Dark Fire

‘I’m sorry I slapped you last night,’ she said abruptly.

Silence stretched tautly between them. She kept her eyes on the flowers in the vase.

‘Are you? I didn’t leave you with much option.’ There was no measurable emotion in his tone, nothing to tell her what he was thinking.

Her shoulders moved. ‘Nevertheless,’ she said gruffly, thrusting another large sprig of black matipo into the back of the arrangement, ‘I don’t normally go around hitting people.’

‘Your apology is accepted.’ Clearly he didn’t care a bit.

From the corner of her eye she watched him pick up one of the long-stemmed rosebuds. Hastily Aura averted her gaze, strangely affected by the sight of the fragile flower held so carefully in his lean strong hand as he raised it to his face.

‘It has no scent,’ he said on a detached note.

‘No. Most flowers cultivated for the markets have lost their scent. Even the carnations have very little.’ She was babbling, so she drew in a deep breath. Much more of his presence, she thought with slight hysteria, and she’d end up hyperventilating.

‘A pity. I’d rather have scent and fewer inches in the stem.’

‘Not all roses have scent.’

‘I prefer the ones that do.’

She nodded. ‘So do I.’

He held out the stem. Carefully avoiding his fingers, she took it.

‘Will they open?’ he asked.

She shrugged, and put the rose into the vase. ‘I don’t know. Sometimes they do, sometimes they die like that.’

‘Poor things. No scent, no blossoming, no seeding. Hardly flowers at all. I wonder what gave anyone the idea that these were preferable to the real thing.’ He walked into the sitting-room, saying off-handedly, ‘I’ll get you a drink.’

‘No, thanks, I don’t need one.’

But when he reappeared it was with a wine glass in one hand, and a glass of whisky well qualified with water in the other.

‘You might not,’ he said, ‘but I do, and as I never drink alone, you can accompany me. You look as though you could do with something. It’s only white wine, dry, with a hint of floral bouquet and a disconcerting note of passion. Heavy day?’

‘Not really,’ she said, reluctantly accepting the glass. He had made the description of the wine too intimate, too personal, his abrasive voice lingering over the words as though he was applying them to her, not the wine.

‘What shall we drink to?’ he asked, not trying to hide the note of mockery in his voice.

Eyes the colour and clarity of a topaz searched her face; he seemed to be trying to probe through the skin to the thoughts in her brain, the emotions in her heart.

Determined not to let him see how uncomfortable she was, she said lightly, ‘The future is always a good toast. It covers a lot of ground.’

‘So it does. Well, Aura Forsythe, here’s to the future. May it be all that you need.’

Made gauche by the unexpected wording, she said, ‘And yours, too,’ and swallowed some of the wine before setting the glass down.

‘Do you intend leaving yours to fate?’ he asked with apparent disinterest, tilting his glass so that the light refracted in the liquid like a thousand glinting cyrstals, exactly the same shade as his eyes.

‘What else can I do?’ Picking up a marbled swordleaf of flax, she positioned it carefully, as carefully as she kept her face turned away.

He laughed softly. ‘Oh, I believe in making my own future. Somehow I thought you would too.’

‘I don’t believe one can,’ she said, stung by the inference that she was a manipulator.

‘Of course you can. There is always the unexpected, but we lay the ground rules.’

‘We plan,’ she returned crisply. ‘But quite often our plans go awry.’

‘Not mine,’ he said with such assurance that she believed him. ‘Not when you know what you’re doing. And I make sure I do.’

Aura had always been quick to read signals. The circumstances of her upbringing had honed a natural skill to razor sharpness. His voice was even, without inflection, his eyes hooded in an immobile face, his words laconic, yet the threat was naked and open between them.

‘But of course,’ he finished almost indifferently, ‘you have to understand what you’re doing. And gathering information can take a little time.’

Aura moved a chyrsanthemum flower a few centimetres to the right. She had nothing to fear from Flint because there was nothing he could do to hurt her. She loved Paul, and Paul loved her, and because of that, she was safe.

Turning her head, she gave Flint a mocking smile. ‘I’m afraid you won’t find very much more about me. Apart from my previous two engagements I’ve lived a fairly dull life. Earnestly middle class, according to my mother.’

His lashes drooped, hiding the dazzling shimmer of his gaze. ‘If there’s anything to be discovered, I’ll find it.’

It was stupid to be so alarmed by a simple statement. But in spite of her confidence, Aura’s skin prickled, its tiny hairs pulled upright by an atavistic fear that had no base in logic.

Carefully not looking his way, holding her shoulders straight and high, she stepped back to survey her work. Perhaps the vase needed another chrysanthemum? She sorted through the flowers.

‘Leave it,’ Flint commanded smoothly, ‘it’s perfect. A skilful, disciplined piece of work, with just enough surprises to stop it from being boring.’