A Great Deliverance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,11

St. James."

Lynley rubbed his forehead. "Lord, I am sorry." Mechanically, he completed the introduction. "Where's Simon?"

"He was right behind me, but I think Dad caught him. He's absolutely terrified to let us off on our own, certain I'll never take care of Simon well enough." Her laughter bubbled up.

"Perhaps I should have considered the problems of marrying a man my father is so inordinately fond of. "The electrodes,' he keeps lecturing me. "You mustn't forget to see to his leg every morning.' I think he's told me that ten times today."

"I imagine it was all you could do to keep him from going on the honeymoon as well."

"Well, of course, they've not been apart for more than a day since..." She stopped suddenly, awkwardly. Their eyes met. She bit the inside of her lip and an ugly flush stained her cheeks.

There was an immediate, anxious silence between them, the kind in which the most telling sort of communication exists in body language and tension in the air. It was finally - mercifully, Barbara decided - broken by the sound of slow, painfully uneven footsteps in the hall, awkward harbinger of Deborah's husband.

"I see that you've come to capture Tommy." St. James paused in the doorway but continued to speak quietly, as was his habit, to direct attention away from his disability and put others at ease in his presence. "That's a strange twist on tradition, Barbara. Time was when the brides were kidnapped, not the best man."

He was, Barbara decided, very much Hephaestus to Lynley's Apollo. Aside from his eyes, the satin blue of a highland sky, and his hands, the sensitive tools of an artist, Simon Allcourt-St. James was singularly unattractive. His hair was dark, unruly with curls, and haphazardly cut in a way that did nothing to make it manageable. His face was a combination of aquilinity and angles, harsh in repose, forbidding in anger, yet vibrant with good nature when softened by his smile. He was sapling thin, but not sapling sturdy, a man who had known too much pain and sorrow at far too young an age.

Barbara smiled as he joined them, her first genuine smile of the entire afternoon. "But even best men are generally not kidnapped to New Scotland Yard. How are you, Simon?"

"Fine. Or so my father-in-law continues to tell me. Lucky as well. It seems he saw it all from the beginning. He knew it directly the day of her birth. You've been introduced to Deborah?"

"Only just now."

"And we can keep you no longer?"

"Webberly's called a meeting," Lynley put in. "You know how that is."

"How I do. Then we won't ask you to stay. We're off ourselves in a very little while.

Helen has the address if anything should come up."

"Don't give a thought to that." Lynley paused as if he were not quite sure what to do next. "My warmest congratulations, St. James," he settled on saying.

"Thank you," the other man replied. He nodded to Barbara, touched his bride's shoulder lightly, and left the room.

How odd, Barbara thought. They didn't even shake hands.

"Will you go to the Yard dressed like that?" Deborah asked Lynley.

He looked at his clothes ruefully. "Anything to keep up my reputation as a rake." They laughed together. It was a warm communication that died as suddenly as it had risen. From it grew yet another little silence.

"Well," Lynley began.

"I'd a speech all planned," Deborah said quickly, looking down at her flowers. They trembled once again in her hand and a shower of baby's breath fell to the floor. She raised her head. "Something...it was just the kind of thing Helen might say. Talk about my childhood, Dad, this house. You know the sort of thing. Witty and clever. But I'm absolutely pathetic at that sort of thing. Quite out of my depth. A hopeless incompetent." She looked down again to see that a very small dachshund had come into the study and carried in its jaws a woman's sequined handbag. The dog placed the bag at Deborah's satin-shod feet, supremely confident that the offering had merit. A tail wagged in the friendliest fashion. "Oh, no!

Peach! " Laughing, Deborah bent to retrieve the purloined article, but when she straightened, her green eyes glittered with tears. "Thank you, Tommy. For everything. Really. For it all."

"The best, Deb," he said lightly in reply. He went to her, hugged her quickly to him, and brushed a kiss against her hair.

And it came to Barbara, as she stood there watching, that for some