Roots of Evil(113)

Before she could decide, she discovered that she was in his arms without quite knowing how she had got there or which of them had moved first. His kiss, when it came, was at first gentle and exploratory, and then was not gentle at all. When finally he released her, his eyes were glowing.

Fran said, breathlessly, ‘When you let the barriers down, you do so quite spectacularly.’

‘I didn’t mean to put up barriers. Sometimes it just happens. But I’ve wanted to do that ever since I opened the door of Deborah Fane’s house and found you on the step,’ he said. ‘You looked like a defiant urchin – all tousled hair and accusing eyes.’

‘I thought you looked like an extremely urbane wolf,’ said Fran, involuntarily. ‘One who might prowl the groves of academe.’

‘A book of Elizabethan sonnets in one hand and the key to the bedroom in the other?’

‘Something like that. As a matter of fact, I nearly got back in the car and drove away like a bat out of hell.’

‘I’m glad you didn’t. Could we have dinner tomorrow night? I’ll leave the bedroom key behind, although I can’t promise anything about the sonnets. You’ve got the kind of face that could inspire someone to be quite poetic.’

‘I wouldn’t mind if you recited limericks,’ said Fran. ‘And I’d love to have dinner with you tomorrow – oh, blast, no, I can’t. I really do have a parent evening tomorrow.’ In case he thought this was a put-off, she said, ‘I could manage Tuesday or Wednesday, though.’

‘Tuesday? Eight o’clock? And we’ll try to get to the Italian place this time, shall we?’

Francesca’s instant reaction to this was that the Italian restaurant was only a short walk from this house, and that he would bring her home, and that she would almost certainly ask him to come in for a final drink or a cup of coffee…Don’t plan too far ahead, though. Don’t let your mind run away too wildly.

Still, there was no harm in thinking that she could serve the coffee in Trixie’s little sitting-room on Tuesday – the furniture was a bit weather-beaten, but there was an open fire and she could lay the fire ready for lighting as soon as she got home from school. She might as well use some of the applewood logs a neighbour had let Trixie have last month. And he liked music, and there was her own CD collection upstairs. Mozart and apple-scented firelight and some really good filtered coffee. Perhaps a brandy with it. She would set the glasses on the little low table, and the firelight would glow on them. I’m sounding like a romantic fourteen-year-old. I don’t care.

She would not get too stupidly dreamy, though. For the moment it was enough to smile at Michael, and say, ‘Tuesday at eight it is. I’ll look forward to that.’





CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE




Since that splintering second of recognition at Quondam, Edmund had struggled to control a scalding jealousy of Michael Sallis. Once you allowed an emotion – almost any emotion – to get the upper hand, you stopped thinking and reasoning, and you lost a certain detachment.

But the angry hating jealousy was threatening to overwhelm him, blotting out all other considerations and making it difficult to focus on anything else.

Alraune’s son. That was who Sallis was – Edmund knew it quite definitely. After those first few puzzled moments, he had looked from Sallis to the screen and he had suddenly seen the extraordinary resemblance to the young Lucretia von Wolff. A direct descendant? Was that possible? But Michael resembled Lucretia far too closely to be anything else. So who was he? Whose son could he be?

It was unlikely in the extreme that Sallis was a secret son of either Deborah or Mariana. Those two had lived open and conventional lives, but both of them had been sufficiently Lucretia’s daughters not to have troubled overmuch about having an illegitimate son. Deborah, in fact, would probably have relished it. Edmund was inclined to absolve both Deborah and Mariana.

That left the third of Lucretia’s children. Alraune. And Alraune had not been a legend as so many people had said, but a real person, born in December 1940 – the birth certificate in Deborah’s house had been testimony to that. And so far from dying mysteriously or vanishing without explanation, it looked as if Alraune had grown up and had had a more or less conventional life – marriage presumably, and a son.

Alraune had grown up. This was the thought that was sending the corrosive waves of hatred and jealousy scudding through Edmund’s body. Alraune had not been that secret intimate ghost whose presence he had felt so strongly at Ashwood, and whose emotions he had shared. All you need to believe in is the practice of mord, Alraune had said that day. And there had been that burst of childish glee. Remember the eyes, Edmund…Remember mord…

Alraune was mine! cried Edmund silently to Sallis. Alraune was that fragile little ghost who guided my hand when I killed Trixie Smith! We shared mord, Alraune and I, and we shared that killing! The thought of Sallis knowing Alraune – growing up with Alraune as a parent – was almost more than Edmund could bear.

But it was important to stay in control. To fight that black and bitter tide of hatred that threatened to swamp his reason. He forced himself to think on a practical level. How much might Alraune’s son know about Ashwood? Had Michael listened to the stories of the past, as Edmund had? A child ‘listed as Allie’ had been at Ashwood that day: had it really been Alraune? (‘You don’t need to believe in me, Edmund…All you need to believe in is the practice of mord…The ancient High German word that means murder…’)