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“I see,” Henry said quietly. “What is the decision you have to make?”
Oliver looked up. “I beg your pardon?”
Henry repeated the question.
Oliver thought for several moments. “Actually, I'm not sure. Perhaps there is no decision, except how I am going to come to terms with myself. I defended the man, and I took the money for it. I can't give it back. I could donate it to some charitable cause, but that doesn't undo anything. And if I am remotely honest, it wouldn't salve my conscience either. It smacks of hypocrisy.” He smiled very slightly, a small, self-mocking gesture. “Perhaps I simply wanted to confess. I wanted to not feel alone in my sense of having done something vaguely questionable, something I think I may well be increasingly unhappy about.”
“I believe so, Henry agreed. To admit that you are unsatisfied is a step forward. It takes far less energy to confess an error than it does to keep trying to hide it. Would you like another glass of Medoc? We might as well finish the bottle. And the pie too, if you care to. I think there is a spot more cream.”
Rathbone arrived home quite late and was startled to find Margaret still up. He was even more surprised, unpleasantly so, to realize that he had counted on her being asleep, so that any explanation of his absence could be put off until the following morning. By that time he would be in a hurry to leave for his office, and could avoid the subject again.
She looked tired and anxious, yet she was trying to conceal it. She was worried because she did not know what to say to him.
He knew it, and wanted to touch her, tell her that such worries were superficial and of no lasting importance, but it seemed an unnatural thing to do. He realized with a jarring loneliness that they did not know each other well enough, intimately enough, to overcome such reservations of the mind.
“You must be tired,” she said a little stiffly. “Have you had supper?”
“Yes, thank you. I dined with my father.” Now he would have to find an explanation as to why he had gone to Primrose Hill without taking her. He could not tell her the truth, and he resented having put himself in the position where he needed to lie. This was undignified and ridiculous.
He was also suddenly and painfully aware that he would have told Hester the truth. They might have quarreled over it, even shouted at each other. In the end they would have gone to bed at opposite ends of the house, desperately miserable. Then at some point he would have gotten up and gone to her and resumed the quarrel, because he could not bear to live with it as it was. Emotion would have overridden sense, and pride. Need of her would have been stronger than the need for dignity, or the fear of making a fool of himself. Her ability to be hurt would have been more important than his own.
Margaret was more self-controlled. She would ache quietly, within, and he would never be certain of it. It would not show on her calmer, prettier, more traditional face. That was what made her safer for him, a far more comfortable and suitable wife than Hester would ever have been. He had never needed to worry that Margaret would say or do anything that would embarrass him.
Now he owed her an explanation, something resembling the truth, and yet not exposing her to the knowledge that her father had put him in the position of defending Phillips as a favor. She did not ever need to know that; in fact, unless Ballinger told her, she must not. It was a professional confidence.
“I needed to discuss a case,” he said aloud. “Hypothetically, of course.”
“I see,” she said coolly. She felt excluded, and the feeling was too raw for her to hide it.
He must say more. “If I had explained it to you, you would have known who it was, which would have broken a confidence,” he added. That at least was true. “I could not do that.”
She wanted to believe him. Her eyes widened, hope stirring. “Did it help?”
“Perhaps. At least I understand my problem a little more clearly. The process of thought required to explain sometimes clarifies the mind.”
She decided to leave it while she had some form of comfort, rather than press for more. “I'm glad. Would you like a cup of tea?” It was a politeness, something to say. She did not want him to accept; he could hear that in her tone.
“No, thank you. It is quite late. I think I shall simply go to bed.”
She smiled very slightly. “I too. Good night.”
While Monk was busy, with Scuffs help, searching for further evidence of the darker side of Phillips's trade, Hester set out to learn more about Durban's past, including such family as he might have had.
She needed to know because she was afraid of what Monk might find out that would hurt him, and by extension, eventually, the River Police, and that would hurt him even more.
She understood loyalty within a service, and how in dangerous circumstances where men's lives were often in jeopardy, loyalty must be absolute. Commanding officers were seldom afforded the luxury of time in which to ask or answer questions, and they did not explain themselves. They expected obedience. The army could not function without it. An officer who did not inspire loyalty in his men was ultimately a failure, whether or not that loyalty was warranted by either his ability or his character.
She walked down Gray's Inn Road towards High Holborn. It was hot and dusty, and her skirt was already grimed at the hem. She was passed by traffic, its wheels rattling over the cobbles, the sun glinting on polished harnesses and brass. Four huge shire horses passed, slowly pulling a brewers’ dray. Cabs clattered by in the opposite direction, their horses’ hooves loud, long whips curling in the air above the horses’ ears. An open landau offered a glimpse of summer fashion, pale parasols to keep skin fair, the sound of laughter, the bright silk of a puffed sleeve and satin ribbons in the breeze.
Hester thought of blind loyalty in the army, the unquestioning obedience. Perhaps the alternative was chaos, but she had seen the death and it had stunned her, bruised her heart and mind forever.
She had been on the heights of Sebastopol during the Crimean War, and watched the slaughter at the charge of the Light Brigade into the Russian guns. She had tried afterwards to rescue some of the
few mangled but still alive. The senselessness of it still overwhelmed her. She was very uncertain that she would give blind loyalty to anyone. She had tasted its cost.
At the bottom of Gray's Inn Road she turned into High Holborn and walked to the left. When there was a lull in the traffic she crossed over, kept walking, and then turned right into Castle Street. She knew exactly where she was going and for whom she was looking.
Still it took her another half hour to find him, but she was delighted when she learned the reason. She was told at his lodgings that he had obtained a job as a clerk at a trading house, a skill he had acquired since losing a leg in the Crimea nine years ago. At that time even writing his name had been a challenge to his literacy.
