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It always came back to the past, and that great void in his memory, the darkness where anything might exist.
She had used the word betrayal. That implied trust. Was he really a man to do such a thing? He had never betrayed anyone since the accident. Honor was one virtue he possessed. He had never broken his word. He would not let himself down by such an act.
Could he have changed so much? Had the blow to his head not only obliterated all the past from his mind, but also altered his nature? Was that possible?
He paced the floor back and forth, trying to think of all the things he had pieced together about himself from before the accident, the fragments that had come back to him, the flashes from his childhood in the north, glimpses of the sea, its
violence and its beauty. He recalled his eagerness to learn, fleeting impressions; a face, a sense of injustice and desperation, the man who had been his mentor, and who had been deceived and ruined, and Monk had been unable to help. Nothing he could do had saved him. That was when he had abandoned commerce and dedicated himself to the police.
That was not a man who would betray!
In the police he had risen quickly. He knew from a dozen minor evidences, people’s faces when he met them again, remarks half heard. He had been cruel of tongue, critical, at times ruthless. Runcorn, his old superior, had hated him, and little by little Monk had learned it was not without cause. Monk had contributed to Runcorn’s failures and inadequacies, he had undermined him steadily, even if Runcorn had at least in part brought it upon himself with his petty hatreds and his personal ambitions, which he was prepared to achieve on the backs of others.
Was that a kind of betrayal?
No. It was cruelty, but it was not dishonest. Betrayal was always eventually a kind of deceit.
He knew almost nothing about his relationships with women. The only one of whom he had any recollection was Hermione, whom he had thought he loved, and in that he was the loser. If anyone was betrayed it was he. It was Hermione who had been so much less than she promised, she who had been too shallow to grasp at love, who had preferred the comfortable, the unchallenging, the safe. He could still feel the hollowness of loss when he had found her again, so full of hope, and then the disillusion, the utter emptiness.
But he must have known Drusilla! That hatred on her face had some terrible reason, some foundation in a relationship where she felt so wronged she had been prepared to do even this to be revenged.
He had already read through all the letters and the bills he could find when he first returned home from the accident, trying then to reconstruct some framework to his life. There was little enough. He was careful with money, but extravagant as far as personal appearance was concerned. His tailor’s bills were high, as were his shirtmaker’s and bootmaker’s, even his barber’s.
There had been no personal letters except from his sister, Beth, and he had obviously been remiss in writing back to her. Now he searched through them again, but there was nothing in the same hand as Drusilla’s letter. Admittedly there was nothing else personal.
He put them all back. It was a sparse record for a lifetime. There was no sense of identity in it, no feeling for the nature and personality of a man. There must be so much that he did not know, and probably never would. There must have been loves and hates, generosities, injuries, hopes, humiliations and triumphs. They were all wiped out as if they had never happened.
Except that for everyone else they were still there, sharp and real, still carrying all their emotion and pain.
How could he have known a woman like Drusilla, with her vitality, beauty, wit and charm, and simply have forgotten her so totally that even on seeing her again, being so happy with her, he still had no hint of memory? Nothing was familiar. Rack his brain as he might, there was no chord, no flash of even momentary recollection.
He stared out of the window at the street. It was still gray, but the carriage lamps were no longer lit.
It would be a delusion to think she would not proceed. Of course she could prove nothing. Nothing had happened. But that was immaterial. She could make the charge, and it would be sufficient to ruin him. His livelihood depended on his reputation, on trust.
He had no other skills. Perhaps she knew that?
What had he done to her? What manner of man was he—had he been?
Hester was still taking her turn nursing Enid Ravensbrook, who was now beginning the long, slow journey to recovery but still needed constant attention, or she could slip into relapse.
The same morning that Monk received his letter from Drusilla, Hester returned from the makeshift hospital to Ravensbrook House, tired and thoroughly miserable. She ached from lack of sleep, her eyes stung as if she had grit or dust in them, and she was heartsick of the sights and sounds and smells of distress. So many people had died. The bare few who had recovered gave it all meaning, but it was small in the sight of so much loss. And no matter how hard Kristian tried, what arguments he put up in the local government council, nothing was done. They were frightened of the disease, frightened of the cost of new sewers, frightened of innovation or change, of new inventions which might not work, of old ones which had already failed, and of blame no matter what they did. It was an exhausting struggle, and almost certainly doomed to failure. But neither he nor Callandra could give up.
Hester had watched them day after day marshaling new arguments and returning to battle. Each evening they had retired defeated. The only good to come of it was the tenderness they shared with each other, and even that was fraught with pain. After the fever they would part again, to see each other only occasionally, formally, perhaps in meetings of the board of governors of the hospital where Kristian worked and Callandra gave her help voluntarily. These meetings would be in front of all the other governors, or if they were fortunate, perhaps a chance encounter in a corridor with the constant expectation of interruption. They would speak of anything and everything but themselves. In all probability it would always be so.
Hester was welcomed in by the parlormaid and told that a supper was prepared if she wished it, after she had seen Lady Ravensbrook and Mrs. Stonefield.
She thanked the girl and went upstairs.
Enid was propped up in bed, leaning against a pile of pillows. She looked gaunt, as if she had not eaten or slept in days. There were bruised hollows around her eyes and her skin looked discolored and paper-fragile. Her hair hung in lank strings around her shoulders and she was so thin the bones seemed in danger of hurting the flesh stretched across them. But she smiled as soon as she saw Hester.
“How are they?” she asked, her voice still weak, only lifted by the eagerness inside her. “Is it easing at all? How about Callandra? Is she all right? And Mary? And Kristian?”
Hester felt some of the tension slip away from her. The room was warm and comfortable. There was a fire in the hearth. It was a different world from the coldness and the dirt of the hospital, the guttering candles and the smell of too many people unwashed, close together in their pain.
Hester sat on the edge of the bed.
“Callandra and Mary are still well, though very tired,” she replied. “And Kristian is still fighting the council, but I don’t think he has won a yard of ground. And yes, I think the fever is lessening a little. Certainly there are fewer deaths. We sent two people home today, both well enough to leave.”
