Defend and Betray - Anne Perry [162]
It was a discouraging day, and she came back to Great Titchfield Street tired and frightened by the inevitability of events, and the hatred and incomprehension in the air. By the time she had recounted it all to Major Tiplady she was close to tears. Even he could find no hope in the situation; the best he could offer was an exhortation to courage, the greatest of all courage, to continue to fight with all one has even when victory seems beyond possibility.
The following day a crisp wind blew from the east but the sky was sharp blue and flowers were fluttering in the wind. It was Saturday, and there was no court sitting, so there was brief respite. Hester woke with a sense not of ease but of greater tension because she would rather have continued with it now that it was begun. This was only prolonging the pain and the helplessness. It would have been a blessing were there anything more she could do, but although she had been awake, turning and twisting, thrashing it over and over in her mind, she could think of nothing. They knew the truth of what had happened to Alexandra, what she had done, and why—exactly, passionately and irrevocably why. She had not known there was another man, let alone two others, or who they were.
There was little point in trying to prove it was old Randolf Carlyon; he would never admit it, and his family would close around him like a wall of iron. To accuse him would only prejudice the crowd and the jury still more deeply against Alexandra. She would appear a wild and vicious woman with a vile mind, depraved and obsessed with perversions.
They must find the third man, with either irrefutable proof or sufficient accusations not to be denied. And that would mean the help of Cassian, Valentine Furnival, if he were also a victim, and anyone else who knew about it or suspected—Miss Buchan, for example.
And Miss Buchan would risk everything if she made such a charge. The Carlyons would throw her out and she would be destitute. And who else would take her in, a woman too old to work, who made charges of incest and sodomy against the employers who had fed and housed her in her old age?
No, there was little comfort in a long, useless weekend. She wished she could curl over and go back to sleep, but it was broad daylight; through a chink in the curtain the sun was bright, and she must get up and see how Major Tiplady was. Not that he was unable to care for himself now, but she might as well do her duty as fully as possible to the end.
Perhaps the morning could be usefully spent in beginning to look for a new post. This one could not last beyond the confusion of the trial. She could afford a couple of weeks without a position, but not more. And it would have to be one where she lived in the house of the patient. She had given up her lodgings, since the expense of keeping a room when she did not need one was foolish, and beyond her present resources. She pushed dreams of any other sort of employment firmly out of her mind. They were fanciful, and without foundation, the maunderings of a silly woman.
After breakfast she asked Major Tiplady if he would excuse her for the day so she might go out and begin to enquire at various establishments that catered to such needs if there were any people who required a nurse such as herself. Unfortunately midwifery was something about which she knew almost nothing, nor about the care of infant children. There was a much wider need for that type of nursing.
Reluctantly he agreed, not because he needed her help in anything, simply because he had grown used to her company and liked it. But he could see the reasoning, and accepted it.
She thanked him, and half an hour later was about to leave when the maid came in with a surprised look on her face