He looked sideways at Monk, a slightly rueful sadness in his face. 'It is an action not entirely without honor. In her own way, she has behaved the best. There is no doubt she is in love with Lucius. It was plain for anyone to see that they doted upon each other. They seemed to have an unusual communion of thought and taste, even of humor. But she is older than he, already a widow, and from a very... ordinary ... background. This way it remains a grand romance. The memory of it will never be soured by its fading into the mundane realities. Think very carefully, Mr. Monk, before you precipitate a tragedy.'
Monk stood in the late-morning sun in this peaceful garden full of birdsong, where perhaps such a selfless decision had been made. It seemed the most likely answer. A decision like that might be hysterical, perhaps, but then Miriam Gardiner was a woman giving up her most precious dream.
'I have already told Major Stourbridge that if I find Mrs. Gardiner I would not attempt to persuade her to return against her will,' Monk answered. 'Or report back to him anything beyond what she wished me to. That would not necessarily include her whereabouts.'
Campbell did not reply for several minutes. Eventually, he looked up, regarding Monk carefully, as if making some judgment which mattered to him deeply.
'I trust you will behave with discretion and keep in mind that you are dealing with the deepest emotions, and men of a very high sense of honor.'
'I will,' Monk replied, wishing again Lucius Stourbridge had chosen some other person of whom to ask assistance, or that he had had the sense to follow his judgment, not his sentimentality, in accepting. Marriage seemed already to have robbed him of his wits!
'I imagine they will be serving luncheon,' Campbell said, looking towards the house. 'I assume you are staying?'
'I still have to speak to the servants,' Monk answered grimly, walking across the gravel. 'Even if I learn nothing.'
2
HESTER SHIFTED from foot to foot impatiently as she stood in the waiting room in the North London Hospital. The sun was hot and the closed air claustrophobic. She thought with longing of the green expanse of Hampstead Heath, only a few hundred yards away. But she was here with a purpose. There was a massive amount to do, and as always, too little time. Too many people were ill, confused by the medical system, if you could call it by so flattering a word, and frightened of authority.
Her desire was to improve the quality of nursing from the manual labor it usually was to a skilled and respected profession. Since Florence Nightingale’s fame had spread after the Crimean War, the public in general regarded her as a heroine. She was second in popularity only to the Queen. But the popular vision of her was a sentimental image of a young woman wandering around a hospital with a lamp in her hand, mopping fevered brows and whispering words of comfort, rather than the reality Hester knew. She had nursed with Florence Nightingale and had experienced the despair, the unnecessary deaths brought on by disease and incompetence rather than the injuries of battle. She also knew Miss Nightingale’s true heroism, the strength of her will to fight for better conditions, for the use of common sense in sanitation and efficiency in administration. Above all, she fought to make nursing an acceptable profession which would attract decent women and treat them with respect. Old-fashioned ideas must be got rid of, up-to-date methods must be used, and skills rewarded.
Now that Hester was no longer solely responsible for her own support, she could devote some of her time to this end. She had made it plain to Monk from the outset that she would never agree to sit at home and sew a fine seam and gossip with other women who had too little to do. He had offered no disagreement, knowing it was a condition of acceptance.
They had had certain differences, and would no doubt have more. She smiled now in the sun as she thought of them. It was not easy for either of them to make all the changes necessary to adapt to married life. Deeply as she loved him, sharing a bedroom—let alone a bed—with another person was a loss of privacy she found not as easy to overcome as she had imagined. She was not especially modest—nursing life had made that impossible—but she still reveled in the independence of having the window open or closed as she wished, of putting the light out when she chose, and of having as many or as few blankets over her as she liked. In the Crimea she had worked until she was exhausted. Then she had lain on her cot hunched up, shaking with cold, muscles too knotted up to sleep, and had to arise in the morning when she was still almost drunken with tiredness.
But to have the warmth, the gentleness, of someone beside her who she knew without question loved her, was greater than all the tiny inconveniences. They were only pinpricks. She knew Monk felt them, too. She had seen flashes of temper in his face, quickly smothered when he realized he was thinking only of himself. He was used to both privacy and independence as much as she was.
But Monk had less to forfeit than Hester. They were living in his rooms in Fitzroy Street. It made excellent sense, of course. She had only sufficient lodgings to house her belongings and to sleep in between the private nursing cases she had taken after being dismissed from hospital service for insubordination. He was developing a good practice as an agent of enquiry for private cases after his own dismissal from the police force—also for insubordination!
For him to have moved would have been unwise. People knew where to find him. The house was well situated, and the landlady had been delighted to allow them an extra room to make into a kitchen, and to give up having to cook and clean for Monk, a duty she had done only from necessity before, realizing he would probably starve if she didn’t. She was very pleased to have both the additional rent and more time to devote to her increasingly demanding husband—and whatever other pursuits she enjoyed beyond Fitzroy Street.
So Hester was, with some difficulty, learning to become domestic and trying to do it with a modicum of grace.
Her real passion was still to reform nursing, as it had been ever since she had come home from the Crimea. Lady Callandra Daviot shared her feelings, which was why Hester was standing in the North London Hospital now waiting for Callandra to come and recount the success or failure of their latest attempt.
She heard the door opening and swung around. Callandra came in, her hair sticking out in tufts as if she had run her fingers through it, her face set tight and hard with anger. There was no need to ask if she had succeeded.
Callandra had dignity, courage and good humor, but not even her dearest friend would have said she was graceful. In spite of the best efforts of her maid, her clothes looked as if she paid no regard to them, merely picking up what first came to her hand when she opened the wardrobe door. Today it was a green skirt and a blue blouse. It was warm enough inside the hospital for her not to wear whatever jacket she had chosen.
