In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(164)

“Only because you were asleep,” Lynley said.

“That reply came too readily. I expect you've used it a bit more often than I'd like to know.” She padded across the room to him, looked over his shoulder, placing one slender cool hand on the back of his neck. “Ah. I see.”

“A little light reading with dinner, Helen. Nothing more than that.”

“Hmm. Yes. She's beautiful, isn't she?”

“She? Oh. Ophelia, you mean? I hadn't really noticed.” He flipped the programme closed and took his wife's hand, pressing her palm against his mouth.

“You make a poor liar.” Helen kissed his forehead, disengaged her hand from his, and went to the refrigerator, where she took out a bottle of Evian. She leaned against the work top as she drank, watching him fondly over the top of her glass. “You look ghastly,” she noted. “Have you eaten today? No. Don't answer. That's your first decent meal since breakfast, isn't it?”

“Am I meant to answer or not?” he asked reasonably.

“Never mind. I can read it all over your face. Why is it, darling, that you can forget to eat for sixteen hours while I can't manage to put food from my mind for ten simple minutes?”

“It's the contrast between pure and impure hearts.”

“Now, that's a new slant on gluttony.”

Lynley chuckled. He rose. He went to her and took her into his arms. She smelled of citrus and sleep, and her hair was as soft as a breeze when he bent his head to press his cheek against it. “I'm glad I woke you,” he murmured, and he settled into their embrace, finding within it enormous comfort.

“I wasn't asleep.”

“No?”

“No. Just making an attempt but not getting very far with it, I'm afraid.”

“That's not like you.”

“It isn't. I know.”

“Something's on your mind, then.” He released her and looked down at her, smoothing her hair away from her face. Her dark eyes met his and he made a study of them: what they revealed and what they tried to hide. “Tell me.”

She touched his lips with the tips of her fingers. “I do love you,” she said. “Much more than when I married you. More, even, than I loved you the first time you took me to bed.”

“I'm glad of it. But something tells me that's not what's on your mind.”

“No. That's not what's been on my mind. But it's late, Tommy. And you're far too exhausted for conversation. Let's go to bed.”

He wanted to do so. Nothing sounded better than sinking his head into a plump down pillow and seeking the soothing oblivion of sleep with his wife, warm and comforting, by his side. But something in Helen's expression told him that would not be the wisest course to take at the moment. There were times when women said one thing when they meant another, and this appeared to be one of those times. He said, half truth and half lie, “I am done in. But we've not talked properly today, and I won't be able to sleep till we do.”

“Really?”

“You know how I am.”

She searched his face and seemed satisfied with what she saw. She said, “It's really nothing much. Mental gymnastics, I suppose. I've been thinking all day about the lengths people go to when they want to avoid confronting something.”

A shudder passed through him.

“What?” she asked.

“Someone walking on my grave. What brought all this up?”

“The wallpaper.”

[page]“Wallpaper?”

“For the spare rooms. You remember. I narrowed the choices down to six—which seemed quite admirable, considering what a muddle I was in about having to choose in the first place—and I spent all afternoon pondering them. I pinned them to the walls. I set furniture in front of them. I hung pictures round them. And still, I couldn't make up my mind.”

“Because you were thinking of this other?” he asked. “About people not confronting what they need to confront?”

“No. That's just it. I was consumed with wallpaper. And making a decision about it—or, rather, finding myself incapable of making a decision—became a metaphor for living my life. Do you see?”

Lynley didn't. He was too wrung out to see anything at all. But he nodded, looked pensive, and hoped that would do.

“You would have chosen and had done with it. But I couldn't do that, no matter how hard I tried. Why? I finally asked myself. And the answer was so simple: because of who I am. Because of who I was moulded to be. From the day of my birth to the morning of my wedding.”

Lynley blinked. “Who you were moulded to be?”

“Your wife,” she said. “Or the wife of someone exactly like you. There were five of us and each of us—every one of us, Tommy—was assigned a role. One moment we were safe in our mother's womb and the next we were in our father's arms and he was looking down at us, saying, ‘Hmmm. Wife of a count, I think.’ Or ‘I dare say she'll do as the next Princess of Wales.’ And once we knew what role he'd assigned us, we played along. Oh, we didn't have to, of course. And God knows neither Penelope nor Iris danced to the music he'd written for them. But the other three—Cybele, Daphne, and I—why, the three of us were nothing more than warm clay in his hands. And once I realised that, Tommy, I had to take the next step. I had to ask why.”