were never together until we were on board the train.”
His face pinched with unhappiness. “Then I suppose someone meant to kill her.,. and to blame you.” He bit his lip, his eyes narrowing and his brows drawing down. “Hester, for God’s sake, why couldn’t you be content to work at some more respectable occupation? You are always getting involved in crimes and disasters of one sort or another. First the Grey case, then the Moidores, and the Carlyons, and that appalling business at the hospital. What is the matter with you? Is it that man Monk who is involving you in all this?”
The suggestion caught her on the raw, mostly her pride, and the idea that somehow Monk, or her affection for him, ruled her life.
“No it is not,” she said tartly. “Nursing is a vocation that is bound to be involved with death, now and again. People do die, Charles, most especially those who are ill to begin with.”
He looked confused. “But if Mrs. Farraline was so ill, why did they assume she was murdered? That seems most unreasonable to me.”
“She wasn’t ill!” Hester said furiously. She was caught in a trap of her own making, and she knew it. “She was just elderly, and had a slight condition of the heart. She could have lived for years.”
“You can’t have it both ways, Hester. Either her death was normal, and to be expected, or it wasn’t! Sometimes women are most illogical.” He smiled very slightly. It was not unkind, not even critical, merely patient.
It was like a spark to tinder.
“Rubbish!” she shouted. “Don’t you dare stand there and call me ‘most women.’ Anyway, most women are no more illogical than most men. We are just different, that’s all. We take less account of your so-called facts and more of people’s feelings. And we are more often right. And we are certainly a great deal more practical. You are all theories, half of which don’t work because there was something wrong in them, or something you didn’t know which makes nonsense of the rest.” She stopped abruptly, out of breath and conscious of the pitch and volume of her voice, and now suddenly aware that she was quarreling with the one person in the entire building, perhaps in the whole city, who was truly on her side, and who was finding nothing but grief from the whole affair. Perhaps she should apologize, pompous and quite mistaken as he was?
He preempted her by making the matter even worse.
“So who did kill Mrs. Farraline?” he asked with devastating practicality. “And why? Was it money? She was obviously far too old for any sort of romantic involvement.”
“People don’t stop being in love just because they are over thirty,” she snapped.
He stared at her. “I have never heard of a woman over sixty being the victim of a crime of passion,” he said, his voice rising slightly with disbelief.
“I didn’t say it was a crime of passion.”
“You are really being very trying, my dear. Why don’t you at least sit down, so we can talk a little more comfortably?” He indicated the cot, where they could sit side by side, and suited his own actions to his words. “Is there anything I may bring you to ease your situation at all? If they will allow it, I will certainly do so. I did bring some clean linen from your lodgings, but they took it from me on my way in. No doubt they will give it to you in due course.”
“Yes please. You could ask Imogen to find me some toilet soap. This carbolic takes the skin off my face. It’s fearful stuff.”
“Of course.” He winced in sympathy. “I am sure she will be pleased to. I shall bring it as soon as I am able.”
“Could Imogen not bring it? I should like to see her.” Even as she said it she knew it was foolish, and only inviting hurt.
A shadow crossed his eyes, and there was the faint beginning of a flush to his cheeks, as if he were aware of something wrong, but not certain what, or why.
“I am sorry, Hester, but I could not allow Imogen to come to this place. It would distress her fearfully. She would never be able to forget it, it would come back to her mind again and again. She would have nightmares. It is my duty to protect her from all that I can. I wish it could be more.” He looked hurt as he said it, as if the pain were within his own mind and body.
“Yes, it is a nightmare,” she said chokingly. “I dream about it too. Only when I wake up I’m not lying in my own bed in a safe home, with someone to look after me and protect me from reality. I’m still here, with the long, cold day in front of me, and another tomorrow, and the day after.”
His face closed over, as if he could not bear to grasp the knowledge.
“I know that, Hester. But that is not Imogen’s fault, nor mine. You chose your path. I did everything I could to dissuade you. I never ceased to try to convince you to marry, when you had offers, or could have had if you had given a little encouragement. But you would not listen. No, I’m afraid it is too late. Even if this matter is resolved as I pray it will be, and you are exonerated of all fault, you are unlikely to find any man offering you an honorable marriage, unless there is some widower who wishes for a decent woman to-”
“I don’t want some widower to keep house for,” she said, the tears thick in her voice. “I’d rather be paid as a housekeeper-and have my dignity, and the freedom to leave-than married as one, with the pretense that there was some kind of love in it, when he only wanted a servant he didn’t have to pay and I only wanted a roof over my head and food on my plate.”
Charles stood up, his face pale and tight.
“A great many marriages are merely convenient and practical to begin with. Often a mutual respect comes later. There is no loss of dignity in that.” His smile brightened his eyes and touched his lips. “For a woman, and you say women are so practical, you are the most romantic and totally impractical creature I ever knew.”
She stood up as well. Too full of emotion to answer.
“I shall bring you some soap next time I come. Please… please do not lose hope.” He said the words awkwardly, as if they were a matter of duty rather than anything he could mean. “Mr. Rathbone is the best possible-”
She cut him off. “I know!” She could not bear the rehearsed insincerity of it. “Thank you for coming.”
He made a move forward, as if to kiss her cheek, but she backed away from him sharply. He looked surprised for an instant, but accepted the rebuff with something like relief that at last he was excused and could escape, both from the encounter and from the place.
“I’ll… I’ll see you… soon,” he replied, turning to go to the door and bang on it for the wardress to release him.
It was the following day before she had another visitor, and this time it was Oliver Rathbone. She was too miserable to feel any lift of spirits seeing him, and the perception of her mood was instant in his face. And then after formal greetings had been exchanged, with a leaden heart, she realized it was also a reflection of his own feelings.
“What’s wrong?” she demanded shakily. She had not thought she was capable of any further emotion, but she was suddenly sickeningly afraid. “What’s happened?”
They were standing face-to-face in the whitewashed room with its table and wooden chairs. He took hold of both her hands. It was not a calculated move, but instinctive, and its gentleness only added to her fear. Her mouth was dry and she took a breath to ask again what was wrong, but her voice would not come.
“They have ordered that you are tried in Scotland,” he said very quietly. “In Edinburgh. I have no grounds on which to fight it. It appears to them that the poison was administered on Scottish soil, and since we contend it was actually prepared in the Farraline house, and had nothing to do with you, then it was beyond question a Scottish crime. I’m so sorry.”
She did not understand. Why was that so crippling a blow? He looked devastated, and there seemed no reason.
He closed his eyes for a second, then opened them again, dark, dark brown and filled with misery.
“You will be tried under Scottish law,” he explained. “I am English. I cannot represent you.”
At last she understood. It hit her like a physical blow to the body. In a single move the only help she could hope for had been removed from her. She was absolutely alone. She was too stunned to speak, even to cry.
He was gripping her hand so hard the pressure of his fingers hurt. The slight pain of it was her only link with reality. It was almost a relief.
