Anne Perry - A Breach of Promise

He laughed abruptly. "That is hardly comparable, my dear girl. I know an infinitely greater amount about the world and its ways than you do."

"Of course you do!" she rejoined smartly. "Nobody told you you should stay in the nursery and drink milk for the rest of your life!"

"Really, Perdita!" He bridled, stepping backwards. "Your complete loss of composure rather proves what I say. You are overwrought and quite unable to think clearly. That is not a matter you should be discussing in front of Miss Latterly and Mr. Monk."

"Why not?" she demanded. "You are trying to dismiss Hester. Should that be done behind her back?"

"Perdita, please control yourself!" Athol was becoming seriously annoyed now. His rather thin patience was worn through. "Have Martha make you a cup of tea or something. This vindicates my judgment that this has all been too much for you. If you are not careful you will take a fit of the vapors, and then you can be no help to Gabriel or anyone else."

"I shall not take a fit of the vapors!" Perdita retaliated. "The very worst I shall do is tell you precisely what I think and feel about your interfering in my household. But believe me, Athol, that could be very bad. Hester is staying here, and that is the end to it. If you do not find that something you can abide, then I shall be sorry not to see you until Gabriel is better and she has been released to care for someone else… but I shall endure it. Stoically!" Her face was bright pink, and in spite of her attitude of confidence, she was trembling.

Hester was trying very hard to keep the smile from her lips.

Monk did not bother.

"I am sure your husband will be obliged to you, Mrs. Sheldon," he said quietly. "It is not pleasant to rely on someone and have them dismissed by anyone else, no matter how well intended. And your understanding and feelings regarding the Melville case will no doubt make it much easier for him to bear his own sense of distress, since he will not have to do it alone."

"I wiE thank you to concern yourself with your own affairs, sir!" Athol said to him coldly. "You have already brought enough distress and disturbance into this house. We should not even have heard of this miserable, farcical business if it were not for you. Women dressing up as men, deceiving the world, trying to ape their betters and living a completely unnatural life. It is a debasement of all that is purest and most honorable in domestic happiness, and those things any decent man holds dear… those very values which are the cornerstone of any civilized society."

Perdita stared at him. "Why shouldn't women design houses? We live in them just as much as men do-more so."

"Because you are plainly not competent to do so!" he answered, exasperation sharpening his voice. "That is self-evident." He swept his arm sideways, dramatically. "You run households, that is an utterly different affair. It does not call for mathematical or logical skills, for special perception, individuality, or thought-and certainly not for genius-"

Monk interrupted. "If you have your household accounts kept for you by someone with no mathematical skills you will be in a very unfortunate position. But that is irrelevant. Keelin Melville was a woman, and she was the most brilliant architect of this generation, perhaps of this century."

"Nonsense!" Athol laughed derisively. "When one looks at her work with real perception, one can see that it is eccentric, highly unlikely to last. It has a femininity to it, a fundamental weakness."

Perdita let out a howl of rage and turned on her heel. Then as she reached the corridor she swung around again, staring at Athol.

"I think it is going to rain. You had better leave before you get soaked on the way home. I should not like you to catch pneumonia."

In spite of himself Monk glanced out the window. Brilliant sunshine streamed in out of a dazzling sky. He glanced at Hester and saw her eyes full of deep, shining satisfaction.

Rathbone also encountered society's prejudices regarding Keelin Melville. He knew of nothing else he could do in the case. His client was dead. There was nothing further to defend or to prosecute. There were other cases to which he needed to turn his attention. But tomorrow would be sufficient time.

Today he was weighed down by the sense of his failure.

Unfortunately, he had social obligations which, if he did not attend to them, would make the threads of daily life harder to pick up. He could not mourn the Melville case indefinitely. Perhaps thinking of something else, being surrounded by other people whose minds were occupied with other matters, would make it easier for him. It might prove like a cold bath, agonizing for the first few minutes, then invigorating, or at least leaving him a little warmer afterwards from the chill of grief.

He attended a dinner party at the house of a man who had long been an associate, and perhaps also a friend-at least their acquaintance went back to their earliest days of practicing law.

James Laurence had married well, and his house in Mayfair was very fine indeed. Rathbone could have afforded one like it if he had wanted one sufficiently. He might have had to do without one or two other things, but it would not have been impossible.

But Laurence had chosen to marry and to entertain in society. He also selected cases largely according to the fee he would charge, in order to support his choice. Rathbone did not wish to do that. His rooms suited him perfectly well. Of course, if he married that would have to change.

He went in and found several of the guests already arrived. The chandeliers were dazzling. The sound of laughter and the chink of glass filled the room amid the exquisitely colored skirts of the women, the glitter of jewels and the pallor of shoulders and bosoms.

He was greeted and absorbed into the company immediately. Everyone was courteous and spoke of all manner of subjects: what was currently playing at the theater; the last parliamentary debate and what might be expected of the next; a little bit of harmless gossip as to who might marry whom. It was light and pleasantly relaxing.

Only after dinner, when the ladies had retired to the withdrawing room and the gentlemen remained at the table, passing port and savoring a little excellent Stilton, was the matter of Keelin Melville raised, and then it was obliquely.

"Poor old Lambert," Lofthouse said ruefully, holding his glass in his hand and turning it around so the light fell through the ruby liquid. "He must feel a complete fool."

"It's his daughter I'm sorry for," Weatherall replied abruptly. "How must she feel? She's been taken in completely."

Lofthouse turned to look at him, his tufted eyebrows raised. "She hasn't paid out a fortune for buildings which are worthless now!" he retorted, his voice heavy with impatience.

Rathbone was already raw. His temper snapped.

"Neither has Lambert!" he said very clearly.

Half a dozen people at the table swiveled to look at him, caught as much by the tone of his voice as by his words.

"I beg your pardon?" Colonel Weatherall said with puzzlement, his thin, white hair catching the light.

“I said, 'Neither has Lambert,' " Rathbone repeated. "Any building he has paid for is exactly the same today as it was a week ago."

"Hardly!" Lofthouse laughed. "My dear fellow, you, of all people, know the truth! I don't mean to be unkind, or to make an issue of your misfortune, if that is the word, but Melville was a woman, for heaven's sake." He said no more, as if that fact was all the explanation required.

Weatherall cleared his throat and coughed into his handkerchief.

A ginger-haired man helped himself to more cheese.

"Precisely," Rathbone agreed, facing Lofthouse unblinkingly. "The buildings are exactly the same. Our knowledge of Melville's sex has changed, but not of her architectural skills."