since he will not have to do it alone.'
'I wiE thank you to concern yourself with your own affairs, sir!' Athol said to him coldly. 'You have already brought enough distress and disturbance into this house. We should not even have heard of this miserable, farcical business if it were not for you. Women dressing up as men, deceiving the world, trying to ape their betters and living a completely unnatural life. It is a debasement of all that is purest and most honorable in domestic happiness, and those things any decent man holds dear… those very values which are the cornerstone of any civilized society.'
Perdita stared at him. 'Why shouldn't women design houses? We live in them just as much as men do-more so.'
'Because you are plainly not competent to do so!' he answered, exasperation sharpening his voice. 'That is self-evident.' He swept his arm sideways, dramatically. 'You run households, that is an utterly different affair. It does not call for mathematical or logical skills, for special perception, individuality, or thought-and certainly not for genius-'
Monk interrupted. 'If you have your household accounts kept for you by someone with no mathematical skills you will be in a very unfortunate position. But that is irrelevant. Keelin Melville was a woman, and she was the most brilliant architect of this generation, perhaps of this century.'
'Nonsense!' Athol laughed derisively. 'When one looks at her work with real perception, one can see that it is eccentric, highly unlikely to last. It has a femininity to it, a fundamental weakness.'
Perdita let out a howl of rage and turned on her heel. Then as she reached the corridor she swung around again, staring at Athol.
'I think it is going to rain. You had better leave before you get soaked on the way home. I should not like you to catch pneumonia.'
In spite of himself Monk glanced out the window. Brilliant sunshine streamed in out of a dazzling sky. He glanced at Hester and saw her eyes full of deep, shining satisfaction.
Rathbone also encountered society's prejudices regarding Keelin Melville. He knew of nothing else he could do in the case. His client was dead. There was nothing further to defend or to prosecute. There were other cases to which he needed to turn his attention. But tomorrow would be sufficient time.
Today he was weighed down by the sense of his failure.
Unfortunately, he had social obligations which, if he did not attend to them, would make the threads of daily life harder to pick up. He could not mourn the Melville case indefinitely. Perhaps thinking of something else, being surrounded by other people whose minds were occupied with other matters, would make it easier for him. It might prove like a cold bath, agonizing for the first few minutes, then invigorating, or at least leaving him a little warmer afterwards from the chill of grief.
He attended a dinner party at the house of a man who had long been an associate, and perhaps also a friend-at least their acquaintance went back to their earliest days of practicing law.
James Laurence had married well, and his house in Mayfair was very fine indeed. Rathbone could have afforded one like it if he had wanted one sufficiently. He might have had to do without one or two other things, but it would not have been impossible.
But Laurence had chosen to marry and to entertain in society. He also selected cases largely according to the fee he would charge, in order to support his choice. Rathbone did not wish to do that. His rooms suited him perfectly well. Of course, if he married that would have to change.
He went in and found several of the guests already arrived. The chandeliers were dazzling. The sound of laughter and the chink of glass filled the room amid the exquisitely colored skirts of the women, the glitter of jewels and the pallor of shoulders and bosoms.
He was greeted and absorbed into the company immediately. Everyone was courteous and spoke of all manner of subjects: what was currently playing at the theater; the last parliamentary debate and what might be expected of the next; a little bit of harmless gossip as to who might marry whom. It was light and pleasantly relaxing.
Only after dinner, when the ladies had retired to the withdrawing room and the gentlemen remained at the table, passing port and savoring a little excellent Stilton, was the matter of Keelin Melville raised, and then it was obliquely.
'Poor old Lambert,' Lofthouse said ruefully, holding his glass in his hand and turning it around so the light fell through the ruby liquid. 'He must feel a complete fool.'
'It's his daughter I'm sorry for,' Weatherall replied abruptly. 'How must she feel? She's been taken in completely.'
Lofthouse turned to look at him, his tufted eyebrows raised. 'She hasn't paid out a fortune for buildings which are worthless now!' he retorted, his voice heavy with impatience.
Rathbone was already raw. His temper snapped.
'Neither has Lambert!' he said very clearly.
Half a dozen people at the table swiveled to look at him, caught as much by the tone of his voice as by his words.
'I beg your pardon?' Colonel Weatherall said with puzzlement, his thin, white hair catching the light.
“I said, 'Neither has Lambert,' ' Rathbone repeated. 'Any building he has paid for is exactly the same today as it was a week ago.'
'Hardly!' Lofthouse laughed. 'My dear fellow, you, of all people, know the truth! I don't mean to be unkind, or to make an issue of your misfortune, if that is the word, but Melville was a woman, for heaven's sake.' He said no more, as if that fact was all the explanation required.
Weatherall cleared his throat and coughed into his handkerchief.
A ginger-haired man helped himself to more cheese.
'Precisely,' Rathbone agreed, facing Lofthouse unblinkingly. 'The buildings are exactly the same. Our knowledge of Melville's sex has changed, but not of her architectural skills.'
'Oh! Come now!' Lofthouse laughed again, glancing along the table at the others before looking back at Rathbone. 'You cannot seriously be suggesting that a woman-a young woman at that-can conceive and draw up technically perfect plans for the sort of buildings Lambert commissioned and had built, for heaven's sake? Really, Rathbone. We all sympathize with your embarrassment. We have all of us made mistakes of judgment at one time or another…' A smile curled his lips. 'Although not, I think, of that order… or nature…' His smile broadened.
Rathbone could feel the rage inside him almost beyond his grasp to contain. How dare this complacent oaf make a shabby joke out of Keelin Melville's tragedy and society's prejudice?
'Lofthouse, I think…' Laurence began, although there was a look of humor in his eyes also, or so it seemed to Rathbone. He was not in the mood to consider it a reflection from the chandeliers.
'Oh, come on, my dear fellow!' Lofthouse was not going to be hushed. The port was at his elbow, and extremely good. 'It has an element of the absurd, you must admit. When a genius like Rathbone gets caught out so very thoroughly, we lesser mortals must be allowed our moment of laughter. If he is not man enough to take it, then he should not enter the fray!'
Laurence opened his mouth to protest, but Rathbone spoke before he could, leaning forward across the table.
'You can jeer at me all you like. I am perfectly happy to enter the arena and do my best-win, lose, or draw. If my loss gives you pleasure, you are welcome to it!' He ignored the indrawn breath around the table and the looks of amazement. 'But I am deeply offended by your making a public joke out of the death of a young woman whose only sin, so far as we know, was to be denied the opportunity to study or to practice her art so long as we knew she was a woman and not a man. She deceived us because we deserved it-in fact, in a sense demanded it.'
He disregarded Lofthouse's rising anger or Colonel Weatherall's incredulity, even his host's embarrassment 'And to suggest that the buildings are worth less because they were designed by a woman rather than a man is the utmost hypocrisy. You know nothing more or less about them now than you did last week, when you were full of praise. They look exactly the same, your knowledge of their design and construction and material is exactly what it was before. You marveled yesterday, and today you mock, and nothing is different except your perception of the personal rife of the architect.'
'Rathbone, I really think…' Laurence protested.
Lofthouse was red in the face. He half rose to his feet, hands on the white tablecloth.
Rathbone rose also.
