A Question of Marriage Read online

  She came back to the present with a sigh. She still might not have done it if she hadn’t rung once more and tried again to get past Miss Hillier, this time to be told flatly that the professor was busier than ever and would she please stop bothering them! There’d also been a curious innuendo in the other woman’s scathing tones that she’d been unable to pin down but it was almost as if she, Aurora, should be ashamed of herself for some reason—it was this strange insinuation that had added fuel to the flames and made her decide to take things into her own hands.

  So what to do now? she wondered. Would the professor and his dragon lady secretary associate her calls with this home invasion? Should she step forward and confess?

  The phone rang as she was thinking these thoughts and it was Bunny, deliciously full of news. Believe it or not, the professor had been robbed! Well, Bunny had gone on to explain, he’d come home early from Perth on account of some virulent bug that had laid him low and put himself straight to bed, only to wake around midnight ravaged by a headache and thirst. He’d stepped out of his bedroom, stood for a few minutes wondering where the light switch was as often happened to people in new homes, then, despite feeling extremely groggy and unwell, had noticed a strange light at the bottom of the stairs.

  And, when someone had begun to ascend the stairs, between wondering whether he was hallucinating and definitely not feeling well enough to grapple with a burglar, he’d stayed quite silent until the intruder had literally walked into his waiting arms—only to knock himself out briefly in the ensuing mêlée.

  ‘You don’t…say!’ Aurora commented feebly at this first break in Bunny’s narrative. ‘Is…is he all right? Was anything stolen?’ she forced herself to add.

  No, nothing was missing, Bunny reported, but that could have been because the intruder had been disturbed; no, he was back in bed but mainly because of a virus he’d picked up and—here Bunny chuckled—would you believe it? He’d actually left the front door ajar when he’d come home which was, according to the police, tantamount to issuing any stray burglar who happened to be ‘out and about casing joints’ an open invitation!

  ‘How…bizarre!’

  Bunny agreed, still chuckling. ‘Talk about the absent-minded professor! Although, he was pretty crook.’

  ‘So…so what are the police going to do?’ Aurora asked.

  ‘Well, love, there’ve been a few burglaries in the area, apparently, and they suspect there’s a bit of a gang at work, must have been them, they reckon, but they didn’t sound too hopeful of pinning them down on this one. In all the chaos of the storm—we got three broken windows and the garden is kind of flattened—they can’t find any evidence of anyone being on the property.’

  Aurora swallowed, mainly with relief, as Bunny chatted on about how she’d been given the day off. And when Aurora finally put the phone down, she thought she might have had a very lucky escape; she told herself she would never do anything as foolish again, but there still remained the problem of her diaries…

  It took her a week to acknowledge that she would either have to come clean with the professor and resign herself to either he or Miss Hillier reading them before she got to them, or resign herself to having them bricked up for ever, assuming the builder doing the bricking up didn’t find them.

  Then, out of the blue, came a ray of light. Her programme director, Neil Baker, asked her if she’d like to accompany him to a house-warming party. They’d actually met overseas and laughed at one of life’s little coincidences that they should be working together back in ‘Oz’, but there’d never been any romantic spark between them.

  ‘You wouldn’t be between girlfriends, Neil?’ she teased.

  He grimaced and confessed that he was, but he’d been invited to bring a partner to this party, to which his ex-girlfriend had also been invited, and… He paused and looked awkward.

  ‘OK, I get the picture.’ Aurora grinned. ‘Where and when?’

  ‘Luke Kirwan has got himself a new pad, somewhere up on the hill. Know him?’

  Aurora coughed to cover her start of surprise. ‘Er…no. You do, I gather?’

  ‘Yep. I was at uni with him. Like to come? It’s this Friday night, semi-formal and I’ll take the present.’

  ‘I…yes.’

  The thing was to look as little as possible like a cat burglar, Aurora told herself as she studied her wardrobe early on Friday evening.

  Of course, it would be even better if she could persuade herself to come down with a sudden bout of flu and give up the whole idea of going to this party at all, but…

  She flicked back her long streaky fair hair and planted her hands on her hips. Who did this professor and his watchdog secretary think they were? Common courtesy alone was entirely absent from their behaviour and if they thought they could brush her aside like a troublesome, somehow rather shameful fly, they could think again. She would go and, if the opportunity presented itself, she would retrieve her diaries.

  She chose a flamenco outfit she’d picked up in Spain, a long flounced skirt with pink flowers on a dark background and a white blouse. She pinned a fake pink gardenia into her hair and studied her reflection.

  It was almost a boyish little face beneath the glorious hair but redeemed by a pair of thickly lashed, sparkling green eyes that were little short of sensational. At barely five feet two, her figure was neat, compact and very slim.

  She started to smile at herself in the long mirror as she kicked the skirt aside and raised her hands above her head—it was a beautiful outfit and she always felt wonderful in it. As if she could dance the flamenco all night but, not only that, even without her mantilla, she always felt as if the clothes and the dance were a sensuous celebration of her femininity.

  She lowered her arms abruptly—perhaps those were not the right vibes to be giving off at Professor Luke Kirwan’s house-warming? Perhaps she should dress to be as inconspicuous as possible rather than trying to look the opposite to a cat burglar? She frowned, then shrugged as the doorbell rang—it was too late to change now.

  ‘Wow!’ Neil Baker looked suitably impressed. ‘You look absolutely stunning, Aurora.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She got into his car and stowed her fringed shoulder bag at her feet. It was a little bulkier than normal because it contained a green rubbish bag and a length of strong fishing line as well as her lipstick, comb and a hanky. She smiled at Neil as he started the engine for the short drive to her old home. ‘Tell me a bit about this friend of yours?’

  ‘He’s really brilliant, but he’s a good bloke for all that. There was a rumour that he and a girl called Leonie Murdoch were about to get hitched—maybe this is a surprise engagement party too,’ Neil theorized, ‘because I can’t see why he needs a house otherwise. There’s a hell of a lot of old money in the family, family homes and a sheep station out west—here we are!’

  Aurora opened her mouth as she stared at her old family home lit up most attractively tonight, and it was on the tip of her tongue to tell Neil that she was no stranger to this house and why, just in case she met someone she knew, but the moment seemed to pass without her being able to get it out. Then she saw how many people were streaming into this house-warming party, and it didn’t seem to matter—she would only be one insignificant guest in a big crowd.

  But once she was inside, she did take the precaution of asking Neil to point Luke Kirwan out to her because she had every intention of avoiding their host as much as was possible. Only Miss Hillier, fortyish, upright, groomed within an inch of life and looking every bit the martinet she sounded, had been at the door to greet guests.

  ‘Uh…’ Neil looked around the throng as glasses of champagne were pressed upon them—a catering firm had obviously been hired ‘…oh, there he is! Over by the piano. I think I’ll wait until things settle down rather than fight through the crowd to introduce you, if that’s OK with you?’ he added, but rather distractedly as he scanned the throng intently.

  ‘Fine!’ Aurora said, more enthusiastically tha
n was called for, as she gazed through the crowd at the man beside the piano. Actually there were two, but one of them wore thick glasses, had thinning fair hair, was short and wore an Argyle tie with a mustard corduroy shirt beneath a baggy tweed jacket. He also had a pipe in his hand.

  No one could possibly look more ‘donnish’, she decided and smiled inwardly. So that was Professor Luke Kirwan. No wonder he had to employ a dragon lady to run things for him because he literally exuded the kind of fuddy-duddy ineffectualness one associated with an absent-minded professor.

  Which was not how you could describe the man standing next to him, she mused as she felt herself relaxing beneath the vastly less than threatening presence of the man she’d grappled with at the top of the stairs on that never-to-be-forgotten night.

  No, another kettle of fish altogether, the second man beside the piano. In fact, downright arresting might be a good way to put it, she decided.

  Tall with brushed-back dark hair, he had a wide brow, smooth skin, high cheekbones and slight hollows beneath those good bones as his face tapered to a hard mouth and a jaw-line that indicated this was not a man to trifle with. He also had dark, brooding eyes and he was leaning negligently against the baby grand looking cool, slightly bored and capable of a rather damning kind of arrogance if he chose.

  From what she could see, he wore indigo designer jeans, a midnight-blue shirt beneath a faultlessly tailored navy jacket and a shot-silk amethyst tie. He also had a glass of something in his hands which he twirled now and then before putting it to his lips, draining it and setting it down decisively. As he straightened and his dark gaze roamed around the crowded room briefly, she saw that he was even taller than she’d suspected with wide shoulders.

  Well, well, Aurora found herself thinking as that indifferent gaze failed to be impressed by anything it saw and he turned away—what have we here? A hawk amongst the sparrows? A real man amongst us? I wonder what he does for a living? Could he be a corsair in disguise, a better-looking, more dangerous James Bond than any of them, a modern-day Mr Darcy?

  This time an outward smile twisted her lips because it was just that typical flight of fantasy that made it so difficult for her to allow anyone to read her diaries…

  Over the next two hours, the party got noisier and merrier. She also got separated from Neil, who still hadn’t got around to introducing her to Luke Kirwan for the simple reason that as soon as he and his ex-girlfriend laid eyes on each other, they were drawn together like a pin to a magnet and determined, it appeared, to have things out with each other despite being in the middle of a party.

  ‘Look,’ Neil said awkwardly to Aurora as his ex-girlfriend glowered at her over her shoulder, ‘I’m sorry about this but—’

  ‘Forget about me, Neil.’ Aurora chuckled. ‘If looks could kill I should be six feet under by now, which tells me she’s still very interested in you, so go for it! I can take care of myself.’

  Neil looked both grateful and exasperated at the same time, but, five minutes later, neither of them were to be sighted.

  Aurora shrugged, still amused but also aware that she was a free agent now, which simplified things considerably. She could put her plan—of wandering upstairs in search of a powder room but nipping into her old bedroom to get her diaries—into action, and she could leave the party whenever it suited her without anyone being the wiser.

  Before she got to implement any of it, though, she’d wandered outside onto the terrace to drink in the view she knew so well and loved—the Manly Boat Harbour by night with its millions of dollars’ worth of yachts and all kinds of small crafts tied up to the jetties—when a disco struck up on the terrace and couples drifted out to dance.

  And she was actually thinking that this was a livelier kind of party than one would expect of an absent-minded professor when a deep voice behind her drawled, ‘May I have this dance, señorita?’

  For some reason the hairs on the nape of her neck stood up as she turned slowly, then she knew why—it was the man who’d been standing beside the professor at the piano.

  She took an unexpected breath to be on the receiving end of that dark, worldly gaze, but said lightly, ‘Oh, it’s you.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘You were expecting me?’

  ‘Not at all, señor.’ She smiled faintly. ‘I got the rather strong impression not much about this party was of any interest to you.’

  A glint of something like mockery entered his dark eyes. ‘When did you get that impression?’

  She shook out her hair and opted for honesty against confusion at being caught in having ‘sized him up’, so to speak. ‘When you were leaning against the piano looking bored,’ she said with a glimmer of mischief curving her lips.

  ‘That must have been before I caught sight of you,’ he countered, then frowned slightly. ‘Are you—unaccompanied?’

  ‘I am now, although I didn’t start out that way.’ She looked wry. ‘My escort met his ex-girlfriend and they’ve disappeared. I’m not sure if they’re making up or tearing each other to bits, but something intensely dramatic was going on between them so I decided to withdraw rather than get my eyes scratched out.’

  ‘Then he wasn’t the love of your life?’

  ‘No way. I was only filling in because they’d split up!’

  ‘I think he needs his head read,’ the man remarked thoughtfully. ‘Do you dance, señorita? It would be a pity not to do that gorgeous outfit justice.’ His gaze roamed up and down her figure.

  ‘That’s what I always think when I’m wearing it,’ Aurora replied simply, although conscious of a tremor running through her, sparked by that heavy-lidded dark gaze on her body. And she knew instinctively that her sensuous pleasure in herself, brought on by this outfit, had communicated itself to this stranger—in other words it had been a mistake to wear it. But how was she to have known she would bump into the one man who would sense that, where others mightn’t?

  She also caught herself thinking that this stranger was dynamite, and she should possibly exercise due caution or she might find herself willingly led down the garden path…

  That was nonsense, she immediately corrected the thought, another flight of sheer fantasy! All the same, it wouldn’t go astray to take care.

  She said, whimsically, ‘I won’t treat you to a full flamenco, though.’

  ‘Could you?’

  ‘I took lessons in Spain a few months ago. They called me the pocket señorita.’

  He studied her upturned face until she moved restlessly beneath the way his gaze took in her eyes, then rested squarely on her mouth before he said pensively, ‘Why do I get the feeling you could be a pocket dynamo all round, Miss…?’

  But Aurora, who found her heart beating abnormally and her senses all at sixes and sevens beneath not only the way this man was looking at her but everything about him, clutched a straw of sanity. ‘I’d rather remain anonymous at the moment,’ she said with a delicious look of fun in her eyes. ‘If you don’t tread on my toes or have sweaty palms I might reconsider, but I’m not promising anything.’

  He didn’t reply, only inclined his head, took her in his arms and swung her into the beat of the music. Then he stopped and frowned down at her again, but only for a moment before he rather absently steered her through the dancers.

  As for Aurora, she also found herself dancing mechanically for several reasons. A determination not to be overly impressed by this man on such short notice, but also because of a prickling sense of déjà vu. Why, though? she wondered. She was quite sure she’d never met him before—he was not the kind of man you forgot—so it had to be because she was back on the terrace of her old home, only—that didn’t seem to fit.

  ‘Have I offended some other, unnamed principle of yours, Miss Anonymous? Body odour or bad breath?’ he drawled, breaking her out of her frowning reverie.

  Her eyes widened. ‘Uh…no, sorry, nothing like that at all! You smell quite nice in a manly way.’ She inhaled delicately. ‘I’m not partial to overpoweri
ng aftershave or cologne on men.’

  ‘Neither am I,’ he said abruptly. ‘You, on the other hand, use a particularly delicate, floral perfume.’

  ‘Thank you! It is rather nice, isn’t it? I have it specially made up for me by a friend who is into that kind of thing.’

  ‘So it’s—uniquely yours?’ There was a rather intent little gleam in his eyes as he asked the question.

  ‘Yes. Do you have a problem with that?’ she asked curiously.

  ‘No. Why should I?’

  ‘I don’t know. You just looked a bit—’ she shrugged ‘—censorious about my perfume.’

  He smiled faintly. ‘I think it all goes towards making you rather special.’ He held her away and looked down at her consideringly before raising his eyes to hers. ‘Do you have anyone in your life—when you’re not helping hapless men friends out?’

  Aurora, once more clasped in his arms, began to dance again. ‘I don’t think we know each other well enough to go into that. Unless you’d like to set the ball rolling by telling me about your love life?’ She raised an eyebrow delicately at him.

  ‘In point of fact I happen to be—unattached at the moment,’ he responded gravely.

  ‘And on the prowl,’ Aurora suggested with an undercurrent of irony.

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Could be that my antennae are picking up those vibes about you,’ she replied ingenuously. ‘In fact, I warned myself to be on guard against being led down the garden path not long after we started to dance.’

  He laughed, and there was something curiously breathtaking about it despite Aurora’s wish to be unimpressed by him. Because it revealed a vitality that made you want to laugh too, and made you want to get to know this man, who could be so damningly bored at times then respond so fascinatingly to something you’d said—so that you felt absolutely fascinated yourself.