A Great Deliverance (31 page)

No wonder she loves him, Barbara realised suddenly.

She glanced warily at Lynley as they drove back to the lodge. What must it be like for him, knowing that he had lacked the courage to tell Deborah that he wanted her, knowing that he’d put his family and his tide before his love? How he must hate himself! What regret he must feel! How horribly lonely he must really be!

He felt her looking at him. “You did nice work today, Sergeant. Especially at the hall. Keeping Hank at bay for a quarter of an hour shall get you a citation, rest assured.”

She felt absurdly warmed by the praise. “Thank you, sir. St. James agreed to help?”

“He did indeed.”

He did indeed, Lynley thought. He let out his breath sharply in self-derision and tossed the file onto the bedside table. He dropped his spectacles on top of it, rubbed his eyes, and adjusted the pillows behind his back.

Deborah had spoken to her husband. Lynley could see that. They’d already discussed what his response would be when he was asked to assist. It was a simple one: “Of course, Tommy. What can I do?”

How like both of them! How like Deborah to have seen in their conversation that morning all of his concerns about the case. How like her to have paved the way for him to ask St. James’s help. And how like St. James to have agreed without hesitation, for any hesitation would have aroused the guilt that always lay like a dangerous, wounded tiger between them.

He leaned back against the pillows and closed his eyes wearily, allowing his mind in its exhaustion to drift back to the past. He gave himself to the bewitching visions of a former happiness that remained unclouded by grief or pain.

Dryden’s words came from nowhere, unbidden and unwanted. He swallowed them down and demanded that they recede into his mind, an effort that took every ounce of his concentration and prevented him from hearing the door open and the footsteps cross to the bed. He was quite unaware, in fact, of the presence in the room until a cool hand touched his cheek gently. His eyes flew open.

“I think you need an Odell’s, Inspector,” Stepha whispered.

Nonplussed, he stared at her. He waited for his smooth persona to click into place, for the arrival of that illusory man who laughed and danced and had a quick-witted answer for everything. But nothing happened. Stepha’s appearance in his room, materialising for all he knew out of nowhere, seemed to have destroyed his only line of defence, and all that was left in his repertoire of engaging behaviours was the ability to meet, without wavering, her beautiful eyes.

He needed to give reality to the moment, to make her something he hadn’t dreamt up from the mist of his dispirited memory, so he reached out and touched the fall of her hair.
Soft
, he thought wonderingly.

She caught his hand and kissed the palm, the wrist. Her tongue lightly traced the length of his fingers. “Let me love you tonight. Let me drive away the shadows.”

She spoke on the merest breath of a whisper, and he wondered if her voice were a part of the dream. But her smooth hands played across his cheeks and jaw and throat, and when she bent to him and he tasted the sweetness of her mouth, felt the caress of her tongue, he knew she was part of a searing reality, a present calmly laying siege to the castellated walls of his past.

He wanted to flee from the onslaught, to escape to that haven of bliss-charged remembrance that had kept him well armoured in the year that had passed, a year during which all desire had been absent, all longing dead, all life incomplete. But she allowed no evasion, and as she purposefully destroyed the ramparts that shielded him, he felt once again not a sweet liberation but that terrifying need to possess another person, body and soul.

He
couldn’t
He wouldn’t allow it to happen. He desperately sought out last, shattered defences, uselessly willing back into being an insensate creature who no longer lived. In its place was reborn—quiet and vulnerable—the man who had been there, inside, all along.

“Tell me about Paul.”

She raised herself on one elbow, touched her finger to his lips, traced their shape. The light struck her hair, her shoulders, her breasts. She was fire and cream, scented almost imperceptibly with the sweetness of Devon violets.

“Why?”

“Because I want to know about you. Because he was your brother. Because he died.”

Her eyes moved from his. “What did Nigel say?”

“That Paul’s death changed everyone.”

“It did.”

“Bridie said that he went away, that he never said goodbye.”

Stepha lowered herself next to him, into his arms. “Paul killed himself, Thomas,” she whispered. Her body trembled on the words. He held her closer. “Bridie’s not been told. We say he died of Huntington’s, and he did, in a way. It was Huntington’s that killed him. Have you ever seen people with the disease? St. Vitus’ dance. They’ve no control over their bodies. They twitch and stagger and leap and fall. And then their minds go at the last. But not Paul. By
God
, not Paul.” Her voice caught. She drew in a breath. His hand found its way to her hair and he pressed his lips to the top of her head.

“I’m sorry.”

“He had just enough mind left to know that he no longer recognised his wife, no longer knew the name of his child, no longer had any control over his body. He had just enough mind left to decide it was time for him to die.” She swallowed. “I helped him. I had to. He was my twin.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Nigel didn’t tell you?”

“No. Nigel’s in love with you, isn’t he?”

“Yes.” She answered without artifice.

“Did he come to Keldale to be near you?”

She nodded. “We were all at university together: Nigel, Paul, and I. I might have married Nigel at one time. He was less mad then, less angry. I’m the source of his madness, I’m afraid. But I’ll never marry now.”

“Why not?”

“Because Huntington’s is a hereditary disease. I’m a carrier. I don’t want to pass it on to a child. It’s bad enough seeing Bridie every day and thinking every time she stumbles or drops something that she’s got the bloody disease herself. I don’t know what I’d do if I had a child of my own. Probably drive myself mad with worry.”

“You don’t have to have children. Or you could adopt.”

“Men say that, of course. Nigel does all the time. But there’s no point to marriage as far as I’m concerned if I can’t have my own child. My own healthy child.”

“Was the baby in the abbey a healthy child?”

She drew herself up to look at him. “On duty, Inspector? An odd time and place for it, wouldn’t you say?”

He smiled wryly. “Sorry. Reflex action, I’m afraid.” And then he added, unrepentant, “Was she?”

“Wherever did you hear about the baby in the abbey? No, don’t tell me. Keldale Hall.”

“I understand it was a bit of a legend come true.”

“Of sorts. The legend—fanned by the Burton-Thomases at every opportunity—is that sometimes one can hear a baby cry from the abbey at night. The reality, I’m afraid, is much as you’d expect. It’s a trick of wind when it’s blowing with just the right force from the north through a crack in the wall between the north transept and nave. It happens several times a year.”

“How do you know?”

“When we were teenagers, my brother and I camped there for a fortnight one spring until we’d tracked the sound down. Of course, we didn’t disappoint the Burton-Thomases by telling them the truth. But to be honest, even that wind doesn’t sound a great deal like a baby.”

“And the real baby?”

“Ah, back to that, are we?” She rested her cheek on his chest. “I don’t know much about it. It was just over three years ago. Father Hart found her, managed to stir up a great deal of local outrage about her, and it fell to Gabriel Langston to sort it all out. Poor Gabriel. He never was able to discover anything at all. The furor died down after a few weeks. There was a funeral that everyone of conscience attended and that was the end of it, I’m afraid. It was all rather grim.”

“And you were glad when it was over?”

“I was. I don’t like grimness. I don’t want it in my life. I want life filled with laughter and wild, crazy joy.”

“Perhaps you’re afraid of feeling anything else.”

“I am. But I’m mostly afraid of ending up lost like Olivia, of loving someone so much and then having that person ripped out of my life. I can’t bear to be near her any longer. After Paul died, she went into a fog bank and never emerged. I don’t want to be like that. Ever.” She spoke the last word on a hard note of anger, but when she raised her head her eyes shone with tears. “Please. Thomas,” she whispered, and his body responded with the quicksilver flame of desire.

He pulled her to him roughly, felt her heat and passion, heard her cry of pleasure, felt the shadows drift away.

“What about Bridie?”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s like a little lost soul. Just Bridie and that duck.”

Stepha laughed. She curled on her side, her smooth back a pleasant pressure against him. “Bridie’s special, isn’t she?”

“Olivia seems oddly detached from her. It’s as if Bridie’s growing up without parents at all.”

“Liv wasn’t always that way. But Bridie’s like Paul. So exactly like. I think it hurts Olivia even to see her. She’s not really over Paul yet. I doubt she ever will be.”

“Then why on earth was she going to remarry?”

“For Bridie’s sake. Paul was a very strong father. Olivia seems to have felt duty bound to replace him with someone else. And William was eager to be the replacement, I suppose.” Her voice was growing sleepy. “I don’t quite know what she thought it was going to be like for herself. But I think she was more interested in getting Bridie under control. It would have worked well, too. William was very good to Bridie. So was Roberta.”

“Bridie says you are as well.”

She yawned. “Does she? I fixed her hair, poor little pumpkin. I’m not certain I’m good at anything else.”

“You chase ghosts away,” he whispered. “You’re very good at that.” But she was asleep.

He awoke to find the reality this time. She lay, childlike, curled with her knees drawn up, with both of her fists under her chin. She was frowning with her dream, and a strand of hair was caught between her lips. He smiled at the sight.

A glance at his watch told him it was nearly seven. He bent and kissed her bare shoulder. She awoke at once, coming fully awake in an instant, not the least bit confused about where she was. She raised her hand, touching his cheek, pulling him down to her.

He kissed her mouth, then her neck, and heard the delicate change in her breathing that signalled her pleasure when he reached her breast. His hand slid the length of her body. She sighed.

“Thomas.” He lifted his head. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright. “I must go.”

“Not just yet.”

“Look at the time.”

“In a moment.” He bent to her, felt her hands in his hair.

“You … I… Oh Lord.” She laughed as she realised how her body was betraying her.

He smiled. “Go if you must, then.”

She sat up, kissed him a last time, and crossed to the bathroom. He lay there, filled with a contentment that he had thought was entirely lost to him, and listened to the familiar noises she made. He found himself wondering how he’d survived the last year of isolation. Then she was returning to him, smiling, running his hairbrush through her tangled hair. She reached for her grey dressing gown and began to put it on, lifting one arm gracefully as she did so.

And it was in that movement in the early morning light that he saw the unmistakable evidence on her body that she had borne a child.

Barbara finally got up when she heard Lynley’s door open and close softly. She’d been lying on her side, her eyes fixed desperately upon a single spot on the wall, her teeth grinding together so fiercely that her entire jaw ached. She had willed conscious feeling into absolute death for the last seven hours, ever since the first moment when she’d heard them together in his room.

She walked now to the window on legs that felt numb. She stared stonily out into the Keldale morning. The village seemed lifeless, a place without colour or sound. How appropriate, she thought.

The real agony was the bed: the unmistakable, rhythmic creaking of his bed. It went on and on until she wanted to scream, to pound her fists against the wall to bring it to an end. But the silence that fell just as suddenly was worse. It beat against her eardrums in angry pulsations that she finally came to recognise as the pounding of her heart. And then the bed again, endlessly. And the woman’s muffled cry.

She put a dry, hot hand onto the windowpane and felt with listless surprise the damp, cool glass. Her fingers slipped, left streaks. She examined them meticulously.

So much for his unrequited love for Deborah, Barbara thought acidly. Christ, I must have been absolutely out of my mind! When had he ever been more than what he’d been last night: a real stud, a bona fide bull, a hard, hot stallion of a man who had to prove his virility between the legs of every woman he met.

Well, you proved it last night, Inspector. Took her directly up to heaven three or four times, didn’t you? You’ve got solid gold talent, all right.

She laughed soundlessly, mirthlessly. It was a pleasure, really, to discover that he was just what she’d always assumed him to be: an alley cat on the prowl for any female in heat, cleverly disguised under a refulgent veneer of upper-class breeding. But what a thin veneer it was after all! Scratch the surface of the man and the truth oozed out.

The bath began running noisily in the next room, a rushing of water that sounded to Barbara like a burst of applause. She stirred, turned from the window, and made her decision about how to face the day.

“We’re going to have to take the house apart one room at a time,” Lynley said.

They were in the study. Havers had gone to the bookshelves and was sullenly flipping through a dogeared Brontë. He watched her. Other than monosyllabic, expressionless replies to every remark he’d made at breakfast, she had said nothing at all. The fragile thread of communication they had established between them seemed to be utterly broken. To make matters worse, she’d returned to her hideous light blue suit and ridiculous, coloured tights.