A Stranger's Kiss

he didn’t want her to know about.
    ‘Will you call me?’ she asked, as he paused in the doorway, and recognised desperation in her voice.
    ‘I’ll try, my darling. Now I must go, or I’ll miss my plane.’ He walked quickly back and kissed her again and as if he sensed her unease he drew her from her chair and held her. ‘I love you, Tara. I’ll always love you.’ But apparently not enough to trust her.
    If she had had the wedding arrangements to attend to it might have been different. She would have had something to occupy her mind in the long light spring evenings. But Janice had taken care of everything and Jane was holding the reception at her home.
    Tara had been there, met her bearded explorer husband, but they hadn’t volunteered any information on the whereabouts of the man she was about to marry. And she couldn’t bring herself to ask. But one mystery had been cleared away. The newspaper photograph of Jane with the baby and Adam. It had been a story on the arrival of Charles Townsend’s son while the famous man was hacking his way through the rain forests of South America. If she had only read it she would have known then.
    Adam called her once, sounding weary, a second time as if he was talking from the ends of earth on a line that crackled and hissed and made anything but the commonplace courtesies impossible. Any whispered love words were swallowed up by static. Or perhaps he never murmured them.
    * * *
    ‘You look beautiful, Tara.’ Jane made the slightest adjustment to the ivory curve of veil that swept from her hat over her eyes. ‘Quite perfect.’
    ‘Thank you.’ At Jane’s insistence she and Lola had spent the seemingly endless night before her wedding with her future sister-in-law and her husband. Now it was time to go. She turned her head and saw her reflection in the long mirror. The simple silk dress, the tiny veiled hat, the single red rose in her hand.
    She sat pale and silent in the rear of the car, twisting the diamond around the third finger of her right hand, its temporary home until after the wedding. Last night she had been certain he would phone. But he hadn’t. She had no idea if he was even back in the country. She was so certain that something had happened to him that the nerves stabbed through her like spears.
    * * *
    When they arrived at the register office the sudden quiet was enough to confirm her deepest fears. The arrival of the bride before the groom was not a good omen.
    Everyone made a great effort to make a joke of it. Jane seemed unperturbed, but then her only concern at the moment was the welfare of her son and her husband.
    ‘Mr Blackmore and Mrs Lambert?’ The registrar looked around him expectantly.
    Charles intervened. ‘There’s been a slight delay. I wonder if we could just wait—’ Everyone turned at the hurried sound of feet on the stairs.
    ‘Hello. Am I late?’ Adam kissed her cheek and took her hand. ‘The traffic from Heathrow was murder.’
    In his presence all the nameless horrors evaporated like the early morning mist on a hot June morning.
    ‘Timed to a hair’s breadth, I’d say,’ Charles Townsend’s voice boomed across the vestibule.
    But Tara’s eyes for the moment riveted on Adam, were slowly drawn slowly to the two people standing behind him.
    Older, greyer, smaller than she remembered, but so familiar. She took a tentative step towards them.
    ‘Aunt Jenny?’ She took another step and then she was in the older woman’s arms, hugging her. She turned to Lamby and he held her for a moment. ‘I don’t believe it.’ The tears sprang to her eyes. ‘I don’t believe it.’
    ‘Adam came and fetched us, Tara.’
    She turned to him. ‘You did that? For me?’
    He smiled down at her. ‘I knew you’d want them here.’ The registrar cleared his throat. ‘Although if we don’t make a move right now I think this gentleman may make us wait a few more days.’
    The party made a move, but Adam held her back. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you. I didn’t want to raise your hopes. I didn’t know if I could find them and if I did, I couldn’t be sure they would come.’
    ‘Who could ever resist you?’ She shook her head in wonder. ‘Why did I ever think of you as a black knight?’
    ‘I’m sure I gave you every reason.’
    ‘No. You’ve always been my true knight errant, Adam. Always there when I needed you.’
    ‘I always will be, my lady.’ He cradled her face, stole a kiss.
    ‘Darlings,’ Jane said,