A Dangerous Fortune - Ken Follett [203]
Ben Greenbourne’s face was wet with tears as he came out of the ward. “I’ve left her with Kate for a while,” he said in a choked voice. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed ineffectually at his cheeks. Maisie had never seen her father-in-law lose his self-possession. He made a rather pathetic sight, but she felt it would do him a lot of good.
“Come to my room,” she said. “I’ll make you a cup of tea.”
“Thank you.”
She led him to her room and told him to sit down. He was the second man to weep in that chair this evening, she thought.
“All those young women,” the old man said. “Are they all in the same position as Rebecca?”
“Not all,” Maisie said. “Some are widows. Some have been abandoned by their husbands. Quite a lot have run away from men who beat them. A woman will suffer a lot of pain, and stay with a husband even if he injures her; but when she gets pregnant she worries that his blows will damage the child, and that’s when she leaves. But most of our women are like Rebecca, girls who have simply made a stupid mistake.”
“I didn’t think life had much more to teach me,” he said. “Now I find I have been foolish and ignorant.”
Maisie handed him a cup of tea. “Thank you,” he said. “You’re very kind. I was never kind to you.”
“We all make mistakes,” she said briskly.
“What a good thing you are here,” he said to her. “Otherwise where would these poor girls go?”
“They would have their babies in ditches and alleyways,” Maisie said.
“To think that might have happened to Rebecca.”
“Unfortunately the hospital has to close,” Maisie said.
“Why is that?”
She looked him in the eye. “All our money was in Pilasters Bank,” she said. “Now we are penniless.”
“Is that so?” he said, and he looked very thoughtful.
Hugh undressed for bed but he felt far from sleepy, so he sat up in his dressing gown, staring into the fire, brooding. He went over and over the bank’s situation in his mind, but he could think of no way to ameliorate it. Yet he could not stop thinking.
At midnight he heard a loud, determined knocking at the front door. He went downstairs in his nightclothes to answer it. There was a carriage at the curb and a liveried footman on the doorstep. The man said: “I beg pardon for knocking so late, sir, but the message is urgent.” He handed over an envelope and left.
As Hugh closed the door his butler came down the stairs. “Is everything all right, sir?” he said worriedly.
“Just a message,” Hugh said. “You can go back to bed.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Hugh opened the envelope and saw the neat, old-fashioned writing of a fussy elderly man. The words made his heart leap with joy.
12, Piccadilly
London, S.W.
November 23rd, 1890
Dear Pilaster,
On further reflection I have decided to consent to your proposal. Yours, etc.
B. Greenbourne.
He looked up from the letter and grinned at the empty hall. “Well, I’ll be blowed,” he said delightedly. “I wonder what made the old man change his mind?”
4
AUGUSTA SAT IN THE BACK ROOM of the best jeweler’s shop in Bond Street. Bright gaslights flared, making the jewelry glitter in the glass cases. The room was full of mirrors. An obsequious assistant padded across the room and placed in front of her a black velvet cloth bearing a diamond necklace.
The manager of the shop was standing beside her. “How much?” she asked him.
“Nine thousand pounds, Lady Whitehaven.” He breathed the price piously, like a prayer.
The necklace was simple and stark, just a plain row of identical large square-cut diamonds set in gold. It would look very striking against her black widow’s gowns, she thought. But she was not buying it to wear.
“It’s a wonderful piece, my lady; quite the loveliest thing we have in the shop.”
“Don’t rush me, I’m thinking,” she replied.
This was her last desperate attempt to raise money. She had tried going openly to the bank and demanding a hundred pounds in gold sovereigns: the clerk, an insolent dog called Mulberry, had refused her. She had tried to have the house transferred from Edward’s name into her own, but that had