A Great Deliverance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,119

be stuck in Keldale and we'd have to hire a car and drive wildly about the moors in best Earnshaw fashion, trying to find you. Well, it's all ended for the best, hasn't it, and I needn't have given in to my craving for week-old pain au chocolat in order to dull my anxiety. The food is absolutely appalling on the train, isn't it?" She tightened her arm round Gillian protectively. It was an instinctive gesture, for, although she knew the young woman had nothing to fear from Lynley, the last twelve hours had bonded Gillian to her and now she found herself reluctant to hand the young woman over. "Gillian, this is Inspector Lynley," she murmured.

A tentative smile touched Gillian's lips. Then she dropped her eyes. Lynley began to extend his hand to her, but Lady Helen shook her head in warning. At that, his glance slid to the young woman's hands. The angry red scoring that covered them was ugly but not as deep or serious as the abrasions that covered her neck, breasts, and thighs, hidden by the dress that Lady Helen had carefully selected for her to wear.

"I've the car just outside," he said.

"Thank God," Lady Helen declared. "Lead me to it this moment before my feet suffer irreparable damage from these ghastly shoes. They are fetching, aren't they? But the agony I endure hobbling about in them simply beggars belief. I keep asking myself why I'm such a slave to fashion." She airily dismissed the question as unanswerable. "I'm even willing to put up with five minutes of the most melancholy Tchaikovsky in your collection just to get off my feet."

He smiled. "I'll remember that, old duck."

"Darling, I haven't the slightest doubt of it." She turned to Sergeant Havers, who had plodded wordlessly behind them since they had disembarked. "Sergeant, I need to pop into the ladies' and undo the damage I did to my makeup by burying my face in that last pastry just before that dreadful tunnel. Will you take Gillian out to the car?"

Havers looked from Lady Helen to Lynley. "Of course," she replied impassively.

Lady Helen watched the pair walk off before she spoke again. "I'm really not sure which one of them is the worse for wear, Tommy."

"Thank you for last night," he said in answer. "Was it awful for you?"

She took her eyes off the departing women. "Awful?" The terrible desolation in Jonah Clarence's face; the sight of Gillian lying vacant-eyed, scarcely covered by a bloodied sheet, her wounds still seeping slow crimson where the self-inflicted damage was most severe; the blood on the floor and the walls of the bathroom and deep in the grout where it would never come clean; the smashed door and the brushes with bits of flesh still adhering to their horrifying metal bristles.

"I'm sorry for putting you through it," Lynley said. "But you were the only one I could trust to manage it. I don't know what I would have done had you not been at home when I phoned."

"I'd only just got in. I have to admit that Jeffrey wasn't at all pleased at the manner in which our evening ended."

Lynley's reaction played at the corners of his mouth and eyes, equal parts amusement and surprise. "Jeffrey Cusick? I thought you threw him over."

She laughed lightly and took his arm. "I tried, darling Tommy. I did try. But Jeffrey is quite determined to prove that, whether I realise it or not, he and I are on the path to true love. So he was working on advancing us a bit further towards the journey's end last night. It was romantic. Dinner in Windsor on the bank of the Thames. Champagne cocktails in the garden of the Old House. You would have been proud of me. I even remembered that Wren built it, so all these years of your seeing to my education haven't been in vain."

"But I hardly thought you'd be throwing it away on Jeffrey Cusick."

"Not throwing it away at all. He's a lovely man. Really. Besides, he was only too helpful in assisting me with my dressing."

"I've no doubt of that," Lynley remarked drily.

She laughed at his grim expression. "Not that way. Jeffrey would never take advantage.

He's far too...too..."

"Fish-like?"

"Spoken like the most petulant Oxonian, Tommy," she declared. "But to be dreadfully honest, he is the teeniest bit like a cod. Well, what can one expect? I've never in my life known a Cambridge man to get caught in the throes of