A Suitable Vengeance by Elizabeth George Read Free Book Online

a thousand times for her to see.
    “Simon! No! I’m sorry!”
    She was reaching towards him and he noted with interest that she’d cut herself on the edge of one of the pieces of porcelain. A hairline of blood ran from palm to wrist.
    “I didn’t mean it. Simon, you know I didn’t mean it.”
    He marvelled at the fact that all previous passion was quite dead in him. Nothing mattered at all, save the need to escape.
    “I know that, Deborah.”
    He opened the door. It was a mercy to be gone.
     
     
     
    The blood felt like rising floodwaters within his skull, the usual precursor of an intolerable pain. Sitting in his old MG outside the Shrewsbury Court Apartments, St. James fought it, knowing that if he gave it even a moment’s sway, the agony would be so excruciating that finding his way back to Chelsea without assistance would be impossible.
    The situation was ludicrous. Would he actually have to telephone Cotter for assistance? And from what? From a fifteen-minute conversation with a girl just twenty-one years old? Surely he, eleven years her senior with a world of experience behind him, ought to have emerged the victor from their encounter, rather than what he was at the moment, shattered, weak-kneed, and ill. How rich.
    He closed his eyes against the sunlight, an incandescence that seared his nerves, one that he knew did not really exist but was only the product of his heat-oppressed brain. He laughed derisively at the tortured convolution of muscle, bone, and sinew that for eight years had been his bar of justice, prison, and final retribution for the crime of being young and being drunk on a winding road in Surrey long ago.
    The air he drew in was hot, fetid with the scent of diesel fuel. Still, he sucked it in deeply. To master pain in its infancy was everything, and he did not pause to consider that doing so would then give him leave to examine the charges which Deborah had hurled against him and, worse, to admit to the truth of every one.
    For three years, he had indeed not sent her a message, not a single letter, not a sign of any kind. And the damnable fact behind his behaviour was that he could not excuse it or explain it in a way she might ever come to understand. Even if she did, what point would it serve for her to know now that every day without her he had felt himself growing just a bit more towards nothing? For while he had allowed himself to die by inches and degrees, Lynley had taken up position within the sweet circumference of her life, and there he had moved in his usual fashion, gracious and calm, completely self-assured.
    At the thought of the other man, St. James made himself stir and felt for the car keys in his pocket, determined not to be found—looking like a puling schoolboy—in front of Deborah’s apartment building when Lynley arrived. He pulled away from the kerb and joined the rush-hour traffic that was hurtling down Sussex Gardens.
    As the light changed on the corner of Praed and London Streets, St. James braked the car and let his glance wander forlornly with a heaviness that matched the condition of his spirit. Without registering any of them, his eyes took in the multifarious business establishments that tumbled one upon the other down the Paddington street, like children eager to grab one’s attention on the pathway to the tube. A short distance away, beneath the blue and white underground sign, a woman stood. She was making a purchase of flowers from a vendor whose cart stood precariously, one wheel hanging over the kerb. She shook back her head of close-cropped black hair, scooped up a spray of summer flowers, and laughed at something the vendor said.
    Seeing her, St. James cursed his unforgivable stupidity. For here was Deborah’s afternoon guest. Not Lynley at all, but his very own sister.
     
     
     
    The knocking began at her door just moments after Simon left, but Deborah ignored it. Crouched near the window, she held the broken fragment of a fluted wing in her hand,