' Cohan? No, something got in the way. Let's head back to the Plaza and I'll tell you.' She was finished by the time they were halfway there and he was horrified.

'My God, what you trying to do? Clean up the whole world now?'

'I see. You mean I should have stood by and waited while those two animals raped the girl and probably cut her throat?'

'Okay, okay!' he sighed and nodded. 'What about Senator Cohan?'

'We'll fly back to London tomorrow. He's due there in a few days, showing his face on what he pretends is Presidential business. I'll get him then.'

'And then what? Where does it end?' Hedley grunted. 'It all seems unreal.'

He pulled up at the Plaza and she smiled mischievously like a child. 'I'm a great trial to you, Hedley, I know that, but what would I do without you? See you in the morning.'

He went round and opened the door for her and watched her go up the steps.

'And what would I do without you?' he asked softly, then got behind the wheel and drove away.

The night doorman was waiting at the top. 'Lady Helen!' he said. 'It's wonderful to see you. I heard you were in.'

'And you, George.' She kissed him on the cheek. 'How's that new daughter of yours?'

'Great, just great.'

'I'm going back to London in the morning. I'll see you again soon.'

' 'Night, Lady Helen.'

She went in, and a man in a raincoat who had been waiting for a cab said, 'Hey, who was that woman?'

'Lady Helen Lang. She's been coming here for years.'

'Lady, huh? Funny, she doesn't sound English.'

'That's 'cause she's from Boston. Married an English Lord ages ago. People say she's worth millions.'

'Really? Well, she seems quite something.'

'You can say that again. Nicest person you'll ever meet.'

In The Beginning:

London, New York

B ORN IN BOSTON in 1933 to one of Boston 's wealthiest families, Helen Darcy's mother had died giving birth to her, and she was raised as an only child. Fortunately, her father truly loved her and she loved him just as much in return. In spite of his enormous business interests in steel, shipbuilding and oil, he took the time to lavish every attention on her, and she was worth it. Enormously intelligent, she went to the best private schools, and later, Vassar, where she found she had a special flair for foreign languages.

To her father, only the best was good enough and, himself a Rhodes Scholar as a young man, he sent her to England to finish her graduate education at St Hugh's College at Oxford University.

Many of her father's business associates in London put themselves out to entertain her and she became popular in London society. She was twenty-four when she met Sir Roger Lang, a baronet and one-time lieutenant colonel in the Scots Guards, now chairman of a merchant bank with close associations with her father.

She adored him at once and the attraction was mutual. There was one flaw, however. Although he was unmarried, there was a fifteen years' age difference between them and, at the time, it simply seemed too much for her.

She returned to America, confused and uncertain about the future, for business held no attraction for her and she'd had enough of academia. There were plenty of young men, of course, if only for the wrong reason – her father's enormous wealth – but no one suited her, because in the background there was always Roger Lang, with whom she stayed in touch once a week by telephone.

Finally, one weekend at their beach house on Cape Cod, she said to her father across the breakfast table, 'Daddy, don't be mad at me, but I'm thinking of moving back to England… and getting married.'

He leaned back and smiled. 'Does Roger Lang know about this?'

' Dammit, you knew.'

'Ever since you came back from Oxford. I was wondering when you'd come to your senses.'

She poured tea, a habit she'd acquired in England. 'The answer is

… he doesn't know.'

'Then I suggest you fly to London and tell him,' and he returned to his New York Times.

And so, a new life began for Helen Darcy, now Lady Helen Lang, divided between the house in South Audley Street and the country estate by the sea in North Norfolk, called Compton Place. There was only one fly in the ointment. In spite of every effort to have a child, she was bedevilled by miscarriages year after year, so that by the time her son, Peter, was born when she was thirty-three, it seemed a major miracle.

Peter proved to be another great joy in her life, and she took the kind of interest in his education that her father had taken in hers. Her husband agreed he could go to an American prep school for a few years, but afterwards, as the future Sir Peter, he had to finish his education at Eton and the Sandhurst Military Academy. It was the family tradition – which was fine with

Peter, for he had only ever wanted to be one thing, a soldier like all the Langs before him.

After Sandhurst came the Scots Guards, his father's old regiment, and a few years later, a transfer to the SAS, for he had inherited his mother's ability with languages. He saw service in Bosnia and in the Gulf War, where he was awarded the Military Cross for an unspecified black operation behind Iraqi lines. And in Ireland, of course, the one place which never went away. Hand-in-hand with his ability for languages was a flair for dialects. He spoke, not with some stage Irish accent, but as if he were from Dublin or Belfast or South Armagh , which made him invaluable for undercover work in the continuing battle with the Provisional IRA.

Because of the life he led, women figured little. The odd girlfriend now and then was all he had time for. The fear was real, the burden immense, but Helen bore it as a soldier's wife and mother should, until that dreadful Sunday in March 1996, when her husband answered the phone at South Audley Street, then replaced the receiver slowly and turned, his face ashen.

'He's gone,' he said simply. 'Peter's gone,' and he slumped into a chair and cried his eyes out, while she held his hand and stared blankly into space.

If there was one person who understood her grief that rainy day in the churchyard of the village church of St Mary and All the Saints at Compton Place, it was Lady Helen Lang's chauffeur, Hedley Jackson, who stood behind her and Sir Roger, immaculate in his grey uniform, as he held a large umbrella above them. He was six feet four and originally from Harlem. At the age of eighteen, he'd joined the Marine Corps and gone to Vietnam, emerging at the other end with a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts. Posted to the American Embassy Guard in London, he'd met a girl from Brixton who was housekeeper to the Langs at South Audley Street. They had married, Hedley had left the service and been appointed the Langs ' chauffeur, and they had lived in the spacious basement flat and had a child, a son. It was an ideal life for them, and then tragedy struck: Jackson 's wife and son were involved in a multi-car pile-up in the fog on the North Circular Road, and were killed instantly.

Lady Helen had held his hand at the crematorium, and when he had disappeared from South Audley Street, she had hunted him down through one bar after another in Brixton until she found him, sodden with drink and nearly suicidal, had taken him to Compton Place, and slowly, patiently, brought him back to life.

To say that he was devoted to her now was an understatement, and his heart bled for her, particularly since Sir Roger's words to her, 'Peter's gone,' had hidden a horrific truth. The IRA car bomb which had killed him had been of such enormous strength that not a single trace of his body remained, and, standing there in the rain, all they could commemorate was his name engraved in the family mausoleum.