A sudden, fearful death - Anne Perry [108]
“Thank you,” she said in a small tight voice. “But I regret, it is not mine. It must belong to some other—some other lady.”
He stared at her, searching her eyes to see whether it was really the dismissal it sounded.
Callandra longed to intervene, but she knew she would only be prolonging the pain. Robert Oliver had been drawn to something in Victoria’s face, an intelligence, an imagination, a vulnerability. Perhaps he even glimpsed what she would have been. He could not know the wound to the body which meant she could never give him what he would so naturally seek.
Without willing it, Callandra found herself speaking.
“How considerate of you, Mr. Oliver. I am sure Miss Stanhope is obliged, but so will be the handkerchief’s true owner, I have no doubt.” She was also quite convinced that Robert Oliver had no intention of seeking anyone further. He had found the scrap of fabric and used it as an excuse, a gracious and simple one. It had no further purpose.
He looked at her fully for the first time, trying to judge who she was and how much her view mattered. He caught something of the grief in her, and knew it was real, although of course he could not know the cause of it. His thin, earnest young face was full of confusion.
Callandra felt a scalding hot anger well up in her. She hated the abortionist who had done this. It was a vile thing to make money out of other people’s fear and distress. For an honest operation to go wrong was a common enough tragedy. This was not honest. God knew if the practitioner was even a doctor, let alone a surgeon.
Please—please God it had not been Kristian. The thought was so dreadful it was like a blow to the stomach, driving the breath out of her.
Did she want to know, if it had been? Would she not rather cling to what she had, the gentleness, the laughter, even the pain of not being able to touch, of knowing she never could have more than this? But could she live with not knowing? Would not the sick, crawling fear inside her mar everything, guilty or not?
Robert Oliver was still staring at her.
She forced herself to smile at him, although she felt it was a hideous travesty of pleasure.
“Miss Stanhope and I were just about to take a little refreshment, and she was to show me some flowers her gardener has propagated. I am sure you will excuse us?” Gently she took Victoria by the arm, and after only a moment’s hesitation, Victoria came with her, her face pale, her lip trembling. They walked in silence, close to each other. Victoria never asked why Callandra had done such a thing, or what she knew.
A memorial service was held for Prudence Barrymore in the village church at Hanwell, and Monk attended. He went as part of his duty to Callandra, but also because he felt a growing respect for the dead woman, and a profound sense of loss that someone so alive and so valuable should have gone. To attend a formal recognition of that loss was some way of, if not filling the void, at least bridging it.
It was a quiet service but the church was crowded with people. It seemed many had come from London to show their respect and offer their condolences to the family. Monk saw at least a score who must have been soldiers, some of them only too obviously amputees, leaning on crutches or with empty sleeves hanging by their sides. Many others had faces which should have looked young but showed signs of premature strain and indelible memory, whom he took also to be soldiers.
Mrs. Barrymore was dressed entirely in black, but her fair face glowed with a kind of energy as she supervised affairs, greeted people, accepted condolences from strangers with a kind of amiable confusion. It obviously amazed her that so many people should have held a deep and personal regard for the daughter she had always found such a trial, and ultimately a disappointment.
Her husband looked much closer to the edge of emotion he could not contain, but there was an immense dignity about him. He stood almost silently, merely nodding his head as people filed past him and spoke of their sorrow, their