The William Monk Mysteries

by Anne Perry

  Afterwards, when Fabia had elected to remain with Ursula and the general, and Rosamond hurried Hester out to the trap to resume their visiting of the poor, she whispered to her rapidly and with a little self-consciousness.

  “That was awful. Sometimes you remind me of Joscelin. He used to make me laugh like that.”

  “I didn’t notice you laughing,” Hester said honestly, climbing up into the trap after her and forgetting to arrange her skirts.

  “Of course not.” Rosamond took the reins and slapped the horse forward. “It would never do to be seen. You will come again some time, won’t you?”

  “I am not at all sure I shall be asked,” Hester said ruefully.

  “Yes you will—Aunt Callandra will ask you. She likes you very much—and I think sometimes she gets bored with us here. Did you know Colonel Daviot?”

  “No.” For the first time Hester regretted that she had not. She had seen his portrait, but that was all; he had been a stocky, upright man with a strong-featured face, full of wit and temper. “No, I didn’t.”

  Rosamond urged the horse faster and they careered along the track, the wheels bouncing over the ridges.

  “He was very charming,” she said, watching ahead. “Sometimes. He had a great laugh when he was happy-he also had a filthy temper and was terribly bossy—even with Aunt Callandra. He was always interfering, telling her how she ought to do everything—when he got the whim for it. Then he would forget about whatever it was, and leave her to clear up the mess.”

  She reined in the horse a little, getting it under better control.

  “But he was very generous,” she added. “He never betrayed a friend’s confidence. And the best horseman I ever saw—far better than either Menard or Lovel—and far better than General Wadham.” Her hair was coming undone in the wind, and she ignored it. She giggled happily. “They couldn’t bear each other.”

  It opened up an understanding of Callandra that Hester had never imagined before—a loneliness, and a freedom which explained why she had never entertained the idea of remarriage. Who could follow such a highly individual man? And perhaps also her independence had become more precious as she became more used to its pleasures. And perhaps also there had been more unhappiness there than Hester had imagined in her swift and rather shallow judgments?

  She smiled and made some acknowledgment of having heard Rosamond’s remark, then changed the subject. They arrived at the small hamlet where their further visiting was to be conducted, and it was late in the afternoon, hot and vividly blue and gold as they returned through the heavy fields past the reapers, whose backs were still bent, arms bare. Hester was glad of the breeze of their movement and passing beneath the huge shade trees that leaned over the narrow road was a pleasure. There was no sound but the thud of the horse’s hooves, the hiss of the wheels and the occasional bird song. The light gleamed pale on the straw stalks where the laborers had already passed, and darker on the ungathered heads. A few faint clouds, frail as spun floss, drifted across the horizon.

  Hester looked at Rosamond’s hands on the reins and her quiet, tense face, and wondered if she saw the timeless beauty of it, or only the unceasing sameness, but it was a question she could not ask.

  Hester spent the evening with Callandra in her rooms and did not dine with the family, but she took breakfast in the main dining room the following morning and Rosamond greeted her with evident pleasure.

  “Would you like to see my son?” she invited with a faint blush for her assumption, and her vulnerability.

  “Of course I would,” Hester answered immediately; it was the only possible thing to say. “I cannot think of anything nicer.” Indeed that was probably true. She was not looking forward to her next encounter with Fabia and she certainly did not wish to do any more visiting with General Wadham, any more “good works” among those whom Fabia considered “the deserving poor,” nor to walk in the park again where she might meet that peculiarly offensive policeman. His remarks had been impertinent, and really very unjust. “It will make a beautiful beginning to the day,” she added.

  The nursery was a bright south-facing room full of sunlight and chintz, with a low nursing chair by the window, a rocking chair next to the large, well-railed and guarded fireplace, and at present, since the child was so young, a day crib. The nursery maid, a young girl with a handsome face and skin like cream, was busy feeding the baby, about a year and a half old, with fingers of bread and butter dipped in a chopped and buttered boiled egg. Hester and Rosamond did not interrupt but stood watching.

  The baby, a quiff of blond hair along the crown of his head like a little bird’s comb, was obviously enjoying himself immensely. He accepted every mouthful with perfect obedience and his cheeks grew fatter and fatter. Then with shining eyes he took a deep breath and blew it all out, to the nursery maid’s utter consternation. He laughed so hard his face was bright pink and he fell over sideways in his chair, helpless with delight.

  Rosamond was filled with embarrassment, but all Hester could do was laugh with the baby, while the maid dabbed at her once spotless apron with a damp cloth.

  “Master Harry, you shouldn’t do that!” the maid said as fiercely as she dared, but there was no real anger in her voice, more simple exasperation at having been caught yet again.

  “Oh you dreadful child.” Rosamond went and picked him up, holding him close to her and laying the pale head with its wave of hair close to her cheek. He was still crowing with joy, and looked over his mother’s shoulder at Hester with total confidence that she would love him.

  They spent a happy hour in gentle conversation, then left the maid to continue with her duties, and Rosamond showed Hester the main nursery where Lovel, Menard and Joscelin had played as children: the rocking horse, the toy soldiers, the wooden swords, the musical boxes, and the kaleidoscope; and the dolls’ houses left by an earlier generation of girls—perhaps Callandra herself?

  Next they looked at the schoolroom with its tables and shelves of books. Hester found her hands picking at first idly over old exercises of copperplate writing, a child’s early, careful attempts. Then as she progressed to adolescent years and essays she found herself absorbed in reading the maturing hand. It was an essay in light, fluent style, surprisingly sharp for one so young and with a penetrating, often unkind wit. The subject was a family picnic, and she found herself smiling as she read, but there was pain in it, an awareness under the humor of cruelty. She did not need to look at the spine of the book to know it was Joscelin’s.

  She found one of Lovel’s and turned the pages till she discovered an essay of similar length. Rosamond was searching a small desk for a copy of some verses, and there was time to read it carefully. It was utterly unlike, diffident, romantic, seeing beyond the simple woodland of Shelburne a forest where great deeds could be done, an ideal woman wooed and loved with a clean and untroubled emotion so far from the realities of human need and difficulty Hester found her eyes prickling for the disillusion that must come to such a youth.

  She closed the pages with their faded ink and looked across at Rosamond, the sunlight on her bent head as she fingered through duty books looking for some special poem that caught her own high dream. Did either she or Lovel see beyond the princesses and the knights in armor the fallible, sometimes weak, sometimes frightened, often foolish people beneath—who needed immeasurably more courage, generosity and power to forgive than the creatures of youth’s dreams—and were so much more precious?

  She wanted to find the third essay, Menard’s—and it took her several minutes to locate a book of his and read it. It was stiff, far less comfortable with words, and all through it there was a passionate love of honor, a loyalty to friendship and a sense of history as an unending cavalcade of the proud and the good, with sudden images borrowed from the tales of King Arthur. It was derivative and stilted, but the sincerity still shone through, and she doubted the man had lost the values of the boy who had written so intensely—and awkwardly.

  Rosamond had
found her poem at last, and was so absorbed in it that she was unaware of Hester’s movement towards her, or that Hester glanced over her shoulder and saw that it was an anonymous love poem, very small and very tender.

  Hester looked away and walked to the door. It was not something upon which to intrude.

  Rosamond closed the book and followed a moment after, recapturing her previous gaiety with an effort which Hester pretended not to notice.

  “Thank you for coming up,” she said as they came back into the main landing with its huge jardinieres of flowers. “It was kind of you to be so interested.”

  “It is not kindness at all,” Hester denied quickly. “I think it is a privilege to see into the past as one does in nurseries and old schoolrooms. I thank you for allowing me to come. And of course Harry is delightful! Who could fail to be happy in his presence?”

  Rosamond laughed and made a small gesture of denial with her hand, but she was obviously pleased. They made their way downstairs together and into the dining room, where luncheon was already served and Lovel was waiting for them. He stood up as they came in, and took a step towards Rosamond. For a moment he seemed about to speak, then the impulse died.

  She waited a moment, her eyes full of hope. Hester hated herself for being there, but to leave now would be absurd; the meal was set and the footman waiting to serve it. She knew Callandra had gone to visit an old acquaintance, because it was on Hester’s behalf that she had made the journey, but Fabia was also absent and her place was not set.

  Lovel saw her glance.

  “Mama is not well,” he said with a faint chill. “She has remained in her room.”

  “I am sorry,” Hester said automatically. “I hope it is nothing serious?”

  “I hope not,” he agreed, and as soon as they were seated, resumed his own seat and indicated that the footman might begin to serve them.

  Rosamond nudged Hester under the table with her foot, and Hester gathered that the situation was delicate, and wisely did not pursue it.

  The meal was conducted with stilted and trivial conversation, layered with meanings, and Hester thought of the boy’s essay, the old poem, and all the levels of dreams and realities where so much fell through between one set of meanings and another, and was lost.

  Afterwards she excused herself and went to do what she realized was her duty. She must call on Fabia and apologize for having been rude to General Wadham. He had deserved it, but she was Fabia’s guest, and she should not have embarrassed her, regardless of the provocation.

  It was best done immediately; the longer she thought about it the harder it would be. She had little patience with minor ailments; she had seen too much desperate disease, and her own health was good enough she did not know from experience how debilitating even a minor pain can be when stretched over time.

  She knocked on Fabia’s door and waited until she heard the command to enter, then she turned the handle and went in.

  It was a less feminine room than she had expected. It was plain light Wedgwood blue and sparsely furnished compared with the usual cluttered style. A single silver vase held summer roses in full bloom on the table by the window; the bed was canopied in white muslin, like the inner curtains. On the farthest wall, where the sun was diffused, hung a fine portrait of a young man in the uniform of a cavalry officer. He was slender and straight, his fair hair falling over a broad brow, pale, intelligent eyes and a mobile mouth, humorous, articulate, and she thought in that fleeting instant, a little weak.

  Fabia was sitting up in her bed, a blue satin bedjacket covering her shoulders and her hair brushed and knotted loosely so it fell in a faded coil over her breast. She looked thin and much older than Hester was prepared for. Suddenly the apology was not difficult. She could see all the loneliness of years in the pale face, the loss which would never be repaired

  “Yes?” Fabia said with distinct chill.

  “I came to apologize, Lady Fabia,” Hester replied quietly. “I was very rude to General Wadham yesterday, and as your guest it was inexcusable. I am truly sorry.”

  Fabia’s eyebrows rose in surprise, then she smiled very slightly.

  “I accept your apology. I am surprised you had the grace to come—I had not expected it of you. It is not often I misjudge a young woman.” Her smile lifted the corners of her mouth fractionally, giving her face a sudden life, echoing the girl she must once have been. “It was most embarrassing for me that General Wadham should be so-so deflated. But it was not entirely without its satisfactions. He is a condescending old fool—and I sometimes get very weary of being patronized.”

  Hester was too surprised to say anything at all. For the first time since arriving at Shelburne Hall she actually liked Fabia.

  “You may sit down,” Fabia offered with a gleam of humor in her eyes.

  “Thank you.” Hester sat on the dressing chair covered with blue velvet, and looked around the room at the other, lesser paintings and the few photographs, stiff and very posed for the long time that the camera required to set the image. There was a picture of Rosamond and Lovel, probably at their wedding. She looked fragile and very happy; he was facing the lens squarely, full of hope.

  On the other chest there was an early daguerreotype of a middle-aged man with handsome side-whiskers, black hair and a vain, whimsical face. From the resemblance to Joscelin, Hester assumed it to be the late Lord Shelburne. There was also a pencil sketch of all three brothers as boys, sentimental, features a little idealized, the way one remembers summers of the past.

  “I’m sorry you are feeling unwell,” Hester said quietly. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “I should think it highly unlikely; I am not a casualty of war—at least not in the sense that you are accustomed to,” Fabia replied.

  Hester did not argue. It rose to the tip of her tongue to say she was accustomed to all sorts of hurt, but then she knew it would be trite—she had not lost a son, and that was the only grief Fabia was concerned with.

  “My eldest brother was killed in the Crimea.” Hester still found the words hard to say. She could see George in her mind’s eye, the way he walked, hear his laughter, then it dissolved and a sharper memory returned of herself and Charles and George as children, and the tears ached in her throat beyond bearing. “And both my parents died shortly after,” she said quickly. “Shall we speak of something else?”

  For a moment Fabia looked startled. She had forgotten, and now she was faced with a loss as huge as her own.

  “My dear—I’m so very sorry. Of course—you did say so. Forgive me. What have you done this morning? Would you care to take the trap out later? It would be no difficulty to arrange it.”

  “I went to the nursery and met Harry.” Hester smiled and blinked. “He’s beautiful—” And she proceeded to tell the story.

  She remained at Shelburne Hall for several more days, sometimes taking long walks alone in the wind and brilliant air. The parkland had a beauty which pleased her immensely and she felt at peace with it as she had in few other places. She was able to consider the future much more clearly, and Callandra’s advice, repeated several times more in their many conversations, seemed increasingly wise the more she thought of it. The tension among the members of the household changed after the dinner with General Wadham. Surface anger was covered with the customary good manners, but she became aware through a multitude of small observations that the unhappiness was a deep and abiding part of the fabric of their lives.

  Fabia had a personal courage which might have been at least half the habitual discipline of her upbringing and the pride that would not allow others to see her vulnerability. She was autocratic, to some extent selfish, although she would have been the last to think it of herself. But Hester saw the loneliness in her face in moments when she believed herself unobserved, and at times beneath the old woman so immaculately dressed, a bewilderment which laid bare the child she had once been. Undoubtedly she loved her two surviving sons, but she did not especially like them, and no
one could charm her or make her laugh as Joscelin had. They were courteous, but they did not flatter her, they did not bring back with small attentions the great days of her beauty when dozens had courted her and she had been the center of so much. With Joscelin’s death her own hunger for living had gone.

  Hester spent many hours with Rosamond and became fond of her in a distant, nonconfiding sort of way. Callandra’s words about a brave, protective smile came to her sharply on several occasions, most particularly one late afternoon as they sat by the fire and made light, trivial conversation. Ursula Wadham was visiting, full of excitement and plans for the time when she would be married to Menard. She babbled on, facing Rosamond but apparently not seeing anything deeper than the perfect complexion, the carefully dressed hair and the rich afternoon gown. To her Rosamond had everything a woman could desire, a wealthy and titled husband, a strong child, beauty, good health and sufficient talent in the arts of pleasing. What else was there to desire?

  Hester listened to Rosamond agreeing to all the plans, how exciting it would be and how happy the future looked, and she saw behind the dark eyes no gleam of confidence and hope, only a sense of loss, a loneliness and a kind of desperate courage that keeps going because it knows no way to stop. She smiled because it brought her peace, it prevented questions and it preserved a shred of pride.

  Lovel was busy. At least he had purpose and as long as he was fulfilling it any darker emotion was held at bay. Only at the dinner table when they were all together did the occasional remark betray the underlying knowledge that something had eluded him, some precious element that seemed to be his was not really. He could not have called it fear—he would have hated the word and rejected it with horror—but staring at him across the snow-white linen and the glittering crystal, Hester thought that was what it was. She had seen it so often before, in totally different guises, when the danger was physical, violent and immediate. At first because the threat was so different she thought only of anger, then as it nagged persistently at the back of her mind, unclassified, suddenly she saw its other face, domestic, personal, emotional pain, and she knew it was a jar of familiarity.