A Suitable Vengeance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,34

Chel sea/' St. James looked at her curiously. "That was a long time ago." "You didn't have to do it. I didn't know that then.

It all seemed so reasonable to my seven-year-old mind. But you didn't have to do it. I don't know why I never realised till today." He brushed a tangle of Dutch clover from his trouser leg. "There's no real easing a loss like that, is there? I did what I could. Your father needed a place to forget. Or if not to forget, at least to go on."

"But you didn't have to do it. We could have gone to one of your brothers. They were both in Southampton. They were so much older. It would have been reasonable. You were . . . were you really only eighteen? What on earth were you thinking about, saddling yourself with a household when you were just eighteen? Why did you do it? Why on earth did your parents agree to let you do it?" She felt each question increase in intensity.

"It was right." "Why?" "Your father needed something to take the place of the loss. He needed to heal. Your mother had only been dead two months. He was devastated. We were afraid for him, Deborah. None of us had ever seen him like that. If he did something to harm himself . . . You'd already lost your mother. We none of us wanted you to lose your father as well. Of course, you'd have had us to take care of you. There's no question of that. But it's not the same as a real parent, is it?" "But your brothers. Southampton."

"If he'd gone to Southampton, he'd just have been a spare wheel in an established household, at loose ends and feeling everyone's pity. But in Chelsea, the old house gave him something to do." St. James shot her a smile. "You've forgotten what a condition the house was in, haven't you? It took all his energy - mine as well - to make the place habitable. He didn't have time to keep agonising over your mother the way he had been.

He had to start letting the worst part of the sorrow go. He had to get on with his life. With yours and mine as well." Deborah played with the shoulder strap of her camera. It was stiff and new, not like the comfortably frayed strap on the old, dented Nikon she had used for so many years before she had gone to America.

"That's why you came this weekend, isn't it?" she said. "For Dad." St. James didn't reply.

A gull swept across the park, so close to them that Deborah could feel the wild rush of its wings beat the air. She went on. "I saw that this morning. How thoughtful you are, Simon. I've been wanting to tell you that ever since we arrived." St. James thrust his hands into his trouser pockets, a gesture that momentarily emphasised the distortion which his brace brought to his left leg. "It has nothing to do with thoughtfulness, Deborah."

"Why not?"

"It just doesn't."

They walked on, passing through the heavy birch gate, and entering the woodland of a combe that fell down to the sea. Sidney shouted unintelligibly up ahead, her words bubbling with laughter.

Deborah spoke again. "You've always hated the thought that someone might see you as a fine man, haven't you? As if sensitivity were a sort of leprosy. If it isn't thoughtfulness that brought you with Dad, what is it, then?"

"Loyalty."

She gaped at him. "To a servant?"

His eyes became dark. How funny that she had completely forgotten the sudden changes their colour could take on when an emotion struck him. "To a cripple?" he replied.

His words defeated her, bringing them full circle to a beginning and an end that would never alter.

From her perch on a rock above the river, Lady Helen saw St. James coming slowly through the trees. She'd been watching for him since Deborah had come hurrying down the path a few minutes before. As he walked, he flung to one side a heavy-leafed stalk that he'd broken from one of the tropical plants that grew in profusion in the woodland.

Below her, Sidney gambolled in the water, her shoes hanging from one hand and the hem of her dress dangling, disregarded, in the river. Nearby with her camera poised, Deborah examined the disused mill wheel that stood motionless beneath a growth of ivy and lilies.

She clambered among the rocks on the river bank, camera