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“I …” Genevieve took a deep breath. “I don’t know. I know that sounds absurd, but I am not sure. My husband is missing.…”
“I’m sorry.” Hester meant it profoundly. “That must be dreadful for you—the uncertainty and the loneliness.”
“Yes.” Genevieve took a deep breath and steadied herself. Very deliberately she slid the clean cotton shift over Enid’s body, watching every movement in her attempt not to jolt or bump her.
“How long?” Hester asked as they took off the old sheet.
“Twelve days,” Genevieve replied. “I—I know this sounds as if I have given up all faith, but I believe he is dead, because I know where he went, and he would have been back long ago if he were able.”
Hester went over to the linen press and fetched the clean sheet. Together they put it on the bed, moving Enid gently as they did so.
“Where did he go?” Hester asked.
“To Limehouse, to see his brother,” Genevieve answered.
“Caleb Stone …” Hester said slowly. “I’ve heard of him.”
Genevieve’s eyes widened. “Then you know I am not foolish in my fear.”
“No,” Hester agreed honestly. “From the little I have learned, he is a violent man. Are you sure that is where he went?”
“Yes.” There was no hesitation in Genevieve’s voice. “He went quite often. I know it seems hard to understand, when Caleb was so dreadful, he seems to have nothing to commend him at all, but you see they were twins. Their parents died when they were very young, and they grew up together.” She smoothed the blanket and tucked it in with quick, careful hands. “Lord Ravensbrook took them in, but he is only a distant cousin, and that was before he married Aunt Enid. They were cared for by servants. They had only each other to show any kind of affection to, any laughter—or tears. If they were ill, or afraid, they had no one else. Caleb was different then. Angus doesn’t say a great deal, I think he finds it too hurtful.” Her face was pinched with imagination of pain, and the child she could not comfort within the man she loved. Now even the man was beyond her reach, and there was nothing she could do, except wait.
Hester longed to offer her some ease or hope, but there was none, and to invent it would be cruel. It would force her through the agony of realization, acceptance and grief twice, instead of once.
“You must be tired,” she said instead. “Have Dingle bring us some breakfast, then you should change your clothes and go to your room and sleep.”
They had barely finished eating when there was a brisk tap on the door, and before either of them could answer, it opened and Milo Ravensbrook came in. He closed it behind him and stepped a couple of yards inside. He spared only a glance at Hester and Genevieve, staring past them to Enid, his face bleak. From his pallor and the red rims to his eyes, he could have lain awake most of the night.
“How is she?” he asked, looking at neither of them.
Genevieve said nothing.
“She is very ill,” Hester answered gently. “But the fact that she is still alive gives good cause for hope.”
He swung around to her, his face tight and hard.
“You don’t mince with words, do you! I hope you are kinder with your patients than you are with their families!”
Hester had seen fear lead to anger too often to respond with anger herself.
“I told you the truth, my lord. Would you rather I had told you she was better, when she is not?”
“It is not what you say, ma’am, it is your manner in saying it,” he retorted. He would not retreat. He had criticized her, therefore she must be wrong. He would forgive her in his own time. “I will have the physician attend as soon as possible—within the hour. I shall be obliged if you will remain on duty until he has been. Thereafter, if he deems it acceptable, you may go back to your patients in Limehouse for a spell, providing he is not of the opinion you may return further infection here with you. I am sure you yourself would not wish to do that.”
She was about to argue, but he gave her no opportunity. He turned instead to Genevieve.
“I am delighted you saw fit to come, my dear. Not only are you of the greatest help to poor Enid, but it gives me the chance to offer you some measure of assistance in your present difficulty.” His face softened a fraction, a tenderness above the mouth, there, and then gone again. “And as family, we should be together in this anxiety, and support each other, should it come to be a bereavement.” His expression flickered, unreadily. “I sincerely hope it will not. We may yet discover there has been some form of accident—retrievable. Caleb is violent—indeed, he has lost almost every redeeming feature of his youth—but I find it hard to believe he would willfully injure Angus.”
“He hates him,” Genevieve said, her voice thick with an inner exhaustion far deeper than the one night nursing Enid, the sleeplessness or the fear of disease. “You don’t know how much!”
“Nor do you, my dear,” he said, without making any move towards her. “All you have heard is Angus’s fear speaking, and his very natural grief at the situation, and the degradation he has seen in his brother’s nature. I refuse to believe it is irredeemable.”
“Thank you,” she whispered. For an instant her face was bright with gratitude, and vulnerable as a child’s with sudden new hope.
Hester did not know whether to be furious with him for wakening such thoughts again in her or to pity him because of his own need. She imagined the young man he must have been, taking in two orphaned boys and learning to think of them as his own, clothing them in his dreams, teaching them the arts and truths of life, sharing his experience
s and beliefs. And then must have come the disillusion as one of them slowly became bitter, vicious, and began step by tragic step to destroy himself. He had burned out all that was good, all the gentleness and the aspiration towards virtue, until at last he had cut himself off completely and given way to a kind of despair. Surely such a man as Caleb Stone had become could only result from despair?
