into the crook of his arm.
‘Rory,’ I said a few minutes later, ‘I know it’s a terrible thing to say at a time like this, but I’m starving.’
‘So am I,’ he said.
‘Shall we go out?’
‘No, I might want you between courses, which wouldn’t do in a restaurant. I’ll send down for something.’
Later, as he was opening a bottle of champagne, he said, ‘Darling, do you mind awfully if we don’t live in Irasa any more?’
‘Do I mind?’ I said incredulously, ‘of course I don’t.’
‘I’m bored with painting sheep and rocks,’ he said. ‘I want to paint you in the sun and give you half a dozen babies to look after to stop you having thoughts about pushing off and leaving me any more.’
‘But you love Irasa.’
‘It’s lost its charms,’ said Rory. ‘I don’t want you within a million miles of Finn Maclean for a start and Marina’s a bloody troublemaker, and I’ve had enough of my mother and Buster for a few years, and lastly my new father is still there — house guestating.’
‘What does he find to do all day?’ I said. ‘Is he still in love with Buster?’
‘Yes. They’re both addicted to whisky and highly-coloured reminiscences, but Alexei now seems to have other fish to fry. In the old days when Marina wanted to bug me she always used to say what she wanted was an older man. Well, Hamish was a bit too old, but Alexei looks a bit like me, and when I left he was making a marvellous job comforting her in her bereavement.’
‘My goodness,’ I said, staggered, ‘how extraordinary. You don’t mean…?’
‘Well, not yet. Marina fancies herself in black far too much to give it up for at least a year, but I think now that she’s so rich, and Alexei is so poor, it’s very much on the cards.’
‘You’re not jealous?’ I said anxiously.
‘Not at all.’ He bent over and kissed me. ‘But I really don’t fancy Marina as a stepmother.’
