Lynley switched off the recorder at this. He looked up to find St. James watching him. In a play for time before the inevitable came into the open between them, Lynley gathered up the articles and placed them all into a plastic bag which St. James had produced from his valise. He folded it closed, took it to the chest of drawers.
“Why haven’t you questioned Davies-Jones?” St. James asked.
Lynley returned to the foot of the bed, to his suitcase which lay on a luggage stand there. Flipping this open, he pulled out his dinner clothes, giving himself time to consider his friend’s question.
It would be easy enough to say that the initial circumstances had not allowed him to question the Welshman, that there was a logic to the manner in which the case had developed so far and he had intuitively followed the logic to see where it would lead. There was truth in that explanation as well. But beyond that truth, Lynley recognised an additional, unpleasant reality. He was struggling with a need to avoid confrontation, a need with which he had not yet come to terms, so foreign was it to him.
In the next room, he could hear Helen, her movements light and brisk and effi cient. He had heard her thus a thousand and one times over the years, heard her without noticing. The sounds were amplified now, as if with the intention of imprinting themselves permanently onto his consciousness.
“I don’t want to hurt her,” he said at last.
St. James was attaching his leg brace to a black shoe, and he paused in the effort, shoe in one hand, brace in the other. His face, usually so noncommittal, reflected surprise. “You’ve certainly an odd way of showing it, Tommy.”
“You sound just like Havers. But what would you have me do? Helen’s determined to be absolutely blind to the obvious. Shall I point out the facts to her now, or hold my tongue and let her become even more involved with the man so that she’s thoroughly devastated when she discovers how he’s used her?”
“If he’s used her,” St. James said.
Lynley pulled on a clean shirt, buttoned it in a poorly hidden agitated fashion, and knotted his tie. “If? Just what do you conjecture his visit to her room last night was all about, St. James?”
His question was met with no reply. Lynley could feel his friend’s eyes on his face. His fi ngers fumbled with the mess he had made of his tie. “Oh, damn and blast!” he muttered savagely.
AT THE KNOCK, Lady Helen opened her door, expecting to find Sergeant Havers or Lynley or St. James in the corridor, ready to escort her to dinner as if she were either the prime suspect or a key witness in need of police protection. Instead, it was Rhys. He said nothing, his expression hesitant, as if he was wondering what his reception might be. But when Lady Helen smiled, he entered the room and pushed the door shut behind him.
They looked at each other like guilty lovers, hungry for a surreptitious meeting. The need for quiet, for stealth, for a declaration of unity heightened sensitivity, heightened desire, heightened and strengthened the newly forged bond between them. When he held out his arms, Lady Helen more than willingly sought their refuge.
With a wordless longing, he kissed her forehead, her eyelids, her cheeks, and at last her mouth. Her lips parted in response and her arms tightened round him, holding him closer to her as if his presence might obliterate the worst of the day. She felt the length of his body create its sweet agony of pressure against her own, and she began to tremble, shot through with a dizzying, unexpected bolt of desire. It came upon her from nowhere, running through her blood like a liquid fi re. She buried her face against his shoulder, and his hands moved upon her with possessive knowledge.
“Love, love,” Rhys whispered. He said nothing more, for at his words, she turned her head and sought his mouth again. After some moments, he murmured, “Aw bey browden on ye, lassie,” and then added with a torn chuckle, “But I suppose you’ve noticed that.”
Lady Helen lifted her hand to smooth his hair back from his temples where it was peppered with grey. She smiled, feeling somehow comforted and not entirely certain why this should be so. “Where on earth did a black-hearted Welshman ever learn to speak Scots?”
At that, his mouth twisted, his arms stiffened momentarily, and Lady Helen knew before he answered that she had innocently asked the wrong question. “In hospital,” he said.
“Oh Lord. I’m so sorry. I didn’t think-”
Rhys shook his head, pulled her closer to him, resting his cheek against her hair. “I’ve not told you about any of it, have I, Helen? I think it’s something I didn’t want you to know.”
“Then don’t-”
“No. The hospital was just outside of Portree. On Skye. In the dead of winter. Grey sea, grey sky, grey land. Boats leaving for the mainland with me wishing to be on any one of them. I used to think that Skye would drive me to drink on a permanent basis. That kind of place tests one’s mettle as nothing else ever does. To survive, it all came down to clandestine pulls at a whisky bottle or profi ciency in Scots. I chose Scots. That, at least, was guaranteed by my roommate, who refused to speak anything else.” His fingers touched her hair, a mere ghost of a caress. It seemed tentative, unsure. “Helen. For God’s sake. Please. I don’t want your pity.”
It was his way, she thought. It was always his way. He would cut through like that, moving past the potential of any meaningless expression of compassion that stood between him and the rest of the world. For pity kept him at a disadvantage, prisoner of an illness that could not be cured. She took his pain as her own.
“How could you ever believe I feel pity? Is that what you think was between us last night?”
She heard his ragged sigh. “I’m forty-two years old. Do you know that, Helen? Is that fifteen years your senior? Good God, is it more?”
“Twelve years.”
“I was married once, when I was twenty-two. Toria was nineteen. Both of us fresh from the regionals and thinking we’d become the next West End wonders.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“She left me. I’d been doing a winter’s season round Norfolk and Suffolk -two months here, a month there. Living in grimy bed-sits and foul-smelling hotels. Thinking none of it was really half bad since it put food on the table and kept the children in clothes. But when I got back to London, she was gone, home to Australia. Mum and Dad and security. More than mere bread on the table. Shoes on her feet.” His eyes were bleak.
“How long had you been married?”
“Only five years. But quite long enough, I’m afraid, for Toria to come to terms with the worst about me.”
“Don’t say-”
“Yes. I’ve only seen my children once in the past fifteen years. They’re teenagers now, a boy and a girl who don’t even know me. And the worst of it is that it’s my own fault. Toria didn’t leave because I was a failure in the theatre, although God knows my chances of success were fairly dim. She left because I was a drunkard. I still am. A drunkard, Helen. You must never forget that. I mustn’t let you forget it.”
She repeated what he had said himself one night as they walked together against the wind along the edge of Hyde Park: “Well, it’s only a word, isn’t it? It only has the power we’re willing to give it.”