Anne Perry: Acceptable Loss

Hester felt ashamed for her own failure to raise money, but Margaret’s marriage to Rathbone gave her a position in society that Hester would never have. That fact was too obvious for either of them to need to say it. It was also unnecessary to add that Margaret’s courtesy and natural good manners yielded far more reward than Hester’s outspoken candor. People liked to feel that they were doing their Christian duty toward the less fortunate, but definitely not that they owed it in any way. And they certainly did not wish to hear the details of poverty or disease.

“Thank you,” Hester said mildly, although it cost her an effort. “It would certainly be a great help.”

Margaret smiled and took Rathbone’s arm.

By the middle of the afternoon Hester had had little more for luncheon than a cold cheese sandwich and a cup of tea. She was helping one of the women finish the scrubbing when Rupert Cardew arrived. She was on her knees on the floor, a brush in her hand, a pail of soapy water beside her. She heard the footsteps and then saw the polished boots stop about a yard in front of her.

She sat back and looked up slowly. He was at least as tall as Monk, but fair where Monk was dark, and, on his recent visits to the clinic to add to their funding, so relaxed as to be casual. Monk, on the other hand, was always intensely alive, waiting to move.

“Sorry,” Rupert apologized with a smile. “Didn’t mean to catch you on your knees. But if you were praying for more money, then I’m here with the answer.”

Hester climbed to her feet, declining his outstretched hand to assist her. Her plain blue skirt was wet where she had kneeled; and her white blouse, unadorned with lace, was rolled up above her elbows, and also wet in places. Her hair-not always her best feature-had been pinned back and adjusted several times as it had escaped, and was now completely shapeless.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Cardew.” She could not call him “sir”-and she did not think he wished it-although she was perfectly aware of his father’s title. Should she apologize for looking like a servant? Their friendship was recent, but she had liked him immediately, in spite of being aware that his beneficence toward the clinic sprang at least in part from a professional familiarity with some of its patients. His father, Lord Cardew, had sufficient wealth and position to make work unnecessary for his only surviving son. Rupert wasted his time, means, and talents with both charm and generosity, although lately he had lost some of his usual ease.

“I wasn’t praying,” she added, looking ruefully at her wet, rather red hands. “Perhaps I should have had more faith. Thank you.” She took the considerable amount of money he held out. She did not count it, but there was clearly several hundred pounds in the bundle of Treasury notes he put in her hand.

“Debts of pleasure,” he said with a wide smile. “Do you really have to do that yourself?” He eyed the floor and the bucket.

“Actually, it’s quite satisfying,” she told him. “Especially if you’re in a temper. You can attack it, and then see the difference you have made.”

“Next time I am in a temper, perhaps I’ll try it,” he promised with a smile. “You were an army nurse, weren’t you?” he observed. “They should have set you at the enemy. You’d have frightened the wits out of them.” He said it good-naturedly, as if in approval. “Would you like a cup of tea? I should have brought some cake.”

“Bread and jam?” she offered. She could enjoy a few minutes’ break and the light, superficial conversation with him. He reminded her of the young cavalry officers she had known in the Crimea: charming, funny, seemingly careless on the surface, and yet underneath it trying desperately not to think of tomorrow, or yesterday, and the friends they had lost, and would yet lose. However, as far as she knew, Rupert had no war to fight, no battle worth winning or losing.

“What kind of jam?” he asked, as if it mattered.

“Black currant,” she replied. “Or possibly raspberry.”

“Right.” To her surprise he bent and picked up the bucket, carrying it away from himself a little so it did not soil his perfect trousers or splash his boots.

She was startled. She had never before seen him even acknowledge the necessity, never mind stoop to so lowly a task. She wondered what had made him think of it today. Certainly not any vulnerability in her. It had made no difference before.

He put the pail down at the scullery door. Emptying it could wait for someone else.

In the kitchen Hester pushed the kettle over onto the cooktop and started to cut bread. She offered to toast it, and then passed the fork over to him to hold in front of the open door of the stove.

They spoke easily of the clinic and some of the cases that had come in. Rupert had a quick compassion for the street women’s pain, in spite of being one of those very willing to use their services.

With tea, toast, and jam on the table, conversation moved to other subjects with which there was no tension, no glaring contrasts: social gossip, places they had visited, exhibitions of art. He was interested in everything, and he listened as graciously as he spoke. Sometimes she forgot the great kitchen around her, the pots and pans, the stove, and in the next room the copper for boiling linen, and the laundry tubs, the scullery sinks, the racks of vegetables. She could have been at home as a young woman, fifteen years ago, before the war, before experience, passion, grief, or real happiness. There had been a kind of innocence to her life then; everything had been possible. Her parents had still been alive, and also her younger brother, who had been killed in the Crimea. The memories were both sweet and painful.

Deliberately she steered the subject back to the clinic. “We’re very grateful for your gift. I had asked Lady Rathbone to see if she could raise some more money, but it is always difficult. We keep on asking, because there is so much needed all the time, but people do get tired of us.” She smiled a trifle ruefully.

“Lady Rathbone. Is she the wife of Sir Oliver?” he asked with apparent interest, although it might merely have been the feigning required by good manners.

“Yes. Do you know them?”

“Only by repute.” The idea seemed to amuse him. “Our paths don’t cross, except perhaps at the theater, and I dare say he goes for reasons of business, and she, to be seen. I go because I enjoy it.”

“Isn’t that why you do most things?” she replied, and then wished she had not. It was too perceptive, too sharp.

He winced, but appeared unoffended. “You are about the only truly virtuous woman that I actually like,” he said, as if surprised at it himself. “You haven’t ever tried to redeem me, thank God.”

“Good heavens!” She opened her eyes wide. “How remiss of me! Should I have, at least for appearances’ sake?”

“If you told me you cared about appearances, I should not believe you,” he answered, trying to be serious, and failing. “Although for some, there is nothing else.” He was suddenly tense, muscles pulling in his neck. “Wasn’t it Sir Oliver who defended Jericho Phillips and got him off?”

Hester felt a moment of chill, simply to be reminded of it. “Yes,” she said with as little expression as she could.

“Don’t look like that,” he said gently. “The miserable devil got his just deserts in the end. He drowned-slowly-feeling the water creep up his body inch by inch as the tide came in. And he was terrified of drowning, phobic about it. Much worse for him than being hanged, which is supposed to be all over in a matter of seconds, so they say.”

She stared at him, her mind racing.

He blushed, his fair skin coloring easily. “I’m sorry. I’m sure that’s more detail than you wanted to know. I shouldn’t have said that. Sometimes I speak too frankly to you. I apologize.”