had been hiding from reality like a child.
'Being terrified doesn't matter,' Hester said confidently, walking forward to stand beside Perdita. 'So are most of us. It isn't what you feel, it's what you do that counts. Gabriel won't mind you being frightened, then he'll know you understand at least something of it. Nobody understands it all.'
'You do.'
Hester laughed. 'Nonsense! I simply know what it feels like to see pain you can't help, to be terrified yourself, overwhelmed and hideously uncomfortable in body, and so tired you haven't even the strength to weep. If you haven't felt that yet, one day you will.' She took her by the arm. 'Now have a stiff sherry or something and go up to him.'
'But it's you he wants to talk to,' Perdita protested. 'You understand. He doesn't want to have to explain to someone who knows nothing.' There was reluctance in every line of her.
'Frightened?' Hester said with a smile.
'Yes!' Perdita pulled back physically.
'So now is the time to have courage,' Hester pointed out. 'Imagine how much worse soldiers must feel at the order to charge. What is the worst that can happen to you? Your husband will think less of you? You will still have all your arms and legs. You will not bleed or-'
'That's enough!' Athol said sharply. 'You exceed yourself, Miss Latterly!'
Perdita gulped and then swung around very deliberately and glared at him.
'She is quite right! I am going up to see Gabriel. Please don't wait for me. I don't know when I shall be down.' And without stopping to see his response, or Hester's, she marched out of the room and they heard her feet cross the hall floor, sharp and determined.
'Have some whiskey,' Monk suggested to Athol, although it sounded like an offer. He felt enormously proud of Hester, as if he had had some part in her actions, which was absurd. But they were friends, closer in ways than many a man and wife. They had shared extraordinary triumphs and disasters; they knew each other, both the best and the worst. He trusted her above anyone else. There was a way in which friendship was the deepest and the best of bonds.
Athol took the whiskey and drank it, then poured himself another. He did not think to offer Monk one. It was not rudeness, he was simply too lost in his own perplexity.
Hester turned to Monk. She had not the slightest idea what had been going through his mind or his heart.
'Do you still care to discuss the case which concerns you?' she asked as if they had only just left the subject a few moments ago.
He did not. There was really nothing to say. But on the other hand, he did not want to leave yet.
'If you can spare the time, I should,' he answered.
'Certainly.' She turned to Athol. 'I shall be upstairs if I am needed, Mr. Sheldon, but I think I will not be, at least until bedtime.'
'What? Oh. Yes, I think you have done quite enough for one day.' He was displeased, and he intended her to know it.
Monk watched her closely and saw no sign of embarrassment or doubt in her face.
She led the way out of the room and up the stairs to the small sitting room she shared with the gaunt lady's maid, Martha Jackson. They sat in the deep, chintz-covered armchairs and he told her about his fruitless search for information which might help Rathbone, mentioning that apparently Melville had studied abroad, because no one in England knew of him until about five years ago. He also told her the story of Barton Lambert and the unnamed lord who had been involved with the flawed building plans.
None of it mattered insofar as he expected her to offer any helpful remark; it was simply good to clear his own thoughts by putting them into words, and he was comfortable sitting with her.
It was almost an hour later when Martha Jackson came in. At first Monk was annoyed. It was an intrusion. But she was an agreeable woman. There was an honesty to her which pleased him, and he sensed the quiet courage to bear sorrow without complaint that seemed marked in the lines of her face. There was no bitterness in her mouth, no self-pity.
It was Hester who raised the subject of Martha's brother's children and their deformities-and the fact that no one now knew their whereabouts.
'How long ago?' Monk asked, turning to Martha.
'Twenty-one years,' she replied, the hope she had allowed for a moment dying out of her eyes. She had been living in the past, telling him about it, talking as if it were only recently, when it was still possible to do something. Now it was foolish even to think of it.
He was startled. Samuel would have been an elder brother. It was a hard thing. He felt for her as he watched her tired face with the grief washing back into it and the realization of pain lost in the past, irretrievable now, children who could not be found, helped or given the love which had been missed too long ago.
He looked quickly at Hester. She was watching him steadily, her eyes so direct he had the feeling she was seeing his mind and his heart as clearly as anyone else might have seen his outward features. Surprisingly, it was not an intrusion and he did not resent it in the slightest.
What he resented was the fact that he would let her down.
He could not do what she wanted, and he knew it as exactly as if he had heard the words.
Martha looked down at her hands, knotted in her lap. Then she made herself smile at Monk. 'It wouldn't matter even if I could find them,' she said quietly. 'What could I do to help? I couldn't take them then, and I couldn't now. I just wish I knew. I… I wish they knew that they had somebody… that there was someone who belonged to them, who cared.'
'I'll look into it,' Monk said quietly, knowing he was a fool. 'It may not be impossible.'
Hope gleamed in Martha's eyes. 'Will you?' Then it faded again. 'But I have very little money saved…'
'I don't think I can succeed,' he said honestly. 'And I wouldn't charge for failure,' he lied. He avoided Hester's eyes although he could feel her gazing at him, feel the warmth as if it were sunlight, hot on his cheek. 'Please don't hope. It is very unlikely. I'll simply try.'
'Thank you, Mr. Monk,' Martha said as levelly as she could. 'It is very good of you… indeed.'
He stood up. It was not good at all, it was idiotic. Next time he saw Hester, he would tell her just how ridiculous it was in the plainest terms.
'Save your thanks till I bring you something useful,' he said rather less generously. He felt guilty now. He had done it for Hester, and he would never be able to help this woman. 'Good day, Miss Jackson. It is past time I was leaving. I must report to Sir Oliver. Good night, Hester.'
She stood up and moved closer to him, smiling. 'I shall accompany you to the door. Thank you, William.'
He shot her a glance which should have frozen her and seemed to have no effect whatever.
Chapter 6
Rathbone went into court on Monday morning with not a scrap more evidence than he had possessed on the previous Friday afternoon. He had spoken with Monk and listened to all he could tell him, but it offered nothing he could use. Thinking of it now, he had given Monk an impossible task. It was foolish of him to have allowed himself to hope, but sitting at his table in the half-empty courtroom, he realized that he had.
The gallery was filling only slowly. People were not interested. They had no feeling that the case was anything but the rather shabby emotional tragedy Sacheverall had made it seem and, to be frank, Rathbone had been unable to disprove. If Melville were hiding any excuse, no whisper of it showed.
Rathbone looked sideways at him now. He was sitting hunched forward like a man expecting a blow and without defense against it. There seemed no willingness to fight in him, no anger, even no spirit. Rathbone had seldom had a client who frustrated him so profoundly. Even Zorah Rostova, equally determined to pursue a seemingly suicidal case, had had a passionate conviction that she was right and all the courage in the world to battle her cause.
'Melville!' Rathbone said sharply, leaning forward to be closer to him.
Melville turned. His face was very pale, his eyes almost aquamarine colored. He had a poet's features,
