Moth to the Flame (24 page)

Jared nodded. ‘I know what you mean,' he said gruffly. And lowered his lips again. It was not possible, of course. To kiss for ever . . . But, in that instant, if he was willing to try . . .

*          *          *

Rupert leaned against the pane of glass, feeling its coldness chill his skin, making him shiver uncontrollably. The binoculars began to shake, making the image of the lovers, locked in their private kiss, tremble in a kaleidoscope of colours. Tears ran down his face.

‘No more, Alicia,' he whispered. ‘Please. No more.'

*          *          *

Jared lifted his lips from Alicia's, his eyes reluctantly opening. Her head was pressed against his shoulder, her rapid shallow breaths
making
her breasts rise and fall against his chest, causing him to shudder in reaction to every intimate touch of her nipples. She looked up at him then, caught the expression in his eyes, and felt her own body tighten. She led him to the bed, and as they dropped on to it, they fell out of the range of sight of the man watching them.

‘Jared,' she whispered, as he lay gently on top of her, his elbows resting on either side of her neck, as he looked down at her.

‘What?'

‘Nothing,' she shook her head, her mass of black hair spreading like a fan across his pillow. ‘Just . . . Jared.'

He dipped his head, and caught one nipple in his mouth. She gasped, arching her back off the bed as twin rivers of fire spread from her breasts and lodged in that secret, waiting, aching place at the very core of her womanhood. She felt him release the zip of her skirt, moving the material aside, his fingers tracing a circular pattern from her knee, to her thigh, his caress warm and knowing. She sighed, and let her legs fall apart. Gently he stroked his thumb over her yearning flesh, and she cried out softly, biting her lip, closing her eyes, lost in the sensation of his touch. She moved, her whole body following the touch of his thumb, and when she cried out and shuddered, her beautiful face rose-pink from the growing heat building inside her, Jared
thought
she had never looked more beautiful.

Her eyes opened, as blue and sparkling as perfect sapphires. She reached up and cupped his face with her hands. ‘Your turn,' she said softly, and moved her hand down, between them. He gasped as she unzipped his jeans and took him in her hand. He threw his head back, swallowing convulsively. He collapsed against her. His cheek pillowed to her breast, his body as taught as a violin string as she felt him harden helplessly.

After several long minutes of exquisite torture, he groaned, spasmed, then lay still, his breath harsh as he gulped for air. Slowly their bodies cooled. Eventually he raised himself on one elbow again, propping the side of his face against his hand as he looked down at her.

‘Well, how do you think you're going to enjoy life as Mrs Cowan?'

Alicia opened sleepy, contented, half-satiated eyes. She reached for his shirt buttons and began to undress him in earnest. ‘I'll tell you later,' she murmured throatily.

*          *          *

Rupert Greyling-Simms swayed against the window. His binoculars fell forgotten from his hand, and hit the wooden floorboards with a clatter. He raised stricken eyes to the window where he knew they were together, and bit back a wailing cry that seemed to rise up from
the
very depths of him. And then, as abruptly as it came, the desire to scream at the world left him. Instead, he began to smile.

Of course. He should have known Alicia was only doing what she had to do. He should have trusted her. She and Jared had to . . . do . . . this thing . . . to him.

He was the betrayed lover. In order to fulfil their destinies, in order to make their play real, she had to . . . spend this afternoon . . . like this. With him.

She must know he was watching. Must have chosen this moment especially. Of course. It was time! How stupid he was being. How lucky he was to have Alicia to guide him.

Rupert waited, as patient as the wind, until he saw her re-emerge into the gardens and make her way across them, back to her own room in Webster. Then he checked the knife in his pocket. It felt reassuringly solid to his touch. In a world dissolving around him, that knife felt wonderfully real.

Alicia. Oh Alicia . . . it's time at last.

As he stepped into Webster and began to mount the stairs to her room, he was smiling. Rupert felt good.

*          *          *

In his office, Sin-Jun rang two telephone numbers. The first connected him to the Earl of Warrington, of whom he asked some very
pertinent
questions which demanded some very hard answers. And, having got those from the very reluctant Earl, the second call was to a psychiatrist Sin-Jun knew, who was attached to the John Radcliffe Hospital, and who had the power to order a committal to a mental home, should it be necessary.

Both calls were, of course, made when it was already far too late . . .

CHAPTER NINETEEN

At about the same time as Jared and Alicia parted, Davina Granger watched, with fatalistic eyes, as Gareth began to walk towards her, and backed a few steps away. Her heart was thumping with a mixture of fear, and dread, and delight. Although she'd planned to slip out of Oxford like a ghost, she couldn't help but feel elated that she was to see him one last time. Even though it was agony.

Gareth smiled at her grimly. ‘Davina!' he chided cruelly. ‘You're not afraid of me, surely?' he asked softly. ‘You? Who are afraid of nothing and nobody?'

Davina shrugged one shoulder. ‘You've always been someone to fear, Gareth,' she admitted quietly. But not because she thought he might physically harm her. She knew him better than that. Gareth Lacey would never hit
a
woman. No. The danger was not physical. It was mental. Spiritual.

Gareth's grey eyes darkened, as if a cloud had moved across some internal sun. ‘And what, exactly, do you mean by that?'

When he'd listened to Gavin Brock pour forth his stream of accusations, he simply hadn't wanted to believe him, but finally he had been forced to the conclusion that this nightmare was real. Only then had he begun to think. To reason. Coldly. Logically. Rationally.

Who else could come and go in his room without suspicion as easily as Davina? Who else would dare to do something so outrageous? Only Davina. His unique, bold, yet humanly flawed . . . Davina.

As he watched her back away from him, a strange mixture of defiance and pain on her face, he had the grim feeling that he'd been very stupid. Somewhere, somehow, he'd been very stupid indeed.

‘You came here expressly to set up the exam paper scam, didn't you?' he asked quietly. He had physically to fight the urge to go to her and shake her, and demand to know why . . . why . . . why? At the same time, he wanted to carry her to that bed and make love to her with savagery and passion until they were both exhausted. To think that it had all been a sham. All their wonderful conversations. All their shared intimacies. Even the poem she'd written for him—‘The Flame Moth'—was a
sham.
Lies. None of it had been real. That's what was killing him . . . He shook his head. He had to get things straight in his mind. Forget his heart—that could fall to pieces all on its own, without any attention or help from him. Right now, it was his world that he had to put back on to some sort of orbit, if he was to make any sense of Davina at all.

‘Yes,' she admitted quietly. ‘I came here just to destroy you.' She swallowed back a huge aching lump in her throat as she spoke. He looked so . . . hurt. So . . . bewildered. She knew she should be glad. Fiercely glad. It must have been the way David had felt, for so long. This was the revenge she'd come seeking. So why was it like ashes in her mouth?

No—she knew why. It was because she loved him. Had loved him for a long time. She took a deep breath. ‘Why don't you just let me go, Gareth?' she said quietly. ‘It would be easiest. For both of us.'

Gareth nodded. ‘Oh yes. Undoubtedly it would be easiest.' He cocked his head very slightly to one side, and a small, sad, grim smile turned his lips upwards. ‘But when have we ever done anything the easy way, Davina?' he murmured.

Davina sighed. ‘All right.'

Gareth nodded. ‘So, you came here to destroy me? And part of that was to make me love you. Wasn't it, Davina?'

‘Yes.'

Gareth
nodded. ‘You succeeded very well. I love you, even now.'

Davina laughed grimly. ‘That's nothing to brag about,' she snarled back. ‘I love you too.'

Gareth stopped dead in the room. What? Then he laughed. ‘Poor Davina,' he murmured. ‘You must have hated every moment of loving me.' He pushed back the dark strands of hair which had fallen into his eyes, and she noticed that his hand was shaking as he did so. ‘Are you going to tell me why you've done this to us?' he asked quietly.

In response, Davina walked to her holdall and took out her purse, keeping a wary eye on him as she did so. She offered him a small, rather tattered, snapshot. ‘It's because of him,' she said softly. ‘Everything's because of him.'

Gareth moved just close enough to her to take the small square of cardboard. He looked down at it, and his face froze. ‘David Garrett,' he said.

‘Yes. David,' Davina said. ‘My stepbrother.'

Gareth's head shot up. His eyes fixed on hers, the ocean grey irises contracting. ‘Your brother?' Whatever he'd been expecting, it was not this. ‘I see . . . that's why I didn't made the connection until now. You share vaguely similar facial characteristics, but the names are different . . .'

*          *          *

‘Mum
always used to say “Change the name and not the letter, marry for worse, but not for better”,' Davina muttered flippantly. ‘Although my stepfather was a sweetie, so she wasn't worse off by marrying him. I think she meant that my father and stepfather not only shared the same initial letter in their surnames, but that mine and David's Christian names were almost male and female versions of the same name.' She paused, fighting back the tears which always threatened when she thought of her brother. ‘I was eight when Mum married Pete Garrett. David was two. His mother had died when David was a babe in arms, so he was the baby brother I'd always wanted but never had.'

Gareth looked back at the photograph, a wary expression on his face, then slowly handed it back. ‘Just what do you think happened to David, Davina?' he asked quietly.

And Davina found herself stiffening. For there was something else in that lovely voice of his now. And Davina suddenly knew, instinctively, but beyond doubt, that Gareth Lacey knew something about her brother that she didn't know.

And it had her scared. Or rather, it had her cold, logical self, running scared. Her heart and spirit, on the other hand, were beginning to stir. To throb and expand with a desperate surge of hope . . .

‘Only what his letters told me,' she
answered
him, but there was something . . . different now. The balance of power, somehow, had shifted. In Gareth's favour. She shivered.

‘And what did those letters tell you?' Gareth asked bleakly.

Davina's lips twisted. ‘Read them for yourself. I kept every one.' And she stalked to her holdall, grabbed the pile of letters and thrust them under his nose. But as Gareth read the accusing, bitter pages that told the tale of a young man persecuted by an older, machiavellian monster, his expression became sadder, not angrier. Or guiltier.

‘I see,' he said at last.

Davina swallowed, her mouth suddenly as dry as dust.

‘You see?' she echoed, trying to put as much scorn and hate in her voice as she could. ‘Is that all you can say?'

Gareth turned to look at her then. All that fire. All for nothing . . . Oh Davina, he thought despairingly. If only you'd given that fire to me . . .

‘I'm saying,' he said quietly, ‘that I see now why you came to Oxford to destroy me. Why you chose the exam scam. You wanted to see me exiled from Oxford, yes? To see my reputation was destroyed, just as David's was?'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘You see very well.'

Gareth nodded. ‘I have the whole picture now. But you don't.' He said it so matter-of-
factly,
with absolutely no trace of doubt, that she felt herself rocked. A wave of hideous doubt swept over her. She took a deep breath.

‘Are you denying it?' she said at last. ‘I thought at least you might have spared us your excuses.'

Gareth didn't react to the insult. Instead he stared into her eyes, as if trying to decide something. Eventually he sighed and turned away.

‘Do you really want the truth, Davina?' he asked at last. He turned back to her, and her heart lurched. She wanted to believe that he still loved her. As impossible as that hope was, as pointless as it would be even if true, some soul-deep part of her wanted him still to love her.

‘Well, Davina?' Gareth asked relentlessly. ‘Do you want to know the truth or don't you?'

Davina felt her chin lift in familiar challenge. ‘Yes.'

Gareth nodded. He had expected nothing else. ‘Then follow me. And I'll show you the truth about your brother David.'

He led her, without speaking, to his rooms, and there she watched him walk towards the filing cabinet and withdraw a folder. He stood staring down at what was obviously a letter for so long that Davina thought she would scream. Eventually he walked to one of the big leather chairs beside his desk and sat down in it wearily. He knew he'd already won the
battle—but
it was a battle he'd never wanted to fight in the first place. All he'd wanted to do was love her.

Well, he could still do that. His grey eyes sparked. Yes. He could still do that! When you brushed away all the misunderstanding, that's what was left. He could still love her! But first, those misunderstandings had to be dealt with. And therein lay the danger. Everything depended on how Davina reacted to the truth. His whole future hung in the balance. Their future. Slowly, Gareth began to speak.