submerge himself in Vicky, to submerge himself and simultaneously to obliterate everything else as he had never wanted anything else before.
‘Darcy? Darcy?’
He made himself look up into her face. There was no hostility in it, only the aftermath of surprise and – was this possible? – the faintest kindling of a response to him.
They held still for a moment, staring at each other.
Darcy had come straight from Jimmy Rose to look for Vicky. He had come in concern and sympathy, which was commendable enough, but he knew that there had also been a baser intention to measure and then, perhaps, to make use of her vulnerability. He had always found Vicky attractive, and in the last months of her pregnancy and since the birth he had found her even more interesting. The peaks of his interest in his two wives had also coincided with the production of his own children. There was a secretive, intent side to a woman absorbed in a baby that was intensely arousing.
Yet now, as Vicky lifted Helen once again and pinched the nipple – his nipple – expertly between fingers and thumb for the baby to latch on, Darcy recognized a counterpoint to his expendable desire.
Vicky was watching him, not her baby. She had round brown eyes, he saw, with bronze flecks at the outer rim of the iris. It came to him that he loved her as well as wanting to smother himself inside her.
‘My God,’ Darcy said aloud.
He would not let anything harm her. He would not let her gauche husband and his skinny widow breathe any hurt on her, nor anyone else in Grafton either. He would protect her and defend her.
Vicky put her fingers over his mouth.
‘Shh.’
It was to make him contain his promises, even before any of them could be formulated.
He was still kneeling in front of her, between the end of the quilted bed and the padded and filled armchair Hannah liked to curl up in with her copies of The World of Interiors. The noise from downstairs swelled up to them again. Darcy had forgotten that there were more than a hundred people drinking and dancing in his house.
‘Darcy?’
It was Hannah who called his name, not Vicky. Hannah had come in behind them.
Darcy turned around to look at her. She was flushed, a breadth of crimson skin showing above her gold dress and two red patches burning through the creamy makeup on her cheeks. Hannah walked forward into the room. Her hips swung in the tight swathe of satin.
‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you. One of Barney’s friends was fooling round with a chair, pretending to dance with it or something stupid, and managed to fall through the French windows and cut his hand open. Didn’t you hear the noise?’
‘Yes, I did. Is he hurt? Is Mike Wickham still here? Or David Poynter? How many other medics have we got on the bloody premises?’
‘Bloody’s about right. Mike’s seeing to him. You’d better come down. What’s the matter with everyone this evening?’
Hannah faced them, the red spots burning in her face. Darcy stood up, stiff from kneeling and suddenly conscious of his age in front of the younger women.
He remembered Jimmy’s words. ‘Demons are abroad,’ he murmured.
‘What?’
Hannah was angry. Her face reminded him of Laura’s in the midst of one of her fits of temper. Darcy glanced down, and saw there was a white stain of milk on the satin lapel of his coat.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll sort everything out downstairs,’ he said, and left them.
Hannah looked coldly at Vicky. ‘Have you got everything you need?’
Vicky blushed. She felt caught, by Darcy and by her own surprised and guilty pleasure in what had happened. She was further trapped by her semi-nakedness, by the weight of the baby, by the splendour of Hannah’s bedroom.
‘Yes, thanks. I’ll finish her feed, and then I must take Gordon home.’ And then she offered, because she felt that she must say something even if it was not the truth, ‘Darcy was only keeping me company while I did this.’
Hannah shrugged. ‘It’s quite all right. I know what Darcy likes. He is my husband, after all.’
Nina had been dancing with Andrew when a boy with one of Hannah’s curlicued-metal garden chairs in his arms had tripped and crashed forward through the glass doors. For a long moment he had lain quite still with the chair on top of him, under a ragged blanket of glass, while the music thumped on over his head.
Nina was the first to reach him. The glass crunched under her thin shoes as she lifted the chair away.
‘Christ,’ the boy said, blinking.
More people pushed beside Nina. There was a confused babble of orders and instructions. The boy raised his arm to look at it and a broad, bright fountain of blood sprayed from his wrist.
‘Christ,’ he repeated.
Nina knelt over him. She put her hand down to balance herself and felt a sharp stab.
‘Keep still,’ she said. ‘Keep your arm up like that.’
Andrew fumbled beside her with a big white handkerchief in his hands. Nina snatched it and tied it around the boy’s arm, knotting it over the shirtsleeve that was already soaked in blood. Tight, she told herself. Is that an artery? The boy’s face had turned paper white. How long before I must loosen the tourniquet?
‘Where’s Michael?’ Andrew was shouting. ‘Get Mike, will you?’
Nina heard herself saying to the boy, ‘It’s all right, you’re all right.’
There was more shoving in the crowd of people surrounding them and then Michael Wickham emerged. He had stripped off his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. Hannah hovered in a nimbus of gold behind him.
‘Let’s see.’
Michael pressed his thumb over the cut and undid the handkerchief. Nina saw the blood ooze and felt her head swim. Michael glanced briefly at her.
‘It’s all right,’ he echoed her own words. ‘He’ll live.’
Someone helped Nina to her feet.
‘Well done. Give them some room. Oh, God, you’re covered in blood too. Look at your dress.’
Nina recognized Darcy’s big, blond son. Janice Frost had pointed him out to her earlier.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ But she spread her hands out in front of her in helpless disgust. They were smeared scarlet like a murderer’s.
The large young man took hold of one of them regardless. ‘Come on. Let me take care of you. Tom will be okay with Mike.’
She let him lead her away. A path lined with sympathetic faces opened for them through the onlookers.
In
