‘There’s also method C, thank you.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Abstention, for one thing.’
‘You mean me tie a knot in it and you take the veil?’ He waved a well-cushioned hand at the poolside, where sumptuous girls of all sorts flirted with their swains to the music of a live band. ‘Desert island out here, girl. Nearest white man thousands o’ miles away. Just you and me and our duty to Mother England, till my wife comes out next month.’
Francesca was halfway to her feet. She actually yelled out, ‘Your wife!’
‘Haven’t got one. Never did, never will,’ Osnard said, rising with her. ‘So now that obstacle to our happiness has been removed, hell’s to say no?’
They danced very well while she struggled for an answer. She had never supposed that someone so generously built could move so lightly. Or that such small eyes could be so compelling. She had never supposed, if she was honest, that she could be attracted to a man who, to say the least, was several points short of a Greek god.
‘I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you I might hugely prefer someone else, has it?’ she demanded.
‘In Panama? No way, girl. Checked you out. Local lads call you the English iceberg.’
They were dancing very close. It seemed the obvious thing to do.
‘They call me nothing of the sort!’
‘Want a bet?’
They were dancing even closer.
‘What about at home?’ she insisted. ‘How do you know I haven’t got a soulmate in Shropshire? Or London for that matter?’
He was kissing her temple but it could have been any part of her. His hand was perfectly still on her back and her back was bare.
‘Not much good to you out here, girl. Don’t get much satisfaction at five thousand miles, not in my book. Do you?’
It wasn’t that Fran had been persuaded by Osnard’s arguments, she told herself as she contemplated his replete and dozing figure beside her in the bed. Or that he was the best dancer in the world. Or that he made her laugh louder and longer than any man she had known. It was just that she couldn’t imagine herself withstanding him for one more day, let alone three years.
She had arrived in Panama six months ago. In London she had spent her weekends with a frightfully handsome hunting stockbroker named Edgar. Their affair was mutually agreed to have run its course by the time she got her posting. With Edgar, everything was mutually agreed.
But who was Andy?
A believer in solidly-sourced material, Fran had never before slept with anyone she had not researched.
She knew he had been at Eton but only because Miles had told her. Osnard, who appeared to hate his old school, referred to it only as ‘the nick’ or ‘Slough Grammar’, and otherwise disdained all reference to his education. His intellect was widely based but arbitrary, as you would expect from someone whose school career had been abruptly curtailed. When he was drunk, he was fond of quoting Pasteur: ‘chance favours only the prepared mind.’
He was rich or, if he wasn’t, he was spendthrift or extremely generous. Almost every pocket of his expensive locally-made suits – trust Andy to find himself the best tailor in town as soon as he arrived – seemed to be stuffed with twenty- and fifty-dollar bills. But when she pointed this out to him, he shrugged and told her it came with the job. If he took her to dinner or they stole a secret weekend in the country, he spent money like water.
He had owned a greyhound and raced it at the White City until – in his words – a bunch o’ the boys invited him to take his doggie somewhere else. An ambitious project to open a go-karting stadium in Oman had met with similar frustrations. He had run a silver stall in Shepherd Market. None of these interludes could have lasted long, for he was only twenty-seven.
Of his parentage he declined to say anything at all, maintaining that he owed his immense charm and fortune to a distant aunt. He never referred to his previous conquests, though she had excellent reason to believe they were many and varied. True to his promise of omerta he never made the smallest claim on her in public, a thing she found arousing: to be one minute at the highest pitch of ecstasy in his extremely capable arms, the next sitting primly opposite him at a Chancery meeting and behaving as if they barely recognised each other.