Defend and Betray - Anne Perry [177]
“Yes it would.” Hester put out her hand and touched Damaris’s arm. “I’m sorry—but I had no choice either.”
“I know.” Damaris smiled with something of the old charm, although the effort it cost her was apparent. “Only if I do this, you’d better save Alex. I don’t want to say all this for nothing.”
“Everything I can. I’ll leave nothing untried—I promise.”
12
Alexandra sat on the wooden bench in the small cell, her face white and almost expressionless. She was exhausted, and the marks of sleeplessness were plain around her eyes. She was far thinner than when Rathbone had first seen her and her hair had lost its sheen.
“I can’t go on,” she said wearily. “There isn’t any point. It will only damage Cassian—terribly.” She took a deep breath. He could see the rise of her breast under the thin gray muslin of her blouse. “They won’t believe me. Why should they? There’s no proof, there never could be. How could you prove such a thing? People don’t do it where they can be seen.”
“You know,” Rathbone said quietly, sitting opposite her and looking at her so intensely that in time she would have to raise her head and meet his eyes.
She smiled bitterly. “And who’s going to believe me?”
“That wasn’t my point,” he said patiently. “If you could know, then it is possible others could also. Thaddeus himself was abused as a child.”
She jerked her head up, her eyes full of pity and surprise.
“You didn’t know?” He looked at her gently. “I thought not.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But if he was, how could he, of all people, abuse his own son?” Her incomprehension was full of confusion and pain. “Surely if—why? I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I,” he answered frankly. “But then I have never walked that path myself. I had quite another reason for telling you, one of very much more urgent relevance.” He stopped, not fully sure if she was listening to him.
“Have you?” she said dully.
“Yes. Can you imagine how he suffered? His lifelong shame, and the fear of being discovered? Even some dim sense of what he was committing upon his own child—and yet, the need was so overwhelming, so consuming it still drove him—”
“Stop it,” she said furiously, jerking her head up. “I’m sorry! Of course I’m sorry! Do you think I enjoyed it?” Her voice was thick, choking with indescribable anguish. “I racked my brain for any other way. I begged him to stop, to send Cassian away to boarding school—anything at all to put him beyond reach. I offered him myself, for any practice he wanted!” She stared at him with helpless fury. “I used to love him. Not passionately, but love just the same. He was the father of my children and I had covenanted to be loyal to him all my life. I don’t think he ever loved me, not really, but he gave me all he was capable of.”
She sank lower on the bench and dropped her head forward, covering her face with her hands. “Don’t you think I see his body on that floor every time I lie in the dark? I dream about it—I’ve redone that deed in my nightmares, and woken up cold as ice, with the sweat standing out on my skin. I’m terrified God will judge me and condemn my soul forever.”
She huddled a little lower into herself. “But I couldn’t let that happen to my child and do nothing—just let it go on. You don’t know how he changed. The laughter went out of him—all the innocence. He became sly. He was afraid of me—of me! He didn’t trust me anymore, and he started telling lies—stupid lies—and he became frightened all the time, and suspicious of people. And always there was the sort of … secret glee in him … a—a—guilty pleasure. And yet he cried at night—curled up like a baby, and crying in his sleep. I couldn’t let it go on!”
Rathbone broke his own rules and reached out and took her thin shoulders in his hands and held her gently.
“Of course you couldn’t! And you can’t now! If the truth is not told, and this abuse is not stopped, then his grandfather—and the other man—will go on just as his father did, and it will all have been