Страница 54 из 99
‘Twice, but…”
“Was it painful?”
“Yes, but…”
Til see you home, Mr. Monk.” There was only the faintest shadow of a smile on her lips.
He took a deep breath. “Thank you, Mrs. Fyffe.”
In Newgate, Hester swung from moods of hard-fought-for hope, down to engulfing despair, and up the long incline back to hope again. The boredom and the sense of helplessness were the worst afflictions. Physical labor, however pointless, would have dulled the edges of pain, and she would have slept. As it was she lay awake in almost total darkness, shivering with cold, her imagination torturing her with infinite possibilities-and always returning to the same one, the short walk from the cell to the shed where the rope awaited her. She was not afraid of death itself, it was that she realized with icy pain that the belief she thought she had as to what lay after was simply not strong enough to stand in the face of reality. She was frightened as she had never been before. Even in the battlefield death would have been sudden, without warning or time to think. And after all she had not been alone. She had faced it with others, almost all of them suffering far more than she. Her mind had been filled with what she could do for them; it had left no room for thoughts of herself. Now she realized what a blessing that had been.
The wardresses continued to treat her with a coldness and unique scorn, but she became accustomed to it and the small irritant gave her something to fight against, as one digs nails into the palm of the hand when fighting a greater agony.
One particularly cold day the cell door opened and, after the briefest word from the wardress, her sister-in-law, Imogen, came in. Hester was surprised to see her; she had accepted Charles’s word as final and had not expected him to relent. The darker the outlook became, the less likely was he to do so.
Imogen was fashionably dressed, as if going to pay afternoon calls on Society, her skirts broad-sweeping and flounced, her bodice tight and her sleeves elaborately decorated. Her bo
“I’m sorry,” she said instantly, seeing Hester’s face and glancing only momentarily at the bare cell. “I had to tell Charles I was going to call on the Misses Begbie. Please don’t tell him I was here, if you don’t mind. I-I would rather not face a quarrel just now.” She looked both embarrassed and apologetic. “He-” She stopped.
“He commanded you not to come,” Hester finished for her. “Don’t worry, of course I shall not tell him.” She wanted to thank Imogen for coming-she really was grateful-and yet the words stuck in her mouth. It all sounded artificial, when it should have been most real.
Imogen fished in her reticule and brought out sweet-smelling soap and a little bag of dried lavender so fragrant Hester could smell it even from two yards distance, and the femininity of it brought the tears uncontrollably to her eyes.
Imogen looked up quickly and her polite expression vanished and emotion flooded her face. Impulsively she dropped the soap and lavender and moved forward, taking Hester in her arms and holding her with a strength Hester would not have thought her to possess.
“We’ll win!” she said fiercely. “You didn’t kill that woman and we’ll prove it. Mr. Monk may not be very nice, but he is wildly clever, and quite ruthless. Remember how he solved the Grey case when everyone thought it was impossible. And he is on your side, my dear. Don’t ever give up hope.”
Hester had managed to keep her composure with every other visitor she had had, even Callandra, difficult as that had been, but now she found it too much. The long denial would not last anymore. Clinging on, she wept in Imogen’s arms until she was exhausted and a kind of peace of despair came over her. Imogen’s words had been intended to comfort, but perversely they had focused her mind on the truth she had been struggling against all the time since she had first been moved here from the Coldbath Fields. All that Monk, or anyone else, could do might not be enough. Sometimes i
But now instead of the struggle against it, against the fear and the injustice, there was something inside her close to acceptance. Perhaps it was only tiredness, but it was better than the desperate struggle. There was a sort of release in it.
Now she did not want to listen to talk of hope, because she had passed beyond it, but yet it would be cruel to tell Imogen so, and the new calm was too fragile to be trusted. Perhaps there was still something in her which clung to unreality? She did not want to put it into words.
Imogen stepped back and looked at her. She must have seen or sensed some change, because she said nothing more about it but bent and picked up the dropped soap and the lavender.
“I didn’t ask if you could have them,” she said matter-of-factly. “Maybe you should hide them?”
Hester sniffed and took out her handkerchief to blow her nose.
Imogen waited.
“Thank you,” Hester said at last, reaching out to take them and push them down the front of her dress. The soap was a trifle uncomfortable, but even that had its own kind of satisfaction.
Imogen sat down on the cot, her skirts in a huge swirl around her, exactly as if she were visiting a lady of Society; although since Mr. Latterly Senior’s disgrace, she did not do that anymore. The Misses Begbie were now the height of her aspirations.
“Do you ever see anyone else?” she asked with interest. “I mean other than that fearful woman who let me in. She is a woman, I suppose?”
Hester smiled in spite of herself. “Oh yes. If you saw the way she looks at Oliver Rathbone, you’d know she was.”
“You don’t mean it?” Imogen was incredulous, laughter touching her in spite of the place and the occasion. “She makes me think of Mrs. MacDuff, my cousin’s governess. We used to rag her terribly. I blush when I think how cruel we were. Children can be devastatingly candid. Sometimes the truth is better not told. It may be in one’s own heart one knows it, but one can behave so much better if one is not forced to keep looking at it.”
Hester smiled wryly. “I think I am in exactly that situation, but I have very little else to take my attention.”
“Have you heard from Mr. Monk?’
“No.”
“Oh.” Imogen looked surprised, and suddenly Hester felt as if Monk had let her down. Why had he not written? Surely he must know how much it would have meant to have received even a word of encouragement? Why was he so thoughtless? And that was a stupid question, because she knew the answer. There was little tenderness in his nature, and what there was was directed towards women like Imogen, gentle, sweet-natured, dependent women who complemented his own strengths, not women like Hester, whom he regarded at the best of times as a friend, like another man, and at the worst as opinionated, abrasive, dogmatic, and an offense to her own sex.
Loyalty and justice would demand that he search for the truth, but to expect or look for comfort as well was bound to end in hurt and in an inevitable sense of having been let down.
And that was precisely what she did feel.
Imogen was watching her closely. She read her as only another woman could.
“Are you in love with him?” she asked.
Hester was horrified. “No! Certainly not! I would not go so far as to say he is everything I despise in a man, but he is certainly a great deal. Of course he is clever, I would not take that from him for a moment, but he is on occasion both arrogant and cruel and I would not trust him to be gentle, or not to take advantage of weakness, for a minute.”
Imogen smiled.
“My dear, I did not ask if you trusted or admired him, or even if you liked him. I asked if you were in love with him, which is quite a different matter.”