Passage of the Night

by Amanda Carpenter

  Francis turned his face away and ran his fingers through his raven hair. Then he leaned his head into his hand, propped his elbow on one raised knee and just stayed there for long seconds. 'I don't know,' he said reluctantly. 'I just don't know any more. University was fun. Even the bitter winters. Something crazy was always on and stupid pranks were being pulled. Louise and I went to as many movies as my budget could afford. I've been thinking about a lot of things recently, and one of those things was Louise, so I looked her up. I wondered how she was getting on, and whether she was happy or not.'

  Kirstie stared at him, working hard to piece together the images he gave her. There was no reason to doubt his explanation for getting in contact with Louise; it didn't conflict with anything her sister had told her, and it made sense, but what troubled her was that his motive stemmed from a sense of comradeship and shared experience, and a caring that was totally at odds with his hard-bitten, relentless pursuit of Louise.

  'If that was the case,' she asked slowly, watching his every flicker of expression, 'why couldn't you just leave it at that?'

  He looked at her, clear-eyed. 'As far as I was concerned, I had.'

  'Louise said you were so ruthless that when she tried to tell you about her forthcoming marriage you wouldn't even listen. I listened,' Kirstie said painfully. 'She cried about it, and I listened all night long.'

  'I can be ruthless,' he replied at last, and he did not sound proud of the fact. 'I can push, and cut and scheme, and have done on more than one occasion. I wouldn't be where I am if I couldn't, where for every success there's a criticism, and where; for every strength, my rivals are looking for a weakness. But I never thought to turn that ruthlessness on her. I didn't want to. I never tried.

  'Louise didn't tell me,' Francis said, lifting his head to meet her gaze. 'There was never a mention of a fiancé. There was no talk of a wedding. The second time we met, she had called me. We ate dinner that night at a restaurant she recommended.'

  Kirstie started to shake her head. It was horrible. In her naiveté she had thought him capable of physical violence, but the reality was worse. Looking into his candid gaze and hearing what he said was much, much worse.

  'You don't understand,' she said, fighting back tears, she didn't know, fighting back something. He stopped and looked at her. 'This isn't doing any good. Why wouldn't Louise tell me the truth?'

  Like a cloud passing over the sun, an incredible pain darkened his face. 'Why, indeed?' said Francis.

  His brief expression of hurt was the final straw. Like salt in a wound, it stung her into crying out, 'Either you or Louise is lying. And you have to be lying. Don't you see? You have to be lying.'

  She thrust herself off the ground. He just stared at her, head thrown back, an odd glint in his eyes. She didn't want to know what it was she saw there, shining green.

  'Kirstie,' he said, and it was spoken with gentleness.

  'Don't talk to me.' Her mouth trembled around the words. What more could he say? How much more damage could he try to do? She put both hands in front of her as if to ward him off, then ran back to the cabin and locked herself in her room.

  She had forgotten to make, the bed. She leaned against the door as she stared at the rumpled blankets and sheets, her ears straining to pick up some hint of pursuit, but there was nothing.

  Left alone, Kirstie dug the heels of her hands into both eyes with such fierceness that she saw blood-red stars. Outside her window a bird burst into a piercing warble seconds before launching into flight, frightened no doubt by the scrabblings of some small animal in the underbrush.

  She recalled everything she could about Francis's true nature, repeating the litany religiously as if she could somehow shore up the shaken foundations of her faith.

  Francis Grayson was unconcerned for the feelings of fellow human beings. Supremely selfish, he was ruthless by his own admission, domineering and unscrupulous, everything she despised in a man. He rode roughshod over anyone who dared to get in his way. All this she had come to believe of him.

  But unfeigned pain was in his voice when he talked of Louise. And patience was what he had needed to overcome his anger and her defences, to attempt a conversation to begin with. Granted, he had defended his position, but she would have done the same. He had used reason, logic, the assumption of common decency, but he had never once, not even in the height of his outrage, attempted to overtly force her into returning him to New York. She had indeed seen no sign of the monster that weekend, just a baffled and infuriated man trying to cope as best he could with a problem he didn't choose.

  Where did that fit in with all the rest?

  It didn't. It couldn't; the images were too incompatible. Francis had been right when he had talked of two realities yesterday.

  The memory of Louise rose in Kirstie's mind, those lovely blue eyes swollen and red from crying, the desperation in her clutching hands, the misery in her face. It had been such a simple lie.

  Only Louise could have thought she could get away with it. She had said she was going out with her fiancé, Neil, that evening, But Kirstie was the one who had answered the phone much later. And it was Kirstie who, out of kindness and concern, had lied to Neil when he'd asked if he could speak to Louise. When she had faced her sister with the subterfuge, Louise had fallen to pieces.

  'Francis won't leave me alone,' her sister had sobbed. 'I know him—I know what he's like. He never has tolerated opposition. What he wants, he takes, and now he's decided after all these years that he wants me. Promise me you won't say anything! Can you imagine what it would do to Neil if he found out? It would destroy him! But I had to see Francis again, to try to reason with him! What will I do, Kirstie? What will I do?'

  The question echoed in her mind and wouldn't stop, along with her own reassuring reply. 'Don't worry about it any more, Louise,' she had said gently. 'You just concentrate on enjoying your wedding on Saturday and the honeymoon afterwards. Nobody will find out about Francis Grayson. I will see to that.'

  Now Kirstie held up a mental mirror and saw in that statement a reflection of her own unthinking arrogance. Now she was dealing with confusion too. The Vermont cabin had always been a refuge from the world, but she had brought in the enemy and sacrificed the serenity of the place to a private war.

  And she had never felt so alone. There was no one she could talk to of her confusion and doubts, no friend in front of whom she could lay her problems and have them dealt with sympathetic objectivity; only Francis Grayson, who could twist every situation to his own advantage, who played with words and destroyed her peace of mind.

  With a sigh, she determined to thrust her doubts about him aside. After all, there had to be some attractive aspects to the man, to make Louise fall for him thirteen years before. He must know how to use them to the fullest extent. It was a very, very clever man who showed her his best in order to get from her what he wanted. What she was seeing was nothing more than pretty packaging wrapped around a soiled core.

  'Fine feathers do not make a tasty bird,' she said aloud to a bluejay that had just perched outside in the bush. As if in answer, it shook its gaudy head, cawed raucously and flew away.

  Pity, she thought belatedly. That was what had been in Francis's eyes.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Francis was at it again. Chopping wood.

  It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, the kind which, out in normality, people shared with their children and pets. The parks in New York would be full with icecream vendors and hot-dog stands. On a day like today at home, Kirstie would be washing her car or helping Louise pack the rest of her things preparatory to moving out of the small house which had once been their parents' and which they now shared.

  Francis showed absolutely no intention of leaving, which she thought was very unreasonable of him. The rest of Saturday had been hideously uneventful. Since there was always a large stack of paperbacks kept at the cabin, which was updated whenever any visiting member of the family thought about replenishing the sto
ck, she had read throughout the afternoon. And Francis had chopped wood.

  In spite of the sinuous flow of muscles that proclaimed him innately athletic, he was awkward about it. And that evening, when Kirstie had shouted brusquely out of the door that dinner was ready, he had handled his silverware with evident clumsiness, so he must be bearing a good many blisters.

  Kirstie twisted restlessly on to her stomach on the rather shabby, comfortable settee. Her thoughts wouldn't let her settle to any one thing, and attempting to read the dog-eared thriller she clutched in one hand was quite useless.

  There were two kinds of men in Kirstie's life. Her grandfather, Whit, her brothers Paul and Christian— even Neil fitted into the solid, predictable mould. She knew what to expect from the men in her family, knew them so well she could even rely on their weak points. They were comforting in their stability, and their loyalty to both family and close associates was without doubt.

  Once she had learned through personal experience about the other kind of men, they too became predictable. They had an innate falsehood built into their make-up, one so pervasive it could take months to discover what was really truth and what wasn't, for they lied even to themselves.

  They presented themselves so often in the light of what they would like to be, not how they really were. They built their own self-image up so assiduously that the fiction became solidified into memory.

  Her first serious relationship was with one such man. She had fallen so deeply in love with the way he had portrayed himself that the breakdown of her faith and trust in him was a slow crumbling agony. Each little lie was a betrayal, each promise hollow. He would agree to something on principle and believe himself to be honest, but when she would confront him with the full force of her open candour he couldn't cope. He couldn't meet her face to face, and every time would back away.

  Kirstie had come to view men of that calibre with a mixture of exasperation and compassion, for she had no doubt that what they did stemmed from insecurity, the need to be respected, the need to be loved.

  But now she was faced with a quandary, for Francis did not fit into either category. If Louise was right, he was capable of a deception that went far beyond mere self-protection. It was a disturbing possibility, for the detail and consistency of his lies hinted at a love of mischief for mischief's sake. She feared the man might be totally heartless.

  If—just for the sake of argument—her sister was wrong, everything Francis had done might indicate that he was indeed willing to be honest and open. He certainly seemed to refuse to paint himself into a romantic self-delusion. He could discuss his faults with a ruthless objectivity but he was so damned unpredictable, Kirstie never could tell for certain which way the man would jump.

  And the sneaking suspicion, fuelled by the accuracy of his argument from yesterday's conversation, crept up on her that somewhere along the line he had managed to get streets ahead of her. She thought she was being manipulated. She hated to think she was being read like a book. And above all she dreaded finding that she was completely wrong about him, for it cast all sorts of unsavoury speculation on her sister, whom she had loved since early childhood.

  Every pursuit of thought led to a dead end. There was no way out of the maze, but still she ran, faster and faster until she felt as if she'd gone into a flat spin.

  And, throughout it all, Francis just kept chopping. The sound was a bit like listening to a leaky tap. Thunk, thunk, thunk. It drove her crazy with its incessantness, its lack of purpose. There was a mini-mountain of split wood behind the cabin already, and besides, Francis couldn't be feeling the urge to do any favours, not after yesterday.

  Thunk, thunk. . .

  Kirstie sat bolt upright. In the sudden silence, lounging supine on the old comfortable settee seemed a horribly vulnerable position in which to be caught. She was just in time, for the sturdy screen door was thrown open and Francis strode in.

  He didn't spare her a glance, however. Kirstie's untidy head swivelled to follow his frowning progress down the tiny hall and into the bathroom. The door slammed shut.

  She heaved a great sigh, and her eyes travelled back to her book. Something would have to be settled between them, for this silence was unbearable. There weren't any rules, any guidelines one could count on, just this frigid stalemate where one couldn't make a move without the other's consent.

  Almost immediately the door to the bathroom swung open again. She looked up as Francis stalked towards the settee and stopped dead in front of her, still wearing that preoccupied, serious frown. Instinctively she knew that this was it, decision time. Evidently he had, by his own route of thinking and priorities, come to the same conclusions she had.

  'Got any tweezers?' Francis asked.

  'What?' Thrown off balance by the odd request, she blinked owlishly at him.

  'I said, have you got any tweezers? I've got a splinter in the heel of my hand, and it hurts like the devil.' Impatience flitted across his face. Irrelevantly she noticed that he was already getting tanned by his two days out in the sun. It suited him, that flush of healthy brown crowning his strong nose and cheekbones, the bare, straight shoulders, the tight ripple of muscle that played like an accordion down the front of his torso.

  'Oh, for heaven's sake,' she muttered, as much to herself as to him. She pushed off the settee in one smooth uncoiling move. 'I doubt it, but hold on a minute. Let me check my bedroom.'

  She had meant for him to wait in the living-room but, much to the detriment of her composure, he followed close behind. The knowledge that he was looking over her shoulder as she entered her small bedroom and searched the dresser drawers made her clumsy. As a result, when she turned back to face him, she was shorter with him than she might otherwise have been.

  'No luck.' Her gaze collided with his, bounced away. He stood blocking the doorway, with large arms folded across his bare chest as if he had nowhere else in the world to go. Kirstie made a tentative movement towards him as if she would have liked to walk right through him, or butt him out of the way, but he didn't budge. 'Look,' she suggested tightly, wild to get him away from her bedroom, to break that even, emerald stare, 'why don't you go soak your hand in water, or something?'

  He shook his head, without moving, still watching her. 'Wouldn't work. The splinter's too big.'

  'Well, what do you expect me to do about it?' As soon as she had snapped the question she could see how inappropriate her testiness was, and those sleek black brows of his rose in delicate reaction. 'I'm sorry, ignore that. Why don't you let me have a look at it? Since I can use both my hands, I might be able to get at it more easily.'

  Silently, like a little boy, he stuck out his hand palm upwards. Kirstie was forced by her offer of help to step nearer, but all awareness of his half-clad body faded as she focused on the raw mess that was his hand.

  'Oh, God,' she muttered with a wince. Three large blisters had formed at the base of his long, dextrous fingers. Two had already burst, and the third was an angry, abused red. Without thinking, she curled her smaller hand around his sturdy wrist. Her fingers could only come part-way around it. 'Why are you doing this to yourself?'

  His skin was warm, but his voice was not. 'It's called,' said Francis succinctly, 'sublimation. Better to take my frustrations out on the chopping block than to throttle the only helicopter pilot in this neck of the woods.'

  Kirstie refused to look up and meet that intent green stare she could feel was boring into the top of her head. 'You could just leave, you know,' she replied, the audible glaciers in her voice expressing her displeasure at his presence.

  'What, and miss such a charming house-party?' She hated the mockery in that, and her telltale fingers clenched around his wrist until the bone was a fleshless ivory. His free hand came up, cupping her chin and tilting it up. 'Besides, I don't fancy a six-day walk,' he told her closed, tight face. 'I'd far rather hitch a ride.'

  Her grey eyes flashed. 'Don't hedge your bets, Francis. We're a long way from that one.'

&nb
sp; His expression never wavered. He just absorbed her aggression as he had ever since they had reached Vermont, and Kirstie felt as if she were throwing herself, body and soul, against the granite side of a mountain. 'That is something I want to talk to you about.'

  'You can talk all you like,' she told him, baring her teeth in a humourless smile. His touch on her vulnerable facial skin was unbearable, and she jerked her head away. 'It won't change anything.'

  One side of his mouth twisted. 'Don't you think you'd better wait until you hear what I have to say before you make such sweeping statements? I thought better of you than that.'

  He thought better of her! What new ploy was this? Her own cynicism showed in her face, pulling the precise features into an older, jaded expression that didn't suit their delicacy. 'What a marvellous transition from Friday, when you thought me despicable. And you had sounded so sure of yourself,' she told him. He didn't just look at her. He smiled. 'Do we try to get that splinter out,' she snapped, 'or not?'

  He stepped to one side and bowed her ahead of him. Gritting her teeth, she pushed past. She couldn't help but notice how her sleeveless shoulder grazed lightly along his chest. He was warm and smelled of sunshine and sweat.

  In the strong kitchen light, she inspected the splinter embedded in Francis's hand. It was indeed a large one, an alien splice through the whorling pattern of his handprint. The area around the puncture had already begun to swell. It must be quite painful, and, unknown to her, Kirstie's forehead wrinkled as she stared at it.

  Francis was watching what he could see of her downbent face, and that male gaze grew sharp with conviction. 'You have such a nerve,' he said.

  The unexpectedness of it was like an attack. It shot past all her barriers and hit inside, and Kirstie's head snapped up as she took a step back from him in shock. Francis advanced; now he was the aggressor with a new, inexplicable anger, and the recognition of just how big he was barrelled through her all over again. She retreated until her back was pressed against an unyielding kitchen counter, her mind pounding with disconcertment, incomprehension.