Kissed by Moonlight (3 page)

“Yes,” he said grudgingly.

Her head shifted to a speculative angle. “That would be around the time of my father's first failure, when his plan to turn Chimera into a holiday haven crashed. A lot of small investors lost their entire savings.” A chill touched her heart. “Was your father one of them?”

He was on his guard now, and intended to stay tight-lipped on the subject.

She sighed in resignation. “I know from past experience that if you've made up your mind not to tell me, nothing I can say will make you. But you don't have to say anything. Your silence has said it all for you.”

She looked down at her fingers in sad thought. She was sorry for those who had invested in good faith and lost their money; it grieved her to think that anyone with that sort of trust in her father's abilities should lose by it. It was especially hurtful to know that dear Uncle Richard had been a victim. He would have been too loyal to pull out when so many others had.

She was aware of David's eyes narrowing on her hair.

It was the color of pale copper with burnished highlights, and she was suddenly conscious of the tangling her pillow-pounding had achieved. She wished she'd had time to brush it into shiny obedience.

She wasn't coy about her looks. She liked her neck, which was long and slender, a beautiful asset. But she disliked her cheeks, which were still roundly cushioned from childhood; likewise her mouth was full, but she didn't mind that at all. She had good legs, quite long in proportion to her body, which she wished she'd had time to drape in something a little more seductive than this stupid quilt.

The wishing coincided with a sudden alarming awareness of David's good looks. He was tall, leanly built but muscular, with the brightest blue eyes she had ever seen in a strong, suntanned face. His dark hair was crisp, undisciplined, and full of natural vigor. Like the man himself.

Would it have made any difference if his first peep at her hadn't been over the pink frills of her crib? He would have been twelve at the time. Would she ever catch up on those twelve years? And if they'd met now for the first time, with no memories of the slippery pink infant naked in her bath or the tiresome child who wanted to tag along, would he see her in a different light?

Her mouth rounded on a small despairing sigh. Even if she “accidentally on purpose” let the quilt slip, his mind's eye would still see the slippery pink infant and not the woman she was.

She drew a long, hard breath and would have linked her hands together for courage, but she needed them to clutch the quilt more tightly around her. Too much had happened in too short a time. Her father's sudden death, his funeral, the hammering she was taking from the press, David's unexpected reappearance, and the knowledge that Uncle Richard had lost money in her father's failed venture. She couldn't take much more; she was nearly over the top.

“All right, David, you've stalled long enough. Just what is the nature of this escape line you are offering me?”

“It's in the nature of a proposal. I'm asking you to marry me.”

“You can't be. It's too unthinkable.”

“The idea of marriage? Or being married to me?” For once she was glad not to be granted the right of reply as he went on to say, “I see I've shocked you. It would shock my father a great deal more if I carried you off without marrying you.”

“But, Dav –”

“It's all arranged. Pack for a warm climate. Don't bother about the flat. I'll leave instructions for it to be disposed of together with the furniture and whatever possessions you can't take. Anything you can't bear to part with, my father will store for you. The wedding will take place tomorrow; by evening you'll be far away from it all. Any questions?”

She was silent; she had no idea what to say, how to react.

“Good. Get some sleep now, you need it. I'll be back for you tomorrow, around noon.”

When he'd gone she climbed wearily back into bed. Her whole life had been turned upside down, but one thing remained constant. Her feeling for David had not changed. She could wish him at the edge of the earth for his overbearing manner and his supreme arrogance, but she still loved him.

She wondered why she'd assumed that because it was all arranged in a hurry the ceremony would take place in a registry office and not in a church.

David came for her at midday, having badgered the authorities to obtain a special license and the services of a vicar, and pulled strings to get flight reservations in between giving orders for the flat and any remaining possessions to be disposed of so that she could walk out and start new. He'd even remembered to buy the ring.

“I must be insane to be going through with this,” she said, taking two steps to his one to keep up with his long stride. “I'm not sure that I will go through with it. Why are you doing this, David?”

“Don't you know?” he inquired, his smile as evasive as his reply.

“Would I ask if I did? In my present circumstances I'm hardly value for money. What's in it for you? What's your angle?”

“Would you like it better if I had one?”

“I don't know about that. It would make more sense.”

“Very well, I admit it. I've got an angle.”

She waited expectantly, but he didn't elaborate. She sent him a soft sideways look through her lashes, which she knew would avail her nothing. “You're not going to tell me, are you?”

“No.” He softened sufficiently to add – or was it not softening at all but blatant teasing? – “I might tell you someday. If I decide you deserve to be told.”

“You're an arrogant beast,” she said.

He only grinned sardonically in reply.

“It doesn't seem real,” she protested. “I can't believe this is my wedding day.”

“Like a dream?”

Her tongue flicked up to lick her lip in an unconsciously provocative way. “Nightmare, actually.”

She thought he looked very smart. He wore a quiet gray suit and a darker gray silk tie and a remarkable air of assurance.

She wondered if her own hurried choice of dress was appropriate. It couldn't be the white wedding gown she'd always hoped to get married in, but she had gone for chastity in a simple parchment-colored day dress, leaving her arms bare but her throat demurely covered in a close-fitting bodice.

Uncle Richard was waiting for them on the steps of the church. “Will you honor my arm on the walk down the aisle, my child?” he asked in a voice that was choked with emotion and delight. Apparently he had been thrilled by news of the impending wedding and had chosen not to ask any potentially embarrassing questions.

“Indeed I will,” she said, reaching up to kiss his dear cheek.

David had already entered the church, presumably to alert the vicar, so they had these few private moments alone.

“I know about the money,” she said.

“How did you find out? David didn't tell you.”

 “Only very indirectly. I guessed.”

He sighed heavily. “In a way I'm glad you know. It was David's own idea to accept responsibility for you. I would have paid your school fees, but, well, I made a bad investment.”

“Uncle Richard, it's the bad investment I'm talking about.”

“You didn't know about –”

“No. I didn't know it was David who paid my school fees.”

“Seems I've blown it, haven't I?”

“Yes, Uncle Richard,”

“Don't let on to David, will you?”

“No, I promise not to give you away. I won't be long,” she said, detaching herself from his impulsive hug. “There's something ...”

She saw from his expression that he thought she'd changed her mind and was running away, so she made pantomime actions to indicate it wasn't that. She thought he understood as she wriggled through the gap in the church wall and plunged into the tall grass of the field beyond.

Her fingers searched for the abundance of flowers she knew she would find and soon she had a wedding bouquet of buttercups and bluebells, honeysuckle and toadflax, columbines, oxeye daisies, and other field flowers. She secured her sweet-smelling posy in a border of wild pansies and tied them up with her handkerchief. Then she searched around for two wild roses, sparing the time to find perfect specimens. A bride had to have a bouquet, her bridegroom and his father had to have boutonnieres. Why, oh, why did it have to be David who had paid her school fees?

Without choir, organ, or congregation, she walked down the aisle on her future father-in-law's arm in the vast but beautiful emptiness of the gray stone church toward her bridegroom.

She knew why brides wore full veils over their faces. It was to conceal such emotions as she was feeling now. Yet the half-light was kindly. What it couldn't veil was the trembling of her fingers in the crook of the professor's arm as he whispered hoarsely, “I wish your mother could have been here to see you. And your father.”

Perhaps they were. Were those wooden pews totally empty? Did gentle images cluster in the darkest corners? Was it silence ringing in her ears or the faint echo of a celestial choir?

A spear of sunshine shafting down from a stained- glass window touched them with its rosy glow. It was like a benediction.

She squeezed the professor's arm and whispered, “Dear Uncle Richard.”

And then she was conscious of David's solemn face above her. He looked almost tender, as if he cared that she was to become his wife. She shook her head, as if to remove the image. To imagine that David was moved was taking fantasy too far.

The ring that David had placed on her finger now glinted in the bright sunshine as she held it out for the professor's inspection. Her hand was taken into the comforting custody of his larger one. “Truly my daughter at last,” he said, humbling her beyond speech.

David said, in an odd, clipped voice, as though scoffing at the childishness that had prompted the action, “When I saw the posy of wild flowers, I half expected you to come to me barefoot.”

“I almost did.” She looked down at the soaked toes of her ruined shoes. “These weren't manufactured with tramps through long, wet grass in mind.”

Because David's censorious, mocking eyes were upon her, she dared not steal a flower to be sentimentally pressed in a treasured book, so she handed her wild-flower wedding bouquet intact to the first little girl they passed.

The professor still proudly wore his sweet-scented dog rose, but David's lapel was bare of adornment. His boutonniere had been conveniently lost, it would seem.

A jet took them on the first stage of their journey. She didn't know where David was taking her. He hadn't volunteered the information and she hadn't asked. In any case, the moment they were airborne he'd unzipped some papers from his brief case, prohibiting conversation.

He had apologized before starting work on them. “I'm sorry about this, but it's got to be done today. If I must neglect you sometime, better now than later. It wouldn't do to burn the midnight oil on our wedding night.”

Her eyelids dropped, weighted by a great shyness. As his eyes traveled down the papers on his knee, ticking a figure here, heavily scoring out another there, the implication of his words shredded her composure. The haste had been for her convenience – she had needed to get away quickly – but it was clear that it was not going to be a marriage of convenience for him too. Only David would take it for granted that the marriage would be consummated without bothering about the cosseting ritual of courtship. It was going to be very strange. Although she had known him all her life, nurturing a secret passion for him for most of that time, she had never tingled in his arms or gently rebuffed the probings of his hands in their attempt to know her body. Yet tonight he would take it as his right to know her intimately.

The jet touched down at a large airport and she found herself boarding another plane, one that was much smaller.

“Not the last thing in comfort, but it'll do for the short time we'll be on it,” David said in token apology. “The runway of the airport we're making for is being extended to take jets. It should be operational by the end of the year.”

He seemed to be telling her something, but she wasn't intuitive enough to know what. She smiled and said vaguely, “Oh, really!” Just as though he was making inconsequential chatter, which was something he never did.

When he said, “We're almost there now,” she looked down at an amazingly blue sea, angling her head to get a better view of a collection of islands.

The smallest island of all was set a little apart from its sister group. It had a curious outline; its rugged coastline wound in and out in a series of animal shapes. The most distinctive animal shape of all was at its southern tip, and it was like no animal she had known. Tracing its shape she saw that it almost had a lion's head, a goat's body, and it flicked off into a serpent's tail.

Suddenly she knew where David was taking her. She found herself speaking its name, although she had never set eyes on it before. “Chimera.” Her throat was tight with emotion. This moment would live forever in her heart, her first sight of Chimera. “It's my father's island. It's Chimera!”

The dream that went amiss. The venture of three years ago that had toppled his empire and started the avalanche that had brought about his ruin. Yet it was not that aspect she thought about as she gazed down at Chimera with tears in her eyes.

“I've always wanted to tread my father's dream. It's the perfect honeymoon surprise. Thank you for bringing me here, David. You can't know how much I appreciate your thoughtfulness.”

Even before he answered, by looking at his face she knew her gratitude was misplaced.

He demanded crossly, “Just when did you think I had time to make extravagant honeymoon plans?”

He was right. There had been no time for him to arrange a honeymoon; no time for her to shop for her trousseau. Her mouth curved at the thought that perhaps her old cotton nightgown was just the job for a non-honeymoon.