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He smiled back, ruefully, knowing she meant it and feeling a kind of comfort in the thought that he would not be alone.
Behind him in the street the horse stamped and shifted position. There was nothing else to say. Hester let herself in with her key, and Monk returned to the hansom and climbed up as it moved off along the lamplit street.
He was at Hastings Street at quarter to ten in the morning. It was mild and raining very slightly. The flowers in the gardens were beaded with moisture and somewhere a bird was singing with startling clarity.
Monk would have given a great deal to have been able to turn and go back again to the Euston Road and not call at number fourteen. However, he did not hesitate on the step or wait before pulling the bell. He had already done all the thinking he could. There was no more debate left, no more arguments to put for either action.
The maid welcomed him in with some familiarity now, but she was slightly taken aback when he asked to see not Mrs. Penrose but Miss Gillespie. Presumably Julia had said she was expecting him.
He was alone in the morning room, pacing in restless anxiety, when Marianne came in. As soon as she saw him her face paled.
“What is it?” she asked quickly. “Has something happened?”
“Before I left here yesterday,” he replied, “I spoke to your sister and told her that I would not be able to learn who assaulted you, and it would be pointless to continue seeking. She would not accept that. If I do not tell her then she will employ someone else who will.”
“But how could anyone else know?” she said desperately. “I wouldn’t tell them. No one saw, no one heard.”
“They will deduce it from the evidence, as I did.” This was every bit as hard as his worst fears. She looked so crushed. “Miss Gillespie—I am sorry, but I am going to have to take back the pledge I gave you and tell Mrs. Penrose the truth.”
“You can’t!” She was aghast. “You promised you would not do that!” But even as she spoke the innocent indignation was dying in her face and being replaced by understanding—and defeat.
He felt wretched. He had no alternative, and yet he was betraying her and he could not argue himself out of it.
“There are other things that have to be considered also….”
“Of course there are.” Her voice was harsh with anger and misery. “The worst of this is how Julia will feel about it. She will be destroyed. How can she ever feel the same about me, even if she truly believes it was the farthest thing from my wishes? I did nothing whatsoever to lead him to think I would ever be willing, and that is true, Mr. Monk! I swear it by all I hold dear—”
“I know that,” he said, interrupting her. “That is not what I mean.”
“Then what?” she demanded abruptly. “What else could be of importance beside that?”
“Why do you believe that it will never happen again?”
Her face was white. She swallowed with difficulty. She started to speak, and then stopped.
“Have you any protection against it happening again?” he insisted quietly.
“I—but ?
?” She looked down. “Surely that was just one terrible lapse in—in an otherwise exemplary man? I am sure he loves Julia….”
“What would you have said about the possibility of it ever happening a week before it did? Did you know or expect him to do such a thing?”
Now her eyes were blazing.
“Of course not. That is a dreadful thing to say. No! No, I had no idea! Never!” She turned away abruptly, violently, as if he had offered her some physical attack.
“Then you cannot say that it will not happen again,” he reasoned. “I’m sorry.” He hovered on the edge of adding the possibility of becoming with child, and then remembered what Hester and Callandra had said. Marianne might not even be aware of how children were begotten, and he said nothing. Helplessness and inadequacy choked him.
“It must have cost you to tell me that.” She looked back at him slowly, her face drained. “There are many men who would not have found the courage. Thank you at least for that.”
“Now I must see Mrs. Penrose. I wish I could think of another way, but I cannot.”
“She is in the withdrawing room. I shall wait in my bedroom. I expect Audley will ask me to leave and Julia will wish me to.” And with quivering lips she turned and walked to the door too rapidly for him to reach it ahead of her. She fumbled with the knob, then flung it open and went out across the hall to the stairway, head high, her step clumsy.
He stood still for a moment, tempted to try one more time to think of another way. Then intelligence reasserted itself over emotion, and he went the now familiar way to knock on the withdrawing room door.
He was bidden to enter. Julia was standing at the central table before a vase of flowers, a long, bright stem of delphinium in her hand. Apparently she had not liked the position of it and had chosen to rearrange it herself. When she saw who it was she poked the flower in the back lopsidedly and without bothering to adjust it.
