A Question of Marriage

by Lindsay Armstrong

  His fingers slid down the curve of her cheek. ‘If it gets too difficult, I—’

  ‘No, Luke.’ She stood up with her throat working but no tears in her eyes now. ‘I know what I’m doing and there’s no point in dragging it out. I’ll be fine.’ Her lips curved into the faintest smile. ‘It all started with my diaries; that’s where it will end.’

  ‘And when you’re an old lady with grandchildren at your feet, you might read them over and smile a sort of smile no one will understand?’ he suggested roughly.

  ‘Maybe—but I’ll still know I did the right thing. Goodbye…’

  He said her name and caught her wrist. But she kissed his fingers then looked up at him steadily. And the pressure on her wrist relaxed gradually until he released her. ‘Goodbye,’ he said, with an effort. ‘Don’t go invading people’s houses or doing anything crazy.’

  ‘I won’t,’ she promised. ‘You look after yourself too.’ She picked up her sandals and slipped away from him through the gate.

  He stared after her until all he could see were the little gold roses of her skirt and the pale skin of her back picking up the reflected glow of the flares that lit the path, then nothing. And he turned towards the sea and told himself it was for the best. He’d been a fool to let it get this far anyway; she’d be much better off without him…

  So why did he have the feeling he’d let something rare and more valuable than rubies and pearls slip through his fingers like an exquisite butterfly?

  CHAPTER NINE

  ABOUT two months later Jack Barnard was having dinner with Luke Kirwan at the house on the hill.

  Summer had slid into a so far mild winter and they were able to eat outside on the terrace with the night view spread beneath their feet. Chinese take-away was what they were indulging in, with a fine bottle of chardonnay. Jack had brought the wine in anticipation of one of Miss Hillier’s delicious concoctions that she often left for Luke to warm up; Luke had rung up for the food after explaining that Miss Hillier was on holiday for a week.

  ‘How on earth will you cope?’ Jack asked of his friend. ‘I may not like the woman, but in most respects she’s a gem. Fancy finding a secretary who also cooks!’

  Luke looked at him wryly. ‘I can cook some basics when I feel like it, Jack. I’m not completely useless.’

  ‘Never said you were.’ Jack partook of the delicious sweet and sour pork. ‘But you must admit she runs things down to the smallest detail. Is that why you’re off to Beltrees for a while?’

  Luke lifted his glass and studied the golden green contents. ‘Not necessarily. Barry and Julia are off overseas for a couple of months and my father needs a hand. I also want to search for meteorite fragments.’

  ‘This wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that Leonie has been seen out and about with a new man?’ Jack enquired.

  Luke grimaced. ‘Has she? I didn’t know.’

  ‘Question answered,’ Jack murmured. ‘Are you at all interested?’

  ‘I’m quite sure you’re going to tell me whether I am or not.’ Luke regarded his friend quizzically.

  ‘A media magnate, twice divorced but very wealthy. Something of a playboy, I gather. Of course we’re all wondering whether it’s designed to make you jealous, but you don’t seem to be in circulation much these days—by the way, I believe you’ve put this house on the market?’

  Luke looked around. ‘Yes,’ he said pensively.

  ‘Why? Because of Leonie?’

  ‘Not because of Leonie. I’ve never felt the same about it since I…suffered a home invasion one night.’

  Jack blinked through his glasses. ‘You never told me that!’

  ‘Probably because I came out of it looking a bit of a fool. I left the front door open, not that sh—’ He stopped. ‘And I actually got knocked out briefly in the encounter. Nothing was stolen, though.’

  ‘Well, I don’t blame you in that case, but…’ Jack paused ‘…it’s a funny thing—the bloke you bought it from has gone missing. I remembered the name because I did the conveyancing and I don’t think there’d be too many Ambrose Templetons around—what’s the matter?’

  ‘Gone missing how?’

  ‘Um…he was sailing round the world single-handed but he seems to have disappeared somewhere between the Cook Islands and Tahiti. I heard it on the news this morning— Luke, I didn’t think you ever met him, but you look quite strange!’

  ‘I’m sorry about this, Jack, but I have to go out… Please finish your dinner, though, and if you wouldn’t mind locking up for me when you leave—there’s a Yale on the front door now, you just have to pull it closed.’

  ‘Well—’ Jack half rose as Luke Kirwan was about to step inside ‘—I…I…’

  ‘I’ll call you, Jack!’ He disappeared. Two minutes later the Saab, parked in the driveway, roared to life.

  Jack sat back and sipped his wine dazedly. ‘He hasn’t been the same since he bought this damn house,’ he commented to himself. ‘I’d love to know what the hell is going on!’

  Aurora was at home alone, huddled on her settee, staring at her fish.

  She heard the knock and her heart started to race—news, surely! But in her haste to get to the door she tripped on the edge of a rug, and she must have left the door unlocked anyway because it opened before she got there—and Luke was standing in her hall.

  She stared at him wordlessly as if he were an apparition, then, when he came to her and put his arms around her, all her pent-up emotion burst the banks she’d so rigidly erected and she collapsed against him with her eyes streaming and sobs shaking her.

  Five minutes later she was sitting on his lap on the settee and taking sips of brandy from the glass he held for her. Nor did he allow her to speak until she’d finished the small tot and stopped shuddering.

  He put the glass on the elephant table and eased her more comfortably against him. ‘Tell me what happened?’

  She sighed desolately. ‘No one knows. He’d arranged a regular sked—radio schedule with an HF station in New Zealand that was also to be relayed here to Manly, and he called me once a week on his satellite phone. But the call is five days overdue now and no one’s been able to raise him by radio.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean—’

  ‘I know,’ she broke in intensely, ‘I know it all. It could just be battery problems; radios, phones, they all need some kind of power and he did have a hiccup with the phone about a month ago. But he does have a solar pack on board… He also has an EPIRB, an emergency position indicating radio beacon, that is…’

  ‘I know how they work,’ Luke said quietly. ‘So no signal’s been picked up?’

  ‘No. Which either means he hasn’t had to use it or…’ she swallowed ‘…he went down before he could use it. There are so many things…whales, containers, storms.’ She stopped helplessly.

  ‘Has a search been mounted?’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I wanted to go but they said wait a while. They don’t really know where to start.’

  ‘I’m not into boats myself, but Barry and Julia are, as you know, and one of their favourite catch cries is when one thing goes wrong you can bet your bottom dollar it won’t be the only one, so it could well be batteries, or loose wires in a radio and another hiccup with the phone.’

  Aurora smiled shakily. ‘I’ve worked at the Coastguard long enough not to be amazed at all the things that can go wrong on boats, but this is different. It’s not only my father—it’s the South Pacific out there, not Moreton Bay.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said quietly and frowned. ‘Why are you here on your own?’

  ‘I…I wanted to be,’ she whispered.

  ‘Or because there’s no one close enough to care?’ he suggested.

  She shook her head. ‘It’s not that. I’ve got friends, colleagues, mates at the Coastguard, they’ve all been so wonderful, but…’ She stopped and sighed. ‘I just wanted to be alone.’

  He moved, but her eyes widened and her hands clenched. Damp
tendrils of hair were clinging to her face from the storm of tears and he studied that little face, thinking it seemed to have fined down so her green eyes were even more stunning with their wet lashes sticking together in clumps. She wore a lightweight track suit the colour of lemon grass with green sand shoes but he could feel the fine, delicate lines of her body beneath it. Her heavy hair had grown again and was tied back loosely.

  ‘I…was going to suggest,’ he said slowly, ‘that I made us some of your Arusha coffee—have you eaten lately?’

  ‘No, but coffee would be lovely.’

  ‘Have you got any bread and cheese?’

  ‘Um—yes but—’

  ‘Do you like toasted cheese?’ he interrupted.

  ‘Luke—’ she paused ‘—can you make toasted cheese?’

  ‘I don’t know why everyone assumes I’m quite useless,’ he remarked bitterly. ‘I make the best toasted cheese this side of the black stump!’

  ‘Who else has been trying to make you feel useless?’ she queried with a smile trembling on her lips.

  ‘My friend Jack Barnard,’ he explained. ‘That’s how I heard about your father. Jack heard it on the radio and remembered the name because he did the conveyancing on the house. In fact Jack, for all I know, is still sitting on the terrace finishing off the Chinese dinner.’

  ‘Thank you for rushing over,’ she said softly. ‘And, yes, I do like toasted cheese.’

  Half an hour later, she’d finished her toasted cheese and was inhaling the delicious aroma of the Arusha coffee. Luke had pulled up an armchair to the coffee-table and was sitting opposite her.

  ‘Tell me about your experiences of Arusha?’ he invited. ‘You said you’d been there.’

  Aurora laid her head back. ‘Ah, Arusha. Yes, my father was captaining a freighter that took a few passengers. There was stuff to be unloaded at Dar-es-Salaam and when something went wrong with the freezers on board we had about a week to kill so we hired a Land Rover and drove up.’ She smiled. ‘I’ll never forget the mad traffic or the state of the roads in Dar. Then this good, long straight highway up country and as we got closer to Moshe we started to look for Kilimanjaro.’ She stopped and her eyes were far away.

  ‘It’s quite a sight, when it reveals itself,’ he commented.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it. We were looking too low, then I just happened to look up and there was this snow-clad peak rising out of a blue horizon way up in the sky. I’ll never forget it.’ She looked across at Luke. ‘And Arusha,’ she said affectionately. ‘We stayed at this lovely place called Mountain Village, it’s in the middle of a coffee plantation on Lake Duluti—you could see Kili from there too, as well as Mount Meru. It looked really mysterious. And we went to Ngorongoro, the Serengeti—I did a balloon safari over the Serengeti at dawn.’

  ‘So did I. And I stayed at Mountain Village, saw the lions of Ngorongoro, the wildebeest migration across the plains of the Serengeti to the Masai Mara, saw Olduvai Gorge—in fact I climbed Kilimanjaro.’

  Aurora sat up, her eyes wide and wondering. ‘Oh! Tell me about it! I wanted to but we didn’t have the time.’

  Two hours later, they’d shared not only Tanzania but many travel experiences and Aurora was feeling more relaxed than she had for days, even sleepy. She yawned, then apologized. ‘It’s not that I’m bored, but I haven’t had much sleep lately.

  His eyes softened. ‘Why don’t you go to bed?’ He stood up.

  She hesitated and he saw some of the ghosts come back to her eyes.

  ‘I could stay if you liked. I could doss down there.’ He nodded at the settee. ‘Just give me a pillow and a rug.’

  ‘That’s very kind but—’ she began.

  ‘I wouldn’t be tempted to take advantage of you,’ he said quietly.

  Aurora coloured. ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  He looked at her with a sombre question in his eyes.

  She swallowed. ‘It’s just come rushing back to me that we…well—’

  ‘Broke up before we’d barely started?’ he suggested.

  If only that were true or you knew how tough these two months have been, Luke, she thought, with her lashes lowered so her eyes were hidden from him.

  Then he moved abruptly and her lashes flew up to see that the sombreness had been replaced by a slight smile as he said, ‘But we did like each other, didn’t we, Aurora? And that’s what friends are for at times like these. So don’t bother your head with all sorts of complications that don’t exist. Just…’ he paused, then said humorously ‘…throw me down a pillow and a rug and go to bed.’

  After she’d done that, Aurora took a shower, donned her pyjamas and curled up in her bed with a spare pillow in her arms. She knew she should be thinking of her father—she was, but she was also thinking about Luke; she couldn’t help herself. And thinking specifically about what regrets he might have—was that why he’d come? Why he’d said something about breaking up before they’d barely started? Or was he only being a good friend in need?

  In which case, how much harder was it going to be for her after two months of still being sure she’d been right to walk away from him but finding absolutely no comfort in it? Despite her flourishing career—she’d made a hit on the airwaves and now had a devoted band of listeners to her talk-back session—she’d felt incredibly lost and lonely. Despite her friends and colleagues and filling her life with interests—she was rarely home—despite it all, the pain of not having Luke in her life was still with her. And now this…

  Just the sight of him in khaki moleskins and a blue linen shirt she remembered well, the feel of his arms around her, the way she could talk to him was enough to…what? she mused.

  Wonder if it would ever go away, that bereft feeling? Wonder how she could possibly be worse off as Newton’s mistress even if she couldn’t aspire to be his wife?

  Her tired, overwrought mind gave up at this stage and she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. So deep, she didn’t hear the phone ringing downstairs and had no idea she’d forgotten to bring her remote phone upstairs with her.

  It was his hand on her shoulder that woke her finally. She sat up brushing her hair out of her eyes and blinking like an owl. ‘Who…Luke…what?’

  He put the phone into her hand. ‘Your father.’

  She tensed convulsively but Luke smiled at her. ‘Talk to him.’

  She put the phone to her ear. ‘Dad? Is that you? Dad!’

  Twenty minutes later she ended the call and lay back against the pillows. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she whispered, then sat up jubilantly. ‘He’s quite OK. It was a battery problem! Well, batteries, bilges and a storm that blew him off course—it was a long story and a bit hard to take in,’ she said ruefully. ‘And the satellite phone just gave up the ghost! Would you believe it?’

  He sat down on the side of the bed and said gently, ‘I would. And I’m so very happy for you, Aurora.’

  She burst into tears.

  He took her in his arms. ‘I’m so happy myself,’ she wept. ‘I really thought I’d lost him. He managed to signal a passing freighter eventually and they came to his rescue. They let him use their equipment and he reckons he’ll be able to sail back to the Rarotonga.’

  ‘And you’re going to fly over tomorrow if you can arrange it and be there on the dock to meet him.’

  ‘Yes! Perhaps I can even persuade him to give up this round-the-world idea, but, anyway, I can at least spend some time with him. I’ve got some leave coming up. With a bit of juggling I can get away early.’

  He brushed her wet cheeks with his fingers and cupped her face in his hands. ‘I’ve missed doing this.’

  She stared up into his dark eyes. ‘I’ve missed it too…’

  He smiled briefly. ‘I never did get to kiss you goodbye.’

  ‘Is…is that what you’re going to do now?’

  ‘Just between friends, Aurora.’

  The next day she was winging her way to Rarotonga via New Zealand where she had a joyful reunion with her father
but was unable to talk him out of his round-the-world voyage. It was one of the subjects they discussed in their last conversation on board the Aurora, before she flew back home a week later.

  ‘I know you worry, I know the last little contretemps took its toll,’ Ambrose Templeton said, ‘but I’m only sixty, Aurora, and retirement, sitting at home wondering what to do with myself, frightened the life out of me. Also, I’m a sailor at heart and I’ve dreamt of doing this all my life. Would you, could you be generous enough to allow me to continue with my dream?’

  She regarded him wistfully. He looked wonderfully well, tanned and fit, keen-eyed and not the least deterred by his brush with fate. ‘Of course,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Just try to minimize the frights you give me!’

  Ambrose hesitated. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Fine! Why?’

  ‘I…I don’t know, can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s just occurred to me you’re not quite the same. Could there be something—some reason you need me home, darling?’

  ‘None at all,’ Aurora reassured him with a grin. ‘I’m probably still a bit shell-shocked, that’s all. But I would hate the thought of you sitting at home twiddling your thumbs and, although I got such a fright, in my heart of hearts I know you’re a consummate sailor. So you have my blessing.’ She leant across and kissed his cheek.

  An hour later he put her on the plane that took her home.

  Luke was at the airport to meet her.

  She stopped as if she’d been shot as soon as she saw him.

  He was wearing the same clothes as he had the first time she’d ever seen him. Indigo jeans, a navy jacket, dark blue shirt, although today it was open at the neck.

  ‘This…this wasn’t what we decided, Luke,’ she said barely audibly as he came up to her and took her bag from her nerveless fingers.