Anne Perry - Death Of A Stranger

“But that’s just the point, William!” She caught hold of his hand, gripping it hard. “I could have been! These women who owe money were perfectly respectable only a short while ago. They were governesses, parlor maids, married women who were abandoned, or whose husbands got into debt. They could have been nurses! I earned my own living in other people’s houses before I married you. One mistake, one misfortune, and I could have borrowed money, and found myself on the streets to pay it back.” She pulled a self-mocking face. “At least if I were a trifle younger.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” he said very softly, but with absolute certainty. “You would never have lent yourself to that, at any age. You’d have led a rebellion, or taken ship to America, or even stuck a knife between his ribs, but you wouldn’t have gone meekly to the slaughter.”

“Sometimes you rate my courage too high,” she replied, but with a rush of warmth inside her at the strength of his admiration. “I don’t know what I would have done. Thank God I was never put to the test.”

He stood silently for a moment, then bent and kissed her long and with a tenderness so complete, so achingly profound, the emotion welled up inside her, bringing tears to her eyes.

Then he let go, and went into the room he used as a study, and closed the door.

She was asleep in exhaustion when he came to bed. She woke in the night and he was beside her, but he did not move or touch her, even when she turned closer to him.

In the morning he was gone. There was a note on the dresser:

Hester,

I am going to investigate more into land purchase for the railway, partly because it is the only fraud I can see in the Baltimore case, but mostly because I know that Arrol Dundas was convicted of land fraud in what seems to have been almost identical circumstances. It may even have been the same company, Baltimore and Sons. I don’t know that beyond question, but I am fairly certain. I hope you will understand why I need to know absolutely.

If there is anything at all I can do to make sure Dalgarno does not end up in prison as Dundas did, for something of which he is innocent, then I must do so. I will not fail him in the same way. I may have to return to the railway itself, in Derbyshire.

Please, Hester, be careful! It is enough that you work in the Coldbath area, helping people who are troubled and are incapable of repaying you, even by telling you the truth. Certainly they cannot protect you if you attract the interest of the kind of men who so abuse them.

If you won’t look after yourself for your own sake, or for mine, at least do it for theirs. If you are injured, or worse, to whom could they turn?

You have in the past eloquently criticized the Crimean generals who wasted their troops in quixotic gestures. And rightly. You have often said a woman would have been more practical and less glory seeking-now prove it!

I hope to see you minding your business-and not mine-when I return, when, if I can, I shall help you to find whoever killed Nolan Baltimore-if the police have not already done so.

Even if it does not always seem as if I do, I love you profoundly, and I admire you far more than you realize.

William

She held the paper in her hands as if it could bring her some part of him, or he would know the emotions inside her, the love and the need, the loneliness for him, the longing to be able to help with whatever private battle he was fighting.

Why could he write so much, and yet not tell her face-to-face? She knew the answer even as the question formed. It was obvious-because she could hold a letter in her hands, read it and reread it, carry it with her, but she could not demand any further answers of it. Monk himself was gone… alone.

And she was here… equally alone. He loved her, certainly. But why was it he could not trust her also-her loyalty, her understanding, her courage? What was it in her he feared might fail him?

It hurt too much to think of. She would go back to Coldbath Square and work. There would be something to do, even if it were only to seek more ideas for raising money. Perhaps they should start to look for other premises? Margaret’s friendship was valuable, although it no longer had quite the uncomplicated ease she had thought it did before they had gone to Rathbone’s office.

She must not show jealousy. That would be small-minded and unbelievably ugly! She would despise herself for that.

And of course she must try to learn all she could about Nolan Baltimore’s death, taking reasonable care not to antagonize anyone.

Margaret was late in to Coldbath, but that was of no importance at the moment. Tempers were short throughout the area so there were many quarrels and several people lashed out in frustration and fear, but it was more often men who were the victims, and the injuries were of the nature that heal with time and very little care-mostly bruises, shallow cuts, and sore heads. Pimps were getting more careful about scarring or bruising their women, their only asset in a shrinking market.

Of course everyone knew it would not go on indefinitely, but it had already been long enough to blow a chill of bitter reality into the lives of all manner of people. The end of it still lay in some unknown time in the future. They lived from day to day.

“How is Fanny?” Hester asked as she came in out of the fine rain, taking off her cloak and hat. “And Alice?”

“Fair enough,” Bessie answered, looking at her balefully from where she was sitting by the empty table, apart from her half-drunk cup of tea. “Quiet, it is. Like a bleedin’ graveyard. ’Ad two girls come in wi’ disease, that’s all. Can’t do much fer ’em, poor cows. Miss Ballinger in’t in yet. Out showin’ ’erself off ’round the swell ’ouses, I shouldn’t wonder. Never seen such a change in anyone in me life!” She said it with fierce satisfaction and not the shadow of a smile. “Wouldn’t say boo to yer w’en she first come ’ere. Now she’s as bold as brass. Ask anyone fer money, she would. Wager yer sixpence she’ll come waltzin’ in ’ere wi’ a grin all over ’er face an’ tell us she’s got a few pound more fer us.”

Hester did smile, in spite of the gloom of the morning. It was true, Margaret had found a confidence, even a happiness, in work. That in itself was an accomplishment, whoever else they were able to heal, and whether or not their patients would slip back to exactly the same debt and abuse afterwards.

Bessie was right; half an hour later Margaret did come in carrying satisfaction with her like a burst of sunlight.

“I have another twenty guineas!” she said proudly. “And promise of more!” She held it out for Hester, her eyes bright, her face glowing.

Hester forced herself to warm to the success, even though she felt all she could taste in her own mouth was failure. “That’s excellent,” she said appreciatively. “It will keep Jessop at bay for a while, and that gives us time. Thank you very much.”

Margaret looked pained. “You’re not going to give him more than our agreement, are you?”

Hester relaxed a little; she almost laughed. “No, I am most certainly not!”

Margaret smiled back and started to take off her jacket and hat. “What can we do today? How are Fanny and Alice?” She glanced towards the beds as she spoke.

“Asleep,” Bessie answered for Hester. “Nowt ter do fer ’em now, ’ceptin keep the roof over their ’eads, an’ feed ’em now an’ then.” She frowned at the rain spattering the window. “I s’pose I’d best be doin’ some marketin’.”

“Stay inside and keep dry for a while.” Hester made her decision. “Margaret and I have an errand in half an hour or so. It’s important.”