A Suitable Vengeance (Inspector Lynley, #4)(25)

The estate office had been placed with an eye to its purpose. Situated on the ground floor across from the smoking room and abutting the billiard room, its location made it accessible to members of the household as well as to tenants come to pay their rent.

In no way did the room suggest ostentation. Green-edged hemp matting, rather than carpet, did duty as surface upon the floor. Paint, not panelling or paper, covered the walls upon which hung old estate photographs and maps. From a plain ceiling, iron chains supported two white-shaded light fixtures. Beneath them, simple pine shelves held decades of record books, a few atlases, half a dozen journals. The filing cabinets in the corner were oak, battered from generations of use, as were the desk and the swivel chair behind it. In this chair at the moment, however, sat not John Penellin, who conducted much of his business from the estate office. Instead a thin figure occupied his accustomed place, huddling as if cold, her cheek resting upon her palm.

As Lynley reached the open door, he saw that it was Nancy Cambrey in her father’s chair. She was playing restlessly with a container of pencils, and although her presence instead of her father’s gave Lynley the excuse he needed to be on his way and to put off his meeting with Penellin indefinitely, he found that he hesitated at the sight of the man’s daughter.

Nancy was very much changed. Her hair, once a brown streaked with gold that shimmered in the light, had lost most of its shine and all of its beauty. It hung drearily round her face without style, grazing the tops of her shoulders. Her skin, once blushing and smooth with a cast of freckles making an endearing bandit’s mask across nose and on cheeks, had become quite pallid. It looked thicker somehow, the way skin in a portrait looks if an artist adds an unnecessary layer of varnish and in doing so destroys the effect of youth and beauty he was trying to create. Everything about Nancy Cambrey suggested just that sort of destruction. She looked faded, used up, overwashed, overworn.

This extended to her clothes. A shapeless housedress replaced the trendy skirts, jerseys, and boots she once had worn. But even the dress was several sizes too large and it hung upon her loosely, much like a smock but without a smock’s style. It was too old to be a piece of modern fashion, and together with Nancy’s appearance, the dress made Lynley hesitate, made him frown. Although he was seven years her senior, he’d known Nancy Cambrey all of her life, liked her as well. The change was troubling.

She’d been pregnant. He knew that. There had been a forced marriage with Mick Cambrey from Nanrunnel. But that was the end 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.