Gradually life and movement returned to both of them. He eased himself down on the floor with one arm still trailing across Annie's body. Both her hands were still locked over his arm. Gradually they sucked in enough air so that their chests no longer heaved like those of mountaineers struggling up a slope. Gradually their eyes met again, and Annie's expression of animal contentment gave way to her normal impish smile.

And gradually Blade realized that this night was the beginning of the end for them. They had pushed the sexual attraction and companionship that lay at the base of their relationship as far as it would go. Both would shy away from pushing things further, into marriage. It might take a few months, of course, because there was nothing bad pushing them apart, merely their own preferences. But there would eventually come a day when they would see each other at a party in London and do nothing more than smile and nod in greeting, then pass on, each with his own partner.

Chapter Two

Lord Leighton's message caught up with Blade the next afternoon at the Sailor's Head Tavern in Folkestone. On all his Channel trips with Annie the eighteenth-century pub on the waterfront had been Blade's message drop. The pubkeeper, a retired Royal Navy petty officer, knew him well and could be trusted to keep his mouth shut about Blade's comings and goings. Besides a discreet landlord, the Sailor's Head also had good beer.

It was over a glass of that beer that Blade read the message. Simple, straightforward, familiar. As he read it, his senses seemed to sharpen until everything in the room seemed to have extra force and vividness-the smells of beer and tobacco and lemon-scented floor cleanser, the sounds of glasses clinking and darts plunking into the board at the back of the room, the stray gleams of watery sunlight wandering in through the windows and striking fire from the copper trays hanging above the bar.