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“She can’t have them back! She left them … that is the end of it for her!” Her indignation dared him to argue.
“Of course it is,” he agreed. “Except that that is not all….”
She caught the emotion in his face, the sense of something new and of vital and different meaning.
“What?” she demanded. “What is it, William?”
“Delphine Lambert,” he answered.
She blinked. She had no idea what he meant. The truth had not entered her mind as a possibility.
“Delphine Lambert,” he repeated. “I am almost certain, certain in my own mind, that she and Dolly Jackson are the same person.”
She gasped. “That’s absurd! How could they be? Dolly Jackson was … well—” She stopped. He could see in her eyes that now she was considering it. “Well … she … why? Why would you think that?”
“If you had seen her and then seen those girls, you wouldn’t ask. When Samuel died, Dolly Jackson put the two girls into an orphanage and disappeared, to try to improve her position, marry again, presumably as well as possible. She was a very pretty and ambitious woman. She succeeded superbly. She married Barton Lambert, who gave her everything she wanted.”
She looked at him with slowly dawning comprehension.
“But she did not dare to give him the one thing he wished: children,” he went on. “She had already had two deformed children. So she adopted a child—a perfect child—and she groomed her for the perfect marriage.”
Hester did not speak, but her face reflected her sense of awe and pity.
The door opened and Perdita burst in in a flurry of skirts, breathless.
“Martha says you’ve found the girls! They are down in the kitchen right now!”
Reluctantly, Monk let go of Hester, amazed that he was not more self-conscious of being seen in such a position.
Perdita looked at his filthy appearance with surprise. A month ago she would have been scandalized. Now she was only concerned.
“Is it true? Have you?”
“Yes,” Monk answered. “Only just rescued them from being shipped abroad as white slaves.” He heard Hester gasp. “I found them actually on the boat.” He glanced down at the floor where he had created a pool of water. “I’m sorry. I half fell in the river.” He smiled ruefully.
“You must be frozen!” Perdita exclaimed—the white slave trade was not in her knowledge as it was in Hester’s. “I’ll have someone draw you a hot bath. I’m sure you can borrow some of Gabriel’s clothes. Then we must think what to do with these girls.”
Hester swallowed, unconsciously smoothing down her dress, now thoroughly wet, also more than a little dirty, where she had pressed against Monk.
“Can you train them to work here?” She turned from Perdita to Monk and back again. “Can you?” There was a faint flush in her cheeks at the presumption.
Before Perdita could reply, Monk interrupted. Hester had not seen them. She had no idea of the reality of their disfigurement, or their deafness, their sheer uncouthness from a lifetime of neglect and abuse. In their entire lives they had seen and heard nothing but the insides of taverns, gin mills and brothels.
“You can’t use them as—” He stopped again. How could he say this? Hester was watching him with anxiety and disbelief. “They’re …” He glanced down at his filthy clothes, then up at Perdita. There was no point in anything but the truth. “They’ve spent their lives in gin mills and brothels. They’re deaf—and they’re disfigured.”
Perdita’s face filled with horror, then pity. Her chin lifted. “Well, we don’t have much company at present, maybe not at all. This could be the very best house in which to train such people.” She did not add any note of anger or bitterness, nor was there any in her face. There was no thought of self.
Hester looked at her with a respect which was wholehearted and full of joy.
Perdita recognized it, and it was the final seal upon her resolve.
“Shall we go and tell Gabriel?” she suggested. “Then you really must get warmed up, Mr. Monk. You must be feeling wretched.”
“Of course,” he agreed. He wished to see Gabriel’s reaction himself. He could not rest until he did. He followed Perdita and Hester out of the butler’s pantry and along the corridor to the servants’ stairs, up them and then through the top door to the main wing. He was aware of squelching with every step, and that someone else would have to clean up after him, but perhaps it was worth it this time.
Perdita threw open Gabriel’s door. “It’s right!” she said without waiting. “He has got them! They’re here!”
Gabriel looked at Monk, his eyes bright.
