Living Two Lives - Book 25
Copyright© 2024 by Gruinard
Chapter 5
Coming of Age Sex Story: Chapter 5 - The end of the journey. These last 18 chapters cover the summer after graduation as the three of them prepare for starting their new jobs.
Caution: This Coming of Age Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Fa/Fa Consensual BiSexual Heterosexual Fiction Rags To Riches DomSub MaleDom FemaleDom Light Bond Spanking White Male White Female Indian Female Anal Sex Analingus Cream Pie Exhibitionism Facial Masturbation Oral Sex Safe Sex Sex Toys Menstrual Play
The two weeks of quietness dissipated after the weekend. On the Monday morning Andrew received notification that there was a place on the Territorial Army Commissioning Course at Sandhurst, starting on Monday August 3rd. That was just three weeks away. He needed to be at the Royal Military Academy on the Sunday afternoon if he accepted the place. Olivia was coming over to stay at the beginning of August, so that very week, and both her and Suzanne were going to be continuing to work on getting their business up and running. Ara would spend hours reading current articles and newspapers as well as digging out papers from the past decades. The two of them were focussing on their careers and so Andrew accepted the place.
That was the serious item out of the way. What that left him with was an overexcited model arriving in London on the 13th of July in preparation for their fancy date at the French Embassy. This did leave him with the dilemma of whether to tell her about Ara and Suzanne.
“I really like Heloise but I suppose my concern is that at the same time I don’t know her. I don’t know how discreet she will be. Am I being too cautious?”
“You once mentioned that she loved you but in a, what did you call it, it wasn’t familial, you called it non-sexual. I always meant to ask you what that meant but I got distracted.”
Andrew sighed, this was going to be complicated.
“I was told that she loved me, for a lot of the same reasons as you two. I was nice to her, liked her for who she was as a person not for her fame. I was the safe guy again, a role I have played many times. So I don’t know that she loves me so much as the idea of me. But she has told me she loves me several times. Not threatened by her fame, helped her expand her career, like a said, the safe guy. Plus other than the first couple of days after we met we never had sex.”
“Really?”
Suzanne sounded skeptical.
“You have seen her, she is thin hipped. How to say this, she found me uncomfortable.”
“Oh.”
“But many times when we worked together she would stay with me at my hotel. That is what I meant when I said it wasn’t familial. Normally we would sleep together naked in the bed. I would spoon up against her and normally was attempting to stab her in the bum in the morning. We were close enough and had been naked so many times together when working that it wasn’t a big deal.
“Now I have no idea whether she expects the same thing on this trip and I could be full of myself, but I figured we needed to talk about this. It is easy to tell her that we can’t do that, I have met someone. But the truth is I have met more than one someone. I am caught between being private and wanting to be truthful with her about the two of you.”
He shrugged.
“Is she someone that you are going to keep in touch with going forward?”
“Yes, I consider her a friend. We lead very different lives but we are good friends, and we work together all the time.”
“Well there is your answer. Let’s meet her somewhere on Monday and do the whole ‘we are a three’ explanation and then go for dinner. I do think that meeting us is enough this trip, I would not invite her back to the house. How does that sound?”
They had a plan. They ended up meeting Heloise in Green Park not far from where she was staying at The Berkeley Hotel and convenient for them from the house. Heloise could not have been more relaxed about the three of them. She smiled, hugged Suzanne and Ara and moved on. Her only comment was almost wistful.
“Andrew is a good man. You all look so happy so I am happy for the three of you.”
And that was it. Heloise had a hat and sunglasses on and Andrew had his hat as usual but the four of them did rather stand out as they walked. Heloise shared something notable while they walked.
“I was supposed to stay with Abi last weekend but I have gotten tired of her endless sniping, especially about you. I don’t know what you did to that woman but she is tiresome. It was if I couldn’t be her friend and your friend at the same time, so I decided not to go and stay. A last minute assignment was a convenient white lie. I don’t understand why she is so negative about you. I thought she stopped going out with you because she was seeing someone else?”
Andrew nodded at Heloise’s statement.
“It doesn’t make any sense.”
Abi and Andrew in a nutshell.
“Anyway, I will see if she calms down. Now let’s talk about tomorrow. How formal are you going to be?”
Andrew looked surprised.
“Formal?”
“Are you planning on wearing your kilt?”
“Oh, I wasn’t planning on wearing it, no.”
“Okay, I thought I would check. It is in the afternoon so it is smart but it is not formal.”
Andrew managed not to say ‘phew’.
“Hermès booked us into The Berkeley thinking they were being smart, it is across the road from the Embassy. But the Reception is at the Ambassador’s Residence not the Embassy.”
“Which is where?”
Heloise produced a beautifully engraved invitation from her bag.
“Kensington Palace Gardens. Do you know where that is?”
They all knew the smart-arse answer but Andrew didn’t specifically know. Ara was the one who actually knew where it was.
“It is a street of large mansions just past Kensington Palace. The Palace is at the west side of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. That street is the first street beyond it.”
“So it is not too far away.”
“Andrew, I am not walking miles in high heels. We will order a taxi, okay?”
He refrained from ‘yes dear’ but it was close.
“Is it a big affair? I know it is your National Day but is going to be thirty people there and we are really going to stand out, or is it a thousand people and we will still stand out for being so tall.”
Heloise laughed.
“Do your dress shoes have a heel?”
Andrew didn’t think he had ever been asked if his shoes had a heel before.
“Just a standard dress shoe, whatever that is, half an inch, an inch, I have no idea. Why?”
“My shoes have a 10 centimetre heel, so you are right, we are going to stand out, unless they have invited the basketball team.”
Two 6’6” twenty year olds, at the French Embassy Bastille Day Reception. Bloody hell were they going to stand out.
“I think there are 750 people invited to the Reception, close to that.”
Shit, this was a bigger thing than Andrew had thought.
“So you know where you are going? Okay then that is all the details dealt with. Now let’s get onto the important stuff. Tell me all about the three of you. Are you really going to try and live this way?”
“Yes we are. It is very unusual, and we know that we will have a lot of issues to navigate and deal with, but I have never been happier, we have never been happier. I need this and the last four months have been wonderful.”
“Suze is right. We are being greedy, we are trying to have it all.”
“What a great way to put it. You want to have it all. Did you both meet Andrew at Cambridge?”
And they were off, dinner passed as the three of them chatted away, with an occasional comment from Andrew. Suzanne went all the way back to when they first met, tutoring, their first kiss, the whole lot. Ara had Heloise in tears of laughter when she described the cup of coffee with the schoolboy. Heloise shared the initial meeting with him, her conversations with Manon in the days before their meeting, her initial reluctance to go out.
“But then Manon showed me a picture of Andrew standing with her and her friend, er, I forget her name.”
“Yasmine.”
“That’s it, Yasmine. The three of them were standing with Edinburgh Castle in the background.”
Suzanne smiled at the memory.
“I took that photograph.”
“You did? You met Manon in Edinburgh?”
“They were there for three days and Andrew invited me along so that Manon could speak French for part of the day. At the time Andrew’s French was minimal, whereas I took French at school. So yes I spent the day with her and I took that photo.”
“It was that photo that convinced me to go out with him, at least to meet after the show and go on a date. Manon and I stood in front of a mirror and I saw how tall she was compared to me and then looked at the photo and Andrew was taller. But the best thing that Manon did, or didn’t do, was tell Andrew anything about me. He was endearingly clueless about me; he asked about life as a model but he never once asked me if I was famous. He was more impressed by my grandfather.”
“Your grandfather?”
“Marshal Leclerc, who as General Leclerc led the troops who liberated Paris from the Nazis.”
“That is amazing. A real life hero in the family. Has Andrew met him?”
“No, I never met him either. He was killed in a plane crash just after the war.”
“Oh, I am so sorry.”
“Thank you but like I said I never met him. But that first night Andrew was charming. He can be confident without being pushy, and I liked that. And allowing me to be anonymous, just a tall thin woman rather than Heloise the model, well Manon was a genius. I remember we walked through the Tuileries that night after dinner, it must have been quite late and people were staring at me. Not many, and nobody came up or said anything but Andrew didn’t care.”
“With your heels on we were both nearly two metres. We did stand out.”
Just like they were going to stand out the following afternoon. Heloise hugged Ara and Suzanne before she left in her taxi.
“I will see you both tomorrow evening after the Reception. I will tell you how Andrew charmed all the French maidens. And maids.”
Andrew shook his head as they walked back up to the house.
“She seems so normal.”
“I know. She is a really nice person. I am sure she must have a screaming diva side to her but I have never seen it. When we work together we spend the time trying to make the other person laugh, often with very inappropriate commentary. Half the time it doesn’t feel like work. You sat and watched all the commercials with Nikki and Fran, and just this weekend with Maggie and Tony, you have seen the difference.”
“Why do you think that is? What did you do that first night that meant she let her guard down?”
“That is the thing I didn’t do anything different. Pedro and I had arrived the night before and we went out for some drinks, scoped out a few bars and ended up talking to a couple of Norwegian women. And it was light and charming but nothing happened. The next night we were out with Manon and she introduced Heloise to me and Margaux to Pedro. And we clicked. Now Margaux and Pedro spent the next 48 hours in bed fucking themselves silly and he never saw her again and I am still good friends with Heloise. And we only ever fucked twice.
“Now for all I know the Norwegian woman I was chatting up is the most famous actress in Norway, I would have no way of knowing. Maybe she is sitting in Oslo remembering the idiotic Scotsman that didn’t have a clue about her. Some of these things you just have to accept as random.”
“Is it really that simple, and utterly random?”
“Yes. The first time I went to a night club in Cambridge, Tuesday night of Fresher’s Week, I ended up helping an Art College student back to her dorm. She was as tall as Heloise, and drunk off her head. But we had nothing in common and it never went anywhere. Fast forward five months and one of the 4th year students that I ended up modelling for saw me at the pool. The tall woman was used as an intermediary and I was asked to model. I initially said no, but something didn’t sit right and I ended up saying yes. And so when Heloise asked if I modelled I was able to say yes. I am going to the reception tomorrow because I helped a drunk art student get back to her dorm, I changed my mind about modelling, Pedro’s father got promoted to Madrid and so we couldn’t go to Ferrol, any one of ten or twenty little things. And even if all that happened Heloise still had to like me, in the way the Norwegian woman didn’t. I did not have to model, either in Cambridge or in Paris, but I remember feeling that it was the right thing to do in Cambridge and standing in Hermès’ office in Paris thinking ‘why not?’. Life is full of these moments.”
Andrew was walking into a house with two beautiful women. The three of them were the product of hundreds, thousands, of these moments. They too had let their guards down. And they were trying to take a path that was never going to be easy.
Andrew was fussed over the next day. When they all returned from the pool Suzanne and Ara flitted about making sure that he was immaculate for the Reception. Andrew had seen Sergeant Majors in the Army who weren’t as fussy about his shoes as they were. But eventually he was deemed to be ready and with hugs and kisses he was let out. Andrew would see them both in the Bar at The Berkeley at 6.30, unless the Reception wrapped up earlier than they thought, at which point he would call for them to come over sooner. It was only a half mile walk but he cabbed over to avoid getting hot and sticky in the summer heat.
Heloise did not keep Andrew waiting long but she arrived in the lobby with a man he had met once before, although only briefly. It was at that moment that Andrew discovered that the Artistic Director of Hermès was also the Chairman of the company, and was the great, great, grandson of the founder of the company. When Andrew thought about the initial meeting with him later, he replayed the number of greats and there might have been another great in there, but regardless he was a descendent of the founder. Andrew had met him in Beatrice’s office in his role as Artistic Director, he was her boss. It was going to be him and Heloise that were opening the store the following day, which was why he was in town. Fortunately the taxi ride over to the Ambassador’s Residence only took a few minutes so the small talk was minimal. Other than finding out that his wife was Greek nothing of consequence was talked about.
Things changed when they got to the street though. There was a line of vehicles waiting to turn into the street, being stopped and checked by the police. They showed their invitations and finally got through but it seemed unusual. The reason for the police presence that day became obvious a short time later but there was no indication as they turned onto the street. They edged forward and were deposited outside the residence, an imposing mansion in a street of imposing mansions. Trying, and probably failing, not to gawk like some gauche country cousin Andrew followed the Dumas’ and Heloise into the Residence. He could tell the Ambassador wanted to spend more time talking to Heloise but the receiving line stretched behind them so they escaped into the garden.
It was like being with Helena at the May Ball all over again. Heloise was charming and funny and talked effortlessly to everyone that they met. Andrew made some small conversation but Heloise was the celebrity, at a time when it was much less ubiquitous. The guests seemed to be split two thirds British, one third French, from his listening to the language round about them. The reason for the police presence at the end of the street became apparent in two stages. First, Andrew recognised a politician across the garden, although he couldn’t remember the man’s name. With the threat of the IRA ever present it made more sense.
Andrew had never been to an event like this before, so he had no frame of reference, but it seemed that everyone sort of constantly mingled. Now he and Heloise stood out, towering over nearly all of the people. She was the tallest woman there by a considerable margin and he was one of the two tallest men. So she was noticeable, they were he supposed, and people came over and greeted her. So they weren’t mingling around, people could easily see them and if they wanted to talk to Heloise then it was easy to wander over. So Andrew was silently processing all this while at the same time trying to be polite and social, without really caring about any of the people that he was meeting. He really was the world’s worst networker! But then things started to get more interesting, as Andrew started to get a little more background on some of the attendees, from a politician’s wife. This was the third politician’s wife that Andrew had met and spoken to and in all three cases he found them easier to speak to than their husbands. He had met Jean Wylie at Jim and Freya’s house that memorable Hogmanay and although he got on really well with Norman Wylie, but there was something irreverent and mischievous about Jean that always made him smile. Edith Rifkind, Andrew also met at that same party, and had spent a lot of time in her company over the last three years. She was an astute but kind lady that had helped him immeasurably at several events. Now Andrew met Christina Maude, the wife of Francis Maude, who was talking to Mr. Dumas. They got past the introductions and pleasantries.
“What brings you to this event today, do you have a connection with France?”
Andrew indicated Heloise.
“I am a guest of Ms. de Hauteclocque. She is visiting London to open a new Hermès store tomorrow.”
“Oh, I see. Francis is talking to Mr. Dumas. I presume he is in London for the same occasion.”
Andrew nodded.
“Yes he is.”
“How do you know Ms. de Hauteclocque? I understand she is very famous in France. Mr. Dumas described her as the most famous model in France.”
Andrew nodded again.
“Yes she is. We have a mutual friend who works for Hermès, I met Heloise through her. She likes it when I accompany her as it means she can wear heels.”
“The two of you do rather stand out, Ms. de Hauteclocque especially. She must be 6’5” in these heels at least.”
“If you don’t mind me asking what is your connection to today’s festivities?”
“Francis is a junior minister in the Government, an Under-Secretary of State at Trade and Industry. He is here in an official capacity. This is one of the events that I am happy to accompany him to, the food is so much better than is usually served at these events.”
“I hadn’t thought about it but of course this is an official event, so it is hardly surprising that there is a minister in attendance.”
“There are three here, the Foreign Office, Trade and Industry, and Defence have all sent ministers.”
Andrew wasn’t sure what to say to that, he was starting to feel like at the Hogmanay party, or the wedding.
“If you will pardon my mentioning it, you seem ill at ease.”
Busted.
“You are correct, when I am in a new environment I tend to retreat into my shell. I remember the maxim of two ears and one mouth. My apologies.”
Christina Maude smiled at the way he characterised it.
“I understand, I have been at far too many events where it seems like it is the other way round. When you are not escorting famous models what do you do?”
“I just graduated university, I join the Civil Service at the start of October.”
“Andrew!”
He turned at sound of his name in a posh accent.
“Your Grace, how lovely to see you again. Allow me to introduce Mrs. Christina Maude, her Grace the Duchess of Roxburghe.”
Andrew didn’t know whether Maude was more surprised at meeting the Duchess or the fact that he apparently knew her.
“How lovely to meet you Mrs. Maude. Andrew, you are so easy to spot in a crowd, and I can guess who you are escorting this afternoon.”
The Duchess was chirping away happily. Heloise elegantly untangled herself from a conversation and joined him.
“You are right. This is Ms. Heloise de Hauteclocque. Heloise, this is Her Grace the Duchess of Roxburghe.”
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