Aston Marlowe
Rajah
CHAPTER ONE
At London's Heathrow Airport, four men and women whose lives were at that moment interrelated — and destined in the span of the next few days to become even more so — stood waiting for the loading announcement over the loudspeakers for BOAC's morning flight to Athens.
Outside, through the glass observation windows, tendrils of soup-like English fog trailed across the pattern of runways. Tall, blonde young Sharon Court watched the gray wisps with apprehensive eyes and clung tightly to the arm of the lean, muscular young man who was her husband, Neal. "Will your plane be able to take off in all that fog darling?" she asked him. "I don't see how it can; you can hardly see anything at all…"
Neal — wearing a heavy tweed overcoat over a conservatively-cut gray business suit that was befitting of his position as a rising executive with the British firm of Greater Continental Packaging, Ltd. — laughed reassuringly and kissed his wife's cheek. "Don't worry, honey," he said. "Everything is done by instruments and radar. The men in the Control Tower have had a lot of practice operating in fog like this."
"I know," Sharon said quietly, "but you know how nervous I am about flying anyway. And with weather conditions like this…"
"You're an old worry-wart," Neal chided gently.
"Well, maybe I am but I love you and I don't want anything to happen to you."
"Nothing's going to happen to me, babydoll," he said. "This is just a simple, routine business trip to Athens. I'll be back in a few days, you know."
"I know, but…"
"No buts, now. You're not going to be fretting about me the whole time you're with Lena Alvaro, are you? I want you to have a good time, honey; after all, Lena is the boss' wife."
"Oh you don't have to worry about me making a good impression," Sharon said with a hint of petulance. "I won't do anything to put you in a bad light."
"Honey, you know I didn't mean anything like that…"
Sharon suddenly felt ashamed at her comments, her inordinate fear of a simple plane flight. She put her arms around her husband and clung to him tightly, kissing him openly, unmindful of the crowd of people waiting to board the aircraft or saying good-bye to friends and relatives.
Oh how she loved him! she thought as she nuzzled his over-coated chest. They had been married almost three years now, but her ardor for the man she had chosen from a long, long list of suitors back in America had not waned in the slightest from their wedding day. This handsome, dark-haired, gray-eyed man, with the smiling mouth and the gentleness of a kindly village doctor, the impetuousness of a small boy, was her whole life and the idea of living without him for even three or four days filled her with unhappiness. From the moment they had been married in a small white church in San Francisco, they had been separated for only a few hours at a time, certainly never more than a single day. And when the opportunity to move to England, in the shape of a lucrative job offer from Greater Continental Packaging, Ltd., had presented itself, she had even flown to the British Isles with Neal to consummate the acceptance of the position with the signing of a two-year contract.
They had lived in London now for the better part of a year, in a small flat in Kensington, and she had been deliriously happy. The English people fascinated her, and she felt at ease around them; she and Neal had made many friends during their stay, and had become very popular in their middle-class social circle. They were an active couple, doing many things together — tennis, swimming, hiking, horseback riding — and they were completely compatible in every way. Their lovemaking, from the very first (Sharon had been a virgin on their wedding night, and Neal had had only a few brief interludes with women of questionable standing), had been tender and gentle, and yet somehow abandoned too. They never ceased to satisfy each other, Sharon thought, and her cheeks reddened slightly as she remembered the feel of Neal's large, rigid penis filling her vagina the night before, the passion with which she had urged him on to greater thrusts deep inside her to bring about the glorious splendor of their eventual and simultaneous orgasms.
Sharon sighed, kissing her husband again, letting herself be warmly cuddled in the fold of his strong arms. No, she needed nothing else from life except this man — and he needed nothing else except her; these next few days, even though they had been promised to be both adventuresome and relaxing by Lena Alvaro, would be empty for Sharon until Neal returned.
She had become good friends with Lena, the wife of Rodney Alvaro, the Vice-President in charge of Sales at Greater Continental and Neal's immediate superior, during the past year. Lena, young and vivacious and beautiful, twenty years her husband's junior, had that kind of magnetism which made you instantly like her. Sharon, who was much quieter, much more conservative, didn't really approve of some of Lena's habits or traits, but she liked the English woman nonetheless.
Two days ago, when Neal had told her he was flying to Athens with Rodney Alvaro on business, the beautiful young wife had experienced a sense of great disappointment at the proposed separation. But then Neal had said that she would not have to be alone during his absence in Greece, that she and Lena could spend the time together at the estate of Mark Marlowe — Marlowe Manor — in Dartmoor. Marlowe, a wealthy young man of aristocratic background and long-time friend of the Alvaros, had invited the two wives — and Neal and Rodney when they returned from Athens — to be his house guests for as long as they cared to stay.
Sharon had met Mark Marlowe on two separate occasions at small cocktail gatherings in the Alvaro home, and had found him a charming, intelligent, attractive man; the invitation had been appealing to her, and later, when she had spoken to Lena and learned the facts surrounding Marlowe Manor, she had readily accepted the gracious proposal.
The ancestral home of the young heir to a vast, hereditary fortune was located in the heart of the eerie, fabled Dartmoor Moors — the home of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous Sherlock Holmes tale. The Hound of the Baskervilles. It was isolated, the nearest neighbor being over four miles away, and while offering that hint of forbidden mystery intimated by its location, it also offered luxury and comfort and relaxation in its stately and baronial rooms and halls. Both attributes appealed to the young wife's nature, and she was looking forward to that afternoon and the drive to Dartmoor with Lena in the Alvaros new Jaguar 4.8 sedan — but she wished that her husband were going to be with them at Marlowe Manor for their entire stay there, and not just on the tag end of it.
Neal Court held his soft warm young wife for a moment longer, then stood her away from him gently and looked into her lovely face. He never tired of looking at her, at the fine, symmetrically formed features, the small pert nose and the wide, guileless blue eyes, the soft round mouth, the long cascading silkenness of her honey blonde hair falling about the shoulders of her plaid raincoat. Her full, firm, voluptuous breasts jutted forth with feminine allure even beneath the heavy garment, and the tight globular roundness of her buttocks were provocatively outlined as she stood in profile. She was a woman in a thousand, a million, he thought possessively; he was a damned lucky man to have a wife like Sharon, very damned lucky.
He chucked her lightly under the chin. "You'll have a wonderful time in Dartmoor, sweetheart," he told her. "But I don't want you going off by yourself on those moors. It can be dangerous out there, without someone along who knows his way around."
"I'll be careful," she promised.
"That's my girl."
"It really is going to be fun," said Sharon, her eyes lighting with renewed excitement, her mind momentarily off the impending flight and separation. "Just think, Neaclass="underline" a real old-English country estate, in the foggy moors! I feel like… well, like Jane Eyre or somebody."