The Sins of the Wolf (7 page)

Hester could picture it. Two children sitting together, each pretending to assure the other, and whispering in hushed voices of the horrors of body snatchers, resurrectionists, secret murder in dark alleys, and the dissector’s bloody table. Such memory runs deep, perhaps below the surface of consciousness, but those things shared forge a trust which excludes other, later, comers. She had no such moments with her elder brother, Charles. He had always been a little on his dignity, even from the earliest times she could recall. It had been James with whom she had had adventures and secrets. But James had been killed in the Crimea.

“I’m sorry,” Mary said quietly, her voice cutting across Hester’s thoughts. “I have said something that distressed you.” It was not a question but an observation.

Hester was startled. She had not thought Mary was more than peripherally aware of her, certainly not enough to notice her feelings.

“Perhaps resurrectionists were not the most sensitive of subjects to raise,” Mary said ruefully.

“Not at all,” Hester assured her. “I was thinking of the two children together, and remembering my younger brother. My elder brother was always a little pompous, but James was fun.”

“You speak of him in the past. Is he—gone?” Mary’s voice was suddenly gentle, as if she knew bereavement only too well.

“Yes, in the Crimea,” Hester replied.

“I’m so sorry. To say I know how you feel would be ridiculous, but I have some idea. I had a brother killed at Waterloo.” She said the word carefully, rolling it off her
tongue as if it held some mystic quality. To many of Hester’s age that would have been incomprehensible, but she had heard too many soldiers speak of it for it not to give her a shiver through the flesh. It had been the greatest land battle in Europe, the end of an empire, the ruin of dreams, the beginning of the modern age. Men of all nations had fought to exhaustion till the fields were strewn with the wounded and the dead, the armies of Europe, as Lord Byron had said, “in one red burial blent.”

She looked up and smiled at Mary, so she would know Hester understood at least something of its immensity.

“I was in Brussels then,” Mary said with a wry turn of her lips. “My husband was in the army, a major in the Royal Scots Greys….”

Hester did not hear the rest of what she said. The clanking of the train wheels over the tracks drowned out a word here and there, and her mind was filled with a picture of the man in the portrait, with his fair sweep of hair and the face which at once had such emotion and ambiguous power and vulnerability. It was easy to imagine him, tall, straight-backed, wildly elegant in uniform, dancing the night away in some Brussels ballroom, knowing all the while that in the morning he would ride out to a battle to decide the rise or fall of nations and from which thousands would not return and more thousands would come home blind or maimed. And then she thought of the painting she had seen of the charge of the Royal Scots Greys at Waterloo, the light on the white horses plunging through the heat of battle, manes flying, scarlet riders bent forward, the dust and gun smoke clouding the rest, darkening the scene behind them.

“He must have been a very fine man,” she said impulsively.

Mary looked surprised. “Hamish?” She sighed gently. “Oh yes, yes he was. It seems like another world, so very long ago, Waterloo. I hadn’t thought of it in years.”

“He came through the battle all right?” Hester was not
afraid to ask because she knew he had died only eight years before, and Waterloo was forty-two years in the past.

“He had a few cuts and bruises, but nothing worth calling a wound,” Mary replied. “Hector had a musket ball in his shoulder and a saber cut on his leg, but he healed quickly enough.”

“Hector?” Why should she be surprised? Forty-two years ago Hector Farraline might have been a very different man from the drunkard he was now.

The look in Mary’s eyes was far away, sad and sweet and full of memory. “Oh yes, Hector was a captain. He was a better soldier than Hamish, but being the younger brother, his father only bought a captain’s commission for him. He hadn’t Hamish’s grace, or his charm. And when the war was over, it was Hamish who had the imagination and the ambition. It was he who started the Farraline printing company.” There was no need to add that, being the elder, he would have inherited whatever money there might have been. That was something everyone knew.

“He must have been a great loss,” Hester said aloud.

The light died out of Mary’s face and her expression became formal, as if receiving condolences in a long-practiced fashion. “Yes, naturally,” she replied. “Thank you for saying so.” She sat more uprightly in her seat. “But we have talked about the far distant past too much already. I should like to hear something of your experiences. Did you ever meet Miss Nightingale? One reads so much about her these days. I swear, she seems more revered in some quarters than the Queen herself. Is she really so very remarkable?”

For nearly half an hour Hester recalled her experiences as vividly as she could. She told Mary of pain and waste, the stupidity and the constant fear, the biting cold of winter and the hunger and exhaustion of siege. Mary listened attentively, interrupting only to ask for greater detail, often merely nodding assent. Hester described the heat and sparkle of summer, the white boats on the bay, the glamour of
officers and their wives, the gold braid in the sun, the boredom, the companionship, the laughter and the times when she dared not weep or she might never stop. And then at Mary’s request, with sharp memory, with laughter and anecdote she recounted much of the individual people she had admired or despised, loved or loathed, and all the time Mary sat with total attention, her clear eyes on Hester’s face, while the train rattled and jolted, slowed for inclines, and then gathered speed again. They were completely islanded in a world of lamplight and rhythmic clanking and swaying through the darkness, the countryside beyond the windows invisible. They were warmly wrapped in rugs, their feet almost touching on the stone footwarmer.

Once the train stopped altogether and they both alighted into the chill night air, not so much to stretch their legs, although that was welcome, but to avail themselves of the conveniences at the station.

Back in the train again, whistle blowing, steam billowing as the engine gathered impetus, they rewrapped themselves in the rugs, and Mary requested that Hester continue her account.

Hester obliged.

She had not intended to, but she found herself now speaking with vehemence about the ideals which had burned so deeply in her when she first returned, her passion to begin reforming the outdated hospital wards in England with their closed practices.

Mary smiled wistfully. “If you tell me you succeeded, I shall begin to disbelieve you.”

“And so you should. I am afraid I was dismissed for arrogance and acting without orders.” She had not meant to reveal that. It was hardly conducive to confidence in a patient, but Mary was already far more than that, and the words were out before she considered it.

Mary laughed, a rich sound filled with delight.

“Bravo. If we all acted only upon orders, we should still
not have invented the wheel. What have you done about it?”

“Done?”

Mary put her head a little to one side, her face full of quizzical doubt.

“Don’t tell me you have simply accepted dismissal like a good girl and gone obediently on your way! Surely you are fighting the cause in some fashion or other?”

“Well—no….” She saw Mary’s face slowly fill with dismay. “No—because there have been other battles,” she went on hastily. “For—for justice of other sorts.”

Mary’s eyes widened with new interest “Oh?”

“Er—I—” Why should she be so reluctant to talk of helping Monk? There was nothing dishonorable in assisting the police. “I became acquainted with a police inspector who was investigating the murder of an army officer, and it seemed as if there was going to be a terrible miscarriage of justice….”

“And you were able to prevent it?” Mary leaped to the conclusion. “But afterwards, did you not return to the question of nursing reform?”

“Well …” Hester found herself coloring very faintly, Monk’s face with dark gray eyes and broad, high cheeks so vivid in her mind he could have been in the seat opposite her.

“Well, there were other cases … soon afterwards.” She stumbled a little over the words. “And again there was the question of injustice. I was in a position to help….”

A slow smile curled Mary’s lips. “I see. At least I think I do. And no doubt after that one, another? What is he like, this policeman of yours?”

“Oh he is not mine!” Hester disclaimed instantly and with more vehemence than she had intended.

“Is he not?” Mary looked unconvinced, but there was laughter in her voice. “Are you not fond of him, my dear? Tell me, how old is he, and what does he look like?”

Hester wondered for a moment if she should tell the
truth, that Monk did not know how old he was. A carriage accident had robbed him of all his memory, and his self-knowledge was returning only in fragments as the months passed into a year, and more. It was too long a story, and not truly hers to tell. “I am not quite sure,” she prevaricated. “Around forty, I should think.”

Mary nodded. “And his appearance, his manner?”

Hester tried to be honest and impartial, which was more difficult than she had expected. Monk always aroused emotions in her, both admiration, for his cutting intelligence, his courage and his dedication to truth; and impatience, even contempt, for his occasional bitterness towards those he suspected of crime, not towards his own colleagues if they were less quick, less agile of mind than himself, or less willing to take risks.

“He is a good height,” she began tentatively. “In fact, quite tall. He stands very straight, which makes him look …”

“Elegant?” Mary suggested.

“No—I mean, yes, it does, but that is not what I was going to say.” It was absurd to be stumbling over words this way. “I think the word I was looking for was
lithe.
He is not handsome. His features are good, but there is a directness in him, which … I was going to say that it approaches arrogance, but that is not true at all. It is arrogance, quite simply.” She took a deep breath and continued before Mary could interrupt. “His manner is abrasive. He dresses beautifully and spends far too much money on his clothes because he is vain. He tells what he sees to be the truth without the slightest regard as to whether it is suitable or not. He has neither patience nor respect for authority, and little time for those who are less able than himself, but he cannot abide an injustice once he has seen it, and will acknowledge a truth at whatever cost to himself.”

“A singular man, by your account,” Mary said with interest. “And it seems you know him very well. Is he aware of it?”

“Monk?” Hester asked with surprise. “I have no idea. Yes, I suppose so. We have seldom minced words with one another.”

“How interesting.” There was not the slightest sarcasm in Mary’s voice, only the most acute fascination. “And is he in love with you, this Monk?”

Hester’s face burned. “Certainly not!” She denied it hotly, and her throat tightened as she said the words. For one idiotic moment she thought she was going to cry. It would be mortifying, and thoroughly stupid. She must clear up the misapprehension which Mary quite obviously bore. “We have been friends in certain issues, because we believed in the same causes and were both prepared to fight against what was wrong,” she said firmly. “Where matters of love are concerned, he has no interest in women like me. He prefers”—she swallowed, memory sharp and peculiarly painful—“women like my sister-in-law, Imogen. She is very pretty indeed, very gentle, and knows how to be charming without clumsy flattery, but how to make one feel the desire to protect her. Not that she is ineffectual, you understand.”

“I see,” Mary agreed, nodding her head. “We have all known women like that at some time in our lives. They smile at a man, and instantly he feels better and handsomer, and definitely braver than before.”

“Exactly!”

“So your Monk is a fool where women are concerned.” It was a statement, not a question.

Hester chose not to answer that. “And I prefer someone like Oliver Rathbone,” she went on, not really sure how much truth there was in her words. “He is a most distinguished barrister….”

“Well-bred, no doubt,” Mary said flatly. “And respectable?”

“Not especially, that I know,” Hester replied defensively. “However, his father is one of the nicest people I have ever met. I feel comfortable merely to recall his face.”

Mary’s eyes widened. “Indeed. I misunderstood. So Mr. Rathbone is not without interest. Tell me more.”

“He is also extremely clever, in a different kind of way. He is very sure of himself, and he has a dry sense of humor. He is never boring, and I admit I do not often know what he is really thinking, but I am quite certain it is not always what he says.”

“And is he in love with you? Or do you not know that either?”

Hester smiled smugly, that sudden impulsive kiss coming back as sharply as if it had been a week ago instead of a year. “I think that is too strong a term, but he has given me occasion to think he finds me not unattractive,” she replied.

“Oh excellent!” Mary said with evident pleasure. “And these two gentlemen dislike each other, I trust?”

“Certainly,” Hester agreed with a satisfaction which surprised her. “But I don’t think it has anything to do with me—or at least, very little,” she added.

“This is really most intriguing,” Mary said happily. “I am sorry our acquaintance will be so short I shall not see the end of this.”

Hester felt her face growing hot again. Her mind was in total confusion. She had spoken of her feelings as if it were a romance. Did she wish it were? She was embarrassed for her foolishness. She could not possibly marry Monk, even if he were to ask her, which he would not. They would quarrel all the time. There was far too much in him she really did not like. She had not mentioned it to Mary—it would be disloyal—but there was a streak of cruelty in him which appalled her; there were dark areas of his character, impulses she did not trust. She could not commit herself to such a man, not as anything more than a friend.