The thought was especially hideous when he remembered the remarkable face of Lady Ravensbrook, the strength in it, the power of feeling and imagination, even ravaged by recent disease as it was. There was something in her which awoke an extraordinary interest in him. He found even while he was thinking of ways and means of discerning the truth, and the near impossibility of proving it, it was her features impressed on his closed eyelids, her expression, her mouth, even her voice in his ears. She had said barely a dozen words to him, and every inflection remained.
He rose at half past six, while it was still dark, sent for water from a very surprised housemaid, then shaved, washed, dressed and requested breakfast by quarter past seven. His cook was not in the least amused, and allowed it to be known. He did not care in the slightest, although good cooks were not easy to obtain.
He left the house at eight and walked briskly, swinging his rather handsome stick, and so deep in thought he passed a dozen acquaintances without seeing them, and addressed two more by their fathers' names.
By five minutes past nine he was outside Ravensbrook House, and saw his lordship leave in his own carriage. Goode mounted the steps and pulled the brass bell knob.
“Good morning, sir,” the footman said with only the merest surprise.
“Good morning,” Goode replied with a charming smile. “I am sorry to disturb the family so early, but there are matters which cannot wait. Will you ask Lady Ravensbrook if I may speak with her? I shall await her convenience, naturally.” He passed over his card.
“Lady Ravensbrook, sir?” The footman was uncertain he had heard correctly.
It seemed absurd. What could the lawyer have to say to Lady Ravensbrook?
“If you please.” Goode stepped inside and took off his coat and gave the man his hat. He had no intention of being turned away, and he was used to pressing his cause. He had not become one of London's leading barristers by being easily refused or overridden. “Thank you. So good of you. Should I wait in the morning room? Yes?” He had been here only once before, but he recalled it was the second door to the left. He assumed consent, and strode across the hall, leaving the footman holding his clothes, and with little choice but to accede.
He was obliged to wait nearly three quarters of an hour in the calm, ornate room with its heavy curtains and shelves of books, but when at last the door opened, it was Enid Ravensbrook who stood there. Instantly he felt guilty. She looked desperately afraid. Her lavender-colored gown hung on her, in spite of the fact her maid had taken it in as much as was possible without recutting it altogether. Her hair had lost its luster and even the cleverest dressing could not conceal how much of it had come out in her illness. Her skin had no color at all, but nothing could dim the intelligence in her eyes or the underlying strength in the lines of her cheekbones and jutting nose and jaw. She looked at him with unwavering courage.
“Good morning, Mr. Goode. My footman tells me you wish to speak with me.”
She closed the door and walked quite slowly, as if she were afraid of losing her balance.
He made half a gesture towards helping her, and knew instantly that he should not. He ached to reach out and give her his strength, but it would be an intrusion. He did not need to meet her eyes to know it.
She reached the nearest chair and sat down, smiling at last.
“Thank you, Mr. Goode. I am obliged to you. I hate being an invalid. Now, what is it you wish to say to me? I presume it is to do with poor Caleb. I knew him very little, and yet I cannot help grieving that he should die so.
Although, God knows, perhaps the alternative was worse.”
“But you knew Angus,” he said quickly. “With Lord Ravensbrook's regard for him, and his own gratitude and affection, he must have come here often.”
It had been a statement, as if he did not doubt it, yet the look on her face was one of uncertainty and denial.
“No.” She shook her head fractionally. “He came, of course, but not so very often, and he seldom stayed long. I am not sure if it was because Genevieve felt a certain… uncomfortableness here? I think my husband overawed her to a degree. He can be…” Again she hesitated, and he had a sudden sharp perception that it was not the words she was struggling with, nor even if she should express the thought to him, but the thought itself. It was something she had long avoided facing, because of its pain. He was stunned by how much it distressed him.
He hesitated. Perhaps it was not worth pursuing at such cost. It could all be left to the coroner to cover with polite decencies.
But the doubt lasted only a moment. He could not live with such cowardice, and it was not worthy of her.
He smiled, “Please, ma'am, tell me the truth as you feel it, as you saw it.
It is not a time for lies, however gently meant, or seemingly kind.”
“Isn't it?” She frowned. “Both Angus and Caleb are dead, poor creatures, and their hatred with them, whatever it was for. It is gone now…
finished.”
“I wish it were.” He meant it profoundly. “But there will have to be an inquest into Caleb's death. We need to know why suddenly he launched himself into such a violent and hopeless act.”
“Do we'?” Her face was calm, her inner decision made. “What does it matter now, Mr. Goode? It seems he never lived in peace. Cannot he now at least be buried and left to rest in whatever ease his soul can find? And we with him. My husband has known little but grief of one sort or another since he first took them into his home.”
“Even with Angus?”
“No. No, that was quite unfair of me. Angus brought him great joy. He was everything he could have wished.”
“But?” he said gently, insistently.
“He was!”
“There is a shadow in your voice, a hesitation,” he insisted. “What is it?
What was it in Angus, Lady Ravensbrook, which made Caleb hate him so passionately? They were close once. Why did they grow so hideously far apes?? “I don't know!”
“But you guess? You must have thought about it, wondered. Even if only for the pain it brought your husband.”
“Of course I thought about it. I lay awake many hours wondering if there were some way they might be reconciled. I searched my mind. I asked my husband often, until I realized he knew as little as I, and that to speak of it gave him pain. He and Angus were not…”
“Not what?”
She spoke reluctantly. He was dragging the words out of her, and he knew it.
“Easy in each other's company,” she admitted. “It was as if the shadow of Caleb were always there, a darkness between them, a wound that could never be completely forgotten.”
“But you liked Angus?”
“Yes, yes I liked him.” Now the shadow was gone, she spoke wholeheartedly.
“He was extraordinarily kind. He was a man you could admire without reservation, and yet so modest he never put himself forward, was never pompous. Yes, I liked Angus enormously. I never saw him lose his temper or perform a cruel act.” The marks of grief were plain in her face, but simple loss, without doubt or underlying darkness.
He hated himself for persisting, and yet the nagging anxiety was in his mind like a toothache, dull and ever present, and sometimes giving a stab so sharp it robbed the breath.
“Never?”
“No,” she said as if she had not expected to feel so. “Never. I am not surprised my husband loved him. He was all he could have wished in a son, had he been granted one.”
“He must have hated Caleb for destroying him,” he said gently. “It would be understandable if he could never forgive such an act of treachery. Most especially since Angus still kept such loyalty towards Caleb.”
She turned away, her voice even lower. “Yes, I could not blame him. And yet he does not seem to feel the anger I do. It is almost as if…” He waited, leaning forward, the silence in the room prickling his ears.
She turned very slowly to look at him.
“I don't know what you expect me to say, Mr. Goode…
“The truth, ma'am. It is the only thing clean enough, the only thing which will in the end stand above all the pain.”
“I don't know it!”
“It was almost as if… what?” he prompted.
