A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(167)

“I suppose we’ll do without the scarf for now,” and then the old floor creaked under him as he crossed to her and the old bed creaked as he joined her on it.

Afterwards—hours, it seemed, although it was probably twenty-five minutes—water ran for a while and a hair dryer blew. Ruth lay on her bed and listened to the sounds, so domestic and natural that she could almost pretend she’d been mistaken in what she’d seen.

But Guy did not allow that. He came to her once Cynthia had departed. It was dark by then, and Ruth hadn’t yet turned on a light. She would have preferred to remain in the darkness indefinitely, but he didn’t allow that. He made his way over to her bedside table and switched on the lamp. “I knew you wouldn’t be sleeping,” he said.

He looked at her long, murmured, “Ma soeur chérie,” and sounded so deeply troubled that at first Ruth thought he meant to apologise. She was wrong.

He went to the small overstuffed armchair and sank into it. He looked somehow transported, Ruth thought.

“She’s the one,” he said in a tone that a man might use to identify a sacred relic. “She’s come to me at last. Can you credit that, Ruth? After all these years? She’s definitely the one.” He rose as if the emotion within him couldn’t be contained. He began to move about the room. As he spoke, he touched the curtains at the window, the edge of Ruth’s earliest needlepoint, the corner of the chest of drawers, the lace that fretted the edge of a mat. “We mean to marry,” he said. “I’m not telling you that because you found us... like that today. I meant to tell you after her birthday. We both meant to tell you. Together.”

Her birthday. Ruth gazed at her brother. She felt caught in a world she didn’t recognise, one ruled by the maxim If it feels good, do it; explain yourself later but only if you’re caught.

Guy said, “She’ll be eighteen in three months. We thought a birthday dinner...You, her father, and her sisters. Perhaps Adrian will come over from England as well. We thought I’d put the ring in among her gifts and when she opens it...” He grinned. He looked, Ruth had to admit, rather like a boy. “What a surprise it’ll be. Can you keep mum till then?”

Ruth said, “This is—” but could go no further with words. She could only imagine and what she imagined was too terrible to face, so she turned her head away.

Guy said, “Ruth, you’ve nothing to fear from this. Your home is with me as it always has been. Cyn knows that and she wants it as well. She loves you like...” But he didn’t complete the thought. This allowed her to complete it. “A grandmother,” she said. “And what does that make you?”

“Age isn’t important in love.”

“My God. You’re fifty years—”

“I know how much older I am,” he snapped. He came back to the bed and stood looking down at her. His face was perplexed. “I thought you’d actually celebrate this. The two of us. Loving each other. Wanting a life together.”

“How long?” she asked.

“No one knows how long anyone’s going to live.”

“I meant how long. Today...This couldn’t have been...She was too familiar.”

Guy didn’t answer at first and Ruth’s palms dampened as she realised exactly what his reluctance implied. She said, “Tell me. If you don’t, she will.”

He said, “Her sixteenth birthday, Ruth.”

It was worse than she’d thought because she knew what it meant: that her brother had taken the girl on the very day it had become completely legal to do so. This would mean he’d had his eye on her for God only knew how long. He’d laid his plans, and he’d carefully orchestrated her seduction. My God, she thought, when Henry found out...when he worked it all out as she herself had just done...She said numbly, “But what about Ana?s?”

“What about Ana?s?”

“You said the same about her. Don’t you remember? You said, ‘She’s the one.’ And you believed it then. So what makes you think—”

“This is different.”

“Guy, it’s always different. In your mind, it’s different. But that’s only because it’s new.”

“You don’t understand. How could you? Our lives have taken such different paths.”

“I’ve seen you walk every step of yours,” Ruth said, “and this is—”

“Bigger,” he cut in. “Profound. Transforming. If I’m mad enough to walk away from her and from what we have, then I deserve to be alone forever.”

“But what about Henry?”

Guy looked away.

Ruth saw, then, that Guy knew very well that in order to get to Cynthia, he’d engaged in a calculated use of his friend Henry Moullin. She saw that Guy’s “Let’s get Henry to take a look at the problem” about this or that round the estate had been his way of gaining access to Henry’s daughter. And just as he would doubtless rationalise this machination with regard to Henry if she challenged him about it, so would he continue to rationalise what she knew was in effect yet another delusion about a woman who’d ostensibly won his heart. Oh, he believed that Cynthia Moullin was the one. But so had he believed about Margaret and then JoAnna and all the Margarets and JoAnnas since them, up to and including Ana?s Abbott. He was talking about marrying this latest Margaret-andJoAnna only because she was eighteen years old and she wanted him and he liked what this did for his old man’s ego. In time, though, his eye would stray. Or hers would. But in either case, people were going to be hurt. They were going to be devastated. Ruth had to do something to prevent all that.