A Suitable Vengeance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,31

of it, or so his mother's letter had informed him. And then a few months later, he received the birth announcement from Nancy herself. He responded with a duty gift and thought nothing more about her. Until now, when he wondered if having a baby could have brought about such a change. Another wish granted, he thought wryly, another distraction. He entered the office.

She was looking through a crack in the blinds that covered the bank of office windows.

As she did so, she chewed on the knuckles of her right hand, something she obviously did habitually for they were red and raw, too raw to have arrived at that condition through housework. Lynley said her name. She jumped to her feet, hands thrust behind her back.

"You've come to see Dad," she said. "I thought you might. After lunch. I thought - hoped

- to catch you ahead of him. My lord."

Lynley felt his customary rush of embarrassment at her final two words. It sometimes seemed that he had spent most of the last ten years of his life avoiding every situation in which he might have to hear someone say them.

"You've been waiting to see me? Not your father?"

"I have. Yes." She moved from behind the desk and went to a ladder-back chair that stood beneath a wall map of the estate. Here she sat, her hands curled into tight balls in her lap. At the end of the corridor, the outer door banged against the wall as someone shoved it open too recklessly. Footsteps sounded against the tiled floor. Nancy braced herself against the back of her chair, as if in the hope of hiding from whoever had come into the house. Instead of approaching the estate office, however, the footsteps turned left at the stillroom and faded on their way. Nancy exhaled in a nearly imperceptible sigh.

Lynley went to sit in her father's chair.

"It's good to see you. I'm glad you came by." She moved her large grey eyes to the windows, speaking to them rather than to him.

"I need to ask you something. It's difficult for me. How to begin."

"Have you been ill? You've got awfully thin, Nancy. The baby. Has it - " He was mortified to realise that he had no idea of the baby's sex.

"No. Molly's fine." Still, she would not look at him. "But I'm eaten by worry."

"What is it?"

"It's why I've come. But ..." Tears rose to her eyes without spilling over. Humiliation mottled her skin. "Dad mustn't know. He can't."

"Then it's between us, whatever we say." Lynley fished out his handkerchief and passed it across the desk. She pressed it between her hands but did not use it, controlling the tears instead.

"Are you at odds with your father?" "Not I. Mick. Things've never been right between them. Because of the baby. And me. And how we married. But it's worse now than before."

"Is there some way I can help? Because if you don't want me to intercede with your father, I'm not sure what else ..." He let his voice drift off, waiting for her to complete the sentence. He saw her draw her body in, as if she were garnering courage before a wild leap into the abyss.

"You can help. Yes. With money." She flinched involuntarily as she said the words but then went bravely on with the rest. "I'm still doing my bookkeeping in Penzance. And Nanrunnel. And I'm working nights at the Anchor and Rose.

But it's not been enough. The costs ..."

"What sort of costs?"

"The newspaper, you see. Mick's dad had heart surgery a year ago last winter - did you know? - and Mick's been running the paper for him ever since. But he wants to update.

He wants equipment. He couldn't see how he'd be spending the rest of his life in Nanrunnel on a weekly paper with broken-down presses and manual typewriters. He has plans. Good plans. But it's money. He spends it. There's never enough."

"I'd no idea Mick was running the Spokesman." "It's not what he wanted. He only meant to be here a few months last winter. Just till his dad got back on his feet. But his dad didn't recover as quick as they thought. And then I fell pregnant"

Lynley could see the picture well enough. What had probably begun as a diversion for Mick Cambrey - a way to make the time at his father's newspaper in Nanrunnel less boring and onerous - had evolved into a lifelong commitment to a wife and