by Robyn Donald
‘Who knows?’ Natalie sounded excited, like a child faced with an unexpected treat.
Accustomed to constant entertaining, she used to adore parties and occasions, but it had been months since she had shown any eagerness for a social life. Her interest now was an indication of her improvement. An improvement, Aura recognised with a growing dread, that started when she began to go out with Paul.
Slivers of ice attaching themselves to her spine, she frowned at the big Jag that had stopped at the kerb. Yes, that was Flint getting out of it—she’d be able, she thought with painful honesty, to recognise him from a mile away.
For a stupid moment she toyed with the idea of refusing to answer the door, but every light in the place was blazing. And a peremptory knock demanded an answer.
‘Hello,’ she said coolly, trying to preserve some sort of composure.
He loomed, tall and forbidden and infinitely intimidating; every cell in her body acknowledged his presence.
‘Are you wearing those clothes tonight?’
She looked down at her trousers and jersey. ‘What’s wrong with them?’ she asked numbly.
‘Nothing, I suppose.’ His glittering gaze followed the contours of her body with too much interest.
Aura’s breath died in her throat. Her body leapt into vivid life, almost shuddering with a singing anticipation.
‘But don’t you think,’ he went on smoothly, ‘that opera demands a little more formality? Especially as we’re having dinner first?’
‘I’m not—’
‘Yes, you are. We don’t want to disappoint Paul, do we?’
Torn between a desire so strong she could taste it, sweet and wild and heady, and a fear that drained the light from her eyes and the colour from her skin, Aura said huskily, ‘I don’t think it would be a good idea, Flint.’
Her shamed glance pleaded with him not to press the matter, but he asked, ‘Why not?’
Anger at an obtuseness she knew to be deliberate sparked into life. She retorted crisply, ‘I don’t really want to go with you. I’m not ready—’
‘Then get ready,’ he commanded.
He was punishing her, she realised. The momentary flashflame of emotion died into listless fatalism. He looked quite capable of picking her up and carrying her off as though she were some mindless, helpless captive.
‘Very well,’ she said stiffly, despising herself for capitulating. ‘You’d better come in. It will take me twenty minutes or so to get ready.’
Any remote hope she might have had that Natalie would object was extinguished when she came back into the sitting-room. Flint was smiling at her mother, his mouth relaxed into amusement, and Natalie looked better than she had for months, a very becoming colour hinting at her pleasure. When Aura appeared wearing black lace and her grandmother’s rare green garnets, her hair restrained in an old-fashioned chignon, her mother smiled almost wistfully.
‘Run away and enjoy yourselves,’ she said.
Natalie’s upbringing, perhaps her nature, had insulated her against the violent tumult of uncontrollable emotions. Her affections were directed very firmly at one person—herself. It would never occur to her that her daughter might feel obliged to call her wedding off because of an inconvenient hang-up over the best man. Paul was much the better bet as a husband, so Natalie, in her own inimitable way, would have been faithful to him.
Aura was not finding it so easy to compartmentalise her life and her inclinations.
Once in the car she sat quietly, refusing to fill the silence with pointless chatter. By forcing her to come out with him, Flint had revealed how little he cared for the usual social conventions, so she wasn’t going to indulge in them either.
The front that brought the afternoon rain had moved over, and above them a clear sky was spattered with stars, hazy in the city air. No doubt just north of Auckland where Flint had his land the stars would be huge and brilliant, glittering like pale, precious gems in a sky as dark and fathomless as black velvet.
Aura adjusted the Edwardian gold and seed-pearl and green garnet bracelet. Its familiar shape and weight on her slender wrist should have comforted her, as should the heavy warmth of the matching stones in their golden setting around her throat, but she was beyond comfort.
Anticipation, forbidden and headily ungovernable, curled like alcohol through her veins, fuzzing her thoughts and kicking in emotions she had never experienced before.
Flint said, ‘Your father didn’t have much to do with your looks, did he?’
‘No.’ She thought of the father she had never really known. ‘He was tall and dark and craggy.’
‘What happened to him?’
The smile that curved her lips was sad and angry, but her voice was coolly detached. ‘He went to Africa.’
‘And left you behind? Why?’
Her shoulders lifted. ‘He was a doctor, and he wanted to help people who really needed him. I was eight when he went, and I don’t really remember much about it, except that I cried for weeks afterwards. And every time—’ She stopped.
‘And every time—?’
Every time she cried Natalie would stop her own wailing long enough to inform her he had left them and wasn’t coming back because she’d been such a naughty girl. But she wasn’t going to tell Flint that.
Aloud, she said, ‘Oh, nothing. He had a dream, but it wasn’t Mother’s dream. When she wouldn’t go with him he went alone.’
‘Leaving you and your mother behind. What sort of man was he, to dump his responsibilities like that?’ The scorn in his deep voice revealed exactly what he thought of that sort of man.
Aura smiled ironically. ‘He was an old-fashioned man like Dr Livingstone, who thought that wives should follow their husbands even if it meant their early death, or their misery.’
‘It was unfortunate that his high ideals didn’t encompass his wife and child.’
Although Aura had often thought exactly the same thing, she wasn’t going to listen to Flint run her father down. With an undertone of warning she said, ‘Who knows why other people behave the way they do? I certainly don’t judge him.’
‘Didn’t his departure affect you? Apart from the weeks of crying?’
The question was delivered in a casual tone that didn’t fool Aura at all. She shrugged. ‘You get over things.’
‘How long did you live with Alick Forsythe?’
To her surprise he and Alick had got on well at the party; both powerful men, confident and arrogant. For some reason she hadn’t expected them to so clearly enjoy each other’s company.
But there was a flick of emotion in his question that snagged her attention. Her eyes scanned the harsh, blunt profile, returning to her hands when she realised that it revealed nothing but strength and a disciplined authority.
In a reserved voice she said, ‘I lived in Kerikeri for a couple of years, from ten until I was twelve.’ They had been the happiest years of her life.
‘Why?’
‘Oh, after my father left I ran wild. Natalie couldn’t control me.’ Natalie didn’t really try. ‘When she remarried I didn’t approve of her choice,’ she went on flippantly. ‘I had a nice line of tantrums, specialising in high-decibel hysteria. I behaved so badly they sent me to boarding school, but the third time I ran away the school decided I was in need of specialist care and suggested I stay at home while I got it. We had a family conference, and it was agreed that I should live with my Kerikeri cousins.’
‘And did you run away from there?’
She laughed. ‘Oh, no, that was quite a different kettle of fish. I was an uncivilised little savage, but I knew where I wanted to be. I adored Alick, and his parents, and especially his grandparents, who were darlings but very firm. I soon learnt that tantrums weren’t going to succeed, and I stayed put, even when Alick lost his temper with me.’
She had tormented him unmercifully until that happened. Alick’s anger had frightened her, but he hadn’t hit her, and he hadn’t used any of the psychological ter
rorising that her stepfather was so expert in. That episode had marked the turning point; from then on she had trusted her cousin.
‘And you didn’t want to go back home?’
She laughed harshly. ‘No. Never. I loved it at Kerikeri.’
‘I see.’ He was silent for a moment, before asking, ‘You didn’t run away when you went back to boarding school?’
‘Nope. I was a reformed child.’ Amazing what unconditional love and firm discipline could do.
‘What became of your father?’
‘He died five years ago, still in Africa. I believe he was happy.’
‘You don’t know?’
Her shoulders moved an inch. Staring straight ahead she said calmly, ‘He didn’t write, didn’t contact us.’
She had written to him for years, but no reply ever came back. When he left he had cut wife and daughter out of his life as though they had no further meaning for him. Perhaps they hadn’t.
‘Your stepfather died recently, too, didn’t he?’ His voice revealed nothing more than mild interest, but if he knew about Lionel Helswell he must have heard of the circumstances of his death.
Perhaps he anticipated some kind of pleasure from forcing her to tell him. If that was so, she was prepared to deny it to him.
Lightly, cynically, she replied, ‘Yes. He got tied up in a financial scandal, used most of my mother’s money and all of mine in an attempt to bail himself out, and when that had all gone put a gun in his mouth. Good job, too. He was a mean-minded martinet, and, like all bullies, fundamentally a coward. I don’t miss him in the least.’
‘Except that he dumped the responsibility for your mother on you. When did this happen?’
Aura shrugged. ‘Six months ago.’
‘Three months before you met Paul.’
Refusing to react to the steel in his words, she replied serenely, ‘Yes, just before I met Paul.’
And he could make what he liked of that. She had already told him more than she had wanted to about her own life.
‘Do you have relatives, or were you spat out of the ground, fully carved in stone?’ she asked pertly.
He laughed. ‘I have parents, and a variety of aunts and uncles and cousins.’
They talked a little about the Wairarapa; several of the girls Aura had been to school with came from there, and he knew their families. It was meaningless, harmless conversation. Keeping her eyes firmly fixed in front, she stared sightlessly as they made their way through suburbia towards the city, finally stopping under the wide porte-cochere of a hotel with a well-known and highly recommended restaurant on its top floor.
Flint had booked a table by the window so she was able to look out over the harbour, but Aura saw nothing beyond a blur of lights, the sheen of obsidian water, for her whole attention was taken by the man who walked beside her.
She had never experienced such utter absorption before, as though the only thing of any importance to her in the world was this man. She wanted to stop time, to hold back its inexorable flow and imprison the moment like a fly in amber, or the crystal brilliance at the heart of a diamond.
Yet beneath the mingled delight and pain lurked deep guilt. At last, with anger and despair, she accepted that she could not marry Paul. What had been unimaginable before was now the only honourable way to behave.
With that thought came the horrifyingly daunting prospect of cancelling the wedding.
The cruel, bitter irony of it all was that whatever she did she was doomed to loneliness. There was no future for her with Flint. She didn’t trust him, she didn’t like him; all she felt for him was a forbidden desire so potent that it overcame even love.
Because she did love Paul. That was what hurt so much.
The lamplight glittered on the diamond on her finger, transforming it to blue fire. Paul, she thought sadly, aware that even now she was thinking of him in the past, oh, Paul, my dearest, forgive me.
She looked up, to catch Flint’s gaze, piercing, predatory, on her downcast face. A delicious shudder stabbed her spine, turned her bones to honey.
She began to talk with the sophisticated ease of a woman who knew her way around the world. Her savoir-faire was a shield, a thin, barely opaque barrier against those far too perceptive eyes, but it and pride was all she had for shelter.
Halfway through the delicious meal a caustic comment made by Flint about one of the other patrons surprised a catch of laughter from her. He surveyed her with gleaming eyes, his hard mouth curved, and she felt that look right down to her toes, felt it scorch a pattern through her that couldn’t be erased.
Her heart leapt into feverish speed. The smile faded on her lips, an unruly hunger sharpened its claws on her body, and she was gripped by a need so acute, so frightening, that she lost colour. She had never known such passion, never understood how powerless reason and logic were against it.
Common sense told her that if she went ahead and married Paul she’d live a happy and fulfilled life. Paul loved her, and Flint manifestly didn’t, yet all she wanted to do was follow him through whatever hells he might drag her. This ‘dark, secret love’ of Blake’s poem was terrifying, but if he said come, she’d leave without a backward glance everything that had been so important to her and walk barefoot with him across the world.
Only he would never say that word. He saw her as someone with her eye to the main chance. Oh, he wanted her, but he was strong enough to deal with that. His sexuality wouldn’t get in the way of his intelligence; that cold, clear incisive brain was completely in control of his hormones.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
Aura shrugged. ‘A goose walked over my grave.’ And added rapidly, ‘So do you think we’re really going to have power cuts until the southern lakes fill in the spring?’ referring to the latest political scandal.
‘It seems ominously like it,’ he said. If he realised she was evading his question he chose not to probe, instead delivering an extremely trenchant criticism of those he considered had brought the country to this pass.
Playing devil’s advocate, Aura made him justify every statement, and tried to enjoy the rest of the meal, acutely aware that remorse and apprehension dimmed her usual easy conversation. She was relieved when at last they were sitting in the seats Paul had chosen for her pleasure at the theatre.
Unfortunately, as the story of two friends as close as brothers who loved the same woman unfolded in front of her, she barely heard the ravishing music. At any other time she would have smiled at the weakness of the libretto. Now, it struck too near home.
Yet in spite of the emotions that churned through her, submerging her integrity in a dark tide of desire, she had never felt so vividly, achingly alive; it was as though all these years she had slept in a cocoon, watching the world but not part of it.
From the age of fourteen she had mistrusted men. Her assailant’s spoken rape had corrupted her in ways she was only just beginning to understand, so that she had protected herself by freezing off her budding sexuality. That, and the misery of life with a mother too weak to protect her from a stepfather intent on breaking her spirit, had led to the two engagements Flint was so suspicious of. They had been escape bids.
Looking back, she could even work out why she had chosen each man. The first one, when she was barely eighteen, had happened a month after Alick and Laurel’s first child was born. Her cousin had always been Aura’s refuge, her anchor. The baby boy had signalled irrevocably that Alick’s main loyalty now lay with Laurel and his new family. Aura had been once more relegated to the periphery.
And the second engagement had been a vain attempt to refute her first fiancé’s accusations of frigidity.
Aura regretted both of them, because she had used both men, and hurt them.
After those fiascos she had refused to become serious with any man until Paul came along, the ideal, chivalrous hero of every virgin’s dreams, offering protection and an unthreatening, unselfish love. Paul was safe. And he understood. When she tried to tell him she
was frigid he had laughed softly.
‘No one with your love of textures and colours and perfumes, no one who uses their senses as you do, is frigid,’ he had said. ‘You might have had bad experiences in the past, but making love will come naturally with you with the right man, a man you can trust.’
Then he’d kissed her, and she’d liked it, and because he was so patently trustworthy she had learned to love him.
He had been right. But it was Flint who had smashed through her barriers. She didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him, but she wanted him with every sense honed to a painful intensity.
He had ripped the shield of ice away, melted it in the heat of his personality and exposed her unprotected, untried self to his potent, explicit masculinity.
By the time interval arrived she was tense and on edge, so she drank the glass of white wine he bought her too fast. Fortunately, friends and acquaintances kept her answering questions about Paul’s absence with what she hoped was the correct mix of regret at his absence, and pleasure in Flint’s company.
But she was almost convinced that everyone who talked to her, looked at her, knew of her hypocrisy.
The second half was sheer hell. Aura tried to concentrate on the stage because it was easier than facing her misery and self-reproach, but she couldn’t take in what was happening. Brilliantly clad people passed before her vision, sang and postured, and she saw nothing because her brain was feverishly sorting through alternatives.
She couldn’t marry Paul feeling like this.
Yet this would die; something so intense couldn’t last for long. Paul was everything she wanted. It was aridly ironic that in spite of the runaway fire Flint roused in her, she didn’t want to give up the security of Paul’s love for the doubtful bliss of an affair with Flint—even supposing he wanted one. And the incident with Gemma made that highly unlikely. Loyalty, she thought agitatedly, was probably more important to him than satisfying a sexual need.
He wouldn’t have any difficulty with that; she had only to glance around the foyer at interval to notice jealously the interested scrutiny he was getting from far too many women. His combination of raw sexuality and worldliness was overwhelming.