it was only when he tumbled her down on to the floor, right by the front door, that Libby remembered that she wasn’t some divine being but made of flesh and heated blood and she could kiss Hugo back. Arched back from his insistent body so she could unbutton his trousers, take him in her hands because much as she loved him, she loved to see him truly come apart even more.
He was magnificent when he was inside her, rearing back, the muscles in his arms taut, a slick of dark hair falling into his face. His eyes clouded, jaw clenched, his lips curled back and still he managed to say it even as his thrusts became more brutal, more desperate. ‘I love you. I love you. I love you.’
It should have come as no surprise that a man as stiff and as starched as Hugo would become so fierce, so passionate, so out of control once he’d loosened his collar, taken off his tie, unbuttoned. Libby had wanted to know what was beneath the prim and proper face that he showed to the rest of the world and it was this man, his eyes dark with wicked promise, the mouth, that did such wonderful things to her, curved in a smile. This man who touched her skin, her breasts, the secret place between her thighs with a knowing, tormenting ease. This man proud and naked as he lay in bed next to her, the curtains still pulled back so they could see the sun set in a glorious sky streaked pink and orange. This man who, once again, said, ‘I do love you, Libby.’
Libby smiled. ‘There’s nowhere else I’d rather be than right here,’ she murmured as she settled back in his arms.
‘You don’t love me too?’ Hugo asked casually, though Libby could feel the tension thrum through him.
‘When I tell a man I love him, then it’s guaranteed that I won’t see him for dust.’ There was little point in prevaricating. Hugo already knew that Libby’s past was as chequered as a draughtboard.
Hugo stroked a finger down her profile, her chin, neck, between her breasts. ‘I’m not like the other men,’ he said as if he were making Libby a solemn promise.
‘And that’s why I love being with you,’ was the best she could offer him, until she was absolutely certain of his heart, his intentions.
‘We should be together. Always,’ he told her.
‘Always lasts for ever,’ Libby said carefully because those other men had talked of always too and it turned out that always never lasted that long. ‘You might grow tired of me halfway through for ever.’
‘That’s not possible. I could never have enough time with you.’ Hugo pressed his mouth to the line of freckles that adorned the underside of her left breast and though Libby could have sworn she was spent, her nipples hardened, her insides turned liquid and molten. ‘These weekends hidden away as if we should be ashamed; I want to spend every day with you. Wake up with you, come home to you.’
‘You do?’ Libby couldn’t think of what she’d done to inspire such feelings but she hoped, how she hoped, that Hugo would feel this way for a little longer. Oh, she wasn’t ready for this to end. ‘It would be nice to have someone who wanted to come home to me.’
‘I was hoping for better than nice.’
‘Wonderful, then,’ Libby amended. ‘To have you thinking about me all day as you were tinkering about with your cars, then coming home to me every evening. What a lovely life that would be.’
Considering all those years on the stage, all those parties, nightclubs, romantic intrigues, it should have sounded a boring way to end up; the little woman waiting for her man to come home, but it didn’t. It sounded heavenly.
Hugo rolled over, presenting Libby with the long line of his back as he reached for his jacket, which had been tossed on the floor. Libby marvelled at how at ease he was now in his own skin, a throaty rumble coming from him as she pressed a finger to the dimple at the base of his spine, because she was more than ready to go again.
Hugo returned with his cigarette case and lighter and Libby hoped that they were finished with talking about a future so rosy, so golden that it was impossible.
‘It’s easy enough if you’re the King of England, I suppose,’ Hugo said as Libby took the cigarette he was offering.
‘What is?’ Libby asked.
‘Obtaining a divorce for that woman of his. Wallis Simpson.’
There hadn’t been anything in the papers about Wallis Simpson for weeks and so if she’d stopped to think about it then Libby supposed that her affair with the King had died a death. It would have to. ‘He could never marry her,’ she said.
Hugo blew out a thin plume of smoke ruminatively. ‘Why? Because she’s been divorced?’
‘That, and she’s an American!’ It was clear that Hugo had no interest in ravishing her for the time being so Libby sat up and tucked a pillow behind her, drew the sheet up to cover her breasts, the scar that Hugo always avoided, no matter how thorough his attentions to the rest of her body. ‘You say that it’s easy for him, but he’s the King and yet he can’t get married to the woman he loves.’
‘Tell that to Henry the eighth,’ Hugo said with a snort.
‘Isn’t it precisely because of Henry the eighth that they don’t let today’s kings run about willy-nilly doing whatever they please?’
‘Then I’m glad I’m not the King and that I can get married to the woman I love.’ Hugo took Libby’s hand, his finger worrying at the ring that Freddy had placed there. ‘Not right away, you understand. After my divorce is granted. Do you think your Freddy would put up a fight when you ask him for a divorce?’
‘Oh, please, let’s not talk about this, about divorces, about Freddy and your Pamela,’ Libby begged. ‘It gives me such a horrible, gloomy feeling.’
‘If we don’t talk about it now, then when? I love you. Do you love me too?’
Libby couldn’t stall any longer. ‘Don’t be silly. Of course I love you!’ She must have said ‘I love you’ hundreds of times but now she tried to convey the true depth, the heft of the words, in the tone of her voice. ‘All I want is to be loved, to have someone who loves me, who makes me happy.’
‘You do realise that it’s not quite as simple as that,’ Hugo said, and he tried to settle Libby back into his arms but she wouldn’t go.
Love was never simple for Libby – but for everyone else love was an absolute breeze.
‘I didn’t mean to upset you, darling. Don’t look so sad.’ Hugo kissed one of the downturned corners of her mouth. ‘It’s just that once the judge in his infinite wisdom allows us to walk away from the two people who wished they’d never married us in the first place, we can’t see each other for six months.’
‘Six months?’ Libby repeated incredulously. ‘What business is it of theirs?’
‘Six months when we can’t have any contact until our divorces have been finalised. The King’s Proctor’s office employs detectives to ensure we’re obeying their ridiculous rules, though I’m damned if I can see what difference it makes.’ Hugo viciously stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on the nightstand. It was one of the reasons why Libby hated it when they talked about his divorce – it made him so angry. Seething with the injustice of it all. ‘But it needn’t be so bad. We can write to each other. Talk on the telephone.’
‘I’m not on the telephone,’ Libby reminded him and she thought about how it would be not to see Hugo for six months when she’d seen him once a week since February. More than once a week. Being with him had given her life, which always felt so transient, new purpose. Given her something to look forward to, to get her through the week. And now there was this Friday night to Sunday afternoon when he made her heart stop hurting and taught her body how to sing again.
It this wasn’t love, then Libby didn’t know what was.
‘We’ll have to put you on the telephone then,’ Hugo said. He was so determined now his affections had been declared that Libby let herself be cheered up.
‘You really are the sweetest man.’ She curled herself around him and Hugo smiled as if just her touch was enough to make him happy. ‘But we’re not on the electric at Willoughby Square and surely you can’t have a telephone without electricity. Besides, Millicent might just explode if she found out that my fancy man was going to connect us to the local exchange.’
‘More than just your fancy man, Libby. At least, I hope I’m more than that,’ he said quietly, leaning down to kiss the top of her head.
‘Much more than that,’ Libby said. ‘But I could just be your fancy woman. Afterwards, we don’t have to get married. We could be together and what we are, husband and wife, or simply lovers, well, it’s nobody’s affair but ours.’
It was when she expected something from her men, made what they called ‘demands’ on them, wanted an indication that she was more than just an amusing diversion, that their so-called love inevitably turned sour.
Libby realised her mistake immediately for Hugo took his hands off her. ‘I’m not the sort of man to take advantage of a woman,’ he said in the same acid-drop voice that she remembered all too clearly from that first weekend in Brighton. ‘Certainly not the woman I’m in love with. I’d marry you tomorrow if the law would have it.’
‘It’s just a piece of paper. It doesn’t mean anything. We both know that. I want to be with you, that’s enough, surely?’
Her marriage had barely lasted two months. It hadn’t made Freddy love her more. In truth, it had made him restless and desperate to be free once he was tied to her by dry words recited in a town hall, their names scratched on official documents.
So, Libby really didn’t need to be married again. It was tempting fate.
‘You’re not still in love with your Freddy?’ Hugo asked.
‘He was never my Freddy.’ Libby struggled upright, accidentally digging Hugo in the ribs with her elbow so he hissed in pain. ‘Darling, please, what we have is so precious, more than I ever dared hope I’d have again, let’s be content with that. For the time being, at least.’
Then she leaned over and peppered his face with kisses until she’d wiped away his mulish expression and he was laughing at her onslaught.
‘This is no way to win an argument,’ he protested, trying to hold Libby back as she climbed astride him.
‘I’m sick of talking about it,’ she said firmly as she ground her hips against his, once, twice, three times and was rewarded by his eyes darkening and the tiny groan he gave, before he rose up with a dramatic roar to rival any villain’s, which made Libby shriek in turn, and rolled them so she was underneath and he was on top, plucking the sheet away from her, to drive her quite mad with his mouth and fingers.