In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(136)

They were right for each other, she and her cousin. No matter that the blood relationship was a close one, cousins had formed alliances before and in the process had enriched the family from which they both sprang.

Formed an alliance. What a way to label it, Samantha thought wryly. And yet hadn't things been so much more sensible during that period when marriages came about for just that reason? There was no talk of true love in the days of political and financial matchmaking, no aching, longing, and pining until one's true love happened to come along. What there was, instead, was a steadiness and devotion that grew from an understanding of what was expected of one. No illusions, no fantasy. Just an agreement to bind one's life to another in a situation in which both parties had much to gain: money, position, property, authority, protection, and authentication. Perhaps that last, most of all. One wasn't complete until one married; one wasn't married until the match was consolidated through coition and legitimised through reproduction. Simple, it was. There were no expectations of romance, passion, and exquisite surrender. There was just the steady lifelong assurance that one's mate was actually that which the agreeing parties had earlier defined him to be.

Sensible, Samantha decided. And in a world in which men and women were partnered to each other in that fashion, she knew that agents of herself and Julian would long ago have reached an understanding.

But they didn't live in that world. And the world they did live in was one suggesting that a permanent soul mate was one little strip of celluloid away: boy meets girl, they fall in love, they have their troubles which are resolved by Act III, fade to black, and the credits roll. That world was maddening because Samantha knew if her cousin adhered to a belief in that sort of love, she was doomed to failure. I'm here, she found herself wanting to shout, hose pipe in hand. I have what you need. Look at me. Look at me.

As if he'd heard her silent cry, Julian glanced up at just that moment and caught her watching him. He leaned forward and swung the casement window fully open. Samantha crossed the courtyard to join him.

“You're looking grim. I couldn't help noticing. You caught me trying to design a cure for what ails you.”

“D'you think I have a future in counterfeiting?” he asked. The sun was shining directly on his face and he squinted into it. “That may be the only answer.”

“Do you think so?” she asked lightly. “No rich young thing waiting for seduction on your horizon?”

“It doesn't look like it.” He saw her observing the mass of documents and account books that were spread on his desk, certainly a far greater number than he usually went through when doing his sums for the coming week. “Trying to see where we stand,” he explained. “I was hoping to wring about ten thousand pounds out of … well, out of nothing, I'm afraid.”

“Why?” She noted the downhearted cast of his face and hastened to add, “Julie, is there an emergency of some sort? Is something wrong?”

“That's just the hell of it. Something's right. Or something could be made right. But there's not enough liquid cash to do much more than see us through to the end of the month.”

“I hope you know that you can always ask me—” She hesitated, not wanting to offend him, knowing that he was as proud a man as he was responsible. She put it another way. “We're family, Julie. If something's come up and you'd like some money … it wouldn't even be a loan. You're my cousin. You can have it.”

He looked horrified. “I didn't mean you to think—”

“Stop it. I'm not thinking anything.”

“Good. Because I couldn't. Not ever.”

“Fine. We won't discuss it. But please tell me what's happened. You look really cut up.”

He blew out a breath. He said, “Oh bugger it,” and in a quick movement he climbed onto the desk and out of the window to join her in the courtyard. “What're you up to? Ah. Windows. I see. Have you any idea how long it's been since they've had a wash, Sam?”

“When Edward chucked it all in for Wallis? Fool that he was.”

“That's a fair bet.”

“Which part of it? The guess itself? Or chucking it all in for her?”

He smiled resignedly. “I'm not sure at this point.”

Samantha didn't say what came first to her mind: that he wouldn't have answered in such a way a week ago. She merely gave a few moments’ consideration to what such an answer implied.

Companionably, they went at the windows. The old glazing was set into lead in far too fragile a fashion to blast away at it with the hose pipe, so they were reduced to a painstaking process of soaking away the grime with rags, one single pane at a time.

“This'll take till our dotage,” Julian noted grimly after ten minutes of silent cleaning.

“I dare say,” Samantha replied. She wanted to ask him if he was prepared for her to stay round that long, but she let the thought go. Something serious was on his mind, and she had to get to it, if only to prove to him her abiding concern for all aspects of his life. She sought a way in, saying quietly, “Julie, I'm sorry about your worries. On top of everything else. I can't do anything about … well …” She found that she couldn't even say Nicola Maiden's name. Not here and now. Not to Julian. “About what's happened in the last few days” was what she settled on. “But if there's ever anything else that I can do …”