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Rhys nodded very slowly, uncertainly.
“You want to add something?” Rathbone asked. “Did you go often?”
Rhys shook his head.
“Only a few times?”
He nodded.
“Did you injure any women there?”
Again Rhys shook his head, sharply, his eyes angry.
“Did your father go with you?”
Rhys’s eyes widened in amazement.
“No,” Rathbone answered his own question. “But he knew you went, and he did not approve?”
Rhys nodded, a bitter smile twisting his mouth. There was rage in it and hurt and a blazing frustration. He tried to speak, his throat muscles knotting, his head jerking forward.
Hester started up from her chair, then realized she must not interrupt. She might protect him for the moment—and damage him for all the future. Rathbone must learn all he could, however painful.
“Did you quarrel about it?” Rathbone continued.
Rhys nodded slowly.
“Here at home?”
He nodded.
“And when you went to St. Giles the night of his death?”
Again the sharp, violent movement of denial and the jolt forward as if he would laugh, had he the power.
“Did you quarrel about something else?”
Rhys’s eyes filled with tears and he banged his broken hands up and down on the bedclothes, his body locked in an inner pain far worse than the sickening jolting of the bones.
Rathbone turned to Hester, his face white.
She moved forward.
“Rhys!” she said sharply. She sat down on the bed and took hold of his wrists, trying to force him to be still, but his muscles were clenched so hard she could not. He was stronger than she had expected, and his whole body was caught in the emotion. “Rhys!” she said again, more urgently. “Stop it! You’ll move the bones again. I know you think you don’t care, but you do. Please …”
He unclenched his muscles slowly, and the tears spilled over his cheeks. He stared at her, then turned away, and she saw only the back of his head.
“Rhys,” she said firmly. “Did you kill your father?”
There was a long silence. Neither Hester nor Rathbone moved. Then slowly he turned back to her and shook his head, his eyes intent on her face.
“But you know who did?” she pressed.
This time he refused to answer even by a look.
She turned to Rathbone.
“All right, for now,” he conceded, standing up. “I will consider what to do. Try to rest and recover as much as you can. You will need
