Chapter Text
Adam sighed. He watched as his breath ruffled a coil of Kate’s hair, then he tucked it carefully behind her ear, out of her face.
Her dear face.
“What are we doing, Kate?”
“Do you regret it already?”
“No, never. You know I would give you anything. Down to my blood, and marrow, and every cell of myself, but—”
Her hand cupped his jaw. “You know that’s not the type of feeling that’s usually between a superior and a subordinate.”
He bowed his head. “I know.”
“That means we’re something more.”
He was silent for a moment, letting her gentle words sit with him. The fire was murmuring warmly behind them, its glow turning her skin to bronze. He touched the base of her throat with the pads of his fingertips, felt her breath catch before he moved along her collarbone and along her arm, reciting the words she had only recently read to him.
“He caressed the rest of her arm, kissing the nook between the elbows, the shoulders…”
Kate leaned into his touch. She had waited so long. “There was a but,” she whispered. “What was it?”
“I am a good deal older than you. And there’s our work.”
She nodded, toyed with the knot in his tie. She was aware of the guilt he’d carried with him, when they’d met and she wondered if it had lessened in that time. He’d done a great deal of healing, had returned to poetry, but she still had to ask the question. “Are those your only worries about a potential relationship?”
“About us, yes.”
“Shall I tell you mine, then?”
His eyes widened a fraction. “Please.”
Miskin sat up on the sofa, bringing her stockinged feet flat on the cushion. Adam took the seat beside her, his eyes never leaving her. She curled her arms around her legs, the press of his mouth still alive on hers, the taste of him still on her tongue.
“My mother is a good person for the most part. She raised me on her own, you know. But when I told her I was joining the force, it was like she became another person altogether. Hard-edged, her words cutting.”
Her voice skittered to a stop as Adam lifted her legs to drape them across his lap. He placed her drink in her hands and waited while she sipped from it.
“It’s an unsuitable job for a woman. Policing. That was her constant refrain. When I still pursued it, against her wishes and advice, she tried other tactics. Saying, ‘No one will want a woman police officer for a wife – no decent bloke anyways. You’d be showing him you were more of a man than he is.’”
Miskin looked up at the ceiling of the farmhouse, in an effort to keep her eyes dry. “it was always variation on a theme with her. He’ll think you’re giving him orders, no man wants that. He’ll never be able to relax around you, girl. He’ll run for the hills the moment it comes out what you do for work.
“And she was right, you know. For the entire time I had been on the force, six whole years, she was so right about all of it.” She looked at him then, her eyes sparkling with unshed tears and the reflection of the fire’s embers. “That was before I met you. I believed I was just going to be alone. That no one would ever want me, or support me, or trust my judgement. You changed all that. But we’ve been doing this dance for three years, Adam.”
“Kate,” he said softly.
She’d opened the taps to her heart, and she couldn’t stop the flow of words now. “I didn’t want to give up and move out of London. I wanted to give us a chance, and hope that you saw a possibility for us to be something… more to each other.”
“We are something more.”
“But you’ve already decided that we can’t—” She pressed her lips together to keep in the sob rising in her throat.
“Damn it. Damn it all to hell,” he said, tugging her into his lap and into his arms, holding her until she stopped trembling.
“I want you, Kate. With everything in me, I want you. I need to breathe you in, need to feel you next to me, not just my head and in my heart. Before we met, I was a spirit haunting a body and a life I no longer thought I had a right to. But it is you who has changed all of that. Spun bone and muscle and flesh back onto this ghost of a man. I am the worst fool for not declaring myself to you earlier. For not asking what your own heart’s burdens were, and instead soaking in mine. I am sorry, Kate, my Kate.”
He buried his face in her hair, as he rubbed his hands over her back.
“Adam,” she murmured into his neck. “You don’t have to feel sorry for me.”
He pulled back and tipped her chin up to look at him. “I will only feel sorry for the fact that you will have to find a way to live with me from here out.”
“How? I thought… with the Met there was no way.”
“There might be a way. Before Braithwaite left, he gave me some folders about an idea he’d had. I wasn’t sure it would work, but now I have even more determination that it should.”
In fact, Braithewaite had left several folders before the retirement party. Slyly, he’d had Dalgliesh with him when congratulating Miskin on her promotion. After they’d moved off, back toward the dais, they watched her move toward the back of the room. Then Braithwaite had pinned the younger man with a look. “I’ve given you the keys to the kingdom, son. A new start. If you mess this up, we will have words.”
“What’s the solution?”
“Do you trust me, Kate?”
“Always.”
“Then leave it with me. I have some research to do whenever it is that we get back.”
Kate bit her lip and nodded, traced the knot in his tie. “Does that mean we’re…”
“Together? Yes.” He kissed her tenderly. “If that’s still what you want.”
“I want you.”
“And I, you.”
Kate smiled. “So get on with it, then.”
“Aren’t we demanding?” he chuckled.
“Is that a problem?”
“Never.” He looked back over his shoulder. “I would love to say I’ll be gallant and carry you to the bedroom, but the staircase is quite narrow.”
“Another time, then.” Kate slid off his lap.
“Yes. As for this time…” He stood and held his hand out to her. When she placed her smaller hand in his, he helped her to her feet.
“This is all very civilized,” she commented, following him upstairs.
“That will change shortly,” he promised.
Kate realized soon after that Adam Dalgliesh kept his promises.
Epilogue- Two years later, after the conviction of Muriel Godby
Kate came in from assignment to an envelope in her desk. Her name and title were written on the envelope made of heavyweight paper in an understated cream hue, a linen blend unless she missed her guess.
CDI Kate Miskin
She knew that handwriting as well as she knew her own. That plus, the fact he had left the envelope inside her desk made her go close the door to her office. When she read the lines on the single sheet of matching wove paper enclosed, she was glad she had.
She makes for me rivers of silk in welcome
Her pulse knocks on the door of my heart
I answer
To deny her entry is to deny my own structure
With touch and tongue how can I not set her alight?
Upon my gaze, she as angel burns
With her, I am once again
Whole
She read it twice more before picking up the phone. He answered on the second ring. He must have had an idea of when she would get back to London from Canterbury.
“Dalgliesh.”
“This is CDI Miskin, Commissioner.”
“I know it’s you. I could feel your gasp three buildings away.”
Even now, he could make her face heat and her heart skip enough beats to make her breathless. “Well, you were correct on both counts.”
“Not bad for an old man.”
Miskin scoffed. “You call yourself an old man when I’m the one who had trouble walking this morning.”
Dalgliesh laughed, a deep, rich sound that resounded through the line.
“I love your laugh.”
“I love you, Kate.”
She twisted back and forth in her chair, then tucked the poem in its envelope in her bag. She would add it to her cedar chest with the others, kept close at hand when she wanted to re-read them. “I love you, too.”
“See you tonight. Are you going to be home late?”
Kate glanced at her watch, a gift from Adam. Four-thirty. “No, I’m actually heading out now.”
“The life of a consulting DI. Must be nice,” Adam teased.
“It is, actually.”
It was a genius stroke that Braithwaite had come up with. As a younger man, he’d wanted to encourage more women on the force. Women had carried this country on their backs during the war, he’d said. Surely, they were capable of keeping the peace now. He’d been met with great opposition at the time, but twenty years had passed. The world was different now, and a man like Adam Dalgliesh as Commissioner could help issue in a new age of policing. They’d spent many hours together, updating and fine tuning the proposal, to ensure its success. Interviewing the relatively small percentage of women officers and detectives as to what they felt they needed to be successful. Overwhelmingly, they wanted support. Someone to call for their opinion on a case or on a tenuous situation within the office.
And Kate Miskin was the ideal person to head this new direction the Met was moving into. To make things neat and tidy, she reported to the Commissioner of the Canterbury office, instead of to Adam. She loved the assignment: a combination of field work, administration, and mentoring.
“I need to make a stop though, but I’ll likely be home before you.” She locked her desk, shrugged back into her jacket. “Don’t get used to it though. Once this department takes off, you may be getting home first and be responsible for dinner.”
“I make a great roast chicken.”
She laughed. “Yes, you do. See you in a bit.”
At home, they had a leisurely dinner of quiche Lorraine and oven-roasted vegetables with a glass of Chablis. After, they retired to the sofa in front of the fireplace—Adam in casual trousers, singlet vest and navy dressing gown, Kate in silk lounging pajamas her mother had given to her as a wedding present.
“You never said what you stopped for after work, Inspector.”
She playfully shook a scolding finger at him. “I kept my maiden name for work, but it’s Mrs. Dalgliesh outside the office.”
“Duly noted, ma’am.” He lifted her legs onto his lap, then brought his feet up onto their ottoman. “So where did you stop to?”
“The library. I managed to catch it before closing time so I picked up the book I requested.” Kate held up a copy of Anaïs Nin’s Delta of Venus. “Shall I read to you?”
He caressed the inside of her ankle with feathery fingertips, then up to a spot behind her knee, smirking when she shuddered. “Only if you want to get into a great deal of trouble with me, Kate.”
She opened the book. “Oh Adam, I do. I absolutely do.”