Defend and Betray - Anne Perry [160]
“You’re wasting your time,” she said bleakly, sudden pain obliterating both her curiosity and her humor. “There’s nothing anyone can do for her, poor soul.”
“Or for Cassian?” he asked.
Her eyes narrowed; she looked at him in silence for several seconds. He did not turn away but met her gaze squarely.
“What would you be trying to do for him?” she said at last.
“See it doesn’t happen to him anymore.”
She stood still, her shoulders stiff, her eyes on his.
“You can’t,” she said at last. “He’ll remain in this house, with his grandfather. He has no one else now.”
“He has his sisters.”
She pursed her lips slowly, a new thought turning over in her mind.
“He could go to Sabella,” he suggested tentatively.
“You’d never prove it,” she said almost under her breath, her eyes wide. They both knew what she was referring to; there was no need to speak the words. The old colonel was in their vision as powerfully as if some aura of him were there, like a pungent smoke after a man and his cigar or pipe have passed by.
“I might,” he said slowly. “Can I speak to Cassian?”
“I don’t know. Depends what you want to say. I’ll not let you upset him—God knows the poor child has enough to bear, and worse to come.”
“I won’t do more than I have to,” Monk pressed. “And you will be there all the time.”
“I most certainly will,” she said darkly. “Well, come on then, don’t stand there wasting time. What has to be done had best be done quickly.”
Cassian was alone in his own room. There were no school-books visible, nor any other improving kind of occupation, and Monk judged Miss Buchan had weighed the relative merits of forced effort to occupy his mind and those of allowing him to think as he wished and permit the thoughts which had to lie below the surface to come through and claim the attention they would sooner or later have to have. Monk approved her decision.
Cassian looked around from the window where he was gazing. His face was pale but he looked perfectly composed. One could only guess what emotions were tearing at him beneath. Clutched in his fingers was a small gold watch fob. Monk could just see the yellow glint as he turned his hand.
“Mr. Monk would like to talk to you for a while,” Miss Buchan said in a matter-of-fact voice. “I don’t know what he has to say, but it might be important for your mother, so pay him attention and tell him all the truth you know.”
“Yes, Miss Buchan,” the boy said obediently, his eyes on Monk, solemn but not yet frightened. Perhaps all his fear was centered in the courtroom at the Old Bailey and the secrets and the pain which would be torn apart and exposed there, and the decisions that would be made. His voice was flat and he looked at Monk warily.
Monk was not used to children, except the occasional urchin or working child his normal routine brought him into contact with. He did not know how to treat Cassian, who had so much of childhood in his protected, privileged daily life, and nothing at all in his innermost person.
“Do you know Mr. Furnival?” he asked bluntly, and felt clumsy in asking, but small conversation was not his milieu or his skill, even with adults.
“No sir,” Cassian answered straightaway.
“You have never met him?” Monk was surprised.
“No sir.” Cassian swallowed. “I know Mrs. Furnival.”
It seemed irrelevant. “Do you.” Monk acknowledged it only as a courtesy. He looked at Miss Buchan. “Do you know Mr. Furnival?”
“No I do not.”
Monk turned back to Cassian. “But you know your sister Sabella’s husband, Mr. Pole?” he persisted, although he doubted Fenton Pole was the man he needed.
“Yes sir.” There was no change in Cassian’s expression except for a slight curiosity, perhaps because the questions seemed so pointless.
Monk looked at the boy’s hands, still grasping the piece of gold.
“What is that?”
Cassian’s fingers closed more tightly on it and there was a faint pink color fresh in his cheeks. Very slowly he held it out for Monk to take.
Monk picked it up. The watch