One day when Sam was up in the tower room, working, Rhys invited Elizabeth to lunch. She took him to the Red Lion and watched him shoot darts with the men at the bar. Elizabeth marveled at how much at home Rhys was. He seemed to fit in anywhere. She had heard a Spanish expression that she had never understood, but she did now as she watched Rhys. He’s a man easy in his skin.
They sat at a small corner table with a red-andwhite tablecloth, and had shepherd’s pie and ale, and they talked. Rhys asked her about school.
“It’s really not too bad,” Elizabeth confessed. “I’m learning how little I know.”
Rhys smiled. “Very few people get that far. You finish in June, don’t you?”
Elizabeth wondered how he had known. “Yes.”
“Do you know what you want to do after that?”
It was the question she had been asking herself. “No. Not really.”
“Interested in getting married?”
For one quick instant her heart missed a beat. Then she realized that it was a general question. “I haven’t found anyone yet” She thought of Mlle. Harriot and the cozy dinners in front of the fireplace and the snow falling, and she laughed aloud.
“Secret?” Rhys asked.
“Secret.” She wished she could share it with him, but she did not know him well enough. The truth was, Elizabeth realized, that she did not know Rhys at all. He was a charming, handsome stranger who had once taken pity on her and flown her to Paris for a birthday dinner. She knew that he was brilliant in business and that her father depended on him. But she knew nothing about his personal life, or what he was really like. Watching him, Elizabeth had the feeling that he was a many-layered man, that the emotions he showed were to conceal the emotions he felt, and Elizabeth wondered if anyone really knew him.
It was Rhys Williams who was responsible for Elizabeth’s losing her virginity.
The idea of going to bed with a man had become more and more appealing to Elizabeth. Part of it was the strong physical urge that sometimes caught her unaware and gripped her in waves of frustration, an urgent physical ache that would not leave. But there was also a strong curiosity, the need to know what it was like. She could not go to bed with just anyone, of course. He had to be someone special, someone she could cherish, someone who would cherish her.
On a Saturday night Elizabeth’s father gave a gala at the villa.
“Put on your most beautiful dress,” Rhys told Elizabeth. “I want to show you off to everyone.”
Thrilled, Elizabeth had taken it for granted that she would be Rhys’s date. When Rhys arrived, he had with him a beautiful blond Italian princess. Elizabeth felt so outraged and betrayed that at midnight she left the party and went to bed with a bearded drunken Russian painter named Vassilov.
The entire, brief affair was a disaster. Elizabeth was so nervous and Vassilov was so drunk that it seemed to Elizabeth that there was no beginning, middle or end. The foreplay consisted of Vassilov pulling down his pants and flopping onto the bed. At that point Elizabeth was tempted to flee but she was determined to punish Rhys for his perfidy. She got undressed and crawled into bed. A moment later, with no warning, Vassilov was entering her. It was a strange sensation. It was not unpleasant, but neither did the earth shake. She felt Vassilov’s body give a quick shudder, and a moment later he was snoring. Elizabeth lay there filled with self-disgust. It was hard to believe that all the songs and books and poems were about this. She thought of Rhys, and she wanted to weep. Quietly, Elizabeth put on her clothes and went home. When the painter telephoned her the next morning, Elizabeth had the housekeeper tell him that she was not in. The following day Elizabeth returned to school
She flew back in the company jet with her father and Rhys. The plane, which had been built to carry a hundred passengers, had been converted into a luxury ship. It had two large, beautifully docorated bedrooms in the rear, with full bathrooms, a comfortable office, a sitting room amidship, with paintings, and an elaborately equipped galley up front. Elizabeth thought of it as her father’s magic carpet.