A Question Of Marriage

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‘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. But 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.

He lifted his eyes to hers and they were amused, but with a glint of irony as a tinge of pink coloured her cheeks at the same time. ‘Why don’t you sit down and have a glass of wine instead?’ he suggested. ‘It might be just what you need after a sleepless night.’ He raised his glass to her.

‘How did you know—?’ She bit her lip.

‘You look a little peaked,’ he drawled, and got to his feet at last to pull out a chair for her. In blue jeans and a grey T-shirt, he looked casual but big and very fit.

Aurora hesitated, then sank down into it. She also took the glass of wine he poured for her, although absently. ‘How did you know,’ she began again, ‘that I’d dropped them out of the window? I assume that is what happened?’

‘You assume correctly.’ He sat down. ‘I just thought,’ he mused, ‘that I should take some precautions. It was, after all, only your word I had to go on last night. So I stopped and asked myself what I would have done with anything I had come by—shall we say illegally?’

‘There was nothing illegal about it at all! At least by now you must know that.’

‘I certainly do.’ His gaze was so amused as it rested on her, she flinched visibly. ‘But at the time, with Neil having done a bunk—’

‘I told you why!’ she interrupted fiercely.

‘Yes,’ he murmured gently. ‘Once again I must point out I had no way of knowing if you were telling me the truth.’

Aurora suddenly took a large swallow of wine as some intuition told her that she was in for a battle of wits on a scale she’d never encountered before. ‘Now we’ve sorted it out, though—OK, I concede it was all my fault and offer my sincere apologies—could I have my diaries back, please?’