I confess I have always been a fan of mystery. I love to curl up on a wintry day with a good mystery novel, full of twists and turns that keep me on my toes. And when I came to write my first novel, Burning Embers, I quickly realised that I found mystery to be an integral part of a romance novel as well.

Most novels contain some degree of mystery. Mystery and intrigue are what keep readers turning pages, eager to knit together the clues into a cohesive, satisfying whole at the end. If an author delivered the entire story in the first chapter, what point would there be in reading on?

But apart from the drive to include mystery as an integral part of fiction, the romance author has an added impetus: mystery heightens romance.

Imagine the heroine meets an attractive man. He invites her for a drink, and they sit together in a pavement café, watching the world go by, glancing coyly at each other and getting to know one another. Sounds like a perfect start to romance. But that is assuming that the ‘getting to know one another’ element contains that essential ingredient: mystery.

By the end of the date, each person does not know all there is to know about the other. A man or woman who lays bare his or her entire inner world – their past, their future dreams; their mistakes, their successes; their weaknesses, their strengths; their hopes, their fears – to a virtual stranger would not be considered romantic, but lacking in boundaries and, possibly, a little odd!

No, instead by the end of the first date each person has only:

• Light, superficial knowledge of the other: name, occupation, area of dwelling, favourite food, favourite poet and so on.
• An inkling of what runs deeper beneath the surface: an idea of character and aspirations that forms the basis for attraction, passion and a blossoming relationship.

But beyond this initial impression, there is much to be discovered. And, indeed, both parties usually harbour secrets of some sort whose eventual honest sharing will lay the foundations for a relationship built on openness and trust.

In Burning Embers, for example, Coral and Rafe first meet upon a boat bound for Mombasa, Kenya. Coral is returning to the land of her birth to take up an inheritance, and Rafe appears to be nothing more than a gallant gentleman who, having found Coral alone and tearful on the deck, offers ‘the comfort of strangers’. In fact, the reader soon discovers this handsome is no stranger, but a man tied closely to Coral’s fate. But not until the end of the book does Coral get to the very heart of the mysterious shadow that haunts Rafe’s heart. In this, the beginning of their love, the mystery serves to fuel the fire that has ignited in Coral:

They stood close to each other, almost touching. His hand reached out and, with infinite tenderness, covered the slender fingers clenching the rail. A pleasant warmth flooded her. She was afraid to move in case she disturbed that initial, yet powerful, contact. For a fleeting moment, in this wan light and because he spoke gently, her wounded heart yielded to this stranger’s soothing voice.

As poet John Donne wrote in ‘The Ecstasy’, ‘Love’s mysteries in souls do grow.’ It is not about playing games – of a woman being deliberately over-coy or a man willfully concealing what his lover should know of him. Instead, it is a case of respecting the slow unfolding of a relationship, the magic of the mystery, and the importance of a gentle stoking to fuel burning embers into passionate, lasting flames.