wished. She threw her arms around him and hugged him.
He stood frozen for a moment, then responded, gently at first, as if she might break, then strongly with sheer joy.
Claudine came into the room, gasped, then whisked around and took hold of Flo, behind her, and hugged her too, almost bumping into Margaret.
There was a knock on the door and Sutton stepped over and threw it open, blinking in amazement when he saw a smartly dressed man with fair hair and a long, intelligent face, at the moment filled with overwhelming emotion.
“Oliver!” Hester said in disbelief.
Rathbone looked questioningly from one to another of them, then solely at Margaret.
“Come in,” Margaret invited him. “Have breakfast with us. It’s perfectly all right.” Then she smiled hugely as well. “We’ve beaten it!”
He did not hesitate an instant; he strode in and took her in his arms, hugging her just as all the others had, in a bewilderment of happiness.
Finally he turned to Hester. “You haven’t been home for over a week. I’ll take you now.” It was not a question.
She smiled at him, shaking her head. “Thank you, Oliver, but—”
“No,” he cut across her. “Margaret will stay here now; you must go home. Even if you don’t think you deserve it, Monk does.”
“I’ll go home,” she said meekly. “I’ll just go with Sutton, if you don’t mind.”
He hesitated only an instant. “Of course I don’t mind,” he replied. “Mr. Sutton deserves that honor.”
So Hester walked home beside Sutton, pulling the rat cart, smiling all the way. Snoot sat upright in the front, quivering with excitement at all the new sights and smells, and the infinite possibility of ratting ahead of him.
Sutton put down the cart in Fitzroy Street and turned to Hester.
“Thank you,” she said with profound sincerity. “That is far too small a word for what I feel, but I don’t know any large enough.” She offered him her hand.
He took it a little awkwardly. “Yer don’t need ter thank me, Miss ’Ester. We done well together.”
“Yes we did.” She shook his hand, then let it go and turned to walk up to the step. She would have to knock, or look for her key. She had thought Rathbone had said Monk was home, but perhaps she only wanted to believe that. How absurd it would be if he were not!
The door opened, as if Monk had been watching for her. He stood just inside the hall looking thin and ashen- faced, his eyes shining with joy so intense he could not speak.
Rathbone had planned this—she knew it now—but there was no time even to think of him. She walked straight into Monk’s arms and clung to him so fiercely she must have bruised his body. She felt him shudder, holding on to her with such passion he could scarcely breathe, his tears wetting her face.
It was the rat catcher who softly closed the door, leaving them alone.
FOURTEEN
Monk stood in the bedroom in the wan morning light looking at Hester still sleeping. He wanted to stay, simply to be as close to her as he could. He would like to wait until she woke, however long it was, and light the fire downstairs, regardless of expense. He would make the room warm for her, bring her whatever she wanted, tea, toast, go out in the rain and buy whatever else she would like and bring it back for her. Then when she was ready, talk about everything, tell her all that had mattered to him, and learn more than the few bare facts she had told him of her time in Portpool Lane. He wanted to hear the details, how she had felt in all the victories and the pain, so he could be closer to her.
Before that he had one more idea to pursue. He knew nothing about any of the missing crewmen except Hodge. He was apparently the only one married. It was perhaps intrusive to go to his widow now, but it was just possible that Hodge might have told her something about one of the missing men: a woman, a place, anything at all to help find them.
He went downstairs and cleaned out the grate, clumsily. It was not a job he was accustomed to doing, and at the end he found himself with rather more cleaning up to do than he had expected. Then he laid a new fire and lit it. When it was drawing nicely, he damped it down so it would last. He filled the coal buckets to the top and wrote a note for Hester, saying simply that he loved her. At any other time he would have thought it ridiculous, but today it was the most natural thing to do. He only became self-conscious after he had propped it up on the table and had gone as far as the door, coat collar turned up. He smiled for a moment, then went out into the wind and sleet.
He had no idea of Hodge’s widow’s address; Louvain’s office was the obvious place to ask. However, the surgeon or the morgue attendant might know, and he would far rather ask them. He had too much other business to address with Louvain: the death of his sisters, the whereabouts of his missing crew, and his own black rage with him for deliberately sending Ruth Clark to Hester, knowing she had plague, and to use it to manipulate Monk. He dared not even think of that; the raw emotion it woke in him robbed him of reason, of any kind of judgment. He wanted to beat Louvain with his own hands until he was a bloody pulp and too helpless even to ask for mercy. And that blind rage frightened him; it woke old memories of another rage which had ended in murder, and only by the grace of God had he not been guilty.
So instead he set out to look for the attendant at the morgue. He was walking along the Embankment when he heard a scampering of feet. The next moment Scuff’s voice was demanding to know what was the matter with him.
“In’t yer talkin’ ter me no more?”
Monk stopped, taken aback at how pleased he was to see him. “I was thinking,” he excused himself.
