For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley, #5)(3)
Elena pounded from Senate House Passage into King’s Parade. The pressure of her feet against the pavement sent an answering quiver up the muscles and bones of her legs and into her stomach. She pressed her palms against her hips, just where his had been last night. But unlike last night, her breathing was steady, not rapid and urgent and centred single-mindedly on that frantic rise to pleasure. Still, she could almost see his head thrown back. She could almost see him concentrating on the heat, the friction, and the slick profusion of her body’s desire. She could almost see his mouth form the words oh God oh God oh God oh God as his hips thrust up and his hands pulled her down harder and harder against him. And then her name on his lips and the wild beating of his heart against his chest. And his breathing, like a runner.
She liked to think of it. She’d even been dreaming of it when the light went on in her room this morning.
She powered along King’s Parade towards Trumpington, weaving in and out of the patchy light. Somewhere not far away, a breakfast was cooking, for the air held the faint scent of bacon and coffee. Her throat began to close uneasily in response, and she increased her speed to escape the odour, splashing through a puddle that sent icy water seeping through her left sock.
At Mill Lane, she made the turn towards the river. The blood was beginning to pound in her veins, and in spite of the cold, she had started to perspire. A line of sweat beneath her breasts was trickling towards her waist.
Perspiration’s the sign that your body is working, her father would tell her. Perspiration, naturally. He would never say sweat.
The air seemed fresher as she approached the river, dodging two dust carts that were manned by the first living creature she had seen out on the streets this morning, a workman wearing a lime green anorak. He heaved a haversack onto the pushbar of one of the carts and lifted a thermos as if to toast her as she passed.
At the end of the lane, she darted onto the pedestrian bridge that spanned the River Cam. The bricks beneath her feet were slick. She ran in place for a moment, fumbling with the wrist of her track jacket to get a look at her watch. When she realised she’d left it back in her room, she cursed softly and jogged back across the bridge to have a quick look down Laundress Lane.
Damn, damn, double damn. Where is she? Elena squinted through the fog. She blew out a quick gust of breath in irritation. This wasn’t the first time she’d had to wait, and if her father had his way, it wouldn’t be the last.
“I won’t have you running alone, Elena. Not at that hour of the morning. Not along the river. We won’t have any discussion about this. If you’d care to choose another route..”
But she knew it wouldn’t matter. Another route and he’d only come up with another objection. She should never have let him know that she was running in the first place. At the time, it had seemed an innocuous enough piece of information. I’ve joined Hare and Hounds, Daddy. But he managed to turn it into yet another display of his devotion to her. Just as he did when he got hold of her essays prior to supervisions. He’d read them, brow furrowed, his posture and expression both declaring: Look how concerned I am, see how much I love you, note how I treasure having you back in my life, I’ll never leave you again, my darling. And then he’d critique them, guiding her through introductions and conclusions and points to be clarified, bringing her stepmother in for further assistance, sitting back in his leather chair with his eyes shining earnestly. See what a happy family we are? It made her skin crawl.
Her breath steamed the air. She’d waited more than a minute. Still no one emerged from the grey soup of Laundress Lane.
Stuff it, she thought, and ran back to the bridge. On the Mill Pool beyond her, swans and ducks etched out their shapes in the gauzy air while on the southwest bank of the pool itself a willow wept branches into the water. Elena gave one final glance over her shoulder, but no one was running to meet her, so she herself ran on.
Descending the slope of the weir, she misjudged the angle and felt the slight pull of a muscle in her leg. She winced, but kept going. Her time was shot to hell—not that she knew what her time was in the first place—but she might be able to make up a few seconds once she reached the causeway. She picked up her pace.
The pavement narrowed to a strip of tarmac with the river on its left and the wide, mist-shrouded expanse of Sheep’s Green to its right. Here, the hulking silhouettes of trees rose out of the fog, and the handrails of footbridges made horizontal slashes of white where the occasional lights from across the river managed to cut through the gloom. As she ran, ducks plopped silently from the bank into the water, and Elena reached into her pocket for the last wedge of morning toast which she crumbled and tossed their way.
Her toes were driving steadily into the front of her running shoes. Her ears were starting to ache in the cold. She tightened the drawstring of her hood beneath her chin, and from her jacket pocket, she took a pair of mittens and pulled them on, blowing into her hands and pressing them against her chilled face.
Ahead, the river separated into two parts—main body and murky stream—as it flowed sluggishly round Robinson Crusoe’s Island, a small mass of land thickly overgrown on its south end with trees and brush and its north end given to the repair of the colleges’ sculls, canoes, row-boats, and punts. A bonfire had been lit in the area recently, for Elena could smell its remains in the air. Someone had probably camped illegally on the north section of the island during the night, leaving behind a residue of charred wood hastily extinguished by water. It smelled different from a fire that has died a natural death.