A Great Deliverance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,96
her dream, and a strand of hair was caught between her lips. He smiled at the sight.
A glance at his watch told him it was nearly seven. He bent and kissed her bare shoulder.
She awoke at once, coming fully awake in an instant, not the least bit confused about where she was. She raised her hand, touching his cheek, pulling him down to her.
He kissed her mouth, then her neck, and heard the delicate change in her breathing that signalled her pleasure when he reached her breast. His hand slid the length of her body. She sighed.
"Thomas." He lifted his head. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright. "I must go."
"Not just yet."
"Look at the time."
"In a moment." He bent to her, felt her hands in his hair.
"You...I...Oh Lord." She laughed as she realised how her body was betraying her.
He smiled. "Go if you must, then."
She sat up, kissed him a last time, and crossed to the bathroom. He lay there, filled with a contentment that he had thought was entirely lost to him, and listened to the familiar noises she made. He found himself wondering how he'd survived the last year of isolation. Then she was returning to him, smiling, running his hairbrush through her tangled hair. She reached for her grey dressing gown and began to put it on, lifting one arm gracefully as she did so.
And it was in that movement in the early morning light that he saw the unmistakable evidence on her body that she had borne a child.
Barbara finally got up when she heard Lynley's door open and close softly. She'd been lying on her side, her eyes fixed desperately upon a single spot on the wall, her teeth grinding together so fiercely that her entire jaw ached. She had willed conscious feeling into absolute death for the last seven hours, ever since the first moment when she'd heard them together in his room.
She walked now to the window on legs that felt numb. She stared stonily out into the Keldale morning. The village seemed lifeless, a place without colour or sound. How appropriate, she thought.
The real agony was the bed: the unmistakable, rhythmic creaking of his bed. It went on and on until she wanted to scream, to pound her fists against the wall to bring it to an end. But the silence that fell just as suddenly was worse. It beat against her eardrums in angry pulsations that she finally came to recognise as the pounding of her heart. And then the bed again, endlessly. And the woman's muffled cry.
She put a dry, hot hand onto the windowpane and felt with listless surprise the damp, cool glass. Her fingers slipped, left streaks. She examined them meticulously.
So much for his unrequited love for Deborah, Barbara thought acidly. Christ, I must have been absolutely out of my mind! When had he ever been more than what he'd been last night: a real stud, a bona fide bull, a hard, hot stallion of a man who had to prove his virility between the legs of every woman he met.
Well, you proved it last night, Inspector. Took her directly up to heaven three or four times, didn't you? You've got solid gold talent, all right.
She laughed soundlessly, mirthlessly. It was a pleasure, really, to discover that he was just what she'd always assumed him to be: an alley cat on the prowl for any female in heat, cleverly disguised under a refulgent veneer of upper-class breeding. But what a thin veneer it was after all! Scratch the surface of the man and the truth oozed out.
The bath began running noisily in the next room, a rushing of water that sounded to Barbara like a burst of applause. She stirred, turned from the window, and made her decision about how to face the day.
"We're going to have to take the house apart one room at a time," Lynley said.
They were in the study. Havers had gone to the bookshelves and was sullenly flipping through a dog-eared Bronte. He watched her. Other than monosyllabic, expressionless replies to every remark he'd made at breakfast, she had said nothing at all. The fragile thread of communication they had established between them seemed to be utterly broken. To make matters worse, she'd returned to her hideous light blue suit and ridiculous, coloured tights.
"Havers," he said sharply. "Are you listening to me?"
Her head turned with slow insolence. "To every word...Inspector."