Free The Maestro's Mistress by Angela Dracup Page B

session with Monica Heilfrich, Tara’s initial instinct was to refuse his
offer. But as he steered her firmly towards his car parked just a few yards
away she found herself curiously unresisting. She felt drained and weary, in no
mood to fight him for her right to grapple with London’s public transport.
    He started the engine, a
throbbing beast with a roar in its belly and the distinctive whine of precision
engineering in its throat. Tara felt her back pressed against the seat as
Xavier accelerated. She had never realized before that it was perfectly
possible to drive fast in London’s jumble of traffic – as long as you were
prepared to ignore the rights and demands of all the other drivers.
    ‘You are sorry you went along to
that little event?’ he enquired conversationally.
    ‘It was a farce. A disaster,’ she
responded with feeling.
    ‘To be told you could make it
into a civic orchestra – that is a disaster?’
    Tara turned her head to examine
his expression. As she might have foreseen it gave nothing away. ‘As a matter
of fact, yes.’
    He nodded – said nothing.
    ‘Would you have been pleased at
nineteen to have been told you might make it to the rear section of the violins
in a second-rate orchestra – if you practised?’
    ‘I was never a violinist.’
    ‘Hah! Sliding out of the
question.’ She turned to stare out of the window. She felt wretched and bleak.
The master class had not only unnerved her but had dug deep into the rawness of
her grief. It was as though her father had been there with her during those
fateful minutes and she had been powerless to prevent herself letting him down.
    ‘What were you hoping for? To be
told you had a future as a soloist?’ Xavier asked.
    ‘Probably.’ She felt a fresh stab
of pain as the flame of ambitious optimism that had glowed throughout the years
of her childhood was finally snuffed out. ‘Yes, I used to hope for that. That
is what he wanted for me.’
    ‘And were his hopes realistic?’
    ‘You’ve just heard me play. You
should know,’ she responded aggressively.
    ‘I did not hear you as a child. A
great deal could have happened since then.’
    Tara did not reply. She did not
want to talk about it; her childhood potential, the anxiety to match up to her
father’s hopes. She wanted to cry again because she had lost him forever. She
wondered how long it would be before she stopped feeling like this.
    They were out of the city now, on
the carriageway leading to the west-bound motorway. She glanced at Xavier. ‘Why
aren’t we going straight home?’
    ‘I enjoy driving. And you’re not
busy are you?’
    She shrugged. She glanced at the
rev counter. The rpms were up at 400. The car was doing ninety and still
accelerating.
    Her eyes moved to Xavier’s
profile, travelled over the lithe supple body and the slender powerful hands
placed at ten past ten on the small steering wheel. She found that she could
not keep her eyes off him. Against her will she was fascinated. There was
something unfathomable in those steely cold eyes with their deeply cowled lids.
And his face was disturbingly arresting, troubling even. The long carved bones
were those of a medieval knight, the deep forehead reminiscent of the stone
heroes who lay on marble-topped coffins in great cathedrals.
    Something stirred and uncoiled in
her body, something dark and primitive, giving her an uneasy premonition of
some basic and fateful change about to overtake her. Briefly he turned to her,
his lips curved into a smile as though he were relishing a private joke. She did
not smile back.
    They were on the motorway, in the
outside lane. Behind them the trail of cars was rapidly swallowed up in the
disappearing distance.
    ‘It’s illegal,’ Tara breathed,
exhilarated and a little fearful.
    ‘I know all the radar traps. And
no police car could catch us if we really started moving.’
    Tara moulded herself into the
back of her seat and watched the countryside spin past.
    ‘I love