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Hester felt Monk stiffen beside her, and tightened her hand on his arm warningly.
“She knew a fine man when she saw him,” Hedley Breeland said with a lift of his chin. “She couldn’t do better for herself in any country on God’s green earth, and she had the sense to know it! Fine girl.”
“Is your son here?” Hester asked disingenuously “I should be delighted to meet this girl. I do admire courage so much. We can lose all we value in life without it.”
Breeland stared at her as if he had become aware of her existence for the first time but was now uncertain whether it pleased him or not.
She realized she had said something he considered vaguely unseemly. Perhaps Breeland did not think women should express opinions on such a subject. She had to force herself to think of Judith Alberton and bite her tongue not to tell him what she felt about the quiet courage of women the world over who bore pain, oppression and unhappiness without complaint. She could not contain herself entirely.
“Not all courage is obvious, Mr. Breeland,” she said in a small, tight voice. “Very often it consists of hiding a wound rather than showing it.”
“I can’t say I understand you, ma’am,” he said dismissively. “I’m afraid my son is at the battlefront, where all good soldiers belong at a time like this.”
“How brave,” Monk said in an unreadable voice, but Hester knew it was his coldest irony, and that he was thinking of the grotesque bodies shot to death in the Tooley Street warehouse yard.
There was music, laughter and the clink of glasses around them. Women with bare shoulders drifted by, magnolia blossoms caught up in their gowns and wafting a sweet perfume. It seemed to be the fashion to wear real flowers.
“Surely his fiancee is here with you?” Hester said quickly, she hoped before Breeland would wonder about Monk’s remark.
“Of course,” Breeland replied, turning to her. “But she is very keen to do her duty also. You should be proud of her, ma’am. She has a clear vision of right and wrong and a hunger to fight for freedom for all men. I admire that greatly. All men are brothers and should treat each other so.” He made it a statement, and looked to Monk as if he expected to be challenged on it.
A wave of panic passed through Hester, burning her cheeks as she thought of all the answers Monk might make to that-most of them with razor-cruel sarcasm.
But instead Monk smiled, perhaps a trifle wolfishly. “Of course they should,” he said softly. “And I can see that you are doing everything within your power to make sure that they do.”
“That’s right, sir!” Breeland agreed. “Ah! There’s Merrit! Miss Alberton, my son’s fiancee.” He turned, and they could see Merrit coming towards them. She was dressed in wide skirts pinched into a tiny waist, and a softly draped bodice decorated with gardenias. She looked flushed with excitement and quite lovely.
“Brothers?” Hester said very softly to Monk. “Hypocrites!”
“Cain and Abel,” he replied under his breath.
Hester swallowed her snort of abrupt laughter and turned it into a cough just as Merrit saw them and stopped. For an instant her face registered only shock. There was a brief moment while she struggled to remember from where she recognized them. Then it came, and she walked forward, her smile uncertain but her head high.
Hester had thought she knew how she would feel when she saw Merrit again; now it all vanished and she struggled to read in the girl’s face whether it was brazen defiance which lit her expression or if she had no idea what had happened in the warehouse yard. Certainly there was no fear in her at all, and no apology.
Breeland introduced them, and there was a brief instant when they were all uncertain whether to acknowledge past acquaintance or not.
Merrit drew in her breath and then did not speak.
Hester glanced at Monk.
“Good evening, Miss Alberton,” he said with a slight smile, just enough to be courteous. “Mr. Breeland speaks very highly of you.” It was ambiguous, committing him to nothing.
She blushed. It obviously pleased her. She looked very young. For all the womanly curves of her body and the romantic gown, Hester could see the child in her. It did not take much imagination to put her back in the schoolroom with her hair down her back, a pinafore on and ink on her fingers.
In a wild moment Hester longed for any escape from the truth, any answer but the dead bodies in the warehouse yard and Lyman Breeland on his way to Manassas with the Union army-and Daniel Alberton’s guns.
They were talking and she had not heard.
Monk answered for her.
Somehow she stumbled through the rest of the conversation until they excused themselves and moved on to speak to someone else.
Later that night Trace came to Monk and Hester’s room, his face grave, his dark eyes hollow and deep lines from nose to mouth accentuating his weariness.
“Have you made your decision?” he asked, looking at each of them in turn.
Hester knew what he meant. She turned to Monk, who was standing near the window which opened over the rooftops. It was close to midnight and still stiflingly hot. The sounds of the city drifted up in the air along with the smell of flowers, dust and tobacco smoke, and the overtaxed drains that everyone complained about.
