A Breach of Promise - Anne Perry [73]
“Well …” The memory was so clear in Perdita’s face, her mouth pulled as if the pain were physical inside her. She struggled for words and did not know which to choose. “Well … I …” Her eyes filled with tears. “Yes … I felt … just like that.”
“Haven’t you forgotten sometimes, and woken up as if it were all just the same as before, then remembered?” Hester asked. “And had to live it all over again?”
“Yes!” Suddenly Perdita knew; she grasped the reality of it as if it could save her from drowning. “Yes, I have.”
“Then you know what nightmares are like,” Hester assured her. “It is that same shock of seeing and feeling all over again, just as sharp as the first time, only it happens again and again.”
“Poor Gabriel. Do you think if I read”—she looked at Hester with desperate earnestness, stumbling towards knowledge—“if I read the history of India, as you said, that I shall be able to listen to him and be of some use?”
“I really don’t think—” Athol began.
Perdita swung around on him. “Oh, be quiet!” she said sharply. “I don’t want to hear about all their tortures and deaths. I’d much rather imagine the world is all as safe as we are here and nothing really unspeakable ever happens. But it isn’t true, and in my heart I know that. If I try to stay a child forever, I shall lose Gabriel.”
“Nonsense, my dear—”
“Don’t tell me it’s nonsense!” She stood still with her hands straight by her sides, her fists clenched. “He has to be able to speak properly to survive. If it isn’t to me, it will be to Hester. It certainly won’t be to you! You don’t know anything more about India than I do! Not about the reality of it, the heat and dust and disease, the flies and the cruelty, the death. You don’t know what happened to him. Neither do I … but I’m going to find out!”
“You are overtired,” Athol said, nodding with assurance. “It is hardly surprising. You have had a most distressing time. Any woman would—”
“Stop it!” she said loudly, her voice cracking she was so close to tears. “Stop talking at me as if I were feeble! I am! I know I am! Hester has been out to the Crimea and nursed dying men, faced bullets and swords, seen atrocities we haven’t even read about in our nice ironed newspapers the butler brings us on a tray. And what have I done? Sat at home painting silly pictures and stitching samplers and mending the linen. Well, I refuse to stay useless! I’m—I’m terrified!”
Athol was appalled. He had no idea what to say or do. He stared at her, then at Hester with a mixture of anger and appeal. He loathed her for precipitating this crisis, and yet he needed her to cope with it, which he resented profoundly.
Monk was waiting for Hester to show her impatience with Perdita. She was quite right; she was useless and had been hiding from reality like a child.
“Being terrified doesn’t matter,” Hester said confidently, walking forward to stand beside Perdita. “So are most of us. It isn’t what you feel, it’s what you do that counts. Gabriel won’t mind you being frightened, then he’ll know you understand at least something of it. Nobody understands it all.”
“You do.”
Hester laughed. “Nonsense! I simply know what it feels like to see pain you can’t help, to be terrified yourself, overwhelmed and hideously uncomfortable in body, and so tired you haven’t even the strength to weep. If you haven’t felt that yet, one day you will.” She took her by the arm. “Now have a stiff sherry or something and go up to him.”
“But it’s you he wants to talk to,” Perdita protested. “You understand. He doesn’t want to have to explain to someone who knows nothing.” There was reluctance in every line of her.
“Frightened?” Hester said with a smile.
“Yes!” Perdita pulled back physically.
“So now is the time to have courage,” Hester pointed out. “Imagine how much worse soldiers must feel at the order to charge. What is the worst that can happen to you? Your husband will think less of you? You will still have all your arms and legs. You will not bleed or—”
“That’s enough!” Athol said sharply. “You exceed yourself, Miss Latterly!