c 2

She was about to retreat cravenly back to her car to retrieve an old mackintosh that would at least cover up her clothes—too tight in the hips and straining the material at shoulder and neck—when the sounds of footsteps and laughter close by directed her attention to the stairway in the hall. A woman was descending, calling over her shoulder to someone who remained on the fl oor above.

"Just the two of us are going. You must come as well and we'll make a party of it, Sid." She turned, saw Barbara, and stopped where she was, one hand on the banister. It was very nearly a pose, for she was the kind of woman who could manage to make yards of haphazardly arranged teal-coloured silk look like the very latest word in haute couture. She was not particularly tall, but very slender, with a fall of chestnut hair framing a perfect, oval face. From the dozens of times she had been to fetch Lynley from the Yard, Barbara recognised her at once. She was Lynley's longest-running mistress and St. James's lab assistant, Lady Helen Clyde. Lady Helen completed her descent and crossed the hall to the door. So confident, Barbara noted, so completely self-possessed.

"I've the most dreadful feeling that you've come for Tommy," she said immediately, extending her hand. "Hello. I'm Helen Clyde."

Barbara introduced herself, surprised at the firmness of the woman's grip. Her hands were thin, very cool to the touch. "He's wanted at the Yard."

"Poor man. How miserable. How damnably unfair." Lady Helen spoke more to herself than to the other woman, for she suddenly shot Barbara an apologetic smile. "But it's not your fault, is it? Come, he's just this way."

Without waiting for a reply, she moved down the hallway to the garden door, giving Barbara no choice but to follow. However, at her first glimpse of the cluster of linen-covered tables at which fashionably clad guests chatted and laughed, Barbara stepped quickly back into the dimly lit hall. Her fi ngers wandered up to her neck.

Lady Helen paused, her dark eyes refl ective. "Shall I search Tommy out for you?" she offered with another quick smile. "It's a crush out there, isn't it?"

"Thank you," Barbara replied stiffl y and watched her walk across the lawn to a group standing in merry conversation round a tall man who managed to look as if somehow he'd been born wearing morning clothes.

Lady Helen touched his arm and said a few words. The man looked towards the house, revealing a face that bore the unmistakable stamp of aristocracy. It was a Greek sculpture sort of face, unaccountably timeless. He brushed his blond hair back from his forehead, placed his champagne glass on a table nearby, and, after exchanging a quip with one of his friends, came towards the house with Lady Helen at his side.

From the safety of the shadows, Barbara watched Lynley's approach. His movements were graceful, fluid, like a cat's. He was the handsomest man she had ever seen. She loathed him.

"Sergeant Havers." He nodded when they joined her. "I'm not on call this weekend." Barbara read the implication clearly: You're interrupting me, Havers.

"Webberly sent me, sir. Ring him if you like." She didn't look at him directly as she replied but rather focussed her eyes somewhere just over his left shoulder.

"But surely he knows that today's the wedding, Tommy," Lady Helen protested mildly.

Lynley let out his breath in a puff of anger. "Damn and blast, of course he knows." He glanced out at the lawn, then sharply back to Barbara. "Is this Ripper business? I'd been told that John Stewart would join MacPherson."

"It's business in the North as far as I know. Some girl's involved." Barbara thought he'd appreciate that piece of information. Some spice to the case, just the way he liked it: a tart for dessert. She waited for him to demand the particulars that, no doubt, were fi rst and foremost on his mind: age, marital status, and measurements of the damsel whose distress he was only too willing to alleviate.

His eyes narrowed. "In the North?"

Lady Helen laughed regretfully. "Well, there go our plans to go dancing tonight, Tommy darling, and I was just persuading Sidney to come as well."

"I suppose it can't be helped," Lynley replied. But he moved abruptly from the shadows into the light, and both the tightness of the movement and the play of a repressed reaction on his face told Barbara how irritated he really was.

Lady Helen evidently saw this as well, for she spoke again cheerfully. "Of course, Sid and I could easily go dancing alone. With androgyny the rage, no doubt one of us might be taken for a man no matter how we dress. Or there's Jeffrey Cusick. We could telephone him." It was somehow a personal joke between them and it had its desired effect, for Lynley relaxed into a smile. He followed it with a dry chuckle.

"Cusick? My God, these are desperate times."

"Oh, you may laugh," Lady Helen replied and did so herself, "but he took us to Royal Ascot when you were far too busily engaged in some bloodthirsty murder watch at St. Pancras Station. Cambridge men, you see, have all sorts of fi ne qualities."

Lynley laughed outright. "Among which is the tendency to look like a penguin when formally dressed."

"You dreadful creature!" Lady Helen gave her attention to Barbara. "May I at least offer you some lovely crab salad before you drag Tommy back to the Yard? Years ago, I was served the most terrifying egg sandwich there. If the food's not improved, this may be your last chance to eat well today."

Barbara glanced at her watch. She sensed an undercurrent of urgency in Lynley and knew quite well that he wanted her to accept the invitation so that he'd have a few more minutes with his friends before being called back to duty. She wasn't about to accommodate him. "There's a meeting in twenty minutes, I'm afraid."

Lady Helen sighed. "Well, that's hardly enough time to do it the justice it deserves. Shall I wait for you, Tommy, or shall I phone Jeffrey?"

"Don't do that," Lynley responded. "Your father would never forgive you for putting your future into the hands of Cambridge."

She smiled. "Very well. If you're off, then, let me fetch the bride and groom to bid you farewell."

His face altered swiftly. "No. Helen, I…just make my excuses."

A look passed between them, something said without being said. "You must see them, Tommy," Lady Helen murmured. There was another pause, a compromise being sought.

"I'll tell them you're waiting in the study." She left quickly, giving Lynley no chance to respond.

He uttered something inaudible under his breath, following Lady Helen with his eyes as she wove back through the crowd. "Have you brought a car?" he asked Barbara suddenly and started down the hall, away from the celebration.

Nonplussed, she followed. "A Mini. You're not exactly dressed for its splendour."

"I'll adjust, I'm sure. Chameleon-like. What colour is it?"

She was puzzled by the query, an ill-concealed attempt to make conversation as they walked to the front of the house. "Mostly rust, I'm afraid."

"My favourite." He held open a door and motioned her into a dark room.

"I'll just wait in the car, sir. I've left it—"

"Stay here, Sergeant." It was a command.

Reluctantly, she preceded him. The curtains had been drawn; the only light came from the door which they had opened. But Barbara could see it was a man's room, richly panelled in dark oak and filled with shelves of books, well-used furniture, and an atmosphere redolent of comfortable old leather and the fragrance of scotch.

Lynley gravitated absently to a wall that was covered with framed photographs and stood there quietly, his eyes on a portrait that was central to the display. It had been taken in a cemetery, and the man who was its subject bent to touch the inscription on a tombstone whose carving had long since been obliterated by time. The skilful composition of the piece directed the viewer's eyes not to the awkward leg brace that distorted the man's posture but to the piercing interest that lit his gaunt face. Studying the picture, Lynley seemed to have forgotten her presence.

The moment, Barbara decided, was probably as good as any to give him the news.

"I'm off the street," she announced bluntly. "That's why I've come, if you're wondering."

He turned slowly towards her. "Back in CID?" he asked. "Good for you, Barbara."

"But not for you."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, someone's got to tell you, since Webberly obviously hasn't. Congratulations: you're stuck with me." She waited to see his look of surprise. When it was evident that none was forthcoming, she pushed on. "Of course, it's damned awkward having me assigned to you—don't think I don't know it. I can't fi gure out what Webberly wants." She was stumbling on, barely hearing her own words, uncertain whether she was trying to forestall or provoke his inevitable reaction: the sharp explosion of anger, the movement to the telephone to demand an explanation, or, worse, the icy politeness that would last until he got the superintendent behind closed doors. "All that I can think is that there's no one else available or that I've got some sort of wonderful latent talent that only Webberly knows of. Or maybe it's a bit of a practical joke." She laughed, a little too loudly.

"Or perhaps you're the best for the job," Lynley finished. "What do you know about the case?"

"I…nothing. Only that—"

"Tommy?" They swung around at the sound of the voice, the single word spoken as if on a breath. The bride stood in the doorway, a spray of flowers in one hand and others tucked into the tumble of coppery hair that fell round her shoulders and down her back. Backlit from the hallway, she looked in her ivory dress as if she were surrounded entirely by a cloud, a Titian creation come to life. "Helen tells me you're leaving…?"

Lynley appeared to have nothing to say. He felt in his pockets, brought out a gold cigarette case, opened it, and then snapped it shut with a flash of annoyance. During this operation the bride watched him, the flowers in her hand trembling momentarily.

"It's the Yard, Deb," Lynley finally answered. "I have to go."

She watched him without speaking, fi ngering a pendant she wore at her throat. Not until he met her eyes did she reply. "What a disappointment for everyone. It's not an emergency, I hope. Simon told me last night that you might be reassigned to the Ripper case."

"No. Just a meeting."

"Ah." She looked as if she might say something more—indeed, she began to do so—but instead she turned to Barbara with a friendly smile. "I'm Deborah St. James."

Lynley rubbed his forehead. "Lord, I am sorry." Mechanically, he completed the introduction. "Where's Simon?"

"He was right behind me, but I think Dad caught him. He's absolutely terrified to let us off on our own, certain I'll never take care of Simon well enough." Her laughter bubbled up. "Perhaps I should have considered the problems of marrying a man my father is so inordinately fond of. "‘The electrodes,' he keeps lecturing me. ‘You mustn't forget to see to his leg every morning.' I think he's told me that ten times today."

"I imagine it was all you could do to keep him from going on the honeymoon as well."

"Well, of course, they've not been apart for more than a day since…" She stopped suddenly, awkwardly. Their eyes met. She bit the inside of her lip and an ugly fl ush stained her cheeks.

There was an immediate, anxious silence between them, the kind in which the most telling sort of communication exists in body language and tension in the air. It was fi nally—mercifully, Barbara decided—broken by the sound of slow, painfully uneven footsteps in the hall, awkward harbinger of Deborah's husband.

"I see that you've come to capture Tommy." St. James paused in the doorway but continued to speak quietly, as was his habit, to direct attention away from his disability and put others at ease in his presence. "That's a strange twist on tradition, Barbara. Time was when the brides were kidnapped, not the best man."

He was, Barbara decided, very much Hephaestus to Lynley's Apollo. Aside from his eyes, the satin blue of a highland sky, and his hands, the sensitive tools of an artist, Simon Allcourt-St. James was singularly unattractive. His hair was dark, unruly with curls, and haphazardly cut in a way that did nothing to make it manageable. His face was a combination of aquilinity and angles, harsh in repose, forbidding in anger, yet vibrant with good nature when softened by his smile. He was sapling thin, but not sapling sturdy, a man who had known too much pain and sorrow at far too young an age.

Barbara smiled as he joined them, her fi rst genuine smile of the entire afternoon. "But even best men are generally not kidnapped to New Scotland Yard. How are you, Simon?"

"Fine. Or so my father-in-law continues to tell me. Lucky as well. It seems he saw it all from the beginning. He knew it directly the day of her birth. You've been introduced to Deborah?"

"Only just now."

"And we can keep you no longer?"

"Webberly's called a meeting," Lynley put in. "You know how that is."

"How I do. Then we won't ask you to stay. We're off ourselves in a very little while. Helen has the address if anything should come up."

"Don't give a thought to that." Lynley paused as if he were not quite sure what to do next. "My warmest congratulations, St. James," he settled on saying.

"Thank you," the other man replied. He nodded to Barbara, touched his bride's shoulder lightly, and left the room.

How odd, Barbara thought. They didn't even shake hands.

"Will you go to the Yard dressed like that?" Deborah asked Lynley.

He looked at his clothes ruefully. "Anything to keep up my reputation as a rake." They laughed together. It was a warm communication that died as suddenly as it had risen. From it grew yet another little silence.

"Well," Lynley began.

"I'd a speech all planned," Deborah said quickly, looking down at her fl owers. They trembled once again in her hand and a shower of baby's breath fell to the floor. She raised her head. "Something…it was just the kind of thing Helen might say. Talk about my childhood, Dad, this house. You know the sort of thing. Witty and clever. But I'm absolutely pathetic at that sort of thing. Quite out of my depth. A hopeless incompetent." She looked down again to see that a very small dachshund had come into the study and carried in its jaws a woman's sequined handbag. The dog placed the bag at Deborah's satin-shod feet, supremely confident that the offering had merit. A tail wagged in the friendliest fashion. "Oh, no! Peach!" Laughing, Deborah bent to retrieve the purloined article, but when she straightened, her green eyes glittered with tears. "Thank you, Tommy. For everything. Really. For it all."

"The best, Deb," he said lightly in reply. He went to her, hugged her quickly to him, and brushed a kiss against her hair.

And it came to Barbara, as she stood there watching, that for some reason St. James had left the two of them together precisely so that Lynley could do just that.