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But she had merely nodded and answered obediently.
When Sylvestra Duff came into the room she was a complete surprise. Hester had not formed a picture of her in her mind, but she realized she had expected someone as anodyne as Dr. Wade’s regimen for Rhys. Sylvestra was anything but bland. She was, very naturally, dressed entirely in black, but on her tall, very slender figure, and with her intense coloring, it was dramatic and most flattering. She was pale with shock still, and moved as if she needed to be careful in case in her daze she bumped into things, but there was a grace and a composure in her which Hester could not help but admire. Her first impression was most favorable.
She stood up immediately. “Good morning, Mrs. Duff. I am Hester Latterly, the nurse Dr. Wade engaged in your behalf to care for your son during his convalescence.”
“How do you do, Miss Latterly.” Sylvestra spoke with a low voice, and rather slowly, as if she measured her words before she uttered them. “I am grateful you could come. You must have nursed many young men who have been terribly injured.”
“Yes, I have.” Hester considered adding something to the effect that a large number of them had made startling recoveries, even from the most appalling circumstances, then she looked at Sylvestra’s calm eyes and decided it would be shallow and sound as if she were minimizing the truth. And she had not yet seen Rhys Duff; she had no idea for herself of his condition. Dr. Riley’s pinched face and anxious eyes, his expressed desire to hear of the young man’s progress, indicated that his fears were deep that Rhys would recover slowly, if at all. Dr. Wade had also seemed in some personal distress as he spoke of it to her when engaging her.
“We have prepared a room for you next to my son’s,” Sylvestra continued, “and arranged a bell so that he can call you if he should need you. Of course, he cannot ring it, but he can knock it off onto the floor, and you will hear.” She was thinking of all the practical details, speaking too quickly to cover her emotion. “The kitchen will serve you meals, of course, at whatever time may prove most suitable. You must advise Cook what you think best for my son from day to day. I hope you will be comfortable. If you have any other requirements, please tell me, and I shall do all I can to meet them.”
“Thank you,” Hester acknowledged. “I am sure that will be satisfactory.”
The shadow of a smile touched Sylvestra’s mouth. “I imagine the footman has taken your luggage upstairs. Do you wish to see your room first and perhaps change your attire?”
“Thank you, but I should prefer to meet Mr. Duff before anything else,” Hester replied. “And perhaps you could tell me a little more about him.”
“About him?” Sylvestra looked puzzled.
“His nature, his interests,” Hester answered gently. “Dr. Wade said that the shock has temporarily robbed him of speech. I shall know of him only what you tell me, to begin with. I should not like to cause him any unnecessary annoyance or distress by ignorance. Also …” She hesitated.
Sylvestra waited, with no idea what Hester meant.
Hester took a breath.
“Also I must know if you have told him of his father’s death.…”
Sylvestra’s face cleared as she understood. “Of course! I’m sorry for being so slow to understand. Yes, I have told him. I did not think it right to keep it from him. He will have to face it. I do not want him to believe I have lied to him.”
“I cannot imagine how difficult it must be for you,” Hester said. “I am sorry I had to ask.”
Sylvestra was silent for a moment, as if she too was stunned even by the thought of what had happened to her in the space of a few days. Her husband was dead and her son was desperately ill, locked in his own world of isolation, hearing and seeing but unable to speak, unable to communicate with anyone the terror and the pain he must feel.
“I’ll try to tell you something about him,” Sylvestra replied. “It … it is difficult to think of the kind of things which would help.” She turned to lead the way out of the room and across the hall to the stairs. At the bottom she looked back at Hester. “I am afraid that because of the nature of the incident, we have the police returning to ask questions. I cannot believe they will trouble you, since naturally you can know nothing. When Rhys regains his speech, he will tell them, but of course they don’t wish to wait.” A bleakness came over her face. “I don’t suppose they will ever find who did it anyway. It will be some pack of nameless ruffians, and the slums will protect their own.” She started up the stairs, back very straight, head high, but there was no life in her step.
Following after her, Hester imagined
that Sylvestra was barely beginning to lose the numbness of shock, and only in her mind did she turn over and over the details as their reality emerged. Hester could remember feeling the same when she first heard of the suicide of her father, and then, within weeks, of her mother’s death from loneliness and despair. She had kept on worrying at the details, and yet at the same time never really believed the man responsible for her family’s ruin would be caught.
But that was all in the past, and all that needed to be retained in her mind from it was her understanding of the changing moods of grief.
The Duff house was large and very modern in furnishings. Everything she had seen in the morning room and in the hall dated from no further back than the accession of the Queen. There was none of the spare elegance of the Georgian period, or of William IV. There were pictures everywhere, ornate wallpaper, tapestries and woven rugs, flower arrangements and stuffed animals under glass. Fortunately, both the hall and the upstairs landings were large enough not to give an air of oppression, but it was not a style Hester found comfortable.
Sylvestra opened the third door along, hesitated a moment, then invited Hester to accompany her inside. This room was completely different. The long windows faced south and such daylight as there was fell on almost bare walls. The space was dominated by a large bed with carved posts, and in it lay a young man with pale skin, his sensitive, moody face mottled with blue-black bruises and in several places still scabbed with dried blood. His hair, as black as his mother’s, was parted to one side and fell forward over his brow. Because of the disfigurement of his injuries and the pain he must feel, it was difficult to read his expression, but he stared at Hester with what looked like resentment.
It did not surprise her. She was an intruder in a very deep and private grief. She was a stranger, and yet he would be dependent upon her for his most personal needs. She would witness his pain and still be detached from it, able to come and go, to see and yet not to feel. He would not be the first patient to find that humiliating, an emotional and physical nakedness in front of someone who always had the privacy of clothing.
Sylvestra went over to the bed, but she did not sit.
“This is Miss Latterly, who is going to care for you now you are home again. She will be with you all the time, or else in the room along the landing, where the bell will ring to summon her if you need her. She will do everything she can to make you comfortable and help you to get better.”
He turned his head to regard Hester with only mild curiosity, and still what she could not help feeling was dislike.
“How do you do, Mr. Duff,” she said rather more coolly than she had originally intended. She had nursed very awkward patients before, but for all her realization, it was still disturbing to be disliked by someone for whom she had an instinctive pity and with whom she would spend the next weeks, or months, constantly—and in most intimate circumstances.
He blinked but stared back at her in silence. It was going to be a difficult beginning, whatever might follow.
Sylvestra looked faintly embarrassed. She turned from Rhys to Hester.
