A sudden, fearful death (50 page)

But the fear inside her, the sick
doubt, was ruining it anyway. She could not meet his eyes or speak to him naturally
as she used to. All the old ease, the trust, and the laughter were gone.

She must see him. Win or lose, she
must know.

The opportunity came the day
Lovat-Smith concluded his case. She had been discussing a pauper who had just
been admitted and had persuaded the governors that the man was deserving and in
great need. Kristian Beck was the ideal person to treat him. The case was too
complex for the student doctors, the other surgeons were fully occupied, and
of course Sir Herbert was absent for an unforeseeable time— perhaps forever.

She knew Kristian was in his rooms
from Mrs. Flaherty. She went to his door and knocked, her heart beating so violently
she imagined her whole body shook. Her mouth was dry. She knew she would
stumble when she spoke.

She heard his voice invite her to
enter, and suddenly she wanted to run, but her legs would not move.

He called again.

This time she pushed the door and
went in.

His face lit with pleasure as soon
as he saw her and he rose from his seat behind the table.

"Callandra! Come in—come in! I
have hardly seen you for days." His eyes narrowed a little as he looked at
her more closely. There was nothing critical in him, just a gentleness that
sent her senses lurching with the power of her own feelings. "You look
tired, my dear. Are you not well?"

It was on her lips to tell him the
truth, as she always had, most particularly to him, but it was the perfect
excuse to evade.

"Not perhaps as I would like
to be. But it is of no importance." Her words came in a rush, her tongue
fumbling. "I certainly don't need a doctor. It will pass."

"Are you sure?" He looked
anxious. "If you'd prefer not to see me, then ask Allington. He is a good
man, and here today."

"If it persists, I will,"
she lied. "But I have come about a man admitted today who most certainly
does need your help." And she described the patient in detail, hearing her
own voice going on and on as if it were someone else's.

After several moments he held up
his hand.

"I understand—I will see him.
There is no need to persuade me." Again he looked at her closely.
"Is something troubling you, my dear? You are not at all yourself. Have we
not trusted one another sufficiently that you can allow me to help?"

It was an open invitation, and she
knew that by refusing she would not only close the door and make it harder to
open again next time, but she would hurt him. His emotion was there in his
eyes, and it should have made her heart sing.

Now she felt choked with unshed
tears. All the loneliness of an uncounted span, long before her husband had
died, times when he was brisk, full of his own concerns—not unkind, simply
unable to bridge a gulf of difference between them—all the hunger for intimacy
of the heart was wide and vulnerable within her.

"It's only the wretched
business of the nurse," she said, looking down at the floor. "And the
trial. I don't know what to think, and I am allowing it to trouble me more than
I should ... I am sorry. Please forgive me for burdening everyone else with it
when we all have sufficient to bear for ourselves."

"Is that all?" he said
curiously, his voice lifted a little in question.

"I was fond of her," she
replied, looking up at him because that at least was totally true. "And
she reminded me of a certain young woman I care about even more. I am just
tired. I wiD be much better tomorrow." And she forced herself to smile,
even though she felt it must look ghastly.

He smiled back, a sad, gentle look,
and she was not sure whether he had believed anything she had said. One thing
was certain, she could not possibly ask him about Marianne Gillespie. She could
not bear to hear the answer.

She rose to her feet, backing
toward the door.

"Thank you very much for
accepting Mr. Burke. I was sure you would." And she reached for the door
handle, gave him another brief, sickly smile, and escaped.

* * * * *

Sir Herbert turned the moment
Rathbone came in the cell door. Seen from the floor of the courtroom at all but
a few moments, he had looked well in command of himself, but closer to, in the
hard daylight of the single, high window, he was haggard. The flesh of his face
was puffy except around the eyes, where the shadows were dark, as if he had
slept only fitfully and without ease. He was used to decisions of life or
death, he was intimately acquainted with all the physical frailty of man and
the extremity of pain and death. But he was also used to being in command; the
one who took the actions, or refrained; the one who made the judgments on which
someone else's fate was balanced. This time he was helpless. It was Rathbone
who had control, not he, and it frightened him. It was in his eyes, in the way he
moved his head, something even in the smell of the room.

Rathbone was used to reassuring
people without actually promising anything. It was part of his profession. With
Sir Herbert it was more difficult than usual. The accepted phrases and manners
were ones with which he was only too familiar himself. And the cause for fear
was real.

"It is not going well—is
it?" Sir Herbert said without prevarication, his eyes intent on Rathbone's
face. There was both hope and fear in him.

"It is early yet."
Rathbone moderated, but he would not lie. "But it is true that we have so
far made no serious inroads into his case."

"He cannot prove I killed
her." There was the very faintest note of panic in Sir Herbert's voice.
They both heard it. Sir Herbert blushed. "I didn't. This business of
having a romantic liaison with her is preposterous. If you'd known the woman
you would never have entertained the idea. She simply wasn't—wasn't remotely of
that turn of mind. I don't know how to make it plainer."

"Can you think of another
explanation of her letters?" Rathbone asked with no real hope.

"No! I can't. That is what is
so frightening! It is like an absurd nightmare." His voice was rising with
fear, growing sharper. Looking at his face, his eyes, Rathbone believed him
entirely. He had spent years refining his judgment, staking his professional
reputation upon it. Sir Herbert Stanhope was telling the truth. He had no idea
what Prudence Barrymore had meant, and it was his very confusion and ignorance
which frightened him most, the complete loss of reality, events he could
neither understand nor control sweeping him along and threatening to carry him
all the way to destruction.

"Could it be some sort of
malicious joke?" Rathbone asked desperately. "People write strange
things in their diaries. Could she be using your name to protect someone
else?"

Sir Herbert looked startled, then a
flicker of hope brightened his face. "I suppose it is conceivable, yes.
But I have no idea whom. I wish to God I had! But why would she do such a
thing? She was only writing to her sister. She cannot have expected the letters
ever to be public."

"Her sister's husband,
perhaps?" Rathbone suggested, knowing it was foolish even as the words
were out.

"An affair with her sister's
husband?" Sir Herbert was both shocked and skeptical.

"No," Rathbone replied
patiently. "It is possible her sister's husband might read the letters.
It is not unknown for a man to read his wife's letters."

"Oh!" Sir Herbert's face
cleared. "Yes of course. That would be perfectly natural. I have done that
from time to time myself. Yes—that is an explanation. Now you must find who the
man is that she means. What about that man Monk? Can't he find him?" Then
the moment's ease slipped away from him. "But there is so little time. Can
you ask for an adjournment, a continuance, or whatever it is called?"

Rathbone did not answer.

"It gives me much more
ammunition with which to question Mrs. Barker," he replied instead, then
remembered with a chill that it was Faith Barker who had offered the letters to
Monk in the conviction they would hang Sir Herbert. Whatever Prudence had
meant, her sister was unaware of any secret the letters contained. He struggled
to keep his disillusion from his face, and knew he failed.

"There is an
explanation," Sir Herbert said desperately, his fists clenched, his powerful
jaw gritted tight. "God damn it—I never had the slightest personal
interest in the woman! Nor did I ever say anything which could ..." Suddenly
sheer, blind horror filled him. "Oh God!" He stared at Rathbone,
terror in his eyes.

Rathbone waited, teetering on the
edge of hope.

Sir Herbert swallowed. He tried to
speak, but his lips were dry. He tried again.

"I praised her work! I praised
it a great deal. Do you think she could have misinterpreted that as admiration
for her person? I praised her often!" There was a fine sweat of fear on
his lip and brow. "She was the finest nurse I ever had. She was
intelligent, quick to learn, precise to obey, and yet not without initiative.
She was always immaculately clean. She never complained of long hours, and she fought
like a tiger to save a life." His eyes were fixed on Rathbone's. "But
I swear before God, I never meant anything personal by my praise for
her—simply what I said. No more, never more!" He put his head in his
hands. "God preserve me from working with young women—young women of good
family who expect and desire suitors."

Rathbone had a very powerful fear
that he was going to get his wish—and be preserved from working with anyone at
all—although he doubted God had anything to do with it.

"I will do everything I
can," he said with a voice far firmer and more confident than he felt.
"Keep your spirits high. There is very much more than a reasonable doubt,
and your own manner is one of our strongest assets. Geoffrey Taunton is by no
means clear, nor Miss Cuthbert-son. And there are other possibilities
also—Kristian Beck, for one."

"Yes." Sir Herbert rose
slowly, forcing himself to regain his composure. Years of ruthless
self-discipline finally conquered his inner panic. "But reasonable doubt.
Dear Heaven—that would ruin my career!"

"It does not have to be
forever," Rathbone said with complete honesty. "If you are acquitted,
the case will remain open. It may be a very short time, a few weeks, before
they find the true killer."

But they both knew that even reasonable
doubt had still to be fought for to save Sir Herbert from the gallows—and they
had only a few days left.

Rathbone held out his hand. It was
a gesture of faith. Sir Herbert shook it, holding on longer than was customary,
as if it were a lifeline. He forced a smile which had more courage in it than
confidence.

Rathbone left with a greater
determination to fight than he could recall in years.

* * * * *

After his testimony Monk left the
court, his stomach churning and his whole body clenched with anger. He did not
even know against whom to direct it, and that compounded the pain inside him.
Had Prudence really been so blind? He did not wish to think of her as fallible
to such a monstrous degree. It was so far from the woman for whom he had felt
such grief at the crowded funeral in the church at Hanwell. She had been brave,
and noble, and he had felt a cleanness inside from having known of her. He had
understood her dreams, and her fierce struggle, and the price she had paid for
them. Something in him felt at one with her.

And yet he was so flawed himself in
his judgment or he would never have loved Hermione. And the very word
love
seemed
inappropriate when he thought of the emotion he had felt, the turmoil, the
need, the loneliness. It was not for any real woman, it was for what he had
imagined her to be, a dream figure who would fill all his own emptinesses, a
woman of tenderness and purity, a woman who both loved and needed him. He
had-never looked at the reality—a woman afraid of the heights and the depths of
feeling, a small, craven woman who hugged her safety to her and was content to
stand on the edge of all the heat of the battle.

How could Monk, of all people,
condemn Prudence Barrymore for misjudgment?

And yet it still hurt. He strode
across Newgate Street regardless of horses shying and drivers shouting at him
and a light gig veering out of his way. He was nearly run down by a black
landau; the footman riding at the side let fly at Monk a string of language
that caused even the coachman to sit a little more upright in surprise.

Without making any deliberate
decision, Monk found himself going in the general direction of the hospital,
and after twenty minutes' swift walking, he hailed a hansom and completed the
rest of the journey. He did not even know if Hester was on duty or in the
nurses' dormitory catching some well-needed sleep, and he was honest enough to
admit he did not care. She was the only person to whom he could confide the
confusion and power of his feelings.

As it chanced, she had just fallen
asleep after a long day's duty beginning before seven, but he knew where the
nurses' dormitory was and he strode in with an air of such authority that no
one stopped or questioned him until he was at the entrance doorway. Then a
large nurse with ginger hair and arms like a navvy stood square in the middle,
staring at him grimly.