A Great Deliverance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,24

as the villagers hoped.

'Twas deserted, and silent with a heavy fog. And throughout all the village, not a soul, not a stitch, not a living creature. And then" - Danny's swift glance made certain her audience was with her - "a baby began t' cry in the abbey where all the villagers were. Ah God!" She clutched her lovely bosom. "The terror! For they'd escaped Cromwell only t' be betrayed by a babe! The mother hushed the baby by offering her breast. But 'twas no good. The wee baby cried and cried.

They were desperate in terror that the dogs from the village would begin t' howl with the noise and Cromwell would find them. So they hushed the poor child. An' they smothered it!"

"Good heavens!" Deborah murmured. She edged closer to her husband's chair. "Just the sort of story one longs to hear on a wedding night, isn't it?"

"Ah, but you must know." Danny's expression was fervent. "For the sound of the babe is terrible luck 'less you know what t' do."

"Wear garlic?" St. James asked. "Sleep with a crucifix clutched in one's hand?"

Deborah punched him lightly on the knee. "I want to know. I insist upon knowing. Shall I have my life blighted because I've married a cynic? Tell me what to do, Danny, should I hear the baby."

Gravely, Danny nodded. "'Tis always a' night when the baby cries from the abbey grounds. You must sleep on your right side, your husband on his left. An' you must hold on t' one another close till the wailing stops."

"That's interesting," St. James acknowledged. "Sort of an animated amulet. May we hope that this baby cries often?"

"Not terrible often. But I..." She swallowed, and suddenly they saw that this was no amusing legend for lovestruck honeymooners, for to her the fear and the story were real. "But I heard i' myself some three years back! 'Tis not something I'll soon forget!" She got to her feet.

"You'll remember what t' do? You'll not forget?"

"We'll not forget," Deborah reassured the girl as she vanished from the room.

They were quiet at her departure. Deborah rested her head against St. James's knee. His long, thin fingers moved gently through her hair, smoothing the curly mass back from her face.

She looked up at him.

"I'm afraid, Simon. I didn't think I would be, not once this last year, but I am." She saw in his eyes that he understood. Of course he did. Had she ever truly doubted that he would?

"So am I," he replied. "Every moment today I felt just a little bit mad with terror. I never wanted to lose myself, not to you, not to anyone in fact. But there it is. It happened." He smiled.

"You invaded my heart with a little Cromwellian force of your own that I couldn't resist, Deborah, and I find now that rather than lose myself, the true terror is that I might somehow lose you." He touched the pendant he'd given her that morning, nestling in the hollow of her throat. It was a small gold swan, so long between them a symbol of commitment: choosing once, choosing for life. His eyes moved from it back to her own. "Don't be afraid," he whispered gently.

"Make love to me then."

"With great pleasure."

Jimmy Havers had little pig's eyes that darted round the room when he was nervous. He might feel as if he were putting on the bravura performance of a lifetime, lying his way grandly out of everything from an accusation of petty larceny to being caught in flagrante delicto, but the reality was that his eyes betrayed him every time, as they were doing now.

"Didn't know if you'd be home in time to get your mum the Greece stuff, so Jim went out himself, girl." It was his habit to speak of himself in the third person. It allowed him to evade responsibility for virtually any unpleasantness that cropped up in his life. Like this one now.

No, I didn't go to the turf accountant.

Didn't pick up snuff, either. If it was done at all, was Jimmy that done it, not me.

Barbara watched her father's eyes dance their way round the sitting room. God, what a grim little death pit it was: a ten-by-fifteenfoot room whose windows were permanently sealed shut by years of filth and grime, crammed with that wonderful three-piece suite so essential to delicate living, but this one a creation that had billed itself as "artificial horsehair" thirty-five years ago when even real horsehair was a