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“Hester . . .” he began.
“I know the whole world of Coldbath Square and Leather Lane are outside the law,” she said quickly, before he could dismis
s her. “It shouldn’t be! Do we always have to wait until people come to us before we can help them? Sometimes we have to see the problem and address it anyway.” She was aware of Margaret’s slight stiffening. Perhaps she was unaccustomed to such frankness from a woman to a man. It was unbecoming, not the way either to win or to keep a husband.
“You mean decide for them?” Rathbone said with a wry smile. “That doesn’t sound like you, Hester.”
“I’m a nurse, not a lawyer!” she said sharply. “Quite often I have to help people when they are beyond knowing anything for themselves. It is my skill to know what they need, and do it.”
This time his smile was full of warmth, a genuine sweetness in it. “I know that. It is a kind of moral courage I have admired in you from the day we met. I find it a little overwhelming, because I don’t possess it myself.”
She found tears prickling her eyes for an instant. She knew he meant it, and it was more precious to her than she had expected. But she still wished to argue. That was no help to women like Alice and Fanny. “Oliver . . .”
Margaret leaned forward. “Sir Oliver,” she said urgently, her cheeks flushed but her eyes steady, “if you had seen that poor woman’s body with its broken arms and legs, if you could see her pain, her fear, and the shame she feels because she has taken to the streets to pay her husband’s debts, you would feel as we do, that to nurse her through the daily distress of at least partial recovery, only to set her out into Coldbath for it to happen again, because her debt is ever falling behind . . .”
“Miss Ballinger . . .”
“Then—” She stopped abruptly, the color deepening in her face as she became conscious of how forward she was being. “I am sorry,” she said contritely. “It is not your sort of case. And it is not as if we had any money to pay you.” She rose to her feet, her eyes downcast with embarrassment. “It was an act of desperation. . . .”
“Miss Ballinger!” He rose also, stepping around the desk towards her. “Please,” he said gently. “I do not mean that I am unwilling, simply that I do not know what I can do! But I promise you that I will put my attention to it, and if there is anything that may be done within and through the law, I will tell you, and take your instructions. Money need not be a consideration. I hesitate only because I do not wish to promise what it is outside my power to give.”
Margaret looked up at him quickly, her eyes candid and direct, her face filled with gratitude. “Thank you . . .”
Hester realized with a shock of amazement that Rathbone was acceding to a request entirely against his interests and outside his nature in order not to refuse Margaret. It was not Hester he was pleasing, as it had always been in the past. She was glad he agreed, of course, and grateful, but it was an odd sense of rebuff that it was not for her. It was not obvious—in no way had he been less than friendly to her, but the quality of his attention was different. She knew it as certainly as a change of temperature in the air. She should have been happy for both of them. She was happy! She did not wish Rathbone to spend the rest of his life in love with her when she would only ever love Monk. But just today, this was as if a door had closed in front of her, and something in it hurt.
Rathbone had turned towards her. She must smile, it was imperative.
“Thank you,” she added to Margaret’s words. “I think we have told you everything that we know. It is the principle rather than individual women so far, but if we learn anything further we will inform you, of course.”
There was nothing else for any of them to say, and they were conscious of the courtesy of his having seen them at all at the expense of other clients waiting. They excused themselves, thanking him again, and five minutes later were in a hansom riding back toward Coldbath Square. They did not speak, each lost in her own thoughts. Margaret was still flushed, her eyes wide, turned away from Hester and staring out of the window at the passing streets. No words could have been more eloquent of the fact that very plainly she had not forgotten her first meeting with Rathbone, nor had its emotional mark on her been worn away in the time between. But it was something too delicate to share. Had their roles been reversed, Hester would not have spoken either, and she did not think of intruding now. She and Margaret had been honest and natural friends. Part of such friendship was respect, and the understanding of when not to speak.
She did not wish to share her own thoughts, except the superficial ones of the mind, the difficulty of knowing where to find the women who owed money to the usurer, of persuading them that help was possible . . . if indeed it was, and the effort needed to convince them that the exercise of courage would win them anything but further pain. Above all there was the necessity of being absolutely certain that that was true.
But Margaret had been in Coldbath Square long enough to know that for herself, so Hester also watched the streets pass by and thought of practical things.
In the afternoon another woman was brought in beaten for debt. She was not seriously injured, but she was very frightened, and it was that which marked her apart from the usual anger and misery of those hurt. She was almost silent as Hester and Margaret tended to her shallow, painful knife cuts. She would not say who had inflicted them on her, no lies and no truth, but they were very obviously intentionally made. No imaginable accident could have caused such vicious and repeated slicing of the flesh.
She stayed a few hours, until they were certain the bleeding was stopped and the woman had at least partially recovered from shock. Margaret wished her to stay longer, but shaking her head, she picked up her torn shawl, once a pretty thing with flowers and fringes, and went out into the square toward the Farringdon Road.
Margaret stood in the middle of the room and looked around at the tidy cupboards, the scrubbed tabletops and the floor.
Hester shrugged. “I suppose we should be glad there’s nobody else hurt,” she said with an attempt at a smile. “Do you want to go home? There really isn’t anything to do, and Bessie’ll be in later, if anything should happen.”
Margaret grimaced. “And trail around behind Mama, calling on nice ladies who look at me with kindly despair and wonder why I haven’t accepted a reasonable offer of marriage?” she said wryly. “Then they’ll assume that there is something terribly wrong with me . . . too indiscreet to mention, and they will think I have lost my virtue!” She gave a little grunt of frustration. “Why is it that young women are presumed to have only two possible virtues—chastity and obedience?” she demanded with sudden fierceness. “What about courage, or honesty of opinion, not just a matter of not taking what does not belong to you?”
“Because they make people uncomfortable,” Hester replied without hesitation, but giving Margaret a crooked, sympathetic smile.
“Can you imagine anything lonelier than being married to someone who always says what he thinks you want to hear, regardless of whatever it is that he thinks?” Margaret asked, her brows puckered in a frown. “It would be like living in a room full of mirrors, where every other face you saw was simply a reflection of your own.”
“I think it would be a very particular kind of hell,” Hester answered with a rush of wonder and pity that anyone could imagine they desired such a thing, and yet she knew many who thought they did. “You have a gift to put it into such vivid words,” she added with admiration. “Perhaps you should try to convey it visually sometime?”
“That would be something really worth drawing,” Margaret responded. “I am so bored with doing the predictable, just reproducing what I see in front of me, with no greater meaning.”
“I can barely draw a straight line,” Hester admitted.
Margaret flashed her a sudden smile. “There are no straight lines in art—except perhaps the horizons at sea. Would you like me to go out and see if I can find us some hot pies for luncheon? There is a good peddler on the corner of Mount Pleasant and Warner Street.”
“What an excellent idea,” Hester said enthusiastically. “One with flaky pastry—and lots of onions . . . please?”
