trembling, and his fingertips seemed to retain an imprint of the texture of her hair and the swelling of the lump beneath it. The reaction would pass, he knew, and he pushed away that first image etched in his brain-Hannah lying still and broken beneath him.
“Now, tell me what happened.”
For the first time Hannah looked afraid. “I was standing at the top of the stairs. The landing door opened-I remember wondering in a vague sort of way why I didn’t hear footsteps or the normal jingly noises people make when they walk. Then I felt a hand at my back.”
“Did you see-”
“No. There wasn’t time. Just a hard shove and that’s really all I remember.” She felt her wrist gingerly. “I must have tried to stop myself falling.”
Kincaid touched her arm. “Hannah, are you sure you don’t know who it was? Not even an impression?”
She shook her head. “No. Why would-”
The front door slammed and they heard quick footsteps crossing the porch. Patrick Rennie came into the hall, his color high as if with anger or excitement. He stopped when he saw them and looked from one to the other, puzzled. “Hannah? Why… what happened?” His tone shifted from bewilderment to concern as he took in Kincaid’s protective posture. “Are you all right?”
Kincaid, his hand still on Hannah’s arm, felt her stiffen. When she didn’t speak he answered for her. “She’s quite bruised and shaken.” He paused, studying Rennie’s face. “Someone pushed her down the stairs.”
Rennie looked at them incredulously for a moment. When he managed to speak he stumbled and stammered like a schoolboy. “Wh-Pushed? Pushed, did you say? Why in hell’s name would anyone want to push Hannah? She could have been…”
Kincaid thought nastily that for once Rennie’s aplomb had deserted him. “I thought you might be able to-” he began, when Rennie interrupted him.
“Have you phoned for the doctor? What about the police? They’ve been hanging about all day and now when they could be doing something useful-”
“Calm down, man. I hadn’t time to ring anyone. Perhaps-” Kincaid felt Hannah jerk beside him and she said softly, urgently, “Don’t Don’t leave me.”
“Perhaps,” he continued to Rennie, without looking at her, “you could go and ring them now.”
“You seem to be forever making me cups of tea.” Hannah gave a wan attempt at a smile.
“My lot in life,” answered Kincaid from the kitchen. “Born into the wrong era. I’m sure I would have made an excellent ‘gentleman’s gentleman’.”
“You as Jeeves? I don’t think so.” This time her smile was genuine, and it relieved Kincaid to see the lines in her face relax. With Rennie’s help he’d walked her up the stairs and into her suite, where they’d settled her on the sofa.
Rennie hovered around Hannah, obviously wanting to speak to her without Kincaid’s watchdog presence. Hannah seemed to have relaxed since her earlier, almost instinctive recoil from her son, but she hadn’t looked at or spoken to him directly. Kincaid had no intention of leaving as yet.
Rennie gave in, finally, with a return of some of his habitual grace. “Look, I can see I’m not wanted just now. But you will let me know if I can do anything?” He spoke to Hannah, not Kincaid, and when he reached the door he turned and addressed her once more. “I’m sorry, Hannah.” Kincaid had the impression he had not been referring to her fall.
Kincaid returned from the kitchen bearing a tray with two cups of tea and a plate of digestive biscuits. “Teatime.”
“Is it?” Hannah took a biscuit tentatively. “Do you know, I don’t think I had any lunch. No wonder I feel so weak.” Kincaid pulled the armchair across and sat near enough to hand her tea and biscuits. He searched her face as she accepted the cup.
When she had eaten and drunk a little, he spoke. “Hannah, tell me what happened today between you and Patrick. I think you must, you know,” he added, softening the demand a bit.
She swallowed some tea and the cup rattled as she replaced it in the saucer. “I never meant it to go like that. I never meant-” Hannah turned her head away, her eyes, already red and swollen with earlier weeping, filling. “First I accused him of all these horrible things, all those things you told me. The words just came out. I couldn’t seem to stop them. Then I told him…”
“That you were his mother?” Kincaid prompted.
She gave a little hiccuppy laugh. “What a prize I am. Suspicious. Shrewish. No wonder he wasn’t too thrilled with the prospect.” Hannah hugged her arms against her chest and began to shiver in earnest.
“You’re in shock.” Kincaid leaned over her, contrite. “I shouldn’t be pestering you-”
“No. No, I have to tell you. I want to tell you.” Her voice rose and Kincaid watched her struggle to regain control. “I did everything wrong, you see,” she continued, modulating carefully now. “From the very beginning. Successful. Independent. That’s how I saw myself. Under no one’s jurisdiction. I thought of marriage and family as a loss of autonomy.” Hannah twisted the edge of the blanket in her fingers. “It was all such a sham. The truth was I had nothing to give, nothing to share.” She raised her eyes to his. “And Patrick… I think what Patrick resented the most was my waiting-if knowing him was so important to me, why hadn’t I found him years ago? And I could have, he was right about that. With all my illusions of strength and independence, I never faced my father. My father…”
Kincaid waited while she tried to find a more comfortable position. Exhaustion tugged at her facial muscles, her eyelids drooped involuntarily. “Hannah-”
“No. I must tell you, before it all slips away…”
Kincaid subsided, powerless against her compulsion to talk. He’d seen it often enough in victims of accidents, or shock, but Hannah was more coherent than most.
“Patrick… How could I explain what happened to me the last year? Biological clock’s stupid, I know,” her lips twisted in a faint smile, “but when I knew, finally, that I’d never have another child… something changed in me. Suddenly everything seemed so empty. Everything I’d done so pointless-”
Kincaid was startled into protest. “You’re not going to trot out that old saw about women only finding fulfillment through marriage and children? I don’t believe it of you.”
She started to shake her head, then lightly touched her fingers to the back. “No…” She paused so long Kincaid began to think she’d drifted away altogether. Then she said quietly, “I don’t think sex has much to do with it. It’s the little lies, the accumulation of self-deception. Armor, all armor, hiding behind armor, like some soft-bodied sea creature. Afraid of…”
“Afraid of what, Hannah?” Kincaid didn’t trust the delicacy of his touch.
Again came the almost imperceptible shake of the head. “Losing…” Her eyes skated away from his. She picked up her forgotten cup and drank the cold tea thirstily, retreating from whatever precipice she had approached.
Hannah blinked and then closed her eyes, the dark lashes fanning out against her cheeks. The empty teacup tilted in her hand. Kincaid had reached to take it from her when she spoke again, her eyes still shut. “One day I realized that if I didn’t wake the next morning, no one would miss me. Except Miles.
“Miles and I were lovers once, in the beginning.” Hannah smiled a little at the memory. “He lost interest when his health began to fail. Or maybe I hadn’t enough to give, even then. Still, I’m all he has, except for some wretched nephew he doesn’t care for, and I’ve neglected him terribly since I became so… obsessed with Patrick.”
She opened her eyes and looked at Kincaid, the late afternoon light shifting her irises from hazel to green, a green almost as clear as Patrick Rennie’s. “Obsession… a selfish preoccupation,” she said dreamily, then continued more forcefully. “What right had I to find Patrick and spy on him, passing judgement on his qualifications as a son? I could have gone to his office and told him the truth straight off, given him a
“It seems to me,” Kincaid said gently, “that you’ve castigated yourself pretty thoroughly for mistakes anyone could have made. We don’t any of us have all the answers before-hand. Why is it too late for you and Patrick? Why can’t you tell him what you told me? What have you to lose?”
“I… He doesn’t want-”
“How do you know what Patrick wants or doesn’t want? He didn’t give me the impression just now of a man determined to sever all connection.” Unless, of course, thought Kincaid, Patrick Rennie had seen an advantage in
