“I’ll be off, then,” he said.
She turned from the stove where she was scooping scrambled eggs onto two Beatrix Potter plates. “Back to London?” she asked.
“No. I’m here on a case.” He told her what little he knew about it, concluding with, “They’ve given me digs at St. Stephen’s.”
“So you can relive your own undergraduate days?”
“Bedders and gyp rooms and night keys from the porter.”
She took the plates to the table along with the toast, grilled tomatoes, and milk. Christian fell to like a victim of famine. Perdita rocked. Lady Helen placed a fork in her hand, touched her dark head, and rubbed her fi ngers gently against the child’s downy cheek.
“Helen.” He found some comfort in saying her name. She looked up. “I’ll be off now.”
“Let me see you out.”
She followed him back through the sitting room to the front door. It was colder in this part of the house. He looked at the stairway.
“Shall I say hello to Pen?”
“I don’t think so, Tommy.” He cleared his throat, nodded. As if she read his expression, she touched his arm lightly. “Please understand.”
He knew instinctively that she wasn’t talking about her sister. “I suppose you can’t get away for dinner.”
“I can’t leave her alone with them. God only knows when Harry’s coming home. He’s staying for formal dinner at Emmanuel tonight. He may sleep there as well. He’s done that already four nights this past week.”
“Will you phone me at the college if he comes home?”
“He won’t-”
“Will you phone?”
“Oh, Tommy.”
He felt a sudden, overpowering surge of hopelessness which prompted him to say, “I volunteered for this case, Helen. When I knew it was Cambridge.”
As soon as the words were out, he despised himself. He was resorting to the worst form of emotional blackmail. It was manipulative, dishonest, and unworthy of them both. She didn’t respond. In the shadows of the hallway, she was darkness and light. The glossy unbroken curve of hair to her shoulders, the cream of her skin. He reached out, caressed the line of her jaw. She came into the shelter of his overcoat. He felt her arms slip warmly round him. He rested his cheek on the top of her head.
“Christian said he likes you because you smell good,” he whispered.
Against his chest, he could feel her smile. “Did he?”
“Yes.” He let himself hold her for a moment longer before he pressed his lips to the top of her head. “Christian was right,” he said and released her. He opened the front door.
“Tommy.” She crossed her arms in front of her. He said nothing, waiting, willing her to take some sort of fi rst step.
“I’ll phone,” she said. “If Harry turns up.”
“I love you, Helen.” He walked to his car.
Lady Helen returned to the kitchen. For the first time in the nine days that she had been in Cambridge, she looked at the room dispassionately, seeing it as an outside observer would see it. Dissolution, it declared.
Despite the fact that she had scrubbed it herself only three days ago, the yellow linoleum floor was once again grimy, patched with spilled food and drink from the children’s meals. The walls looked greasy, with grey handprints smeared like directional indicators against the paint. Work tops acted as storage space for anything that couldn’t be fitted anywhere else. A stack of unopened mail, a wooden bowl of apples and browning bananas, half a dozen newspapers, a plastic jar of kitchen utensils and brushes, and a children’s colouring book and crayons shared the area with a wine rack, an electric mixer, a toaster, and a shelf of dusty books. Beneath the burners on the cooker, the remains of boil-overs lay like sour slop, and cobwebs collected on three empty wicker baskets atop the refrigerator.
Lady Helen wondered what Lynley must have thought, seeing all this. It was quite a change from the only other time he had been in Bulstrode Gardens for a quiet summer dinner in the back garden, preceded by drinks on a lovely terrace that had since been turned into a sandbox and play area now choked with toys. Her sister and Harry Rodger had been live-in lovers then, consumed with each other and fueled by the delights of early love. They were virtually oblivious of everything else. They exchanged meaningful glances and knowing smiles; they touched each other fondly at the slightest excuse; they fed each other small morsels of food and shared a drink. They had their own lives by day-Harry lecturing at the University and Pen working for the Fitzwilliam Museum-but by night they were one.
Their devotion to each other had seemed excessive and embarrassing to Lady Helen at the time, too cloying to be in particularly good taste. But now she questioned the nature of her own reaction to such an overt display of love. And she admitted the fact that she would rather see her sister and Harry Rodger clinging and cooing than witness what they had come to over the birth of their third child.
Christian was still noisily addressing himself to his tea. His toast fi ngers had become dive bombers, and with accompanying sound effects which he supplied at maximum volume, he was flying them gustily into his plate. Eggs, tomatoes, and cheese dripped down the front of his playsuit. His sister had only picked at her own meal. At the moment, she was sitting motionless in her chair with a Cabbage Patch doll laid across her lap. She was studying it pensively, but she did not touch it.
Lady Helen knelt by Perdita’s chair as Christian shouted, “Ka-boom! Ka-plowy!” Eggs splashed across the table. Perdita blinked as a bit of tomato hit her on the cheek.
“Enough, Christian,” Lady Helen said, taking his plate from him. He was her nephew. She was supposed to love him and under most circumstances she could say that she did. But after nine days, her patience was at its lowest ebb, and if she’d ever had compassion for the unspoken fears that underlay his behaviour, she found that she couldn’t summon it at the moment. He opened his mouth for a howl of protest. She reached across the table and covered it with her hand. “Enough. You’re being a wicked little boy. Stop this right now.”
That beloved Auntie Leen would speak to him in such a manner seemed to surprise Christian momentarily into cooperation. But only for a moment. He said, “Mummy!” and his eyes fi lled with tears.
Without the slightest qualm, Lady Helen seized the advantage. “Yes. Mummy. She’s trying to rest, but you’re not making it very easy for her, are you?” He fell silent and she turned to his sister. “Won’t you eat something, Perdita?”
The little girl kept her eyes on her doll which lay inertly across her lap, with cheeks shaped like marbles and a placid smile on her lips. The appropriate picture of infancy and childhood, Lady Helen thought. She said to Christian, “I’m going up to check on Mummy and the baby. Will you keep Perdita company for me?”
Christian eyed his sister’s plate. “She din’t eat,” he said.
“Perhaps you can persuade her to have a bit.”
She left them together and went to her sister. In the upper corridor, the house was quiet, and at the top of the stairs she took a moment to lean her forehead against the cold pane of a window. She thought of Lynley and his unexpected appearance in Cambridge. She had a fairly good idea of what his presence presaged.
It had been nearly ten months since he had made the wild drive to Skye in order to fi nd her, nearly ten months since the icy day in January when he had asked her to marry him, nearly ten months since she had refused. He had not asked her again, and in the intervening time they had somehow reached an unspoken agreement to try to retreat to the easy companionship which they once had shared. It was a retreat that brought little satisfaction to either of them, however, for in asking her to marry him, Lynley had crossed an undefined boundary, altering their relationship in ways neither of them could have possibly foreseen. Now they found themselves in an uncertain limbo in which they had to face the fact that while they could call themselves friends for the rest of their lives if they chose to do so, the reality was that friendship had ended between them the moment Lynley took the alchemical risk of changing it into love.