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She felt a warmth inside her. Simple praise from a colleague for whom she had a supreme regard was sweeter than the greatest extravagance from someone who did not know precisely what it meant.
“Thank you, Dr. Wade,” she said quietly. “I shall endeavor not to give you cause ever to think otherwise.”
He smiled suddenly, as if for an instant he forgot the care and unhappiness which had brought them together.
“I have no doubt of you,” he replied, then bowed very slightly and walked past her and down the stairs to where Sylvestra would be waiting for him in the withdrawing room.
Early in the afternoon Hester tried to spin out small domestic tasks, getting smears out of Rhys’s nightshirt where one of his bandages had been pulled crooked and blood from the still-open wound had seeped through; mending a pillowcase before the tiny tear became worse; sorting the books in the bedroom into some specific order. There was a knock on the door, and when she answered it the maid informed her that a gentleman had called to see her and had been shown to the housekeeper’s sitting room.
“Who is he?” Hester asked
with surprise. Her immediate thought was that it was Monk, then she realized how unlikely that was. It had come to her mind only because some thought of him was so close under the surface of her consciousness. It would be Evan, come to see if he could enlist her help in solving the mystery of Rhys’s injuries, at least in learning something more about the family and the relationship between father and son. It was absurd to feel this sudden sinking of disappointment. She would not know what to say to Monk anyway.
Nor did she know what to say to Evan. Her duty lay to the truth, but she did not know if she wanted to learn it. Her professional loyalty, and her emotions, were toward Rhys. And she was employed by Sylvestra; that required of her some kind of honesty.
She thanked the maid and finished what she was doing, then went downstairs and through the green baize door, along the passage to the housekeeper’s sitting room. She went in without knocking.
She stopped abruptly. It was Monk who stood in the middle of the floor, slim and graceful in his perfectly cut coat. He looked short-tempered and impatient.
She closed the door behind her.
“How is your patient?” he asked. His expression was one of interest.
Was it politeness, or did he have a reason to care? Or was it simply something to say?
“Dr. Wade tells me he is recovering fairly well but still far from healed,” she replied a trifle stiffly. She was angry with herself for the elation she felt because it was him and not Evan. There was nothing to be pleased about. It would only be another pointless quarrel.
“Haven’t you got an opinion of your own?” He raised his eyebrows. He sounded critical.
“Of course I have,” she retorted. “Do you think it is likely to be of more use to you than the doctor’s?”
“Hardly …”
“So I imagined. That is why I gave you the doctor’s.”
He took a breath and then let it out quickly.
“And he still does not speak?”
“No.”
“Or communicate in any other way?”
“If you mean in words, no. He cannot hold a pen to write. The bones in his hands are far from healed yet. I assume from your persistence that your interest is professional? I don’t know why. Do you imagine he witnessed your attackers in Seven Dials, or that he knows who the assailants were?”
He put his hands in his pockets and looked down at the floor, then up at her. His expression softened, the guardedness slipped away from it.
“I would like to think he had nothing to do with them whatever.” His eyes met hers, steady and clear, jolting her suddenly with memory of how well they knew each other, what losses and victories they had shared. “Are you sure that is so?”
“Yes,” she said immediately, then knew from his look, and from her own inner honesty, that it was not so. “No—not absolutely.” She tried again. “I don’t know what happened, except that it was very dreadful, so dreadful it has rendered him speechless.”
“Is that genuine …? I mean to ask that truly.” He looked apologetic, unwilling to hurt. “If you say it is so, I will accept it.”
She came farther into the room, standing closer to him. The fire in the small, carefully blacked grate burned briskly, and there were two chairs near it, but she ignored them, and so did he.
“Yes,” she said with complete certainty this time. “If you had seen him in nightmare, trying desperately to cry out, you would know it as I do.”
His face reflected his acceptance, but there was a sadness in it also which frightened her. It was a tenderness, something she did not often see in him, an unguarded emotion.
