‘No. Yes. Um…I mean, thanks. I think I know who must have sent them.’
She set the basket on her elephant coffee-table, sat down on the settee and stared at it with her chin in her hands for ages. It had to be a peace-offering—or did it? Perhaps Luke had simply heard via Neil that she was off sick? But…Mrs Newton?
She nearly jumped out of her skin when the phone rang. And she dropped the remote and seemed to be all fingers and thumbs before she got it to her ear.
‘Hello…’
‘Mrs Newton? This is Carla from the Sheraton Mirage on the Gold Coast. How are you?’
‘I…I’m not…I’m…fine,’ Aurora said dazedly.
‘Mrs Newton, Mr Newton presents his compliments and we have a room reserved for you for tonight and instructions to book a limo to pick you up, should you feel like taking this reservation up—Mr Newton asked me to tell you it was entirely up to you. But, if so, we wondered what time you’d like to be collected?’
Aurora’s mouth fell open.
‘Ma’am?’ Carla of the Sheraton Mirage prompted discreetly after the silence had stretched. ‘I believe you’re in Brisbane—Manly, actually. It would take about an hour to get down here,’ she added helpfully.
Aurora tried to collect herself and looked at her watch. It was two o’clock in the afternoon but… ‘Around four?’ she heard herself say tentatively. ‘Would that…?’ She couldn’t go on.
‘I’ll arrange for the limo to be at your door at four, Mrs Newton, and may I say that we look forward to welcoming you to the Mirage!’
‘What have I done?’ Aurora said to the phone as it went dead in her hands. ‘What does this mean?’ She jumped up agitatedly. More pressure to marry him—but why? Surely she’d let him off the hook… And why wasn’t he at Beltrees seeking meteorite fragments?
She was still in a state of shock and confusion when the limousine drew up outside the Sheraton Mirage. Then it dawned on her she was going to have to masquerade as ‘Mrs Newton’ unless Luke was there to meet her, but as she got out of the car and looked around anxiously there was no sign of him.
But as she stood poised, as if for flight, a staff member with a name tag pinned to her jacket bustled forward. It was Carla and she greeted Aurora profusely and offered to lead her to her room. All the check-in formalities had been completed, she confided as they walked through the foyer.
‘Is…is Mr Newton around?’ Aurora asked hesitantly.
‘I’m sure he will be, ma’am,’ Carla said serenely.
An hour later there was no sign of Luke so Aurora decided to go for a walk.
It was a wild, overcast day with a strong breeze whipping up the surf and the odd squall passing through. Aurora wore a fleecy-lined track suit and a yellow raincoat as she battled up the beach, head down in the teeth of a minor gale, and battled with the unreality of things.
What was going on? Why had he invited her down, then not even been there to meet her? Was she in the middle of some kind of dream?
She stopped at last, breathless and worried about her voice—it was the last thing she should be doing, braving the elements on top of a recent cold, but she hadn’t stopped to think. She couldn’t think.
She turned around and at least the wind was behind her—then she saw him. A lone, tall figure quite a way from her, but there was no mistaking Luke Kirwan—at least, not for her.
It was a spontaneous reaction, what happened next. She started to run towards him, stumbling in the sand, and he quickened his pace. And she ran right into his arms, crying with frustration and despair…
‘Why are you doing this, Luke? I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t know what to think, I don’t know why I came—I’m a mess!’ she wept.
His arms closed around her. ‘Aurora.’ He held her closer than he ever had. ‘I’m sorry! But I couldn’t convince myself you’d really come.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, this time in the warmth of her room with the shutters closed against the wild weather and lamps on giving the room a gentle glow.
He’d insisted she change into dry clothes and poured them each a brandy. He’d insisted she dry her hair properly and asked her several times if she was warm enough.
Now, as she sat on the settee with her legs curled up beneath her, with no more to be done but feel the warmth of the brandy slip through her veins, he stood in front of her, looking down at her sombrely. Nothing, in the bustle of getting her back to the room, dry and changed, had transpired between them to explain anything, although the way he’d held her in that moment on the beach had given her a slender, delicate little ray of hope. But it flickered beneath this sombre regard and a sense of dread began to take its place.
‘Luke,’ she said as the words built up in her head and wouldn’t be denied, ‘I’ve tried so hard to forget you and convince myself I was right, but it’s not working. I know you don’t really want a wife but I couldn’t be worse off than I am without you, so—’
She stopped as a shudder ran through his tall frame and he sat down in front of her on a padded stool. His hair was still damp and hanging in his eyes. The hollows beneath his cheekbones that she’d always found so fascinating were more pronounced and he looked as if he’d lost weight beneath his navy jumper and bone cord trousers.
‘Aurora,’ he said with quiet intensity, ‘in the space of getting to know you, I’ve gone from not really wanting a wife to knowing that I shan’t rest until I get one—you.’
She gasped, her green eyes huge.
‘I feel like a ship without a rudder. I can’t settle to anything, I’ve lost all interest in meteorites, I couldn’t care less how it may have worked for Galileo, living without you—is not going to work for me.’
‘Luke…’
But he held up a hand. ‘This is not something I’m proud of, but I can only say I didn’t understand. What love really was, I mean. Yes, Leonie was my companion and my bed-mate for three years, but it never filled me with a kind of terror to wake up in the night and think I might have lost her for good. That’s what it does to me to think I’ve lost you. That’s why you’d be no good as my mistress, Aurora, if that’s what you were going to say—I should spend my life petrified I was going to lose you. I’m sorry, but that’s how it is.’
‘So it really has nothing to do with…a girl with only two goldfish and a diary to confide in?’ she asked tremulously.
‘None whatsoever—it’s the opposite, if anything. I don’t even have a diary or some fish to sustain me. The first time you walked away from me…’ he paused and closed his eyes briefly ‘…I told myself you were better off without a man like me. At the same time, though, I asked myself why I felt as if I was letting something more precious than ruby and pearls slip through my fingers.’
Her lips parted in soundless incredulity.
He smiled, but it was strained. ‘The second time you walked away from me I was being entirely unreasonable and I damn well knew it, but I couldn’t help myself because I just didn’t know how to get through to you.’ He shrugged. ‘My male ego took an awful hammering that morning.’
Two tears slid down Aurora’s cheeks and she sniffed.
He pulled a large blue hanky from his pocket and handed it to her.
She wiped her nose.
‘Please,’ he said softly, ‘don’t tell me you still believe it was lust between us. I couldn’t stand it. I love everything about you, Aurora. I’m lost without you. I need you more than you may ever know.’
She stared at him wordlessly and read the unflinching honesty in his eyes. Then she put her glass down and leant forward to cup his face in her hands. ‘Mr Newton,’ she said huskily, ‘I need you more than I ever dreamt I’d need anyone.’
‘You’ve done it again,’ he said, in a teasing paraphrase of what she’d once said to him.
She stirred drowsily in his arms. The night was dark outside and it was still blowing a minor gale, but beneath the covers of her bed they were naked and sated after a glorious lovemakin
‘You’ve bestowed that sheer joyful spirit like a beautiful butterfly in the guise of a gorgeous girl on me, Aurora. I love you.’
She snuggled against him, revelling in the planes and angles of his body and how soft and silky she felt against him, how he’d transported her to the moon again, although this time they’d gone together and matched each other every step of the way.
‘Mind you…’ he stroked her back, then buried his head briefly in her hair ‘…I can’t help having qualms about repeating myself. Will you marry me, Aurora? There, it’s out,’ he said humorously, looking into her eyes.
‘Luke, I would love to marry you,’ she said. ‘It’s quite simple, really—I adore you.’
‘Aurora—’ He stopped, then went on, ‘Is that really true?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she assured him, and he could see it in her eyes in a way that took his breath away. He buried his head between her breasts and she stroked his hair.
Then he looked up reluctantly. ‘Even…the absent-minded professor in me, the guy who gets strange calls to do strange things and all the rest?’ There was a question mark in his dark eyes.
‘Well, there may be times when I’ll blame the apple too,’ she said gravely, ‘but—what we feel for each other will find a way, don’t you think?’
‘I always knew you were wise as well as gorgeous,’ he said a little unsteadily.
‘Actually, you started off thinking I was a groupie, Professor,’ she reminded him.
‘I learnt that lesson the hard way,’ he said wryly. ‘But there are several things you didn’t take into consideration about me. What good husband material I would make, how romantic I could be—’
‘Luke—’ she started to laugh, then kissed him back ‘—you’re right, I certainly didn’t expect…this.’ She gestured with a wondering expression on her face, to take it all in: the hotel, the limo, the plans he’d made, Mrs Newton…
‘And you haven’t seen this yet.’ He sat up and reached for his trousers flung across the bottom of the bed.
Aurora traced the long line of his back and felt the muscles flow beneath the skin. ‘This’ was a black velvet box drawn from the pocket of his trousers. She sat up, brushing her hair back, and stared at it.
‘Open it,’ he said quietly, putting it into her hand.
She flicked the lid up and went absolutely still. It was a pearl engagement ring exquisitely set in a circlet of tiny rubies and diamonds.
‘You…meant it,’ she whispered at last, looking up into his dark eyes.
‘Every last word of it, Aurora. I hope that every time you look at it, you’ll know just how much you do mean to me.’
‘Luke…’ she rested her head on his shoulder and her voice shook ‘…thank you, but I’ve got nothing for you in return.’
‘Darling—’ he took her in his arms and kissed her lingeringly ‘—every time you feel like singing when we make love is a priceless gift for me.’
Her lips quivered. ‘I knew you’d never let me forget that—’ She stopped suddenly. ‘Actually, I do have something for you—where did I put my bag? Oh, there it is.’
It was on the bedside table. She opened it and drew out a tiny suede drawstring bag. She undid the ties and poured the contents into the palm of her hand—a very fine gold chain with a milky-blue opal mounted in gold and hanging from it. ‘Do you remember this?’
He nodded, staring down at the opal.
‘I got it set and put on the chain and, right up until this afternoon, I’ve worn it next to my heart—I felt if I couldn’t have you, I could have this little part of you as a good luck charm and something to remind me of the only man in the world I wanted to love.’
He took it from her and put it over her head, and he settled the stone between her breasts. Then he held her very close. ‘Thanks,’ he said unevenly into her hair. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘Don’t say anything,’ she suggested, and she slipped her arms round his neck and started to croon against the corner of his mouth, an old song… ‘Fly me to the moon…’ She broke off and there were tears of joy in her eyes, although she said whimsically, ‘How appropriate is that, Professor?’
He lay back with her and murmured wryly, ‘Singularly appropriate and—request granted, ma’am.’ He did just that.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0033-3
A QUESTION OF MARRIAGE
First North American Publication 2001.
Copyright © 2001 by Lindsay Armstrong.
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