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She stood still, a small, thin figure of immense dignity, her huge black skirt seeming almost to hold her up with its sweeping stiffness, as if it were solid. She waved back with a tiny gesture, then permitted herself to be assisted up to her carriage, plumed and creped in black and drawn by black horses, and moved slowly away.
Zorah’s departure was as different as could be. The crowds were still there, still pressing forward, eager for a glimpse of her, but their mood had changed to one of ugliness and abuse. Nothing was thrown, but Rathbone found himself clenching as if to dodge and instinctively placing himself between Zorah and the crowd.
He almost hustled her to the hansom, and climbed in after her rather than leave her alone, in case the crowd should bar the way and the cabby be unable to make a path into the clearway of the street.
But only one woman pushed forward, shouting unintelligibly, her voice shrill with hatred. The horse was startled and lunged forward, knocking her off balance. She shrieked.
“Get outta the way, yer stupid cow!” the cabby yelled, frightened and taken by surprise himself as the reins were all but yanked out of his grasp. “Sorry, ma’am,” he apologized to Zorah.
Inside the vehicle, Rathbone was jolted against the sides, and Zorah bumped into him and kept her balance only with difficulty.
A moment later they were moving smartly and the angry shouts were behind them. Zorah regained her composure swiftly. She looked straight ahead without rearranging her skirts, as though to do so would be to acknowledge a difficulty and she would not do that.
Rathbone thought of a dozen things to say, and changed his mind about all of them. He looked sideways at Zorah’s face. At first he was not sure if he could see fear in it or not. A dreadful thought occurred to him that perhaps she sought this. The rush of blood, the excitement, the danger might be intoxicants to her. She was the center of attention, albeit hatred, rage, a will to violence. There were some people, a very few, to whom any sort of fame is better than none. To be ignored is a type of death, and it terrifies, it is an engulfing darkness, an annihilation. Anything is better, even loathing.
Was she mad?
If she was, then it was his responsibility to make decisions for her, in her best interest, rather than to allow her to destroy herself, as one would govern a child too young to be answerable. One had a duty to the insane, a legal obligation apart from a humanitarian one. He had been treating her as someone capable of rational judgment, a person able to foresee the results of her actions. Perhaps she was not. Perhaps she was under a compulsion and he had been quite wrong to do so, remiss in his duty both as a lawyer and as a man.
He studied her face. Was that calm he saw in her an inability to understand what had happened and foresee it would get worse?
He opened his mouth to speak, and then did not know what he was going to say.
He looked down at her hands. They were clenched on her skirt, the leather gloves pulled shiny across the knuckles, both hands shaking. He looked up at her face again and knew that the eyes staring straight ahead, the set of the jaw, were not born of indifference or unawareness but were the manifestations of fear even deeper than his own—and a very good knowledge that what was to come would be both ugly and painful.
He sat back and looked ahead, even more confused than before and more confounded as to what he should do.
He had been at home for over two hours when his servant announced that Miss Hester Latterly had called to see him. For a second he was delighted, then his spirits sank again as he realized how little he could tell her that was good, or even clear enough in his mind to be put into words.
“Ask her to come in,” he said rather sharply. It was a cold night. She should not be kept waiting.
“Hester!” he said eagerly when she entered. She looked lovelier than he had remembered. There was color in her cheeks and a gentleness in her eyes, a depth of concern which smoothed out the tension in him and even made the fears recede for a space. “Come in,” he went on warmly. He had already dined, and he assumed she would have also. “May I offer you a glass of wine, perhaps Port?”
“Not yet, thank you,” she declined. “How are you? How is Countess Rostova? I saw how ugly it was when you were leaving the court.”
“You were there? I didn’t see you.” He moved aside so that she might warm herself by the fire. It was only after he had done so that he realized what an extraordinary action it was for him. He would never consciously have yielded a place by the fire to a woman, least of all his own fire. It was a mark of the turmoil in his mind.
“Hardly surprising,” she said with a rueful smile. “We were crammed in like matches in a box. Who can you call to help? Has Monk found anything even remotely useful? What on earth is he doing?”
As if in answer to her question, the manservant returned to announce that Monk also had arrived, only instead of waiting in the hall or the morning room, he was following hard on the man’s heels so that the servant all but bumped into Monk when he turned.
Monk’s overcoat was wet across the shoulders, and he handed a wet hat to the manservant before he withdrew.
Hester retained her place closest to the fire, moving her skirts slightly aside so some of the warmth could reach him. But she did not bother with pleasantries.
“What have you learned in Wellborough?” she said immediately.
Monk’s face pinched with irritation. “Only substantiation of what we already assume,” he said a trifle tersely. “The more I think of it, the more likely does it seem that Gisela was the intended victim.”
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nbsp; Hester stared at him, consternation mixing with anger in her face.
“Can you prove it?” she challenged.
“Of course I can’t prove it! If I could, I wouldn’t have said ’I think,’ I would simply have stated that it was so.” He moved closer to the fire.
“Well, you must have a reason,” she argued. “What is it? Why do you think it was Gisela? Who did it?”
