Funeral in Blue - Anne Perry [40]
“Hester? Is something wrong?” There was an edge of alarm in his voice.
“No,” she said quickly. “No one is ill. I came because I was concerned for you. I barely had the opportunity to speak with you earlier.”
“That is most thoughtful of you, but I assure you I am merely tired.” The ghost of a smile touched his lips, but there was no echo in his eyes. “It is an effort to accept people’s sympathies graciously and think of something to say in return which is not so bland as to be a kind of rebuff. I think we are all reminded of our own losses. A hundred other griefs come far too close to us at such times.”
“May I dismiss my hansom?” It was an oblique way of inviting herself in.
He hesitated.
She blushed to do it, but with her back to the light he could not have seen. “Thank you,” she accepted before he spoke, and turned around to go back and pay the driver.
He was left with no alternative but to invite her in. He led the way to a small morning room where he reached up and turned the gas a little higher. She saw that the room was pleasantly furnished. There were three armchairs, all odd, but of similar rusty shades, lending an illusion of warmth which in fact was not there. The old Turkish rug was full of reds and blues. The fire did not appear to have been used recently. There was a worn embroidered screen in front of it and no poker, coal tongs or shovel in the hearth.
Kristian looked ill at ease, but he invited her to sit down.
She accepted, beginning to realize just how crass she had been in forcing her way in. It was inexcusably intrusive. She had allowed her concern to rob her of all sensitivity. She did not know him nearly well enough to be placing herself there.
What could she possibly say to redeem the situation?
Honesty—it would either make her actions excusable or condemn her beyond recall. She plunged in. “William is working with Superintendent Runcorn to try to find out who is responsible for this. They loathe each other, but they both want to know the truth enough to bury their feelings for the time being.”
Kristian’s face was almost expressionless as he sat opposite her. Was it from exhaustion at the end of one of the worst days of his life, and was he too in debt to old friendships to throw her out, as most men would have done in the circumstances? Or was he really concealing a very different self he did not wish her to see, more particularly did not wish her to report back to the clever, perceptive, ruthless Monk, who never let go of a case, no matter who was destroyed by the truth?
An icy fear gripped her for Callandra, and she was ashamed of it. She knew Kristian better than that.
“Kristian, was Elissa very religious?”
“What?” He looked totally startled, then the dull color spread up his cheeks, but he offered no explanation.
“The funeral was very High Church.” She knew she was hurting him, although not how.
“That was my father-in-law’s wish,” he said. He was not looking directly at her but somewhere a trifle to her left.
She was aware of feeling cold. The room was too chilly for comfort. Surely he had been sitting somewhere else when she had rung the doorbell. Was he keeping her there in the hope that the cold would persuade her to leave? If so, he had forgotten most of what he had learned about her. Did he really not remember the long, exhausting nights of labor and despair they and Callandra had spent together in Limehouse?
“And you conceded to it?” she asked with a lift of surprise.
“He is deeply grieved!” he replied a trifle sharply. “If it comforts him it does no harm, Hester.” It was a reproof, and she felt its sting.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “It is very generous of you. It did not seem your way, and it is an enormous expense.”
Now it was his turn to blush painfully. It startled her to see it. She had no idea what she