Passage of the Night

by Amanda Carpenter

  His brows snapped together. She noticed that she had managed to give him a bit of a surprise with that one. After a moment, he said carefully, 'I don't get it.'

  'No, I don't suppose you do. Excuse me.' Kirstie brushed past him and went to her bedroom to tidy it and collect the few personal belongings she had brought. He followed.

  'Tell me this. Just one thing,' Francis asked sarcastically. 'Does anyone ever understand a single thing you do?'

  'Quite frequently,' she muttered.

  'Well then, how the hell do they do it?' he snapped.

  'How should I know?'

  'You're the one who thinks the way you do!'

  'Why are you yelling at me? You've got what you wanted all along! You should be over the moon!'

  'If I had wanted to just go back, you stupid woman, I would have done so on Sunday!' he roared.

  Total silence. They glared at each other. Kirstie was amazed at how Francis looked as if he could throttle her without regret. Instead he pivoted on one heel and stalked away. Her vision blurred. Damn the headache. Damn the man.

  She waited deliberately until the dust had settled after his latest bomb. Thinking did no good at all. She was too tired and confused to figure this one out on her own. After a while she went into the living-room and found him sitting in front of the fire, his bare chest gleaming. He stretched his long legs out in front of him and sighed, letting his head fall to the back of the chair, basking in the glow of the fire like a cat.

  He looked—peaceful. That black silk fall of hair. She wondered what it would feel like to let the dry strands flow between her fingers. He rolled his head towards her at the sound of her entrance.

  'I don't understand you,' she said very quietly.

  Just as quietly he replied, 'I know. I'm not so sure I understand it myself.'

  She walked to the settee, sat on a very damp patch left earlier by her own wet bottom and with a grimace slid on to the floor. 'What is it you want from me?'

  His eyes flashed to her. They looked very light. Twin flames flickered across the lustrous, clear colour. 'It's very simple, idealistic and probably impossible,' he said. 'I want you to accept me for what I am—not what another person told you I am, but what you see right now in front of you.'

  The honesty of that was irrefutable, and it hurt like a knife. Her forehead crinkled with the distress it caused, and she whispered, 'Why? Why me, after all I've done to you?'

  'Don't you think I've asked myself that?' His lips curved into a little smile, self-mocking, and she saw that he was as pitiless with himself as she was with herself. 'You've kidnapped me, drugged me, threatened me with a gun and disrupted my schedule in one of the most ridiculous, hare-brained schemes I've witnessed in a very long time. I should still be angry with you. I wish I were.'

  She closed her eyes. He was giving her too much. I'm sorry, she wanted to say. I'm sorry. But she couldn't.

  'The thing is, Kirstie,' Francis was telling her, 'that I can clearly see your concern and desperation in doing what you did. You thought people's lives were being ruined. What you did took courage. You broke the rules of society, but, more importantly, you stayed to face the consequences of what you did, when you didn't have to. And you've continually faced up to your own code of standards even when it meant hurting yourself. I don't agree with what you did, but I can respect it.'

  He leaned forward, placed his elbows on his knees. 'Look at me. What do you see?'

  'I can't,' she whispered, but she looked at him anyway.

  He held her gaze with gentle relentlessness, and then, with the most brutal of all honesties, said, 'You did in the ravine.'

  She flinched, and saw how her reaction went right inside him, and even then she couldn't turn away. And then she forced herself to be as brutal as he, as she licked her lips and whispered, 'We both know what happened. When I looked at you in the ravine, I— wanted you. You, Francis. And it was so scary. I— couldn't even blame you, and I wanted to do that too. There's too much between us. I—can't '

  'I know you can't,' he said quietly, shadows flickering across his face. 'And for what it's worth, I blame myself for what happened in the ravine. In itself, it wasn't wrong, but it was at the wrong time, and in the wrong place. And I've never hidden from you who I am or what I've felt, even if it meant shouting at you or making a fool of myself when you've made me angry. Do you see in me the man Louise described to you?'

  How honest could she be? How much could this hurt? She breathed hard and broke out in a sweat, but funnily enough it was the disappointment overcoming his own face that hurt most of all. That look loosened her tongue.

  'No, I don't,' she said tiredly, and the tension in his whole body eased. 'But I can't decide which is the real man. Even you admitted there is a ruthless side to you. It's too much to ask of me. I love her, Francis.'

  He closed his eyes, sighed and reached for her fist that lay cold and clenched on one knee. With gentle fingers he stroked hers open and warmed them in his grip. She bent her head and stared, melting into boneless vulnerability at the generosity of it. 'I know that too. But truth is only what we see of it. Take the ugliest woman in the world. If she is loved, she feels beautiful inside, no matter what her mirror tells her. And the most beautiful woman in the world can feel ugly if she fears she is unloved.'

  'What are you trying to say to me?' she asked with difficulty. With each stroke on the inside of her wrist, it felt as if he were peeling away a layer of cynicism and disbelief. 'If Louise lied—if—why would she do such a thing?'

  'I don't know,' he said, and she saw another thing. He too was hurt by what Louise had done. It loosened another layer. 'I only know that judgement without mercy is cold, Kirstie.'

  Up close his face revealed the imprint of lines, lines of laughter fanning from those downturned eyes, lines beside that sensual, firm mouth. There were lines, too, marking his forehead between the straight black brows that deepened with anger or determination. It was a hard face, capable of great softening or ferocious reaction, but it was not a cruel one.

  It was the face she had always seen, from the first, in the ravine, now. She had recoiled in the ravine, not from this face, but from the face of the monster painted inside her head.

  She reached out on impulse and curled her small fingers under his chin. He obeyed the light direction she applied, looking up swiftly with the openness of surprise. 'If it were up to me,' she said, 'if it were only me, I would accept without question the person I see.'

  His black pupils contracted, his lips parted. He said simply, 'Then we've done all we can here.'

  'I want to go home,' she whispered achingly.

  He tightened his grip on her hands and nodded. 'So do I, now.'

  They tidied the cabin in silence. The rain had slackened off, but it hadn't yet stopped when Francis donned a battered, fishy-smelling anorak and went out to tinker with the helicopter.

  Kirstie watched him with a troubled gaze from the shelter of the porch. He had twisted her thinking to a standstill. It was appalling to think of how he had done it with apparent ease, but everything he had said was exactly right according to her way of thinking. Was that because he too operated on a similar wavelength, or was it all a diabolically clever assessment of her personality and weaknesses?

  Loyalty to Louise dictated an adherence to the second possibility. Everything she had seen of him supported Francis's honesty. Otherwise his avoidance of returning to New York on Sunday made no sense. And everything he had said was right. Her shoulders sagged. The truth was, she didn't know what to believe, or in whom.

  The harsh truth was, she wasn't sure if she wanted to believe in Francis because of what had happened between them while they'd stayed on the mountain. Was she being unfair to Louise's integrity because she found her attraction to Francis impossible to control or deny? Louise had lied to Neil, but it was exactly the kind of lie Kirstie would have told to protect someone she loved. And everyone lied at some time or another. Was she too ready to have the se
ed of doubt sown that Louise had lied to her too? She wouldn't be able to forgive herself if that were the case. But if Louise had, oh, why?

  Her dilemma crystallised into simple clarity, the issues settling on two sides of a coin. One of them was lying. The other wasn't. And she was too involved now; she would be hurt no matter which of them it was. Either way, something of her faith in her people would be ruined, for Francis had managed the very rare. He had climbed inside the circle.

  This was the price of the immovable object. Two sides of a coin, flipping in the air, and now it had begun its downward arc. Heads or tails, she lost. And she knew that she didn't want the coin to land, to see what would be staring her in the face.

  Francis was in front of her before she realised it, and she recoiled instinctively before she could stop herself. Since she refused to meet his eyes, she failed utterly to see how his facial muscles tightened, how his eyes grew bleak.

  'The helicopter is ready,' he told her briefly.

  'Fine,' she said, her gaze flicking upwards, then away. He had sounded rather odd. 'Oh, I'd better make sure that the fire in the hearth is cold before we leave. I'll only be five minutes.'

  'I'll wait for you out here.'

  She poked and prodded until the last lump of ash had crumbled to dust and even she could not find an excuse for delaying any longer. Then, with a heavy sigh, she shut the door on the cabin and went to climb into the pilot's seat.

  The blades began to rotate without the slightest hitch. They lifted off the heliport a few moments later. Kirstie shot a look over at the man on her left, but his head was turned away as he watched the cabin fall from sight. She tried to concentrate solely on the flight, but scenes from the last few days kept running through her head.

  She was frightened of what she would find at home.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  They were nearing the New Jersey airstrip, the familiar landscape laid out like some marvellously detailed map. Thus far the journey had been conducted in almost total silence. Kirstie closed her mind to any uncertainties, any niggling irrational regrets and concentrated on the landing procedure.

  She had just received landing clearance from the control tower when her headphones emitted an electronic screech and her brother Paul's stern voice cut in, 'Kirstie, is that you?'

  'Negative, control tower, this is the Red Baron, Snoopy to my friends,' she said and missed the strange look that Francis shot at her. 'Who else would it be? How're Carol and the kids?'

  'Wonderful. Normal. No problem, unlike certain relatives of mine,' her brother snapped. 'Do you have any idea what hassles you've caused this week? Sightseeing schedules were disrupted. Flights had to be cancelled '

  'I had a look at the schedules before I took the 'copter, Paul. Try pulling the other leg.'

  'In any case,' he continued, bulldoggish to the end, 'you took that 'copter without permission and I want you to report to my office in exactly fifteen minutes.'

  'I like this man,' said Francis, holding the spare set of headphones to his left ear. Kirstie speared him with an annoyed sidelong glance. He did not appear to be affected by it. Somewhere on the quiet journey Francis had slipped into what looked to be a remarkably disgusting good mood.

  'Do you know what your problem is, Paul?' said Kirstie. 'You have a compulsive personality. You like to play God and know every move everyone makes. I bet you have Carol starch the collar of your pyjama tops. Why don't you try to relax a bit and roll with the punches?'

  'Fifteen minutes, Kirstie, and you'd better have a damned good explanation ready or I swear I'll see you grounded for six months.'

  'It's your civic duty, pal,' said Francis, grinning widely. 'She's a menace to society.'

  'Oh, shut up!' Kirstie snapped, sick of his running commentary.

  She had forgotten about her brother, who unfortunately had heard her loud and clear. Paul said ominously, 'On second thoughts, make that ten minutes.'

  The heliport by the north hangar was almost directly underneath. Kirstie executed a perfect landing. As the lethal blades slowed to a stop, she drew off the headphones and ran the fingers of both hands through her short blonde hair. Francis twisted in his seat to contemplate her with every sign of fascination.

  'Hadn't you better get going?' he asked.

  'No need.' She tried hard to think straight, but his intent stare was short-circuiting her brain.

  'It means you'll be grounded.'

  'I will be anyway, since I have no intention of telling him a thing.' The afternoon sun slid along his cheekbones and jaw. It highlighted the laugh-line directly beside his mouth, making the shaven skin look touchable. She turned her head away and muttered to herself, 'Issues, morality, relationships, confrontations. God, I'm sick to death of it.'

  That last hadn't been said for Francis's benefit, but he must have extraordinary hearing for, unexpectedly, he laughed. She scowled deeply at the ground outside her window, then arched her back in order to dig into her jeans pocket. Francis's head turned to catch the movement of her hips. She slumped back against her door, tossing a set of keys into his lap. 'Your car's in that garage. Have a nice day.'

  His face hardened. After a hesitation he climbed out of the helicopter and slammed the door. Kirstie's mouth drew tight and she breathed hard. Stupid, stupid. Could she really have expected him to do anything else?

  Her door was wrenched open.

  'What's this?' she cried, falling backwards. Francis caught her by the elbows, swung her to the ground and marched her towards the garage.

  'You're coming with me,' he told her, looking insufferably satisfied with himself.

  'Oh, no, I'm not!' Kirstie dug in both heels. She found herself grabbed by the waist, slung over his arm fireman-style and carried. This brought her eyes into close focus with his slim buttocks, and watching that particular area of his anatomy move with such swinging grace was an experience so unsettling that she began to sputter.

  'You see,' he explained as he stopped to hitch her higher up, 'I've been thinking. You must have known from the start that I wouldn't dream of going to the police with the story of being held up by a five-foot-nothing of a woman. Picture their faces if I were to describe the scenic mountain hideaway where she kept me prisoner for a week without a single demand for ransom. Yes, sir, they'd answer politely, and did you enjoy yourselves?'

  Kirstie's head bobbed up and down with every stride. 'You wouldn't,' she guffawed, smirking at the scenario he pithily described. 'Not you. You've got far too much pride for that!'

  'Quite. But you didn't honestly think you were going to get away with it so easily, did you? The way I figure it, I owe you a kidnapping.'

  'No,' she denied with a shake of her head, still laughing. 'You're too middle-class.'

  'Pro-establishment.' With his free hand Francis heaved open the garage doors and strolled towards the BMW. 'Conservative. Boring. Thank you very much.'

  Unlocking the door on the left side, he thrust her in first and held on to her wrist as he climbed in afterwards. Then he locked all four doors from the driver's seat and let her go. The car purred to smooth life. They backed out.

  Kirstie huddled in her seat and ostentatiously rubbed a wrist that didn't hurt, as she stared at the profile of a man she'd once thought she'd had figured out. As it was, she couldn't count the number of times she had underestimated him. What a nuisance.

  'I don't believe this,' she said, with more gloom than incredulity. 'You really mean it.'

  'Of course I mean it,' Francis replied, breaking off a little tune he hummed underneath his breath. He speeded up the car. An odd smile tugged the corners of his lips. 'I always mean what I say. Of course, I have considered the possibility that you exude some sort of chemical that affects the rational part of the brain. It's only a working theory, mind you, but I like it.'

  Kirstie treated this last dig with frosty silence, slouching down in her seat with arms folded militarily across her chest. She hadn't a clue what Francis wanted from her now, and pride wouldn't
allow her to ask him about it. There was something distinctly odd about him, though, a recklessness that had not been in evidence in the man at the beginning of the trip. It was as though he had taken the bit between his teeth and was running hell-for-leather into the wind.

  Strangely enough, she wasn't frightened. She could not bring herself to believe in Louise's monster image of Francis enough to believe that he would mean actual harm from what he did. Whatever his reasoning, it was not spite. She would just have to sit back and wait for him to make his point, for at the moment she hadn't any other choice.

  Once into New York, Francis had driven more or less automatically to Fifth Avenue. As they passed the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Central Park, he slowed the car to a stop in front of one of the high-rise apartment buildings.

  Kirstie piped up for the first time since leaving the airstrip, unashamedly craning her neck to stare around her. 'Excuse me! Did I say middle-class earlier? I should have said upper middle-class, or did your ancestors come over on the Mayflower? You honestly live here?'

  He shot her an amused glance. 'I thought you knew everything about me.'

  'Yeah, well. Fact seems a little different with experience.'

  There was an unreadable look in those wide-set grey eyes of hers. Francis took no chances and grabbed hold of her arm so that she had to scoot across the seat again to get out. He turned to give the keys to a uniformed doorman who had opened his door.

  'See that the car is parked, Victor.'

  'Certainly, Mr Grayson,' murmured the splendid fellow, who unbent enough to let his lips twitch upwards in welcome.

  As Kirstie trotted past, her forearm in Francis's unbreakable grip, she turned to the doorman and told him, 'Nice to meet you, Victor. I'm being kidnapped.'

  For an instant the doorman looked startled, his eyes darting from Francis to his fingers curled around Kirstie's wrist. Then the man snapped his gaze into hyperspace, his expression wooden once more. 'Very good, ma'am.'

  She glanced at Francis and saw that he had trouble suppressing a smile. He hurried her through the revolving glass doors before she could do any more damage to the other man's peace of mind.