Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [108]
“Hello, Abby.” He kissed her fleetingly on the cheek. It was all she offered him.
“Are you home on leave?” she asked, going ahead of him into the sitting room.
“A couple of days,” he replied.
“I thought as a general you would have been able to have longer.” She sat down in the old armchair near the fire. There were early yellow roses in a vase on the table. They were still in bud, short-stemmed, picked from the climber over the arbor in the garden. In a couple of weeks they would be glorious. “I suppose they can’t manage without you,” she added, both pride and resentment in her voice.
He wondered if he was sitting where Judith had sat when she was here. He glanced at the familiar room, the photographs of Prentice, one or two of himself, not many. There were several of Belinda, some of Abby and her husband. Then he saw the one Judith had referred to. He remembered the occasion. It was Henley, as she had supposed. It had been a hot day, dazzling sun on the water. There were young men in light trousers, straw boater hats, striped blazers, girls in dresses that were self-consciously nautical, or else all muslins and ribbons, and parasols against burning in the sun. The hallmarks of the day had been laughter, cold lemonade and beer and champagne, picnic hampers filled with fruit and sherbet, pheasant in aspic, and cucumber sandwiches.
And there was Laetitia Dawson with the startling eyes, almost as tall as Cullingford, a fraction taller than Prentice, but the young man had been fascinated by her. Had his involvement with the Peacemaker begun even there, the first introduction to the seductive and terrible ideas?
Was it she who had given Sebastian Allard his final, murderous instructions also?
“Would you like tea?” Abby asked.
“Thank you,” he accepted, simply because it would be easier than sitting here doing nothing, and he would not go so soon.
“Will you stay to lunch?” she added.
“No, no thank you. I have to get into the city and see various people.”
“Thank you for sending Miss Reavley,” she went on awkwardly. “That was thoughtful of you. She was very nice. She spoke well of Eldon.”
He pictured Judith here in this room, struggling for something kind to say, just as he was now. She had loathed Prentice and despised his insensitivity toward men for whom she cared with an almost unbearable tenderness. Thinking of her his heart raced, the room became too small, too imprisoning. He wanted to be back in Flanders, even with the violence and the grief, the noise and fear and dirt. In Flanders were the people he loved and the causes he understood.
“Good,” he said aloud. “I’m glad she was of some help.”
“Nothing helps, Owen,” Abby answered. “I am just acknowledging your thought.”
“Abby, I did not send him into no-man’s-land,” he told her. He wanted to reach out and touch her, but she was too stiff, too fragile, and he did not dare. “He took his chances, like any young man,” he went on. “If you are angry with everyone who lives, because he didn’t, you are going to hurt yourself intolerably. There are casualties in war, just as there are in life. We do the best we can, the best we understand. Sometimes we are wrong. Eldon was following his belief. Don’t blame other people for that.” He was lying to her. Hadrian had told him that Eldon had been murdered, which was different from war. But he had given many people sufficient cause to hate him, and Cullingford had no idea which of them had been offered the chance and taken it. He could not blame Charlie Gee’s brother, if it had been he, or Edwin Corliss’s friends. But there was no need for Abby to know that. She had grief enough.
She was staring at him, waiting, wanting to quarrel and not knowing if she dared to. The anger needed to spill out, but not at him.
He stood up slowly. “We haven’t time to waste on hate, Abby,” he said very softly. “Hold on to the good you have, while you have it. Time is so precious, and so short.”
The tears spilled over her