A Great Deliverance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,61

went on.

"But I really think, looking back on it, that it was sex, not conception, that frightened William. At any rate, I got him back to my bed eventually. And eight years after Gilly, Roberta was born."

"If you had what you wanted - a second baby to love - why did you leave?"

"Because it began again. All of it. She wasn't mine any more than Gillian had been. I loved my little girls, but I wasn't allowed near them, not the way I wanted to be. I had nothing."

Although her voice quavered on the last word, she drew herself in, cradling her body tighter, and found control. "All I had once again was Darcy. My books."

"So you left."

"I woke up one morning just a few weeks after Roberta was born and I knew that if I stayed I would shrivel to nothing. I was nearly twenty-five. I had two children I wasn't allowed to love and a husband who had begun to consult the Bible before dressing in the morning. I looked out the window, saw the trail leading to High Kel Moor, and knew I would leave that day."

"Didn't he try to stop you?"

"No. Of course I wanted him to. But he didn't. I walked out of the door and out of his life, carrying just one valise and thirty-four pounds. I came to York."

"He never came to see you? Never tried to follow you?"

She shook her head. "I never told him where I was. I just ceased to exist. But I'd ceased to exist so many years before for William that what did it matter."

"Why didn't you divorce him?"

"Because I never intended to marry again. I came to York longing for an education, not a husband. I planned to work for a while, to save money, to go to London or even emigrate to the States. But six weeks after I arrived in York, everything changed. I met Russell Mowrey."

"How did you meet?"

She smiled at the memory. "They'd fenced off part of the city when they began the Viking digs."

"Yes, I recall that."

"Russell was a graduate student from London. He was part of the excavation team. I'd stuck my head through a bit of a hole in the fence to have a look at the work. And there was Russell. His first words to me were, "Jesus, a Norse goddess!' and then he blushed to the roots of his hair. I think I fell in love with him then. He was twenty-six years old. He wore spectacles that kept slipping down his nose, absolutely filthy trousers, and a university jersey. When he walked over to speak to me, he slipped in the mud and fell directly onto his bottom."

"Not much of a Darcy," Lynley said kindly.

"No. So much more. We were married four weeks later."

"Why didn't you tell him about William?"

She knotted her brows, appeared to be searching for words that would enable them to understand. "Russell was an innocent. He had such...such an image of me. He saw me as a kind of Viking princess, a snow queen. How could I tell him I had two children and a husband that I'd left on a farm in the dales?"

"What would have changed if he'd known?"

"Nothing, I suppose. But at the time, I believed everything would have. I believed that he wouldn't want me if he knew, that he wouldn't be willing to wait for me through a divorce. I'd been looking for love, Inspector. And finally, here it was. Could I take a chance that it might escape me?"

"But you're only two hours from Keldale here. Were you never worried that William might one day show up in your life? Even as a chance encounter on the street?"

"William never left the dales. Not once in the years that I knew him. He had everything there: his children, his religion, his farm. Why on earth would he ever come to York? Besides, I thought at first that we'd go to London. Russell's family is there. I'd no idea that he'd want to settle here. But here we stayed. We had Rebecca five years later. Then William eighteen months after that."

"William? "

"You can imagine how I felt when Russell wanted to call him William. It's his father's name. What could I do but agree?"

"And you've been here, then, for nineteen years?"

"Yes," she replied. "First in a small flat in the city centre, then a row house near Bishopthorpe Road, and last year we bought this house. We'd...saved for so