A Question of Marriage

by Lindsay Armstrong

  ‘I…’ She gritted her teeth. ‘I…need to think about it.’ And shrivelled inwardly at such a feeble response.

  He didn’t laugh. He did say, ‘May I come in and have a cup of coffee with you while you do?’ Which was as good as laughing at her, she felt, and he added, ‘Then we could make a decision about lunch.’

  ‘Would that constitute one date or two?’ she asked acidly.

  ‘I might be able to see my way to making it two,’ he replied.

  She eyed him, then shrugged and turned away. He followed her inside via the front patio and through the lounge to the kitchen where she put the kettle on.

  ‘May I?’ he queried.

  ‘May you what?’

  ‘Make the coffee while you have a shower? I’m sure you’ll feel better for it.’

  Aurora looked down at herself. She wore an old pair of khaki shorts with a once-white T-shirt now yellow with age, her knees were dirty and her feet were bare. ‘Can you? Without Miss Hillier to hold your hand?’

  ‘Yep.’ He grinned. ‘If you have a plunger pot and real coffee.’

  Aurora looked heavenwards and produced not only a plunger pot but coffee beans and a grinder. ‘There. The only thing you don’t have to do is go to Arusha to get it.’

  ‘It so happens I’ve been to Arusha,’ he commented.

  ‘So have I.’ Her expression indicated this was no big deal.

  ‘Well, we could swap experiences,’ he suggested comfortably.

  Aurora studied him—he was in the same jeans and grey T-shirt as on that never-to-be-forgotten lunch occasion at her old home. Not quite the corsair, the better-than-any-of-them James Bond or the Mr Darcy she’d first imagined him as, but not because he was any less physically impressive, just better known to her now. Only, she thought gloomily, that made him all the better—or was it worse?

  She shook her head, left the kitchen and went upstairs with no further ado.

  This time she took her time. It was half an hour later when she came back down wearing a straight skirt to just above her ankles, taupe cotton with tiny white dots, and a short white sleeveless top. Flat, strappy sandals completed her outfit and her hair was damp and up in a knot.

  Luke Kirwan rose on her arrival, boiled the kettle, poured the water into the plunger pot and brought a tray on which he had assembled cups, milk and sugar and some biscuits into the lounge. What he had occupied himself with while he’d waited was a sports programme on television, she saw.

  She sat down opposite the tray, which he’d placed on her unusual coffee table—an elephant bearing a round brass table-top.

  ‘Feeling better?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, much better, thank you.’ She plunged the coffee and poured two cups. He took one and sat down in the winged chair.

  ‘You’ve—’ he looked around ‘—sorted the chaos. It looks very nice. I take it you and your father did a lot of travelling together?’

  ‘We did. I just wish I was island-hopping with him in the South Pacific at the moment,’ Aurora replied, unwisely as it happened.

  ‘That bad?’

  She stilled in the act of stirring her coffee and slowly placed the spoon in the saucer, very conscious of the narrowed way he was watching her. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Have I complicated your life to that extent, Aurora?’

  ‘No! Of course not,’ she denied. ‘I…it’s just that…I feel a little flat at the moment. Probably the natural consequence of coming back from a six-month overseas trip myself, that kind of thing.’ She flipped a hand casually.

  ‘So what did you mean earlier?’ he asked.

  She thought for a moment. ‘It must be obvious. Until I get all my diaries back, you have complicated my life. Unnecessarily, what’s more.’ She studied him with her chin lifted, her eyes challenging.

  ‘I…’ He paused and raised an eyebrow. ‘Unless you suspect I’m about to take advantage of you here and now—’ he looked around ‘—or during what I had in mind for lunch, I don’t see what’s so…difficult about it all.’

  ‘You wouldn’t,’ she retorted unwisely.

  ‘Then why don’t you explain, Aurora?’ he invited.

  She took a deep breath, and all the nervous tension she’d endured for the last weeks rose to the top, killing stone-dead any ploys she might have devised for beating Luke Kirwan at his own game. ‘Don’t think I don’t know,’ she said intensely, ‘what you’re up to. You’re not going to be satisfied until you have me so besotted I’ll willingly go to bed with you!’

  An alert gleam entered his dark eyes but he said nothing.

  ‘And I know why,’ she continued, past all good sense now. ‘Yes, your break-up with Leonie may have a lot to do with it, but the other reason is—you hate the thought of not being able to click your fingers at a girl whenever the whim takes you!’

  ‘It is rather a novelty,’ he agreed mildly.

  She stared at him.

  ‘You didn’t expect me to admit it?’

  ‘I’m just trying to work out if it makes you better or worse—’ She stopped abruptly and bit her lip—it was the second time she’d entertained that sentiment in the space of half an hour.

  ‘But the other reason I have, Aurora, is that you never bore me,’ he said.

  ‘What…what about Leonie?’

  He sat back and stared absently into space. Then his lips twisted into a dry smile. ‘I’m amazed at everyone’s concern on that score—Leonie and I agreed to come to a parting of the ways.’

  ‘End of story?’ Aurora suggested with irony.

  ‘Yep. By the way, my sister-in-law, my secretary and anyone else you may have been taking advice from on the subject—’

  ‘Mandy Pearson, for instance,’ Aurora put in.

  ‘Ah, Mandy.’ He looked sardonic.

  ‘I haven’t spoken to her,’ Aurora said hastily. ‘I wouldn’t even have known of the connection if it wasn’t for Neil—he was the one who, well, in response to a little fishing I did he…’ She shrugged.

  ‘Spilt the beans? Anyway,’ Luke said, ‘none of them are entitled, or indeed competent, to comment.’

  Aurora considered this. ‘If all that’s true, why do you need to blackmail me?’

  ‘Are you suggesting you’d allow me to continue to get to know you without holding onto your diaries?’ He raised a dark eyebrow at her.

  Aurora hesitated. ‘I see your point,’ she said at length and shivered suddenly.

  ‘What?’ he queried.

  ‘I don’t know if I like you or hate you—I don’t know if I could trust you.’

  ‘There’s only one way to solve that,’ he observed.

  ‘Perhaps—all right,’ she said with sudden decision. ‘If you consider this two dates, I’ll have two more with you. Then, when I get my diaries back, I…might reconsider.’

  ‘You mean reassess your judgement of me?’

  ‘And exactly what your intentions are, Prof,’ she said with some acerbity.

  ‘I shall look forward to it—so, you will come to lunch?’

  ‘Yes. Where?’

  ‘Well, since it’s such a beautiful day, I thought we might take the fast ferry to Dunwich, then a taxi over to Point Lookout, have a swim, then a long, leisurely lunch before we get the ferry back.’

  Aurora simply couldn’t control the dawning of sheer delight in her eyes. ‘I love Point Lookout,’ she said helplessly.

  He took her hand. ‘Then why don’t you get your costume, a hat and some sunscreen?’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘My gear is in the car.’

  ‘All right. But I’ll need my hand back,’ she responded with a mischievous glint in her eyes.

  He looked down at her hand and thought how small it looked in his, then his dark gaze drifted all over her. And it occurred to him that it was true—he wasn’t normally attracted to small girls, but this one could be an entirely different matter.

  ‘Thank you for a wonderful day,’ Aurora said as the Saab pulled up o
utside her town house much later that day. ‘Would…would you like to come in?’

  Luke shook his head, but slid his arm along the back of her seat. ‘Thank you for a wonderful day, but I’ve got some work to do. And just to reassure you that I do keep my word…’ He used his other hand to open the glove box and he pulled out two packets, which he put in her lap. ‘Only two to go,’ he murmured.

  Aurora looked down at her diaries in her lap, and came tumbling down from the clouds. ‘OK,’ she heard herself say, ‘I guess I’ll hear from you when…whenever.’

  ‘Aurora—’

  ‘No. A deal is a deal, Luke. Goodnight.’ She had her bag at her feet, which expedited a swift departure, but, for that matter, after one restless movement he didn’t try to stop her, although he didn’t drive off until she’d opened her door and switched on a light.

  Then she did hear the Saab roar away and she walked dazedly into her lounge to curl up in her wing chair and rub her face miserably.

  It had been a wonderful day. They’d done everything he’d suggested, but it hadn’t only been the beauty of North Stradbroke Island and Point Lookout or the surf they’d swum in, the long lunch or the ferry rides across a placid and lovely Moreton Bay that had made it so magical. It had been Luke Kirwan.

  The gorgeous but dangerous man on the prowl she’d seen the night of his house-warming had not been much in evidence, although she had found herself suddenly the object of palpable envy from her own sex throughout the day. But he’d also made her feel intensely alive and as if she was operating on all cylinders because he was mentally challenging to be with. They’d talked a lot during the day about all sorts of subjects.

  Other things had appeared to be, mysteriously, more stimulating too. The wonderful seafood they’d eaten for lunch had acquired an almost sensuous quality to be eating it with him while they’d also enjoyed a bottle of wine. The thick grass beneath her bare feet as they’d strolled through the old Dunwich cemetery while they’d been waiting for the ferry home, the lovely old trees, the timelessness of the One Mile anchorage where the ferry came in—it had all sung to her very soul because he’d been there with her.

  But, despite being surprisingly easy to handle, he was also physically challenging, she had to acknowledge. She’d discovered during the day that Luke Kirwan was breathtakingly beautifully put together. In fact, that was just what it had done—taken her breath away when they’d stripped to their costumes on the beach and the lean, clean, strong lines of his body had been revealed to her.

  And when they’d come out of the water to stand side by side on the sand, sleek and dripping, she’d found she’d been able to feel and taste as if they were doing it, the final act of intimacy between a man and a woman. But beyond a lurking glint in his dark eyes as they’d skimmed her slim figure in a rose-pink bikini that had told her she was equally desirable, no more had come of it.

  And now this, she thought bleakly, coming back to the present. She looked across the room to where she’d put her diaries down. A calculated reminder that this was a game to him? It had to be. What was more she, incredibly foolishly, had done all the things, bar one, she’d accused him of trying to achieve with this game. Even to feeling disappointed that he hadn’t come in for a nightcap and kissed her goodnight.

  Two more dates, Aurora, she thought unhappily, and you won’t know if you’re on your head or your heels and all over a blackmailer. There has to be a way out of this…

  Perhaps he had never had any intention of reading her diaries, she wondered suddenly with a faint spark of hope. But it subsided almost immediately. Even if that were true, she was still under siege for whatever reason, but it didn’t seem likely to be a long-term commitment.

  If nothing else he was on the rebound—how many times had she had that pointed out to her, after all? And there was something about his own reticence on the subject that was… She considered for a moment. A little scary?

  There was only one way to find out, she told herself. Was she game to throw down the gauntlet? No more dates until she got her remaining diaries back?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE next morning, out of the blue, Neil approached her with an exciting proposition—a talk-back show of her own.

  ‘You mean I host it?’ She stared at him wide-eyed.

  ‘Yes—don’t look so surprised.’ He grinned. ‘Once a week is what we have in mind with a guest in the studio who you will chat to first, then we’ll open up the lines. We’ll provide you with a research-assistant-cum-secretary. And the choice of guests will be something you and I will hammer out together; but we feel you’re well-enough informed, you’re well-enough travelled, certainly articulate enough, et cetera, to handle it and you’re obviously of good character. But it will be a lot more work. How say you, Miss Templeton?’

  ‘I say yes!’ Aurora beamed back at him. ‘This is wonderful—thank you, Neil!’

  ‘My pleasure! Er—how’s it going with Luke?’

  Aurora stilled and felt a lot of her euphoria evaporate. ‘Why?’ she asked cautiously.

  ‘I believe Leonie is mounting a reconciliation movement.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Neil raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you still seeing him?’

  Aurora rose. ‘Not anymore, Neil. At least—not after tonight.’

  ‘Aurora—’

  ‘Neil—’ she smiled down at him ‘—don’t worry. Without so many people to keep me informed, I’d be working in the dark!’ And she went to walk out jauntily but stopped in her tracks. ‘What has good character got to do with it?’ she asked with a frown.

  ‘Well, the public wouldn’t take kindly to a bank robber on their air space, and, once you open the lines to them, if you do have a skeleton in your closet someone could well embarrass you on air with it.’ He eyed her humorously. ‘So now’s the time to come clean if there is anything deep and dark in your past, Aurora!’

  ‘No, there’s nothing…’

  Nothing but an open police file on me and two of my diaries still in Luke Kirwan’s possession, she thought for the tenth time in the space of an hour as she paced her lounge when she got home from work. So what to do?

  Just go and explain things to him? If nothing else, it would prove to her once and for all what kind of a man he really was. But, say he was the devil in disguise, she mused, wouldn’t she be handing him a real hold over her that could affect her career for ever?

  She sat down and rubbed her temples distractedly. Most of her instincts told her that Luke Kirwan would drop this game if she put her case fairly and squarely. But, as was faithfully recorded in one of the diaries he still had, her one previous relationship with a man had proven beyond doubt that her instincts, on the subject of men, were not that reliable. At twenty-three she’d thought she’d fallen deeply in love but it had turned sour on her.

  The love of her life had turned into a frighteningly possessive, jealous man and she’d had to fall back on her father to help to extricate her from the relationship…

  Her father! She sat up suddenly. Even if she could just talk to him on his satellite phone! But she slumped back almost immediately—what would that achieve, other than worrying the life out of him wherever he was—which was somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?

  Then her phone rang and it was Luke with a proposition. Barry and Julia were having a house party on the family sheep station, Beltrees, the coming weekend, and Julia had rung to ask if he would like to take Aurora.

  ‘You’re kidding!’ Aurora said flatly.

  ‘No,’ he replied. ‘And we’d fly so you’d still be able to work on Friday and Monday. I think you’d like Beltrees. And most people fall for my father although, I should warn you, he’s a bit of a character.’

  ‘He…would be there?’ Aurora asked cautiously.

  ‘Certainly.’ He paused and when he went on she could hear the amusement in his voice. ‘I think this would definitely qualify as a two-diary date, Aurora, and, well, it’s entirely up to you what happens from th
en on.’

  ‘I…see,’ she said slowly.

  There was a short silence, then, ‘Are you all right, Aurora?’

  She made a concentrated effort to perk up. ‘I’m fine! OK. It sounds…fun.’

  ‘Good. I’ll get in touch later in the week. Bye.’

  ‘Bye!’ She put the phone down and stared at it with a most curious thought in her mind in the circumstances—what about Leonie’s reconciliation attempt?

  They flew to Beltrees in a light plane that belonged to the property.

  During the preceding days, she’d worked hard on the approach she should take over this weekend and had decided that since she’d got three of her diaries back by being, mostly, herself, that was how she should continue. If she could, she’d thought several times, because things were much more serious now. It therefore came as a pleasant surprise to find that Beltrees itself was a help…

  Situated between Charleville and Quilpie in south western Queensland, the station was in the heart of sheep country and, while it could be prone to drought, or flood, while it was often flat and not very interesting country, Aurora was in for a pleasant surprise. A good preceding season had turned it into a carpet of wild flowers.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said wonderingly of the splashes of lovely colour on the red soil as they floated down to land.

  ‘You’re lucky,’ Luke said. ‘It doesn’t happen often like this.’

  ‘Only every seven years or so,’ the pilot contributed. ‘OK, here we go.’ He touched the plane down gently and they rolled to a stop at the end of a dirt strip. ‘You’re the last of the party to arrive,’ he added.

  ‘Who exactly is in the party?’ Aurora enquired as they drove in an open four-wheel drive past a picturesque old wooden shearing shed and yards.

  ‘Not sure.’ Luke shrugged. ‘All Julia said was that they were having a house party and would I like to bring you? But she comes from a big family.’ In jeans, a khaki bush shirt and short boots with a broad-brimmed Akubra on the seat beside him, he fitted into the landscape well.

  ‘Did you grow up here, Luke?’ she asked.