He touched her cheek, her brow, traced the outline of her lips. She whispered his name, a single word that finally obliterated fear. He wondered how he had ever been afraid to lose himself in the love of this woman. She was himself. He saw that now. He accepted that truth. It was a form of fulfilment. He brought his mouth to hers.
Nothing existed save being in his arms. Nothing mattered save the warmth of his mouth and the taste of his tongue. It was as if only this single moment counted, allowing her life to be defined by his kiss.
He murmured her name, and a sure current passed between them, gathering force from the wellspring of desire. It swept away the past and took in its flow every belief, every intention, every aspect of her life but the knowledge that she wanted him. More than loyalty, more than love, more than the promise of the future, she wanted him. She told herself that this had nothing to do with the Deborah who was Tommy's, who slept in Tommy's bed, who would be Tommy's wife. This had to do only with a settling of accounts, one hour in which she would measure her worth.
'My love,' he whispered. 'Without you—'
She drew his mouth back to hers. She bit his lips gently and felt them curve in a smile. She wanted no words. In their place, she wanted only sensation. His mouth on her neck, describing a curve to the hollow of her throat; his hands on her breasts, teasing and caressing, dropping to her waist to the belt of her dressing gown, loosening it, pushing the gown from her shoulders, slipping the thin straps of her nightdress down the length of her arms. She stood. The nightdress slid to the floor. She felt his hand on her thigh.
'Deborah.'
She didn't want words. She bent to him, kissed him, felt him drawing her down to him, heard her own sigh of pleasure as his mouth found her breast.
She began to touch him. She began to undress him.
'I want you,' he whispered. 'Deborah. Look at me.'
She couldn't. She saw the candles' glow, the stone surround of the fireplace, the bookshelves, the glint of a single brass lamp on his desk. But not his eyes or his face or the shape of his mouth. She accepted his kiss. She returned his caress. But she did not look at him.
'I love you,' he whispered.
Three years. She waited for the rush of triumph, but it didn't come. Instead, one of the candles began to gutter, spilling wax in a messy flow on to the hearth. With a hiss, the flame died. The burned wick sent up a wisp of smoke whose smell was sharp and disturbing. St James turned to the source.
Deborah watched him do so. The single small flame of the remaining candle flickered like wings against his skin. His profile, his hair, the sharp edge of his jaw, the curve of his shoulder, the sure, quick movement of his lovely hands… She got to her feet. Her fingers trembled as she put on her dressing gown and fumbled uselessly with its slippery satin belt. She felt shaken to her core. No words, she thought. Anything else, but no words.
'Deborah…'
She couldn't.
'For God's sake, Deborah, what is it? What's wrong?'
She made herself look at him. His features were washed by a storm of emotion. He looked young and so vulnerable. He looked ready to be struck.
'I can't,' she said. 'Simon, I just can't.'
She turned away from him and left the room. She ran up the stairs. Tommy, she thought.
As if his name were a prayer, an invocation that could keep her from feeling both unclean and afraid.
Part Six. EXPIATION
25
The day's fair weather had begun to change by the time Lynley touched the plane down on to the tarmac at Land's End. Heavy grey clouds were scuttling in from the southwest, and what had been a mild breeze back in London was here gathering force as a rain-laden wind. This transformation in the weather was, Lynley thought bleakly, a particularly apt metaphor for the alteration that his mood and his circumstances had undergone. For he had begun the morning with a spirit uplifted by hope, but within mere hours of his having decided that the future held the promise of peace in every corner of his life, that hope had been swiftly overshadowed by a sick apprehension which he believed he had put behind him.
Unlike the anxiety of the past few days, this current uneasiness had nothing to do with his brother. Instead, from his meetings with Peter throughout the night had grown a sense of both renewal and rebirth. And, although during his lengthy visit to New Scotland Yard, the family's solicitor had depicted Peter's danger with transparent simplicity unless the death of Mick Cambrey could be unassailably pinned upon Justin Brooke, Lynley and his brother had moved from a discussion of the legal ramifications of his position to a fragile communion in which each of them took the first tentative steps towards understanding the other's past behaviour, a necessary prelude to forgiving past sins. From the hours Lynley had spent talking to his brother had come the realization that understanding and forgiveness go hand-in-hand. To call upon one is to experience the other. And if understanding and forgiveness were to be seen as virtues — strengths of character, not illustrations of personal weakness — surely it was time he accepted the fact that they could bring harmony to the single relationship in his life where harmony was most needed. He wasn't certain what he would say to her, but he knew he was ready to speak to his mother.
This intention — a resolution which lightened his steps and lifted his shoulders — began to disintegrate upon his arrival in Chelsea. Lynley dashed up the front steps, rapped on the door, and came face to face with his most irrational fear.
St James answered the door. He was pleasant enough with his offer of a coffee before they left, and confident enough with his presentation of his theory about Justin Brooke's culpability in Sasha Nifford's death. Under any other circumstances the information about Brooke would have filled Lynley with the surge of excitement that always came with the knowledge that he was heading towards the conclusion of a case. Under these circumstances, however, he barely heard St James' words, let alone understood how far they went to explain everything that had happened in Cornwall and London over the past five days. Instead, he noted that his friend's face was etiolated as if from an illness; he saw the deepening of the lines on his brow; he heard the tension beneath St James' exposition of motive, means and opportunity; and he felt a chill settle in every vital organ of his body. His confidence and his will — both flagships of the day — lost a quick battle with his growing dismay.
He knew there could be only one source of the change that had come over St James, and she walked down the stairs not three minutes after his arrival, adjusting the leather strap of a shoulder bag. When she reached the hallway and Lynley saw her face, he read the truth and was sick at heart. He wanted to give sway to the anger and jealousy that he felt in that instant. But, instead, generations of good breeding rose to commandeer his behaviour. The demand for an explanation became meaningless social chitchat designed to get them through the moment without so much as a hair of feeling out of place.
'Working hard on your photos, darling?' he asked her and added, because even good breeding had its limits, 'You look as if you haven't had a moment's rest. Were you up all night? Are you finished with them?'
Deborah didn't look at St James, who went into the study where he began rooting in his desk. 'Nearly.' She came to Lynley's side, slipped her arms round him, lifted her mouth to kiss him, and said in a whisper against his lips, 'Good morning, darling Tommy. I missed you last night.'
He kissed her, feeling the immediacy of her response to him and wondering if everything else he had seen was merely the product of pathetic insecurity. He told himself that this was the case. Nonetheless he still said, 'If you've more work to do, you don't need to go with us.'
'I want to go. The photographs can wait.' And, with a smile, she kissed him again.
