A Question of Marriage

by Lindsay Armstrong

  To her everlasting gratitude, she managed to stop herself from actually saying it as he put her away from him and steadied her before releasing her.

  ‘Well?’ There was sheer devilry in those dark eyes as he posed the question.

  Aurora breathed deeply and had to suffer the indignity of him restoring some tendrils of hair behind her ears and straightening the collar of her blouse before she could think of a response. Then she could only fall back on the truth. ‘I’m speechless,’ she said huskily and licked her lips.

  He raised an eyebrow at her with a mixture of amusement and mockery. ‘I’ll take it as read, then. And I’ll leave you to—compose yourself.’

  ‘I didn’t necessarily mean I was bowled over or anything…’ she began to protest not quite truthfully, but stopped with her eyes darkening. ‘You’re not still going to lock me in!’

  ‘Oh, yes, I am, sweetheart,’ he said coolly, then looked amused. ‘By the way, there’s an en-suite bathroom through there.’ He pointed. ‘Never let it be said I inconvenienced a guest even if they are burglars or groupies—and I’m now quite sure it was you that dark and stormy night.’ He turned on his heel and walked out and Aurora heard the key turn in the lock before she was able to think of a thing to do.

  ‘I don’t believe this!’ she said through gritted teeth, then sank back onto the bed to drop her face into her hands as she marvelled bitterly on her sheer bad luck and wondered what to do next. Of course, it was obvious, she thought. She had no choice but to come clean, yet it went supremely against the grain to be outwitted by this man and there was no guarantee he wouldn’t insist on reading at least some bits of her diaries…

  Several minutes later she got up and went into the bathroom, where she washed her face and had a drink of water. Then she returned to the bedroom and went straight to the fireplace. The brick came out easily; her diaries were still in the cache. She removed them, put them into the plastic bag from her shoulder bag and tied the fishing line to the bag. She turned off the light and went to the window that was so impossible to climb out of because of the wrought-iron bars—apart from being one floor above the ground.

  Five minutes of silent, intense scrutiny of the shrubbery and surrounds below yielded nothing, no movement at all. Her old bedroom was not directly above any window on the ground floor, so she felt quite safe as she manoeuvred the rubbish bag awkwardly through the bars, lowered it to the ground to be swallowed up amongst some flourishing hydrangea bushes, and threw the line down after it.

  Then she switched on the light again and looked around. Despite the luxuriousness of the bedroom, a thick-pile silvery blue carpet, matching curtains and bed cover, there was only one chair, a wooden antique that matched the marvellous bureau but looked highly uncomfortable.

  She shrugged, slipped her shoes off and retired to Luke Kirwan’s bed, where she propped the pillows up behind her and picked up the book on his bedside table—a murder mystery, as it happened. And she’d finished the first chapter when she heard the key in the lock. She made no move to get up and that was his first sight of her as he came into the room—propped against his pillows, looking gravely at him over the top of his book.

  Inwardly, Luke Kirwan was amused. This girl had enormous nerve if nothing else. Not that she lacked other qualities, he conceded. A delicate figure, unusual beauty—her hair and eyes alone were stunning—a flair for clothes and the kind of joie de vivre that was infectious. The fact remained, he reminded himself, that discreet enquiries downstairs had shed no light on who she was, and the story of coming with someone who’d deserted her for an ex-girlfriend was most likely another invention.

  ‘I do hope you’re comfortable—or, after what passed in here before I locked you in, is that an invitation to join you?’ he said with an undercurrent of sarcasm.

  ‘Not at all.’ Aurora closed the book, got up and slipped on her shoes. She added, as she shook out her beautiful skirt and ran her hands through her hair, ‘It was your idea to lock me in, not mine, so I couldn’t see why I shouldn’t make myself comfortable. How do you do, by the way? I’m Aurora Templeton.’ She held out her hand.

  He crossed the room to take it, and felt it tremble briefly in his. It was the only sign of inner nerves he could detect, however. Her back was as straight as ever, her chin elevated and those stunning green eyes proud.

  ‘Why do I get the feeling this is not to be a—penitent confession—brought on by sober reflection?’ he murmured a little wryly.

  Aurora took her hand back. ‘Because you really have only yourself to blame, Mr Kirwan. You and your secretary, that is. This preoccupation with guarding you from “groupies” is what brought this all about. I find it a little hard to believe that any kind of a real man needs to go to those lengths anyway, but, be that as it may—if I could have got in touch with you by any other means, I would not have had to resort to this.’

  ‘Hang on—resort to robbing me, do you mean?’ he queried quizzically.

  ‘No. Reclaiming my property,’ she stated.

  ‘Really, you’re going to have explain better than that, Aurora Templeton.’ He paused and narrowed his eyes. ‘Why does that name ring a bell?’

  ‘From the number of messages I left on your answering machine that you ignored?’ she suggested with irony. ‘But you also bought this house from my father,’ she explained. ‘This was my bedroom.’

  Luke Kirwan blinked.

  ‘And this,’ Aurora continued, turning towards the fireplace, ‘was my secret cache from the time I discovered it when I was about twelve.’

  He followed her across the room and ducked his head to look into the fireplace. He observed the brick and the empty cavity in the wall, put his hand into it and whistled softly. ‘I see,’ he said as he straightened.

  ‘Good!’ Aurora said briskly. ‘Now, you may or may not have been aware that I was overseas at the time the house was sold—’

  ‘I had no idea Ambrose Templeton had a daughter,’ he said, and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his hands.

  ‘Well, he does,’ she said flatly, ‘and I can prove it. But I didn’t even know the house had been sold until I got home, just a few days before he took off on his round-the-world voyage. And it was only after he’d left that I remembered the cache and something that was very precious to me in it.’

  ‘Why the hell didn’t you just say so?’ Luke Kirwan demanded.

  ‘I would have, if I could have got here first—to make sure no one got to it before I did.’

  ‘What was this precious something?’ he asked with a frown. ‘A heroin haul or the crown jewels?’

  ‘Very funny, Mr Kirwan.’ She eyed him sardonically. ‘No, but precious enough to me. And when I couldn’t get past your secretary, not to mention being treated as if I were a piece of rubbish even after telling her who I was; and when I could never find you home, I remembered I still had a laundry key, and I decided to take matters into my own hands. Don’t you think you might have done the same?’ she asked gently.

  He blinked. ‘So—you didn’t use the front door?’

  ‘I didn’t have a front door key,’ she said simply. ‘I’d left all my other keys with my father. As a teenager, the laundry door was my—’ she grimaced ‘—preferred way of coming home when I was late.’

  He was silent for a long moment, watching her narrowly. Then he said abruptly, ‘Did you know I was supposed to be away that night?’

  Aurora took her time. This was the tricky bit because if she didn’t tread carefully, she could involve Bunny. She frowned at him. ‘Were you? What a pity you weren’t. I was kicking myself for not taking into consideration that you had to be an extraordinarily light sleeper. I swear I didn’t make a sound and, believe me, I’ve had a bit of practice at it, but…’ She shrugged.

  ‘You didn’t make a sound,’ he said slowly. ‘And I came home early because I was ill. I got up to go downstairs to find an aspirin or something when I saw this strange light at the bottom of the stairs.’
<
br />   Aurora smiled suddenly. ‘I haven’t had much luck, have I?’

  He considered, then gestured with his forefinger. ‘There’s still something that doesn’t quite gel, Aurora Templeton. What was it you thought you left behind in that cache that was so precious you couldn’t tell anyone about it? I really think I need to see it,’ he said pensively, ‘before I can believe this story.’

  ‘You can’t because it—they—weren’t there after all. My diaries,’ she said simply.

  ‘Your…diaries?’

  She nodded. ‘My innermost thoughts and secrets that I would hate any strange, prying eyes to see.’

  He took a long moment to think around this, then said with a frown, ‘If they’re not there now, what’s happened to them?’

  ‘I think my father must have removed them,’ she replied. ‘Like any conscientious parent, he probably went through a stage of wondering whether I was on drugs or whatever. I did go through a slightly wild stage,’ she confided, ‘although certainly not that wild. But I’m now faced with the lowering thought that he probably knew about the cache all along. And my guess is that he packed the diaries up and forgot to tell me.’ She sighed ruefully. ‘We had so little time together and he was so excited before he left. He’s sailing round the world single-handed. I don’t know if you knew?’

  ‘I didn’t deal with him personally. Can you check it out with him?’

  ‘Yes. He’s got a satellite telephone on the boat.’

  ‘So that explains that,’ he said slowly. ‘You must have confided some pretty intimate thoughts to your diaries to be so paranoid about getting them back unseen by other eyes?’

  The slightest tinge of pink entered Aurora’s smooth cheeks. ‘Would you like any old stranger reading your diaries?’ she countered, however.

  ‘I don’t keep one, so I don’t know,’ he replied with the glimmer of a smile. ‘What do you do for a living, Miss Templeton?’

  She told him, adding, ‘I also have an afternoon music programme that I compere three times a week. In between times I volunteer my time as a radio operator for the local Coastguard Association. I’m really quite respectable.’

  ‘So you say,’ he commented. ‘But, seeing I don’t know you from a bar of soap and neither does anyone else, apparently, just how did you get into this party?’ he enquired.

  ‘I came with Neil Baker—he’s my programme director and a friend of yours, apparently. It, at the time,’ she confessed with a glint of mischief in her eyes, ‘seemed like divine intervention, when he invited me because he’d broken up with his girlfriend—and I told you the rest of it.’

  ‘Ah, Neil,’ he murmured, ‘yes, he is a friend.’ But he continued to study her thoughtfully and in a slightly nerve-racking way.

  ‘Does that set your mind to rest about me, Mr Kirwan?’ she asked. ‘Look, I apologize. The whole thing was rash and misguided—I’m a little prone to that kind of thing but, I can assure you, your secretary did brush me off like a troublesome if not to say somehow shameful fly; I did leave messages for you that you never responded to and I did call to see you at least five times but you were never home.’

  ‘I’ve been out west a lot lately. So—’ he shrugged ‘—what would you like to do now, Miss Templeton? Go back to the party?’

  He took Aurora by surprise. ‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’ she asked incredulously.

  He eyed her. ‘What more is there to say?’

  ‘You could at least apologize for putting me in this awkward position in the first place!’

  ‘Putting you in an awkward position,’ he marvelled, his dark eyes suddenly full of wicked amusement. ‘You may not recall this, but I did get bitten, scratched and finally knocked out in our first encounter, not to mention made to look a fool.’

  ‘I did not bite you!’ Aurora denied hotly. ‘Nor did I scratch you—I had gloves on and you must have knocked yourself out.’

  He raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘Nevertheless, it was like having an angry kitten, spitting and clawing in my arms. Well,’ he amended, ‘after the first impact of a slim, rather gorgeous little body and, of course—that unique, haunting perfume.’

  This time his dark gaze was pointedly intimate again as it stripped away her outfit and dwelt on the curves of her figure beneath it—any doubts she might have had that he was mentally undressing her were embarrassingly laid to rest by the way her body responded to his scrutiny. She could feel herself growing hot and bothered and more than aware of her fluttering pulses.

  ‘I think I’ll go home now,’ she said unevenly. ‘You didn’t happen to notice whether Neil had surfaced, by any chance? Not that I need him—’ She stopped frustratedly.

  ‘I saw no sign of Neil.’

  She shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter, I can get a cab.’ She picked up her bag.

  ‘Why don’t you stay?’ he suggested. ‘It’s only eleven o’clock. I’m sure the party has a bit of life left in it yet.’

  She returned his dark gaze with as much composure as she could muster. ‘No. No, thank you—’

  ‘We danced well together,’ he said meditatively, then grinned. ‘I gather it was a case of mistaken identity, your dancing with me at all?’

  ‘Yes, it was!’ She eyed him with a mixture of frustration and annoyance. ‘Neil pointed out this man who looked exactly like a bumbling, absent-minded professor to me. It never occurred to me it was you he was pointing to.’

  ‘My apologies,’ he said gravely. ‘I hesitate to point this out to you, but it’s never wise to make snap judgements about people on appearance, although Jack has enough of a sense of humour to see the funny side of it,’ he assured her.

  ‘Blow Jack,’ she retorted bitterly. ‘And I have no intention of dancing with you again, Mr Kirwan, because I’m now in a position to make an informed judgement on that subject. This meek air you’re assuming is entirely false, you’re laughing at me behind it and it doesn’t blind me to the fact that you’re a wolf in sheep’s clothing. You even kissed me without one jot of concern for what my preferences in the matter were!’

  He smiled satanically. ‘Bravo, Aurora—I like that name, by the way. Your preferences, incidentally, didn’t seem to be so contrary to mine,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Oh!’ She ground her teeth. ‘I’m off!’ She picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder.

  ‘Allow me to call a cab for you.’ He reached for the bedside phone and did just that. Then he said, although still looking amused, ‘Please don’t hold this against me but, just to be on the safe side, I’ll come down with you and see you into it.’

  ‘Be my guest,’ she spat at him, ‘but I’m not a burglar or a groupie!’

  ‘Yes, well—’ he sobered, and that tough, dangerous side of him was in evidence for a moment ‘—be that as it may, as you remarked to me, Miss Templeton, and while you may be neither, you do have slightly strange notions about breaking into people’s houses and apportioning the blame.’ He strolled to the door and opened it. ‘After you.’

  And to Aurora’s extreme indignation, he escorted her downstairs and out onto the porch, and he handed her into the waiting taxi—he even paid for it. But his parting shot was the most humiliating.

  ‘I would have a little more faith in human nature, if I were you, Aurora. You may find life a little less dangerous—unless that’s how you get your kicks?’

  She argued the matter out with herself during the short drive home in the cab. She paced up and down her living room for ten intense minutes and even consulted her goldfish on the matter, but nothing could alter the fact that there was no better time to retrieve her diaries than right now, while a noisy, crowded party was still in progress. And nothing could alter her determination not to be bested by Luke Kirwan. With the net result that half an hour later, dressed all in black, she was cautiously making her way down the easement once again.

  The party was audible as she approached the house from the rear. As Luke Kirwan had predicted, it still had plenty of life left in it. Bu
t as she flitted through the garden like a soundless shadow, no one accosted her, no one was about. The only problem was, there was absolutely no sign of a green rubbish bag stuffed full of her diaries in the hydrangeas below her old bedroom window.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘MISS HILLIER, my name is Aurora Templeton,’ she said down the phone the next morning, a Saturday. ‘I would like to speak to Professor Kirwan and, unless you’d like me to come and lie down on the front doorstep and go on a hunger strike, don’t you dare fob me off!’

  ‘That won’t be necessary, Miss Templeton,’ Miss Hillier replied smoothly. ‘Professor Kirwan thought you might like to lunch with him today. Would twelve-thirty be suitable?’

  Aurora ground her teeth as she felt, this time, rather like the fly who’d walked into the spider web. Consequently, she said coolly, ‘One o’clock would suit me better.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Miss Hillier murmured. ‘We’ll see you then.’

  ‘OK,’ she said as she marched out onto the terrace of her old home at five past one, ‘hand them over, Mr Kirwan. My diaries.’

  Luke Kirwan didn’t rise from the cane chair he was lounging in. There was a table for two set for lunch on the terrace and the pool, just beyond, sparkled invitingly beneath a clear blue sky. There was absolutely no sign of a party having been held the night before.

  And he summed Aurora up comprehensively, from her tied-back hair, her yellow blouse and white shorts down to her yellow canvas shoes before he said lazily, ‘Good afternoon, Aurora. Isn’t it a beautiful day? By the way, I was wondering about your legs, but they too are quite stunning.’ His gaze returned to them thoughtfully.

  Aurora clenched her fists, then swallowed several times to calm herself and negate the effect of his gaze on her legs. ‘I didn’t come here to make chit-chat,’ she stated.