Penny knew how the rabbit felt, trapped by hounds, spurred by cunning. If she went out the front door she’d run right smack into her sister, and Emma was the last person she wanted to face. She didn’t want to see anyone-any attempt to explain her behavior would humiliate her even further.
In the end she’d gone upstairs and down the long corridor to the rear stairs and the pool exit. From there it had been easy enough to make her way along the path to the tennis court, screened by trees and heavy shrubbery. She sat huddled on her favorite bench above the court, her small figure almost indistinguishable in the dim light.
Emma and the children must still be out in the garden, for she could hear the little boy’s high-pitched voice above her, fading in and out on the breeze. It was quite funny the way Emma got on with Brian and Bethany. They’d never really known any children-no nieces and nephews to care for, no close neighbors running in and out begging milk and biscuits-and Penny was never quite sure what to say to them. Emma, however, just bossed the small pair about in her usual gruff way. The children seemed to accept it without question and they all got on remarkably well together.
Is that, Penny wondered, the way Emma would treat her, with that same gruff kindness, but in her case stained by pity? Would people speak about her the way they had spoken about poor Mrs. Lyle, and commiserate with Emma behind her back? Would she reach the point where Emma didn’t dare leave her alone, a danger to herself and others? It was an unbearable thought. The tears came again, unbidden, and Penny sat helplessly as they ran down her face and leaked salt into the corners of her mouth. Emma would tell her to stop wallowing and buck herself up, but Penny had never been much good at maintaining what Emma called an even keel.
Penny sniffed and searched in her pocket for a handkerchief. She’d have to try to pull herself together, for Emma’s sake as well as her own. Besides, she had a moral obligation that needed her attention. She had made up her mind at the cocktail party. It would never do to cast false suspicion on someone. What she had seen must have another, logical explanation, and the only fair way to find out was to ask.
CHAPTER 9
Kincaid broke two eggs into the skillet next to the bacon and congratulated himself on mastering an unfamiliar cooker. It had taken some adjusting and a grease burn on his thumb to get the temperature just right, but the bacon had come out perfectly. He turned the eggs as the toast sprang up in the toaster, and by the time he’d transferred the bacon and toast to his plate the eggs were ready as well.
The knock came as he was pouring his coffee.
Hannah Alcock leaned against the wall outside his front door, hugging herself in her long, Aran cardigan. She wore no make-up, her lips pale in contrast to the bruised hollows beneath her eyes.
“Hannah. Come in.” Kincaid led the way into the suite and pulled out a chair at the tiny table for her. “Are you all right? You don’t look at all well this morning.”
“Didn’t sleep.” She slumped down in the chair as if it had taken all her effort to stand up.
“Can I get you anything? Toast? Coffee?”
“Coffee would be nice, thanks.”
Kincaid poured another cup and sat down opposite her, pushing the milk and sugar across the table. She stirred her coffee for a moment before meeting his eyes, then tried a wan smile. “I feel an idiot coming here like this. I thought I’d say ‘we need to talk’, but I realized it’s not true, really. It’s I who needs to talk.” Hannah paused and looked away for a moment, moving her shoulders in a little self-deprecating shrug. “I feel I owe you some explanation for the way I’ve behaved. It’s not-”
“Why should you feel that?” Kincaid asked, puzzled. “I’ve no reason to pass judgment on you.”
“Oh god, Duncan, don’t protest. It only makes this more humiliating for me. Then I start to think I was only imagining that there was… I don’t know… some feeling, some rapport… between us. It’s happened to me once or twice before. You meet someone, spend an evening together, find yourselves talking as if you’d known each other for years, saying things you wouldn’t say to people you had known for years.” Her smile was rueful. “It’s a rare gift, an evening like that, and one I hadn’t planned on.”
At least, thought Kincaid, she was more honest than he. There had been some spark of affinity, of possibility, between them and he had felt hurt to find her sharing the same sudden intimacy with Patrick Rennie. Not merely sexual jealousy, although there was a bit of that as well, but more a sense of confidence betrayed. “All right, Hannah. I’ll grant you that.” He looked at her carefully, noted the unaltered porcelain complexion and fine bone structure, noted also the drawn look around the shadowed eyes. “But it’s more than that, isn’t it? You’re not just worrying about my sensitive feelings.”
Hannah was shaking her head before he’d finished the sentence. “No. I mean yes. I don’t know.” Her hand jerked as she spoke, and her undrunk coffee slopped a milky pool on the table’s surface. “About Patrick. It’s not what you think.” The lift of Kincaid’s eyebrows would have done Peter Raskin credit. “I know how it must look.” She met Kincaid’s eyes. “That I’ve gone middle-aged gaga over any man who looks at me twice. It’s not like that at all. Oh, Jesus, I wish it were that simple.” She dropped her face into her hands, fingers splayed across her eyes.
“Hannah…” Kincaid reached out a hand to touch her, drew it back.
Through her fingers she said, “You have to understand. I thought I’d made a perfect life for myself. I was smart, capable, respected. I’d been lucky enough to find work that I loved.” Hannah raised her head. “People usually think I didn’t have a chance to marry. The old sexually deprived spinster stereotype. God!” she said bitterly. “You’d think we’d grown past that, but we haven’t. Women are still judged first as a commodity, a man’s appendage. If you don’t have a man you don’t measure up. Simple. As for sex-” she gave a harsh laugh “-sex is easy. It’s marriage that terrified me. Losing control.” Hannah pushed her cup forward with her fingertips and looked out the French door. “My parents ordered every aspect of my life, what I ate, what I wore, how I cut my hair, who I saw, even what I thought. The one step I might have taken for myself they… took out of my hands. So I swore I would never let anybody else do that to me. Can you understand that?”
“Yes,” Kincaid said softly, “I think so.”
“So I went along for years, captain of my own ship and all that, and then suddenly this last year it all began to seem so empty. Oh, I had lovers all right, but no one with hooks in my life. Maybe,” she sighed, and Kincaid felt some of her tension relax, “I am suffering from menopausal dementia, some hormonal imbalance. But it doesn’t feel that way.” She spoke now more to herself than to Kincaid, her gaze unfocused. “There’s no wholeness, no connection. It feels…” The flow of words stopped. Hannah fell silent for a moment, then focused clearly on Kincaid, “I’ve done it again, haven’t I? Just like that first night, and you thought I’d bored you with my life story then. I’m sorry.”