Anne Perry - The Face of a Stranger

Menard put his hands over his face.

"Perhaps we should have done better had you been there, General Wadham," Callandra continued unabashed, looking at him frankly. "You at least have a very considerable imagination!"

Rosamond shut her eyes and slid down in her seat. Lovel groaned.

Hester choked with laughter, a trifle hysterically, and stuffed her napkin over her mouth to stifle it.

General Wadham made a surprisingly graceful strategic retreat. He decided to accept the remark as a compliment.

"Thank you, madame," he said stiffly. "Perhaps I might have prevented the slaughter of the Light Brigade."

And with that it was left. Fabia, with a little help from Lovel, rose from her seat and excused the ladies, leading them to the withdrawing room, where they discussed such matters as music, fashion, society, forthcoming weddings, both planned and speculated, and were excessively polite to one another.

When the visitors finally took their leave, Fabia turned upon her sister-in-law with a look that should have shriveled her.

"Callandra-I shall never forgive you!"

"Since you have never forgiven me for wearing the exact shade of gown as you when we first met forty years ago," Callandra replied, "I shall just have to bear it with the same fortitude I have shown over all the other episodes since."

"You are impossible. Dear heaven, how I miss Josce-lin." She stood up slowly and Hester rose as a matter of courtesy. Fabia walked towards the double doors. "I am going to bed. I shall see you tomorrow." And she went out, leaving them also.

"You are impossible, Aunt Callandra," Rosamond agreed, standing in the middle of the floor and looking confused and unhappy. "I don't know why you say such things."

"I know you don't," Callandra said gently. "That is because you have never been anywhere but Middleton, Shelburne Hall or London society. Hester would say the same, if she were not a guest here-indeed perhaps more. Our military imagination has ossified since Waterloo." She stood up and straightened her skirts. "Victory-albeit one of the greatest in history and turning the tide of nations- has still gone to our heads and we think all we have to do to win is to turn up in our scarlet coats and obey the rules. And only God can measure the suffering and the death that pigheadedness has caused. And we women and politicians sit here safely at home and cheer them on without the slightest idea what the reality of it is."

"Joscelin is dead," Rosamond said bleakly, staring at the closed curtains.

"I know that, my dear," Callandra said from close behind her. "But he did not die in the Crimea.".

"He may have died because of it!"

"Indeed he may," Callandra conceded, her face suddenly touched with gentleness. "And I know you were extremely fond of him. He had a capacity for pleasure, both to give and to receive, which unfortunately neither Lovel nor Menard seem to share. I think we have exhausted both ourselves and the subject. Good night, my dear. Weep if you wish; tears too long held in do us no good. Composure is all very well, but there is a time to acknowledge pain also." She slipped her arm around the slender shoulders and hugged her briefly, then knowing the gesture would release the hurt as well as comfort, she took Hester by the elbow and conducted her out to leave Rosamond alone.

The following morning Hester overslept and rose with a headache. She did not feel like early breakfast, and still less like facing any of the family across the table. She felt passionately about the vanity and the incompetence she had seen in the army, and the horror at the suffering would never leave her; probably the anger would not either. But she had not behaved very well at dinner; and the memory of it churned around in her mind, trying to fall into a happier picture with less fault attached to herself, and did not improve either her headache or her temper.

She decided to take a brisk walk in the park for as long as her energy lasted. She wrapped up appropriately, and by nine o'clock was striding rapidly over die grass getting her boots wet.

She first saw the figure of the man with considerable irritation, simply because she wished to be alone. He was probably inoffensive, and presumably had as much right to be here as herself-perhaps more? He no doubt served some function. However she felt he intruded, he was another human being in a world of wind and great trees and vast, cloud-racked skies and shivering, singing grass.

When he drew level he stopped and spoke to her. He was dark, with an arrogant face, all lean, smooth bones and clear eyes.

"Good morning, ma'am. I see you are from Shelburne Hall-"

"How observant," she said tartly, gazing around at the totally empty parkland. There was no other place she could conceivably have come from, unless she had emerged from a hole in the ground.

His face tightened, aware of her sarcasm. "Are you a member of the family?" He was staring at her with some intensity and she found it disconcerting, and bordering on the offensive.

"How is that your concern?" she asked coldly.

The concentration deepened in his eyes, and then suddenly there was a flash of recognition, although for the life of her she could not think of any occasion on which she had seen him before. Curiously he did not refer to it.

"I am inquiring into the murder of Joscelin Grey. I wonder if you had known him."

"Good heavens!" she said involuntarily. Then she collected herself. “I have been accused of tactlessness in my time, but you are certainly in a class of your own." A total lie-Callandra would have left him standing! "It would be quite in your deserving if I told you I had been his fiancée-and fainted on the spot!"

"Then it was a secret engagement," he retorted. "And if you go in for clandestine romance you must expect to have your feelings bruised a few times."

"Which you are obviously well equipped to do!" She stood still with the wind whipping her skirts, still wondering why he had seemed to recognize her.

"Did you know him?" he repeated irritably.

"Yes!"

"For how long?"

"As well as I remember it, about three weeks."

"That's an odd time to know anyone!"

"What would you consider a usual time to know someone?" she demanded.

"It was very brief," he explained with careful condescension. "You can hardly have been a friend of the family. Did you meet him just before he died?''

"No. I met him in Scutari."

"You what?"

"Are you hard of hearing? I met him in Scutari!" She remembered the general's patronizing manner and all her memories of condescension flooded back, the army officers who considered women out of place, ornaments to be used for recreation or comfort but not creatures of any sense. Gentlewomen were for cossetting, dominating and protecting from everything, including adventure or decision or freedom of any kind. Common women were whores or drudges and to be used like any other livestock.

"Oh yes," he agreed with a frown. "He was injured. Were you out there with your husband?''

"No I was not!" Why should that question be faintly hurtful? "I went to nurse the injured, to assist Miss Nightingale, and those like her."

His face did not show the admiration and profound sense of respect close to awe that the name usually brought. She was thrown off balance by it. He seemed to be single-minded in his interest in Joscelin Grey.

"You nursed Major Grey?"

"Among others. Do you mind if we proceed to walk? I am getting cold standing here."

"Of course." He turned and fell into step with her and they began along the faint track in the grass towards a copse of oaks. "What were your impressions of him?"

She tried hard to distinguish her memory from the picture she had gathered from his family's words, Rosamond's weeping, Fabia's pride and love, the void he had left in her happiness, perhaps Rosamond's also, his brothers' mixture of exasperation and-what-envy?