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“Have you found evidence?” she asked, her voice-catching. “Do you know something about it?”
“No.” His expression did not change. “But the suggestions are increasing.”
“What? What suggestions?”
“I’m sorry, Hester. I wish it were not so.”
“What suggestions?” Her voice was rising a little higher. It was mostly fear for Rhys, but also it was the gentleness in Monk’s eyes. It was too fragile to grasp, too precious to break, like a perfect reflection in water—touch it and it shatters. “What have you learned?”
“That the three men who attacked these women were gentlemen, well dressed, arriving in cabs, sometimes together, sometimes separately, leaving in a hansom, nearly always together.”
“That’s nothing to do with Rhys!” She knew she was interrupting and that he would not have mentioned it had he no more than that. She just found it impossible to hear him out, the thought hurt so much. She could see he knew that, and that he hated doing it. The warmth in his eyes she would hoard up like a memory of joy, a sweet light in darkness.
“One of them was tall and slender,” he went on.
The description fitted Rhys. They both knew it.
“The other two were of average height, one stockier, the other rather thin,” he went on quietly.
The coals settled in the fire and neither of them noticed. There were footsteps down the corridor outside, but they passed without stopping.
Monk had not seen Arthur and Duke Kynaston, but Hester had. Glimpsed hastily, hurrying in a dark street, it could very well be them. A coldness filled her. She tried to shut it out, but memory was vivid of the cruelty in Rhys’s eyes, the sense of power as he had hurt Sylvestra, his smile afterwards, his relish in it. It had not happened only once, a mistake, an aberration. He exulted in his power to hurt. She had tried not to believe it, but in Monk’s presence it was impossible. She could be furious with him, she could despise elements in him, she could disagree violently; but she could not intentionally harm him, and she could not lie. To build that barrier between them would be unbearable, like denying part of herself. The protection must be emotional, self-chosen, not to divide them but merely to cover from a pain too real.
He moved towards her. He was so close she could smell the damp wool of his coat where the rain had caught his collar.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I can’t turn aside because he’s injured now or because he is your patient. If he had been alone, perhaps I could, but there are the other two.”
“I can’t believe Arthur Kynaston was involved.” She met his eyes. “I would have to see proof that could not be argued. I would have to hear him admit it. Duke I do not know about.”
“It could have been Rhys, Duke and someone else,” he pointed out.
“Then why is Leighton Duff dead and Duke Kynaston unhurt?”
He put out a hand as if to touch her, then let it fall.
“Because Leighton Duff guessed there was something profoundly wrong, and he followed them and challenged his son,” he answered gravely, a pucker between his brows. “The one with whom he was most concerned, the one for whom he cared. And Rhys lost his temper, perhaps high on whiskey, fueled by guilt and fear and a belief in his own power. The others ran off. The result is what Evan found … two men who began a fight and couldn’t stop it, short of the death of one of them and the near-mortal injury of the other.”
She shook her head, but it was to close out the vision, to defend herself from it, not because she could deny its possibility.
This time he did put his hands on her shoulders, very gently, not to hold her, simply to touch.
She stared at the floor, refusing to look up at him.
“And perhaps some men of the area, husbands or lovers of the last victim, brothers, or even friends, caught up with them. They had stopped running for too long … and it was they who beat them both. Rhys cannot tell us … even if he wanted to.”
There was nothing to say. The impulse was to deny it, and that was pointless.
“I don’t know any way to find out,” she said defensively.
“I know.” He smiled very slightly. “And if you did, you wouldn’t … until you had to know, for yourself. You would have to prove him innocent … and when you proved him guilty, you would say nothing, and I would know anyway.”
She raised her eyes quickly. “No, you wouldn’t. Not if I chose to conceal it.”
He hesitated, then stepped back half a pace.
“I would know,” he repeated. “Why? Would you defend him for it? I should take you to see these women, beaten by poverty, dirt, ignorance, and now beaten by three young gentlemen who are bored by their comfortable lives and want a little more dangerous entertainment, something to make the heart beat a trifle faster and bring the blood to the head.” His voice was hard in his throat with outrage, a deep and abiding hurt he felt for the injured. “Some of them are no more than children. At their age you were in the schoolroom wearing a pinafore and doing your sums, and your most urgent distress was being forced to eat your rice pudding.” He was exaggerating and he knew it, but it hardly mattered. The essence was real. “You wouldn’t defend that, Hester.… you couldn’t. You have more honor, more imagination than that.”
She turned away. “Of course I do. But you haven’t seen Rhys’s pain now. Judgment is fine when you only know one side. It is much harder when you know the offender, and, like him, feel his pain too.”
