Defend and Betray

“I suppose you don't know anything about him?” she asked without hope, looking around the room a last time before going to her own quarters to prepare herself. Everything he might need seemed to be available for him, the maid would serve his meal, and she should be back by mid-afternoon herself.

“Well, as I said before, I know him by repute,” Tiplady replied somberly. “One ca

She smiled wryly. “And which was he?” Her own opinion of generals was not high.

“Ah…”He breathed out, looking at her with a twisted smile. “I don't know for myself, but he had a name as a soldier's soldier, a good-enough leader, inspiring, personally heroic, but outside uniform not a colorful man, tactically neither a hero nor a disaster.”

“He did not fight in the Crimea, then?” she said too quickly for thought or consideration to guard her tongue. “They were all one or the other-mostly the other.”

A smile puckered his lips against his will. He knew the army's weaknesses, but they were a closed subject, like family faults, not to be exposed or even admitted to outsiders- least of all women.

“No,” he said guardedly. “As I understand it he served most of his active time in India-and then spent a lot of years here at home, in high command, training younger officers and the like.”

“What was his personal reputation? What did people think of him?” She straightened -his blanket yet again, quite u

“I've no idea.” He seemed surprised to be asked. “Never heard anything at all. I told you-he was not personally a colorful man. For heaven's sake, do go and see Mrs. Sobell. You have to discover the truth in the matter and save poor Mrs. Carlyon-or the daughter.”

“Yes, Major. I am about to go.” And without adding anything further except a farewell, she left him alone to think and imagine until she should return.

Edith met her with a quick, anxious interest, rising from the chair where she had been sitting awkwardly, one leg folded under her. She looked tired and too pale for her dark mourning dress to flatter her. Her long fair hair was already pulled untidy, as if she had been ru

“Ah, Hester. I am so glad you could come. The major did not mind? How good of him. Have you learned anything? What has Mr. Rathbone discovered? Oh, please, do come and sit down-here.” She indicated the place opposite where she had been, and resumed her own seat.

Hester obeyed, not bothering to arrange her skirts.

“I am afraid very little so far,” she answered, responding to the last question, knowing it was the only one which mattered. “And of course there will be limits to what he could tell me anyway, since I have no standing in the case.”

Edith looked momentarily confused, then quite suddenly she understood.

“Oh yes-of course.” Her face was bleak, as if the different nature of things lent a grimmer reality to it. “But he is working on it?”

“Of course. Mr. Monk is investigating. I expect he will come here in due course.”

“They won't tell him anything.” Edith's brows rose in surprise.

Hester smiled. “Not intentionally, I know. But he is already engaged with the possibility that it was not Alexandra who killed the general, and certainly not for the reason she said. Edith…”

Edith stared at her, waiting, her eyes intent.

“Edith, it may be that it was Sabella after all-but is that going to be an answer that Alexandra will want? Should we be doing her any service to prove it? She has chosen to give her life to save Sabella-if indeed Sabella is guilty.” She leaned forward earnestly.”But what if it was neither of them? If Alexandra simply thinks it is Sabella and she is confessing to protect her…”

“Yes,” Edith said eageiiy. “That would be marvelous! Hester, do you think it could be true?”

“Perhaps-but then who? Louisa? Maxim Furnival?”

“Ah.” The light died out of Edith's eyes. “Honestly, I wish it could be Louisa, but I doubt it. Why should she?”

“Might she really have been having an affair with the general, and he threw her over-told her it was all finished? You said she was not a woman to take rejection lightly.”

Edith's face reflected a curious mixture of emotions: amusement in her eyes, sadness in her mouth, even a shadow of guilt.

“You never knew Thaddeus, or you wouldn't seriously think of such a thing. He was…” She hesitated, her mind reaching for ideas and framing them into words. “He was… remote. Whatever passion there was in him was private, and chilly, not something to be shared. I never saw him deeply moved by anything.”

A quick smile touched her mouth, imagination, pity and regret in it. “Except stories of heroism, loyalty and sacrifice. I remember him reading 'Sohrab and Rustum' when it was first published four years ago.” She glanced at Hester and saw her incomprehension. “It's a tragic poem by Arnold.” The smile returned, bleak and sad.”It's a complicated story; the point is they are father and son, both great military heroes, and they kill each other without knowing who they are, because they have wound up on opposite sides in a war. It's very moving.”

“And Thaddeus liked it?”

“And the stories of the great heroes of the past-ours and other people's. The Spartans combing their hair before Thermopylae-they all died, you know, three hundred of them, but they saved Greece. And Horatius on the bridge…”

“Iknow,” Hester said quickly. “Macaulay's 'Lays of Ancient Rome.' I begin to understand. There were the passions he could identify with: honor, duty, courage, loyalty-not bad things. I'm sorry…”

Edith gave her a look of sudden warmth. It was the first time they had spoken of Thaddeus as a person they could care about rather than merely as the center of a tragedy. “But I think he was a man of thought rather than feeling,” she went on, returning to the business of it. “Usually he was very controlled, very civilized. I suppose in some ways he was not unlike Mama. He had an absolute commitment to what is right, and I never knew him to step outside it-in his speech or his acts.”

She screwed up her face and shook her head a little. “If he had some secret passion for Louisa he hid it completely, and honestly I ca

She lifted her shoulders high in an exaggerated shrug. “But suppose if he had, and then grown tired of her, or had an attack of conscience. I really believe that Louisa-whom I don't much care for, but I must be honest, I think is quite clever enough to have seen it coming long before he said anything-would have preempted him by leaving him herself. She would choose to be the one to end it; she would never allow him to.”

“But if she loved him?” Hester pressed. “And some women do love the unattainable with a passion they never achieve for what is in their reach. Might she not be reluctant to believe he would never respond-and care so much she would rather kill him than…”

Edith laughed jerkily. “Oh Hester. Don't be absurd! What a romantic you are. You live in a world of grand passions, undying love and devotion, and burning jealousy. Neither of them were remotely like that. Thaddeus was heroic, but he was also pompous, stuffy, very rigid in his views, and cold to talk to. One ca