Fire Beneath the Ice

"Have a sip of champagne, it's rather good."

She drank automatically, the clean, cold, sparkling liquid barely registering on her senses as she struggled to absorb the enormity of what he had told her, and when she put down her glass she was surprised to find it was empty and that her head felt a little muzzy.

Two glasses of sherry and now champagne on an empty stomach, she thought suddenly. She really mustn't drink another thing tonight.

Wolfs revelation seemed to have robbed her mind of any normal conversation.

She wanted to ask him a hundred questions, not one of which was possible, and to follow with light chit-chat after such a disclosure would have been the height of callous insensitivity. She stared at him now as she searched for something, anything, to say.

He was sitting in apparent easy contemplation of his fellow diners, big body relaxed and lazy and his gaze indolent as it nicked round the massive, dimly lit room. He seemed at ease with himself and the world in general, but Lydia was beginning to understand that outward appearances were subtly misleading with this man. What went on behind that closed, shuttered mind was his business and his alone. He let very little of himself be seen. It was unnerving, to say the least.

"I shouldn't have told you," he said suddenly.

"What?" As the blue eyes fastened on her face she hadn't had time to school her expression into what he would want to see.

"About Carrie and my wife--I shouldn't have told you." He shook his head slowly as he looked into the dark depths of her eyes.

"It's upset you and now you feel sorry for me. Is that about right?" he asked grimly.

She was aware she had to answer care

fully, very carefully, if he wasn't to clam up for good.

"I'm sorry that someone as young as Hannah didn't have the chance to grow up," she said slowly, 'very sorry. I think if I feel grief for anyone it's for her. “She mustn't show him pity, he would abhor it, but it was hard when every soft female instinct in her body' wanted to comfort and reassure.

He held her gaze for a long, considering moment before sighing softly as he leant back in his seat, his face suddenly open again.

"That's exactly what tormented me," he said quietly, his eyes looking inward to something only he could see.

"She had the whole of her life before her."

"Perhaps she's spending it in a better place." His eyes moved to focus on her again, their sapphire light piercing.

"Do you believe that?" he asked quietly.

"Yes." She returned his look bravely, without wavering.

"In the case of children, I do believe it."

"I'd like to." His voice held unutterable sadness.

As the waiter appeared at their side with the first course, the shutter came down again and she realised the brief moment of intimacy was over. As she ate the best prawn cocktail-she had ever tasted in her life she realised they hadn't discussed his wife at all, and yet he must have been devastated at her death too. How long had they been married? What was her name? What had she looked like? A thousand little questions buzzed at her mind but she resolutely forced them into her subconscious.

At some time in the last few minutes Wolf had refilled her glass and again she took a sip almost automatically. He was such an enigma, this man. How could anyone, anyone at all, walk a solitary path through life? It was. unnatural.

The trout, when it arrived, was excellent, served with baby new potatoes and a selection of vegetables that positively melted in the mouth but, delicious as the food was, Lydia found she was eating almost mechanically. The picture she had had of Wolf in her mind, the picture he had deliberately painted for her and everyone else, didn't fit with this new side to him and it unnerved her.

She glanced across the table at him now and found he was watching her, his blue eyes piercingly fixed on her face.

"Are you enjoying the meal?" He smiled lazily, but the sapphire depths shaded by their thick black lashes didn't flicker.

"It's Scottish trout, of course."

"It's wonderful." She smiled back carefully, her mind anywhere but on the food.

"But I suppose you're used to eating like this all the time."

"Is that what you suppose?" His voice wasn't unfriendly but definitely dry.