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“Was it really as bad as that?” Robert said gently. “You’d better sit down. Would you like me to ring for a tray of tea? You look pretty upset.”
She tried to force a smile and knew she had failed.
“You don’t have to pretend,” Robert went on. “Is the verdict in already? It can’t be, can it?”
“Did she withdraw?” Victoria asked, puzzled.
“No.
No, she didn’t withdraw,” Hester replied, sitting down. “And the verdict is a long way off yet. Sir Oliver hasn’t even started. But I can’t see that it will help when he does. It has reached the stage now where Zorah will be fighting to keep from the gallows herself …”
They both stared at her.
“Zorah?” Robert said aghast. “But Zorah didn’t kill him! If she had, she would be the last person to mention murder. She’d be only too happy they all thought it was accidental. That doesn’t make any sense!”
“Perhaps they don’t think she is sensible,” Victoria pointed out. “They may think she’s a fanatic, or hysterical. I know that they are saying she is very eccentric, and that she dresses in men’s clothes and has been to all sorts of unsuitable and indecent places. And of course they are suggesting that her morals are appalling.”
Hester was startled that Victoria should be aware of such things. How on earth did she know? Then she remembered Victoria’s drastically altered circumstances. She must have come down so far in the world that she no longer had anything like the life of the young lady she had been before her family’s disgrace, and no doubt now also financial dependency upon relatives. She was probably far better acquainted with the harsher side of life and its realities than Robert was.
He was staring at Victoria, and she colored unhappily.
“Who is saying that?” he asked her. “That’s totally unjust.”
“When people are angry, justice has very little part in it,” she replied quietly.
“Why should they be angry?” He frowned. “She may have injured Gisela, but the verdict isn’t in yet. And if it was murder, then they should be grateful to her, whoever is guilty. At least she has brought the truth about that to light. It seems to me they are doing exactly what they are blaming her for … jumping to conclusions without hearing the facts, and condemning people without evidence. That’s totally hypocritical.”
Victoria smiled. “Of course it is,” she agreed gently. Her eyes were soft and bright as she looked at him.
Robert turned to Hester. “What about your friend, Sir Oliver? How is he? He must be feeling very badly that he cannot help, especially if it is as serious for her as you say.”
“I don’t think he has any idea what to do for the best,” Hester said frankly. “He has to prove it was someone else to save the Countess, and we haven’t any proof.”
“I’m sorry.”
Victoria rose to her feet, moving with great awkwardness as the pain caught her, then straightening again and hiding it so Robert should not see. “It is getting late, and I should leave. I am sure you must be tired after the disasters of the day. I shall leave you to talk. Perhaps some idea may come to you.” She looked at Robert, hesitating a moment, blinking, and then making herself smile again. “Good night.” And then quite suddenly she turned on her heel and went out of the door, closing it behind her clumsily. The expression in her eyes and in her voice, the color in her face, had betrayed her feelings, and Hester had read them as plainly as if they had been spoken in words, perhaps more plainly. Words can lie.
She looked at Robert. His mouth was pinched, and his eyes were dark with pain. He stared down at his legs, placed on the chair for him by the footman. One foot was a trifle crooked, and he was powerless even to straighten it. Hester saw it, but to lift it for him would be an intolerable reminder at this moment.
“Thank you for bringing me Victoria,” he said quickly. “I think I shall always love her. I wish I had anything on earth I could give her that compared with what she has given me.” He breathed out. “But I haven’t.” He hesitated. “If I could walk … If I could only stand!” His voice broke, and for long, aching moments he had to fight to retain his self-control.
Hester knew that Victoria had told him nothing of her own griefs. It was an acutely private thing, and yet Robert was suffering, and perhaps he would allow both their happiness to slip away from them because he believed they were so unequal and he was worth nothing to her.
Hester spoke very quietly. Perhaps this was a mistake, an irretrievable error, the breaking of a trust, but she told him.
“You can give her love. There is no gift as great—”
He swung his shoulders around, glaring at her with rage and frustration and pain in his eyes, and something agonizing which she thought was shame.
“Love!” he said bitterly. “With all my heart … but that’s hardly enough, is it? I can’t look after her. I can’t support or protect her. I can’t love her as a man loves a woman! ’With my body I thee worship!’ ” His voice cracked with unshed tears and loneliness and helplessness. “I can’t give her love; I can’t give her children!”
“Nor can she give such things to you,” Hester said softly, longing to touch his hand and knowing it was not the time. “She was raped as a girl, and as a result of that had a backstreet abortion. It was very badly done, and she has never healed. That is the cause of her affliction, her constant pain, and at some times of the month it is worse than at others. She cannot ever have marital relations, and she certainly could not bear a child.”
He was ashen white. He stared at her with horror so great his body shook, his hands clenched and unclenched in his lap, and she thought for a moment he was going to be sick.
“Raped?” he choked. His face filled with feelings of such violence and horror she hated herself for having told him. He despised Victoria. Like so many others, he felt she was unclean, not a victim but somehow a vessel which had invited and deserved its own spoiling. In telling him she had made a fearful misjudgment, irreparable.
She looked at Robert again.
