Ellis Peters - George Felse 06 - Black Is The Colour Of My True Love's Heart by Ellis Peters Read Free Book Online Page B

spite. It won’t come to anything.”
    The Arundales, dutifully circulating among their guests, were approaching this quiet corner by easy stages, the image of a successful, efficient, socially accomplished college head and his eminently suitable and satisfactory wife. “Now I ask you,” said Dominic, low-voiced, “how on earth could melodrama muscle in on any party of theirs? It would never get past the secretary’s office.”
     
    Half an hour later he was not quite so certain.
    The party broke up early. The warden had no way of ensuring that his houseful of young people would stay in their four-bedded rooms, even when he had got them there, but he could at least set a good example, and hope that they would take the hint and follow it. Felicity had already been detached unwillingly from Lucien Galt’s side and edged away to bed. A few of the older people had drifted off to their rooms, and more were on their way, pausing to nose along the library shelves for bedside books. The Arundales completed their tour of all the groups left in the drawing-room by half past ten, said a general good night, and strolled out along the gallery towards their own rooms. And so powerful was the compulsion of their authority that Lucien Galt, who happened to be with them at the time, fell in alongside and left with them, and half a dozen others wound up their conversations and followed.
    “Not that I shall get to bed for an hour or so yet,” observed Arundale with a rueful smile. “I’ve got to address the Vintners’ annual dinner to-morrow night, on adult education in general and Follymead in particular, and I haven’t got my ideas in order yet. We’re hoping to get an annual grant from them, of course! And on Sunday afternoon there’s a conference of clerical and lay educationalists, on the use of leisure – a big subject, and very much in the news just now. I’m afraid it must all sound rather boring to you,” he said, glancing across his wife’s fair head at Lucien Galt, with more of patronage than apology. “At your age the problem of leisure is largely a matter of getting enough of it – no difficulty in filling it.”
    “I don’t find it boring at all,” said Lucien politely. And indeed, the dark profile he turned to the view of Dominic and Tossa, strolling a yard or two behind, did not look bored; the tight lines of it had eased and warmed, his colour was high and his eyes soft and bright. A slightly hectic gaiety touched him, perhaps from the salutary effort of making conversation; perhaps from the secret activity of his mind. He looked at Audrey Arundale, walking between them, and from her to her husband, and said with warmth: “I think what you’re doing here is fine, and I’m glad to be associated with it.”
    Mrs. Arundale turned her head a little at that, and her dutiful, acquiescent smile, which seldom left her lips and never lost its faint overtone of anxiety, flushed into something proud and animated with pleasure.
    “I’d like to think it’s fine,” said Arundale, accepting the bouquet. “I know it isn’t enough. I can only hope it has some effect.”
    At this point Dominic’s thumbs pricked, surely quite unjustly, as he told himself. But who had ever heard Lucifer go out of his way to pay a compliment to anyone before? He sounded quite sincere, and probably he was, but even so it didn’t seem in character that he should say it. And the slight prick of wonder and curiosity suddenly reminded Dominic of that alleged mark on Lucien’s left wrist. That was why he happened to glance down at the right, or perhaps the wrong, moment, and see what Tossa failed to see.
    The three in front were walking close together, the flared skirt of the woman’s dress rustling softly against her escorts as they moved. Lucien’s left hand, carried loosely at his side, suddenly uncurled its long fingers, and delicately and deliberately touched Audrey’s hand between their bodies, and in instant response she opened