Funeral in Blue - Anne Perry [69]
She had acknowledged to herself some time ago that she loved Kristian Beck, even if it would never lead to anything but the profoundest friendship. She would not marry again. Francis Bellingham had asked her. She liked him deeply, and he could have offered her a life of companionship, loyalty and a very considerable freedom to pursue the causes she believed in. He was intelligent, honorable and not in the least unattractive. If she had met him a few years ago she would have accepted his offer.
What she felt for him was affection, kindness, respect, but no more. If she had married him, as many of her friends had expected her to, then she would have had to cut Kristian from her dreams, and that she was not prepared to do. Perhaps she was not even able to do it. She could not commit the dishonor of marrying one man while loving another, not at her age, when there was no need. She had more than sufficient money to care for herself, the social position of a titled widow, work for charity to fill her time, friends she valued. She was perfectly aware of her own foolishness.
Her fingers stopped moving in the cold earth as she remembered what Hester had told her yesterday afternoon. She had known immediately that it was bad news of some kind. She had seen too many doctors with just that expression, the mixture of resolution and pity, the stiff shoulders and pale face, the softness in the eyes.
At the moment it could only concern Kristian. She had not needed to ask what it was about. She was already prepared to hear that he could not prove his innocence. She had always known, from very early in their acquaintance, that there was a loneliness in his life. She sensed it as she felt the deep, hidden pain in her own. She had never asked about his wife and he had not spoken of her. She had not consciously even tried to visualize her, but gradually, unwittingly, she had drawn in her mind a rather ordinary woman with a bitter face, critical of small things, always expecting something she was not given. How could anyone else have failed to offer a man like Kristian all the love she could?
Then Hester had said she was younger, and not just beautiful, but with that haunting quality that stays in the mind, bringing back the eyes, the lips, the turn of the head at unexpected moments, as if the person never entirely left you.
That had been so hard to accept. What manner of woman was she? Why had she not brought happiness? The answer that forced itself upon her was that Kristian loved her but she did not return his feeling. It was comfort for which he turned to Callandra, for the solace of being loved.
And yet going back over every moment they had shared, even in the impersonal times of sitting in management meetings in the hospital, or arguing with Fermin Thorpe, who was enough to try the patience of a saint, she had been certain there was a warmth between them that had dignity to it, and honesty. Kristian was not a man to descend to using someone else merely to make up for a lack in his own life.
Without realizing it, she had stopped weeding.
Then Hester had told her that Elissa Beck was a compulsive gambler, so addicted to the excitement of the game that she had thrown away all she owned, and almost all Kristian owned as well. She had poured out money, pawned or sold her possessions, until finally even the furniture had gone, debts were piled up, the house was cold and dark, and ruin was on the doorstep.
She could not even imagine the fear and the shame that Kristian must have felt, although she did nothing but try to. Elissa’s death must have been a bitter loss to him, a part of his life torn away. And yet it had to have been a relief as well. The bleeding out of money was ended; like a patient whose hemorrhage has at last been staunched, he could begin to rebuild his