Lindsay Armstrong - A Question Of Marriage

‘What was this precious something?’ he asked with a frown. ‘A heroin haul or the crown jewels?’

‘Very funny, Mr Kirwan.’ She eyed him sardonically. ‘No, but precious enough to me. And when I couldn’t get past your secretary, not to mention being treated as if I were a piece of rubbish even after telling her who I was; and when I could never find you home, I remembered I still had a laundry key, and I decided to take matters into my own hands. Don’t you think you might have done the same?’ she asked gently.

He blinked. ‘So—you didn’t use the front door?’

‘I didn’t have a front door key,’ she said simply. ‘I’d left all my other keys with my father. As a teenager, the laundry door was my—’ she grimaced ‘—preferred way of coming home when I was late.’

He was silent for a long moment, watching her narrowly. Then he said abruptly, ‘Did you know I was supposed to be away that night?’

Aurora took her time. This was the tricky bit because if she didn’t tread carefully, she could involve Bunny. She frowned at him. ‘Were you? What a pity you weren’t. I was kicking myself for not taking into consideration that you had to be an extraordinarily light sleeper. I swear I didn’t make a sound and, believe me, I’ve had a bit of practice at it, but…’ She shrugged.

‘You didn’t make a sound,’ he said slowly. ‘And I came home early because I was ill. I got up to go downstairs to find an aspirin or something when I saw this strange light at the bottom of the stairs.’

Aurora smiled suddenly. ‘I haven’t had much luck, have I?’

He considered, then gestured with his forefinger. ‘There’s still something that doesn’t quite gel, Aurora Templeton. What was it you thought you left behind in that cache that was so precious you couldn’t tell anyone about it? I really think I need to see it,’ he said pensively, ‘before I can believe this story.’

‘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.