Page 107 of A Good Heart is Hard to Find
22
Family Party
After reading Cass Leigh’s last novel, Grave Concerns,I swore I’d never read another. Why, then, did I buy her latest one, Nocturnally Yours,then spend the week after reading it too afraid to put the lights out at night?
The Fiction Review
‘You can let go of my hand now, there’s no one here to see us,’ I said firmly, for once we were back in the brightly lit west wing sanityhad returned.
At least, Ithoughtit was sanity. Certainly I’d suddenly recalled that Dante was probably still a bit piqued with me, as men can be for no particular reason that a sensible woman can see, and that seducing me might be his way of punishing me.
Not exactly my idea of a fate worse than death, but still, I’d been seduced once before and look where that got me. I’d no intention ofmaking a mess of my life again.
No ties, and a nice dog, that’s what I needed, not another quick fling with something darkly Byronic.
Dante released me, looking at me in the sad, hungry way that made me think of big dark jungle cats sizing up dinner, and suggested we have a drink in his room. But I’d beenthere, done that, and we all know what happened last time … or we would if we’d been soberenough to remember it all. Anyway, duty called.
‘No thanks, I’m going to go back to my room to do some work,’ I said with resolution. ‘If you don’t need me any more tonight, that is?’
‘Not in your slave capacity,’ he agreed. ‘But I thought we could get to know each other a bit better?’
‘And I thought you’d already discovered everything there was to know about my subconscious from my books,and didn’t find it very attractive?’
‘Haven’t I made it clear that I find therestof you attractive? Maybe your psyche will grow on me, and mine on you. I never meant to frighten you,’ he added unexpectedly.
‘Oh, I’m not scared of you any more,’ I assured him. But actually, even now there are moments … Or then again, perhaps it was me I was so scared of? ‘I mean, I never was really: you justlooked so big and sort of grim-looking the first time we met, and then there was all that guilt.’
‘I meant frightening you when I grabbed you and dragged you into the secret chamber tonight, actually.’
‘Oh, that. It was just a bit too cupboard-like, but I was all right when I knew it was a passage and stairs, and you were in there, and not … not something nightmarish.’
‘You’re such a weirdmixture of impervious chronicler of the undead, and frightened child in the dark,’ he said softly. ‘But tonight, just to confuse me even more, you look more angel than vampire in that dress.’
‘Angels are golden-haired,’ I said coldly, edging away.
‘I don’t see why.’
‘“Light good, dark bad” is a basic tenet of life.’
‘Not mine. Whatever I’ve done, or not done – whatever I’m accused of – I don’treally think I’m a bad man. I hope I’m not a bad man, even though I can’t have been any greatshakes as a husband,’ he added moodily, ‘or Emma wouldn’t have had an affair with someone else.’
Ithought she must have been madder than her mother, but that was just a personal opinion. How did she dare? And why on earth would she want to?
‘I don’t see why anything that happened is your fault,’ Isaid. ‘You’re not responsible for your friend’s death, and if you hadn’t been taken hostage you would have been home with Emma when she was taken ill, so that isn’t your fault either.’
‘I don’t know,’ he said bleakly. ‘It’s a chain reaction, one thing leading to another all along the line, like I’m the kiss of death to anyone close to me.’
‘Well, Rosetta’s absolutely flourishing, and you’refond of her,’ I pointed out. ‘And the person who was there when Emma was ill anddidn’ttake her to hospital is her mother, so she’s projecting her own guilt on to you; but of course, if mediums really can contact the spirits of the dead, which is something I’m not entirely convinced of, the presence of someone like yourself who is extremely antagonistic to the whole idea would probably throwa spanner in the works, don’t you think? So Madame Duvalmighthave a point there.’
‘So – what? I ought to brainwash myself into believing in the afterlife and let her hold her seance? Because I’ll tell you something else: I took Emma back, but I didn’t love her any more after finding out she’d been unfaithful. I think I’d known we were wrong for each other soon after we married, when she startedtrying to get me to change my job.’
I sighed. ‘Like my love affair with Max: I knew that was a mistake right from the start too, once I found he was married. I did resist him, you know. I even got a job and moved here without telling him, only he found me again and persuaded me into our affair.’
‘But he was the married one, you must have been veryyoung, and you did try and make the break, sowhere is your blame?’
‘Well, it’s all water under the bridge now, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘For both of us. I really have finished with Max for ever, even if he’s refusing to accept it. The final straw was that this Kyra got pregnant when I desperately wanted children and he wouldn’t hear of it. And now it’s probably too late,’ I said sadly.
‘Why should it be?’
