A Breach of Promise - Anne Perry [63]
Monk forbore from observing that that could be said of many people. It was a point Sandeman might find offensive. He could think of nothing else to explore, no more to ask that might elicit a useful answer. He rose to his feet and offered his thanks.
“I hope you can help,” Sandeman said with a frown. “It seems like an ugly situation which should never have happened. Lovers’ quarrel, do you suppose? Two young people with more feeling than sense, high temperament of an artist crossed with the emotions of a young girl, overexcited, perhaps suffering a little from nervousness?”
“Could be,” Monk conceded. “But it’s gone too far now. It is already in the courts.”
“What a shame,” Sandeman said sincerely. “If I hear anything, I shall advise you.”
And Monk had to be content with that.
He spent a chilly and exhausting afternoon viewing the latest building close to completion to the plans of Killian Melville. First he had to seek the permission of a dubious caretaker, then pick his way over planks and racks of plaster and past busy craftsmen.
It was an uncomfortable experience. He did not want to feel any involvement with Melville, and already a sense of the young architect’s vision was forcing itself upon him. There was light everywhere around him as he stood in the main floor, where Carrara marble was being laid. It was not cold light, not pale, bleaching of color or fading, but giving an air of expansion and freedom. It was almost as if the interior could be as unrestricting as the outside with its clean, soaring lines and uncluttered facades. It was extremely modern, avant-garde, and yet also timeless.
Walking in the still uncompleted galleries, Monk found himself relaxing. He went through an archway into a farther hall, sun reflecting through a huge rose window along a pale floor, this time of wood. The other windows were very high and round, above the picture line, filling the arched ceiling with more light. He found himself smiling. He enjoyed being there, almost as if he were in the company of someone he liked. There was a kind of communication of joy in beauty, even in life.
What would make a man who could create such things ask a woman to marry him and then break his word? Was it as he had told Rathbone, simply that he had been so naive to the ways of the world that he had allowed himself to form a friendship which was misunderstood? The whole wedding had been arranged around him, and he had at no time the grasp to understand it—or the courage to disclaim and retreat?
These buildings were created by a mind of burning clarity and aspiration, a strength of will to dare anything. Such a man could never be a coward. Nor could he be a deceiver. There was a simplicity of line and conception which was in itself a kind of honesty.
Without realizing it, Monk had clenched his fists; his whole body was stiff with determination and an inner anger in his will to preserve this, to defend whoever was the person whose spirit was embodied there. He had always judged a man not by what he said but by what he did, the choices he made, when it was difficult, dangerous, when he had much to lose. This building soared to the sky with Killian Melville’s choices.
He had entered not wanting to like Melville, not wanting to care one way or the other. He walked out rapidly, his feet loud and brisk on the wood and marble floors, and through the entrance door down steps to the square. He did not even bother to excuse himself to the caretaker. The wind was sharp and growing colder. The sun was already lowering and filling the west over the rooftops with an apricot glow. How could he help Melville? What was he hiding, and above all, why did he not trust Rathbone with it?
Was he protecting