position. 'And I don't feel much like getting stormed on, so I'm going up and stroll around in the house. OK?'
He hummed drowsy acquiescence.
'Is it all right if I make a phone call? I have to tell the airline where I am.'
He did not open his eyes, fearful of damaging the half-doze he was treasuring. 'Don't talk more than three minutes,' he said, barely moving his mouth.
She kissed him gently on his relaxed lips.
'OK,' he said. 'But no more than four minutes.'
When he returned to the house it was late afternoon and the cloud pack was unbroken from horizon to horizon. He found Jemima lounging in the library, looking through a portfolio of Hokusai prints. He looked over her shoulder for a time, then drifted up to his bar. 'It's getting cold. Care for some sherry?' His voice bounced through the nave.
'Sounds fine. I don't like your bar, though.'
'Oh?'
She followed him as far as the altar rail. 'It's too much nose-thumbing, if you know what I mean.'
'As in, 'Oh, grow up'?'
'Yes. As in that.' She accepted the chalice of wine and sat on the rail sipping it. He watched her with proprietary pleasure.
'Oh, by the way!' She stopped drinking suddenly. 'Do you know that there's a madman on your grounds?'
'Is that so?'
'Yes. I met him on my way up here. He was snarling and digging a hole that looked terribly like a grave.'
Jonathan frowned. 'I can't imagine who that could be.'
'And he was mumbling to himself.'
'Was he?'
'Yes. Real vulgar stuff.'
He shook his head. 'I'll have to look into it.'
She did the salad while he broiled steaks. The fruit had been chilling since they got home, and the purple grapes mauved over with a haze of frost when they met the humid air of the garden where places had been set at a wrought iron table, despite the probability of rain. He opened a bottle of Pichon-Longue-ville-Baron, and they ate while the onset of night smoothly transferred the source of light from the treetops of the flickering hurricane lamps on the table. The flicker stopped, the air grew dense and unmoving, and occasional flashes along the storm line glittered to the north. They watched the scudding sky grow darker while little breaths of cool wind leading the storm reanimated the lamps and fluttered the black-and-silver foliage around them. For long afterwards, Jonathan was to remember the meteor trail of Jemima's glowing cigarette when she lifted it to smoke.
He spoke out of a longish silence. 'Come with me. I want to show you something.'
She followed him back into the house. 'There's a certain spookiness about this, you know,' she said as he got the key from the back of the kitchen drawer and led her down the half-turn stone steps. 'Into the catacombs? Probably a lime pit in the cellar. What do I really know about you? Maybe I should drop bits of bread so I can find my way back out.'
Jonathan turned on the lights and stepped aside. She walked past him, drawn in by the paintings that radiated from the walls. 'Oh, my! Oh, Jonathan!'
He sat at his desk chair, watching her as she moved from canvas to canvas with an uneven pulsing flow, attracted by the next painting, unwilling to leave the last. She made little humming sounds of pleasure and admiration, rather as a contented child does when eating breakfast alone.
Her eyes full, she sat on the carved piano bench and looked down at the Kashan for some time. 'You're a singular man, Jonathan Hemlock.'
He nodded.
'All this just for you. This megalomaniac house; these...' she made a sweeping gesture with her hand and eyes. 'You keep all this to yourself.'
'I'm a singularly selfish man. Like some champagne?'
'No.'
She looked down and shook her head sadly. 'All this matters to you a great deal. Even more than Mr. Dragon led me to believe.'
'Yes, it matters, but...'
...For some minutes they said nothing. She did not look up, and he, after the first shocked glance, tried to calm his confusion and anger by forcing his eye to roam over the paintings.
Finally he sighed and pushed himself out of the chair. 'Well, lady, I'd better be getting you to the depot. Last train for the city...' His voice trailed off.
She followed him obediently up the stone steps. While they had been in the gallery, the storm had broken violently above without their hearing it. Now they climbed up through layers of quickening, muffled sound—the metallic rattle of rain on glass, the fluting and flap of wind, the thick, distant rumblings of thunder.
In the kitchen she asked, 'Do we have time for that glass of champagne you offered me?'
He protected his hurt by the dry freeze of politeness. 'Certainly. In the library?'
He knew she was distressed, and he wielded his artificial social charm like a bludgeon, chatting lightly about the paucity of transportation to his corner of Long Island, and of the particular difficulties the rain imposed. They sat facing each other in heavy leather chairs while the rain rattled horizontally against the stained glass, and the walls and floor rippled with reds and greens and blues. Jemima cut into the flow of anticommunicative chat.
'I guess I shouldn't have just dropped it on you like that, Jonathan.'
'Oh? How should you have dropped it, Jemima?'
'I couldn't let it go on—I mean, I couldn't let
'You might have hit me with a brick,' he suggested. Then he laughed. 'I must have been dazzled. You're a real dazzler. I should have recognized the anti-chance of coincidence. You on the plane from Montreal. You just happened to pass by Dragon's office in that taxi. How was it supposed to work, Jemima? Were you supposed to bring me to a white heat of desire, then deny your body unless I agreed to do this sanction for Dragon? Or were you going to whisper insidious persuasions into my ear as I lay in the euphoria of postcoitus vulnerability.'
'Nothing so cool. I was told to steal your payment for the last assignment.'
'That's certainly direct.'
'I saw it lying on your desk downstairs. Mr. Dragon says you need the money badly.'
'He's right. Why you? Why not one of his other flunkeys?'
'He thought I would be able to get close to you quickly.'
'I see. How long have you worked for Dragon?'
'I don't really work for him. I'm CII, but I'm not Search and Sanction. They chose someone out of your department to avoid recognition.'
'Very sensible. What do you do?'
'I'm a courier. The stewardess front is good for that.'
He nodded. 'Have you had many assignments like this? Using your body to get at someone?'
She considered, then rejected the easy lie. 'A couple.'
He was silent for a moment. Then he laughed. 'Aren't we the pair? A selfish killer and a patriotic whore. We should mate just to see what the offspring would be. I have nothing against selfish whores, but patriotic killers are the worst kind.'
'Jonathan.' She leaned forward, suddenly angry. 'Do you have any idea how important this assignment Mr. Dragon wants you to take is?'
He regarded her with bland silence; he had no intention of making anything easier.
'I know he didn't give you the details. He couldn't unless he was sure you would take the job. But if you knew
