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She had considerable difficulty persuading Scuff to go with her.
‘Yer didn’t ought to go,’ he said with conviction. ‘She didn’t help you when you were a prisoner and could ’ave been killed. In fact, if Radnor’d died, you would’ve been. An’ she ’ad to know that! She in’t in any danger ’cept of being used by ’er father, and that’s going to ’appen whether you say so to ’er or not.’ That was very reasonable, and he knew it. He was behaving like a man, not a boy. He was telling her why she shouldn’t go, whereas a boy would just have asked her not to. He smiled very slightly.
Hester smiled back at him. ‘Are you saying that because she didn’t save me, then I shouldn’t try to save her?’ she asked.
For an instant he was wrong-footed. ‘Summink like that,’ he agreed.
‘You think I should be like her?’ Now she sounded surprised.
‘No!’ Of course that was not what he meant. ‘But yer don’t ’ave to go out of yer way to tell ’er what she prob’ly knows anyhow. She won’t listen to you, because she don’t want to hear it. Yer said so and yer said she in’t got anyone ’cept ’er father, so if she wasn’t with ’im, what’d she do?’
‘Get married,’ Hester replied. ‘Have a family of her own.’
He thought about that for a moment or two. The only time he had seen Adrienne Radnor was when they had rescued Hester and the children. Adrienne had been frightened and angry, fighting all the way. Her hands had been tied behind her back with rope, her hair all over the place and her dress filthy from when she had been thrown on to the ground as they overpowered her. He had never thought of the possibility of anyone wanting to marry her. But then he didn’t understand a lot of things about why and who people married. They just did. A fair few regretted it later, both men and women.
‘Yer can’t do that for ’er,’ he said, pleased with the logic of that.
‘No, of course I can’t,’ she agreed. ‘All I might do is make her see her position a little more clearly.’
He frowned. ‘Yer mean scare her? She’ll get angry!’
‘Yes, I suppose I do. Because she might.’
He had expected her to argue, and then he could have argued back. The fact that she had not robbed him of a response.
‘Come with me?’ she asked. ‘She’ll be a lot more careful about getting angry with two of us.’
Scuff knew the look in her eyes. She would go alone if she had to. It would be much better if he were there. He would at least protect her if Miss Radnor were to lose her temper.
He conceded with as much grace as he could manage.
Hester timed her visit for the mid-afternoon. It was a little early for the usual social call, but not so early as to clash with a late luncheon. It was also the time she thought it least likely for Bryson Radnor to be at home. He had been abundantly full of vigour at the trial; she judged he would escape the confines of the house, and the tedium of female company, as often as he could. If she saw him present, or any evidence that he was so, she would turn and leave again – she hoped unseen.
She knew his address from Magnus Rand’s notes on Radnor when he first came to the hospital, but the house was far larger and more imposing than she had expected. It spoke very clearly of Radnor’s considerable fortune, both from its size and the care with which it was maintained. It was set well back from the road, and the late summer garden was filled with bloom. The second flush of roses sent out a rich perfume that wrapped around her before she reached for the bell-pull beside the carved front door.
The house should not have surprised her; Radnor had made no secret of his love of all sensual beauty. And yet its beauty caught her oddly vulnerably all the same. There was an ease in it, an exuberance for life. It pulled her memory back to his gaunt face, filled with passion and fury when he was so afraid of dying, of losing all the great, rich world and the excitement in its own infinite vitality. She hated him, but she understood him.
Perhaps she should have shouted at him that Maggie, Charlie and Mike had the right to taste all these things too. Even if they never savoured them as he would have, it was not Radnor’s right to deny them, or anyone. Who knows the colours someone else sees?
The bell was answered by a footman and Hester asked if she might see Miss Adrienne Radnor. It was a matter concerning the health of her father, and in some degree of confidence.
The footman showed her in, and she waited with trepidation in a great room facing on to the garden. It was full of light, and decorated mostly in soft greens. There were several bookshelves and at least a dozen artefacts that looked to be of ancient origin, perhaps from the Near East, such as Egypt or Palestine.
Scuff had gone into the garden, just around the corner, where he could hear her if she called out, but need not be party to the conversation, if indeed there was one.
Hester would gladly have looked at the artefacts, and also the books, but within a few minutes of her arrival the door to the hall opened and Adrienne came in. Even in the short while since the time in the cottage, she had changed so much that Hester was taken aback. Had they met in the street she would have been uncertain if she was the same woman. She walked uprightly, her head high. The sheen was back in her hair; indeed, it was quite beautiful. Her eyes were clear and there was colour in her skin. She was dressed in a pale green summer afternoon gown, which became her excellently. She looked almost like a woman in love.
Was that possible? Could she have had a relationship of such a nature that had had to be set aside during her father’s illness, but would now be taken up again? Perhaps Hester had been totally mistaken in the whole nature of her love for her father, and his for her, and it was only the terror of death she had seen in his eyes, not the evil she imagined.
Of course it was wrong to kidnap, and the use of the children beyond wrong; it was monstrous. To do so out of terror, no matter how deep, was not an excuse.
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Monk,’ Adrienne said with a lift of curiosity in her voice. ‘Bartlett said that you wished to inform me of something regarding my father’s health. I can assure you, he has no problems. He is his old self again – except that perhaps he values everything even more, if such were possible. And I bear you no ill will for your testimony in court. You said what you had to say, in the circumstances.’ She smiled bleakly, as if conscious of the irony of the situation, and her own equivocal role in it. ‘I had no part in your kidnap, but I could have hel
ped you escape, and I did not. I knew we needed your skill to keep my father alive long enough for the treatment to work. And, in my better moments, I also knew that you would not hurt him, even to save your own life.’
‘It wouldn’t have saved my life,’ Hester replied with equal honesty. ‘If your father had died, Mr Rand would have had no further use for me. Indeed, he could not afford for me to survive anyway. But you are right that I would not have hurt your father. He was my patient. To destroy him would have destroyed me too.’
Adrienne shook her head. ‘You are a very strange woman, but in a way I admire you. Certainly I respect you. And I do not expect you to have the same regard for me.’ She did not hide the sadness that it caused her.
