The Dark Frontier A. Decker (i like reading TXT) 📖

Anything but the sinister demimonde that gnawed greedily at their being. It was a strange and telling irony that they found themselves compelled to avoid even the smallest detail of their shared experiences – of all those things that tie lovers up in knots and keep them forever entwined.

All the while Frank was unable to shake off the image of Silverstone on the terrace of the Kulm, ploughing a way through the crowd towards him. Or the certain knowledge that he would be seeking revenge and doubtless now trawling through all the hotels in St Moritz in search of him. But as time passed, and there was no further sighting of Silverstone, he began to wonder whether he had simply imagined hearing his name over the loudspeaker, whether the man on the terrace at the Kulm was just an innocent American tourist. Nonetheless, he remained alert to the danger and kept his eyes open for that brash figure. But he never saw him again. And his suspicions of an overactive imagination saw their hunch slowly harden with every day that the American remained absent from Frank’s remaining days in St Moritz, especially when they went to watch the final races of the bobsleigh championships.

He was reluctant to go, not only for fear of running into Silverstone, who would certainly be there, but also because the toboggan seemed to have acquired a symbolic value of unpredictable force in his relationship with Patricia. But it was she who insisted with that effervescence he had come to adore in her that they go.

For Frank, this was the first tangible sign of the damage beginning to mend. So, even at the risk of being confronted by his American persecutor, he agreed. Her enjoyment was infinitely more important than this threat, which dwindled to insignificance as he watched her becoming steadily absorbed in the excitement on the ice. To see the joy in her eyes was bewitching. And his own heart reached a new pitch of exhilaration whenever she clasped her hands around his arm. He could sense the mend becoming stronger and firmer by the minute, and he savoured every unexpected moment of her delight. But what surprised him was her unabashed support for the English teams over all the others – even the French. And it was not that the English confirmed their position as favourites and ran away with one trophy after another. That was more likely to irritate Patricia, who was always better disposed towards the underdog.

“I just wanted them to win for the colonel,” she explained. “Because I know it would please him.”

Her continued liking for the colonel baffled Frank all the more since the man’s active encouragement of his exploits on the Cresta Run, which she had so disapproved of. But it gave him an idea.

“I’m surprised he’s not here,” he said, “but I’ve been thinking about the colonel.” Which was not entirely true. “I’ve been wanting to take you on a sleigh ride in the Val Roseg ever since we arrived here. And it occurred to me that it might be a nice idea if we invited him to come along with us.”

“That’s very sweet.” She held his right arm tighter in her grip as she stretched up to plant a kiss on his cheek. “When did you have in mind?”

“I thought Sunday would be a good day.”

Sunday would be a perfect day, he told himself. But he would need somebody to look after Patricia, to take her mind off things. And the colonel was the ideal choice.

So it was settled. The colonel proved every bit as keen on the idea as Patricia, especially since he was returning to England on the Monday and it would make a fitting finale to his holiday, he suggested. In a curious way, this pleased Frank, because he felt he owed the colonel something after letting him down on the champagne celebration.

The night that carried him into those last decisive hours was long and wakeful. And the darkness swelled with emotion, while Patricia slept into the innocence of her dreams, her peace with Frank restored. Or so it seemed.

He ran his hands over the silky slenderness of her body. Every touch brought a new dimension to his rapture, whispered to him in a new voice, felt different, as if she was somehow a complete stranger to him. This freshness invested his arousal with a charge that was hard to resist. But these moments are too precious to be felled by a deciduous passion, he told himself. They needed preserving. And yet he knew they would evaporate eventually. Before dawn at the very latest.

There was only one path to any lasting kind of conservation. And he was impatient to get on with it. To get moving. To see it through. It was this impatience that kept him awake. Kept him prowling the darkness with his eyes as he acted through every sequence of events in his mind and prepared for every twist and turn.

When the light of day began gradually to penetrate the curtains on their window high up above their little frozen corner of the Engadin, the sweeping wastes of snow that stretched away below them still slumbered quietly. Their tidy repose scorned him in his dishevelled unslept state. Only the overcast sky came close to matching the grey fuzziness that filled his skull. With his oedematous eyelids barely capable of opening, his head thick with unrest and the exhaustion of his fidgeting mind, he felt as if he had spent all night on the tiles. But this woeful condition could not have fitted more neatly into his designs, and helped lend credence to his excuses when Patricia eventually woke.

“I’m sorry, I just don’t think I can face that sleigh ride today,” he said. “You’re going to have to make my excuses to the colonel.” It took little theatrical talent to present a convincing picture of his debility. All the outward signs were there. He needed only to paint in some covert