Defend and Betray (15 page)

Peverell did as he was bidden, and smiled from the corner of his vision at Hester. There was the same gentleness in his eyes, a mild awareness of humor, as she had observed before. He was an ordinary man—and yet far from ordinary. She could not imagine that Damaris had entertained romantic notions about Maxim Furnival; she was not foolish enough to destroy what she had for a cheap moment of entertainment. For all her flamboyance, she was not a stupid or shallow woman.

“I have not seen the newspapers,” Edith said suddenly, looking at her mother.

“Of course you haven't.” Felicia stared at her with wide eyes. “Nor shall you.”

“What are they saying of Alexandra?” Edith persisted, apparently deaf to the warning note in Felicia's voice.

“Precisely what you would expect,” Felicia answered. “Ignore it.”

“You say that as if we could.” Damaris's tone was sharp, almost an accusation. “Don't think about it, and it is of no importance. Just like that—it is dealt with.”

“You have a great deal yet to learn, my dear,” Felicia said with chill, looking at her daughter in something close to exasperation. “Where is Cassian? He is late. A certain amount of latitude may be allowed, but one must exercise discipline as well.” She reached out her hand and rang the little silver bell.

Almost immediately a footman appeared.

“Go and fetch Master Cassian, James. Tell him he is required at luncheon.”

“Yes ma'am.” And obediently he left.

Randolph grunted, but spoke no words, and addressed himself again to his food.

“I imagine the newspapers write well of General Carlyon.” Hester heard her own voice loud in the silence, sounding clumsy and terribly contrived. But how else was she to serve any purpose here? She could not hope any of them would say or do something in which she could find meaning, simply eating their luncheon. “He had a brilliant career,” she went on. “They are bound to have written of it.”

Randolph looked at her, his heavy face puckered.

“He did,” he agreed. “He was an outstanding man, an ornament to his generation and his family. Although what you can possibly know about it, Miss latterly, I fail to see. I daresay your remark is well meant, and intended as a kindness, and for your civility, I thank you.” He looked anything but grateful.

Hester felt as if she had trespassed by praising him, as though they felt he was their particular property and only they might speak of him.

“I have spent a considerable time in the army myself, Colonel Carlyon,” she said in defense.

“Army!” he snorted with quite open contempt. “Nonsense, young woman! You were a nurse, a skivvy to tend to the slops for the surgeons. Hardly the same thing!”

Her temper frayed raw, and she forgot Monk, Rathbone and Alexandra Carlyon.

“I don't know how you know anything about it,” she said, mimicking his tone savagely and precisely. “You were not there. Or you would be aware that army nursing has changed a great deal. I have watched battles and walked the field afterwards. I have helped surgeons in field hospitals, and I daresay I have known asrmany soldiers in the space of a few years as you have.”

His face was turning a rich plum color and his eyes were bulging.

“And I did not hear General Carlyon's name mentioned by anyone,” she added coldly. “But I now work nursing a Major Tiplady, and he knew of General Carlyon, because he had also served in India, and he spoke of him in some detail. I did not speak without some knowledge. Was I misinformed?”

Randolph was torn between the desire to be thoroughly rude to her and the need to defend his son, his family pride, and to be at least reasonably civil to a guest, even one he had not invited. Family pride won.

“Of course not,” he said grudgingly. “Thaddeus was exceptional. A man not only of military brilliance, but a man without a stain of dishonor on his name.”

Felicia kept her eyes on her plate, her jaw tight. Hester wondered what inner grief tore at her at the loss of her only son, grief she would keep hidden with that same rigid discipline which had no doubt sustained her all her life, through the loneliness of long separations, perhaps service abroad in unfamiliar places, harsh climate, fear of injury and disease; and now scandal and devastating loss. On the courage and duty of such women had the soldiers of the Empire leaned.

The door opened and a small boy with fair hair and a thin, pale face came into the room; his first glance was to Randolph, then to Felicia.

“I'm sorry, Grandmama,” he said very quietly.

“You are excused,” Felicia replied formally. “Do not make a habit of it, Cassian. It is impolite to be late to meals. Please take your place, and James will bring your luncheon.”

“Yes, Grandmama.” He skirted wide around his grandfather's chair, around Peverell without looking at him, then sat in the empty seat next to Damaris.

Hester resumed eating her meal, but discreetly she looked at him as he kept his eyes down on his plate and without relish began his main course. Since he was too late for soup he was not to be spoiled by being permitted to catch up. He was a handsome child, with honey fair hair and fair skin with a dusting of freckles lending tone to his pallor. His brow was broad, his nose short and already beginning to show an aquiline curve. His mouth was wide and generous, still soft with childhood, but there was a suikiness to it, an air of secrecy. Even when he looked up at Edith as she spoke to him, and to request the water or the condiments, there was something in his aspect that struck Hester as closed, more careful than she would have expected a child to be.

Then she remembered the appalling events of the last month, which must have scarred his senses with a pain too overwhelming to take in. In one evening his father was dead and his mother distraught and filled with her own terrors and griefs, and within a fortnight she was arrested and forcibly taken from him. Did he even know why yet? Had anyone told him the full extent of the tragedy? Or did he believe it was an accident, and his mother might yet be returned to him?

Looking at his careful, wary face it was impossible to know, but he did not look terrified and there were no glances of appeal at anyone, even though he was with his family, and presumably knew all of them moderately well.

Had anyone taken him in their arms and let him weep? Had anyone explained
to
him what was happening? “Or was he wandering in a silent confusion, full of imaginings and fears? Did they expect him to shoulder his grief like a full-grown man, be stoic and continue his new and utterly changed life as if it needed no answers and no time for emotion? Was his adult air merely an attempt to be what they expected of him?

Or had they not even thought about it at all? Were food and clothes, warmth and a room-of his own, considered to be all a boy his age required?

The conversation continued desultorily and Hester learned nothing from it. They spoke of trivialities of one sort or another, acquaintances Hester did not know, society in general, government, the current events and public opinion of the scandals and tragedies of the day.

The last course had been cleared away and Felicia was taking a mint from the silver tray when Damaris at last re.-turned to the original subject.

“I passed a newsboy this morning, shouting about Alex,” she said unhappily. “He was saying some awful things. Why are people so—so vicious? They don't even know yet if she did anything or not!”

“Shouldn't have been listening,” Randolph muttered grimly. “Your mother's told you that before.”

“I didn't know you were going out.” Felicia looked across the table at her irritably. “Where did you go?”

“To the dressmakers',” Damaris replied with a flicker of annoyance. “I have to have another black dress. I'msureyou wouldn't wish me to mourn in purple.”

“Purple is half mourning.”- Felicia's large, deep-set eyes rested on her daughter with disfavor. “Your brother is only just buried. You will maintain black as long as it is decent to do so. I know the funeral is over, but if I find you outside the house in lavender or purple before Michaelmas, I shall be most displeased.”

The thought of black all summer was plain in Damaris's face, but she said nothing.

“Anyway, you did not need to go out,” Felicia went on. “You should have sent for the dressmaker to come to you.” A host of thoughts was plain in Damaris's face, most especially the desire to escape the house and its environs.

“What did they say?” Edith asked curiously, referring to the newspapers again.

“They seemed to have judged already that she was guilty,” Damaris replied. “But it isn't that, it was the—the vicious-ness of it.”

“What do you expect?” Felicia frowned. “She has confessed to the world that she has done something quite beyond understanding. It defies the order of everyone's lives, like madness. Of course people wilLbe . . . angry. I think
vicious
is the wrong word to choose. You don't seem to understand the enormity of it.” She pushed her salmon mousse to the side of her plate and abandoned it. “Can you imagine what would happen to the country if every woman whose husband flirted with someone else were to murder him? Really, Damaris, sometimes I wonder where your wits are. Society would disintegrate. There would be no safety, no decency or certainty in anything. Life would fall to pieces and we would be in the jungle.”

She signaled peremptorily for the footman to remove the plate. “Heaven knows, 'Alexandra had nothing untoward to have to endure, but if she had then she should have done so, like thousands of other women before her, and no doubt after. No relationships are without their difficulties and sacrifices.”

It was something of an exaggeration, and Hester looked around at their faces to see if anyone was going to reason with her. But Edith kept her eyes on her plate; Randolph nodded as if he agreed totally; and Damaris glanced up, her eyes on Hester, but she said nothing either. Cassian looked very grave, but no one seemed to bother that the allusions to his parents were made in front of him, and he showed no emotions at all.

It was Peverell who spoke.

“Fear, my dear,” he said, looking at Edith with a sad smile. “People are frequently at their ugliest when they are afraid. Violence from garroters we expect, from the working classes among themselves, even now and then from gentlemen—a matter of insult and honor over a woman, or—in very bad taste, but it happens—over money.”

The footman removed all the fish plates and served the meat course.

“But when women start using violence,” Peverell went on, “to dictate how men shall behave in the matter of morals or their appetites, then that threatens not only their freedom but the sanctity of their homes. And it strikes real terror into people, because it is the basic safety at the core of things, the refuge that all like to imagine we can retreat to from whatever forays into conflict we may make in the course of the day or the week.”

“I don't know why you use the word
imagine.”
Felicia fixed him with a stony stare. “The home is the center of peace, morality, unquestioning loyalty, which is the refuge and the strength to all who must labor, or battle in an increasingly changing world.” She waved away the meat course, and the footman withdrew to serve Hester. “Without it what would there be worth living for?” she demanded. “If the center and the heart give way, then everything else is lost. Can you wonder that people are frightened, and appalled,' when a woman who has everything given her turns 'round and kills the very man who protected and provided for her? Of course they react displeased. One cannot expect anything else. You must ignore it. If you had sent for the dressmaker, as you should have, then you would not have witnessed it.”

Nothing further was said in the matter, and half an hour later when the meal was finished, Edith and Hester excused themselves. Shortly after that, Hester took her leave, having told Edith all she knew of progress so far, and promising to continue with every bit of the very small ability she possessed, and trying to assure her, in spite of her own misgivings, that there was indeed some hope.

* * * * *

Major Tiplady was staring towards the window waiting for her when she returned home, and immediately enquired to know the outcome of her visit.

“I don't know that it is anything really useful,” she answered, taking off her cloak and bonnet and laying them on the chair for Molly to hang up. “But I learned quite a lot more about the general. I am not sure that I should have liked him, but at least I can feel some pity that he is dead.”

“That is not very productive,” Tiplady said critically. He regarded her narrowly, sitting very upright. “Could this Louisa woman have killed him?”

Hester came over and sat on the chair beside him.

“It looks very doubtful,” she confessed. “He seems a man far more capable of friendship than romances; and Louisa apparently had too much to lose, both in reputation and finance, to have risked more than a flirtation.” She felt suddenly depressed. “In fact it does seem as if Alexandra was the one—or else poor Sabella—if she really is deranged.”

“Oh dear.” Tiplady looked crushed. “Then where do we go from here?”

“Perhaps it was one of the servants,” she said with sudden hope again.

“One of the servants?” he said incredulously. “Whatever for?”

“I don't know. Some old military matter?”

He looked doubtful.

“Well, I shall pursue it!” she said firmly. “Now, have you had tea yet? What about supper? What would you care for for supper?”

* * * * *

Two days later she took an afternoon off, at Major Tiplady's insistence, and went to visit Lady Callandra Daviot in order to enlist her help in learning more of General Carlyon 's military career. Callandra had helped her with both counsel and friendship when she first returned from the Crimea, and it was with her good offices that she had obtained her hospital post. It was extremely gracious of Callandra not to have been a good deal harsher in her comments when Hester had then lost it through overstepping the bounds of her authority.

Callandra's late husband, Colonel Daviot, had been an army surgeon of some distinction; a quick-tempered, charming, stubborn, witty and somewhat arbitrary man. He had had a vast acquaintance and might well have known something of General Carlyon. Callandra, still with connections to the Army Medical Corps, might be able either to recall hearing of the general, or to institute discreet enquiries and learn something of his career and, more importantly, of his reputation. She might be able to find information about the unofficial events which just might lead to another motive for murder, either someone seeking revenge for a wrong, a betrayal on the field, or a promotion obtained unfairly—or imagined to be so, or even some scandal exposed or too harshly pursued. The possibilities were considerable.