Indiscretions

by Robyn Donald

  Perhaps not, and yet, she thought as the drinks arrived, she could. She had absolutely no doubt that he’d be a success at anything he wanted to do, but for some reason she felt diplomacy was not his metier. Although he wore the attributes of power with controlled panache, when she looked at him she saw a buccaneer.

  A voice from behind said, “There you are, Nicholas. I’ve been looking for you.” It was a feminine voice, even and crisp and controlled.

  Susan Waterhouse, Mariel saw as Nicholas got to his feet.

  “Ah, Ms. Browning,” Susan said, smiling coolly. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t interrupt, but I’ve done something rather stupid and I wonder if I could just borrow Nicholas for a minute or so to tell me how to rescue myself.”

  Mariel smiled back, but said nothing.

  “I won’t be a moment,” Nicholas told her, and escorted the other woman to the far side of the room, where they stood for some moments. Mariel tried to keep her eyes off the two of them but couldn’t help noticing that Susan did most of the talking, and that no expression escaped from Nicholas’s hard face.

  She had almost finished her glass of mineral water when he came back.

  “Sorry,” he said calmly.

  Mariel carefully didn’t look at him. “That’s all right.”

  “If you’ve finished your drink,” Nicholas said, “we have a table waiting for us in the restaurant.”

  He had procured the most intimate table in the hotel dining room, which specialized in classic low-country cuisine. Mariel had never been in it before, so she looked appreciatively around the Wedgwood blue room, admiring the tables with their white linen damask tablecloths and napkins starched so stiffly they almost crackled. Tall white candles were wreathed with azalea flowers the same pinks and golds and reds as the Victorian posies on the elaborate china.

  “It’s lovely,” she said.

  “It has,” Nicholas responded, “an excellent reputation.”

  And enormous prices! Just as well his father had been a very rich man.

  The food was magnificent; making a mental reminder to congratulate the kitchen staff, Mariel ate she-crab soup and a wonderful stew of chicken, shrimp and sausage, while slowly drinking two glasses of glorious wine, one French, one Californian.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever eaten anything more delicious,” she sighed.

  “South Carolina is noted for its superb food. But then, you must know that—you’ve been here before, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, quite regularly over the years. I’ve eaten she-crab soup before,” she said, “and it was good, but here it was absolutely out of this world. As for this magnificent chocolate mousse... words fail me!”

  He was laughing at her, and she suddenly realized that until that moment he had been taut with some hidden emotion. Perhaps because the wine had loosened her tongue, she gave him a slow, languorous smile and said mischievously, “There’s nothing in New Zealand like this!”

  His lashes drooped, hiding his thoughts, then lifted suddenly to reveal the cool jade of his eyes. “Not exactly like this,” he admitted, “but we are developing an interesting cuisine, a sort of combination of Mediterranean and Asian styles on a bedrock of British cuisine. How long did you say it is since you’ve been home?”

  “Home? I don’t really think of New Zealand as home— more like three little islands hanging off the end of the world.” Afraid she had revealed too much, she called her unruly tongue to order. “Ten years,” she said.

  “You should go back, you know. You might have grown up enough to appreciate it.”

  She shrugged. “Perhaps. It always seemed so...circumscribed.”

  “I suppose it would after a childhood spent wandering some of the more exotic byways of the world. Were you teased at school in that little town in the backblocks?”

  “Oh, yes. To which I reacted badly.’’

  “A crybaby?” he mocked gently.

  She shook her head. “No. If I’d been able to cry, it might have been all right, but I wouldn’t do it. I refused to give them the satisfaction, and of course they teased me all the more. Looking back I can see they weren’t monsters—it seems to be normal behavior for kids to pick on those who are different. I don’t think it did me any harm—it certainly stopped me from believing that the world revolved around my indulged little self! Nowadays if you want to hold your head up at dinner parties, an unhappy childhood is practically a necessity.”

  “What were the circumstances that actually took you back to the King Country?” he asked idly.

  The chocolate in her mouth tasted suddenly of ashes. Mindful of her policy never to tell lies, always to stick to the truth even if it wasn’t the whole truth, she said, “My parents died, and I went to live with an aunt.”

  “That was hard.”

  She nodded. “They left a gap,” she said quietly, and began to talk of the Spoleto Festival held each year in Charleston, that magnificent city of elegant houses and tantalizing gardens on the mainland.

  He followed suit, and by the time the coffee was served she’d decided that Nicholas Leigh was a perfect host. He had a bred-in-the-bone savoir faire that made the evening go smoothly, his conversation was interesting if a little uncompromising—he was not one to suffer fools gladly—and he had the rare attribute of charm, the ability to make the woman who was with him feel she was the only person who mattered to him.

  Which, considering the career he’d chosen, had to come in very handy.

  And she shouldn’t be here with him—for so many reasons she couldn’t even pick out the most important.

  “What’s the matter?”

  Add intelligent and perceptive to that list of endowments, she thought sardonically. “Nothing. I’m sorry, I really am a little tired.”

  His swift glance might have indicated disbelief, but he asked merely, “Where are you off to next?”

  She said, “France for five days.”

  “Paris?”

  “Yes,” she said, wondering exactly what emotion tinged his deep tones.

  “With a man?”

  Cool, opaque as turquoise, her eyes met his without flinching. “And his secretary.”

  Although she sensed a tightly leashed speculation beneath the impassive features, he said aloofly, “Where do you go from there?”

  “Some heavy-duty interpreting in Kuala Lumpur.”

  “Ah, yes, the ASEAN conference.”

  “Well, I won’t actually be at the conference. I’ll be working for a company that sees good pickings there.” She forestalled his next inquiry by saying with deliberate insouciance, “Then I have two weeks in New York, after which I’m taking three whole days off to paint my apartment.”

  He nodded, the movement of his head catching the glow from the candles so that his hair gleamed with bronze highlights. “You certainly get around. Is this peripatetic life the reason you haven’t married?”

  “One of them.”

  “And the others?”

  Hiding her unease with flippancy, she parried, “The same reasons you haven’t married, probably.”

  “Have you had a lover?”

  The question was so unexpected she gave him the answer before she had time to restrain herself. Not in words, but it might as well have been; her eyes widened as they were captured by the golden flames that had entirely engulfed the green in his.

  “Yes,” he murmured, his smile narrow and sharp as a blade, “of course you have.”

  “You already knew it,” she said, the hairs on the back of her neck lifting in a primitive, involuntary response to an unspoken threat. “It must have turned up on my security clearance.”

  “It did.” His gaze held hers, glittering, mesmerizing. “I even know the man. Diplomatic circles are small, and we’ve met several times. What possessed you to fall in love with a British diplomat, Mariel, and then dump him with his self-esteem shattered?”

  Oh, David...

  Something—fear?—twisted deep inside her, but she said evenly, “My p
ersonal life—”

  “Your personal life is inextricably bound up with your professional life,” he said, watching her. “As you well know. Just as mine is. Apart from your facility for languages, the most important thing you have to offer is your reliability, and the fact that you can be trusted not to let out secrets.”

  Racked by outrage and fear, she angled her chin at him. “I don’t,” she said. “As you say, if I did, my career would be down the drain.”

  “Why did you dump David St. Clair, Mariel?”

  “It’s none of your business,” she said stiffly. “It was entirely personal.” Like so much she had told this man it was only a half-truth. Each word was like a marble on her tongue, heavy and hard to manage, but she thought she produced the right offended snap.

  “Unfortunately,” he said with a grim inflection that sent a shiver the length of her spine, “I’m fighting an urge to make it my business. Let’s get out of here.”

  Ignoring her protests, he again insisted on accompanying her to the staff quarters. Once outside, she said with gritty restraint, “At times your mother’s rules must make your life uncomfortable.”

  “I’ve always thought that was a mother’s function in life,” he returned, the flash of anger gone as though it had never emerged.

  “Rule by guilt?” It didn’t sound like the dictum of a woman who had lived openly as a married man’s mistress.

  “My mother didn’t go in for guilt. Discomfort is different. She was very good at discomfort.” He spoke with a kind of sardonic tolerance, as though in spite of mixed feelings for his mother, he’d been fond of her.

  “It doesn’t seem to have done you any harm.” A hint of acid etched the words.

  “I’m sure it didn’t. I was a reasonably normal boy, which means I had all the sensitivity of a concrete path.” He pushed aside the branch of an old crepe myrtle, holding it back so that it wouldn’t snag her hair.

  And she didn’t believe that, either. He was far too perceptive to be self-centered. Abruptly, because she was afraid he might begin to talk about her family, she changed the subject. “How do you think this miniconference is going?”

  “So far, so good.”

  Well, discretion was part of his job. Still raw from his questions over dinner, she disregarded caution and probed more deeply. “Do you think the discovery that both Mr. McCabe and Mr. Watanabe are swordsmen has been a breakthrough?”

  “It’s certainly given them something to talk about,” he said sardonically, “as well as adding to your vocabulary.”

  “I understand trade comes up tomorrow as a subject for discussion.”

  “Does it?”

  “Apparently. Mr. McCabe made some joke about having to read papers tonight as his memory is so bad, and both he and Mr. Watanabe vied with each other to establish how generally useless they are as ministers.” When he said nothing she went on, “I suppose you’ll be on duty.” More silence, which she felt compelled to fill. “You did say your specialty was trade, didn’t you?”

  “I did.”

  They came to a bend in the path, shaded by a magnolia draped in fairy lights that sparkled like earthbound stars amongst the sculptured foliage. A soft, magical light silvered the pale trunk and branches, yet the very glimmer caused the surrounding shadows to press closely about them in the cool, sea-scented air.

  “I’ve been wondering about you, Mariel,” he said quietly.

  That unsettling, stupid fear uncurled in the pit of her stomach. “I can’t imagine why,” she said with a brisk, no-nonsense intonation. “I’m very ordinary.”

  “Helen of Troy probably thought she was very ordinary.” He paused, then went on harshly, “I’ve been wondering why the way your top lip curls when you smile drives me mad. And why the sound of your voice has the same effect on me as fur on bare skin. And why your eyes go smoky when you say my name, and exactly what the secrets are that lie hidden in their depths...”

  He spoke the last few words against her lashes. His arms pulled her closer, and his mouth crushed hers as his voice echoed eternally in the furthermost reaches of her soul, stealing away her wits and her willpower in a flood of blazing eroticism.

  She had waited for this for years, Mariel thought dazedly, head flung back, arms curling around his shoulders. All her life. She had been born for him. Making love to David had been joyous and satisfying, but Nicholas fired her blood with an uncivilized, wholly elemental hunger that ate through her self-possession, a white-hot intensity of sensation roaring through her body with the force and purpose of a volcanic explosion.

  How could one man do this to her?

  And what the hell was she getting into?

  Terrified by the ferocity of her response, she tore her mouth free and pushed vainly against the cage of his arms, taking in great gulps of air, her hands pressed flat on his chest. The primitive rhythm of his heart drove violently into her palms. She looked up past the elegant black and white of his evening clothes, past the broad sweep of shoulder and chest into his strong-boned face.

  Hooded, half-closed eyes scanned her face. To her shock she realized that the fierce pressure making her lips tingle had marked his, too; they were fuller, more sensual in the lean, ascetic features.

  “I don’t want this,” she gasped when the torrent in her blood had eased slightly.

  “Nobody could want that,” he said, his voice deep and sensual and slightly rough. “It’s like a tidal rip, deceptively smooth on the surface, but one step into it and it carries you off to drown. However, want it or not, it’s there. What are we going to do about it?”

  Was he asking whether she wanted an affair? At that moment, her body still shaking with the consuming desire he had roused, she wanted nothing more than to give in to the mindless need and let it take her over.

  But she was more than just her body. And this man spelled danger, a spellbinding, sexual power that lured her on, enmeshing her in his primeval magnetism.

  With eyes dilated by the night and its unexpected, imprudent passion, she searched his face for some sign of softness, of tenderness.

  He was looking at her with a dispassionate interest that maddened her as much as it warned her. Although she’d been almost ambushed by need, he, in spite of his words, had not. If she surrendered to this rash, ill-judged hunger, he would take whatever she was prepared to give him, but he would still be in full control of himself and, ultimately, of her.

  It was this that gave her the courage to quell the importunate demands of her body and mutter beneath her breath, “Nothing. I’m not doing anything about it. I don’t go to bed with people I’ve only known a couple of days.”

  “How long had you known David St. Clair before you went to bed with him?”

  Three months. David was a gentleman.

  And Nicholas Leigh, for all his English tailoring and effortless air of authority, was not. Her first intuition had been correct; not quite hidden beneath the sophisticated urbanity lurked the prowling menace of a hunter, lethal and cold-bloodedly intimidating.

  She said in a hard voice, “That’s none of your business.”

  “What happened, Mariel?” he asked without emphasis, as though they had not just shared a kiss, as though the foundations of her world had not trembled and almost collapsed.

  She said remotely, “We agreed that we wouldn’t be happy together.”

  I told him about my past and he decided that it made me—as a wife, as a mistress, as a lover—a distinct handicap to any ambitious diplomat. And you would make exactly the same decision.

  “Why do you want to know?” she continued, using anger and scorn to disassociate herself from the woman of only a few minutes ago who had shivered in his arms, pressed closer to his strong body, gloried in his swift, primal response.

  “Curiosity, perhaps. Did you love him?”

  Because she wanted to shake that imperturbable composure she told him the truth, hissing between her teeth, “Yes, I loved him.”

  “For a while.” Nichola
s spoke calmly, yet his eyes were fixed on her face with a keen interest, as though she were some exotic creature he planned to dissect.

  She took a deep breath and moved away, running shaking hands through her hair, freeing the damp strands on her temple and at the nape of her neck. Although her pulse had evened out, his nearness was still intensely disturbing.

  “Your questions are incredibly rude,” she said curtly. “I need to get some sleep.”

  He must have realized he had pushed her far enough, for he responded, “Let’s go, then.”

  They were almost at the staff quarters when they heard an eerie little noise that emanated from a hidden garden not far from the path.

  “Someone’s crying,” Mariel said, turning toward the sound.

  “Stay there.”

  She shook her head. “It sounds like a—”

  “Stay there.” He set off toward the mysterious weeper.

  Mariel hesitated for only a few seconds before following him the length of the smoothly clipped hedge of azaleas to the single opening. Inside, a sweep of smooth grass surrounded a circular bed of white azaleas, incandescent in the moonlight, as was the marble statue of a nymph at their centre.

  Huddled amongst the low bushes was a child, her face swollen and blotchy as she wept forlornly into her hands.

  “Caitlin,” Mariel exclaimed, running over to her. “What are you doing out here?”

  Nicholas dropped onto his knee beside her. “It can’t be that bad,” he said, his deep voice amazingly gentle. “Your little face is all swollen—is that tears or mosquitoes?”

  Caitlin sobbed, “I want my mommy.”

  “Then let’s go and find her,” Nicholas said.

  “I’m not allowed,” she wailed, and sobbed more loudly.

  There was a hopeless, lost quality about the sound that tore at Mariel’s heart. “Darling, Mommy might be cross with you for running away, but she loves you very much. Come on, we’ll take you home.”