Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [144]
Would Mrs. Prentice be like that? Was he going to feel just as helpless? Or more so, because he had despised Eldon Prentice. Worse than that, Sam, who had killed him, was Joseph’s dearest friend, and he understood heart deep, bone deep, why he had done it. He had come close to doing something very like it himself.
He rang the doorbell. It was not a maid who answered, but Judith. He was startled because she looked so beautiful. She was utterly different from the healthy, rather coltish country girl, full of shy grace, that she had been a year ago. Now there were shadows in her face, a sculpting under the cheekbones. She looked far older, a woman, one who had seen passion and tragedy and understood at least something of each. She looked even more vulnerable than before, but also, oddly, she was stronger.
She was wearing a blue dress, which was quite deep in color, muted like the sky at dusk. It had a wide waist, emphasizing how slender she was, and the skirt was swathed and fell to below the knee, then another skirt beneath it to above the ankle, keeping the fashionable line.
“Thank you,” she said under her breath, then after giving him a quick kiss on the cheek, she turned as another woman came into the hall. This was obviously Prentice’s mother. She had the same fair skin and hair, although now it was leached of all vitality, almost as if she were a drawing the artist had forgotten to color. She was wearing dark gray, not quite the full black of mourning.
“Captain Reavley,” she said quietly. “How nice of you to come early. Judith said you might. Please come in. Perhaps you would join us in having a drink before you leave for the party?”
“Thank you.” It was unreasonable to do anything but accept. This was what he had come for. He thought ruefully how difficult he had imagined it was to sit in his dugout and write letters to mothers and widows of the men who had died, especially those he had known little, and about whom he had to invent something. It was nothing compared with facing someone like Mrs. Prentice, seeing the grief in her face, finding it hard even to envision what she had been like when there had been light in her eyes, when she could have laughed and meant it. He had disliked Prentice deeply, and now, knowing what he had intended to do, he regarded him as a traitor to his own land. And Sam was his friend, with all the warmth, the laughter and gentleness, the trust that that word encompassed.
He followed Mrs. Prentice into the quiet sitting room with its family photographs, slightly worn carpet, and unmatched antimacassars on the backs of the chairs. There was a bowl of early roses on the Pembroke table by the wall, golden reflections shining in the polished mahogany. A silver-framed picture of Eldon Prentice stood next to it. He wondered where the one of Owen Cullingford was. Or had she room for only one bereavement at a time?
He thought of what Judith had said about seeing the photograph of Prentice and Cullingford at Henley, with the unusual girl, then mentioning it to Cullingford later. She believed it was that which had led him to the Peacemaker, and his death.
He looked again at the photographs. One of them was of a group at Henley; Cullingford, Prentice, a couple of other youths, and a tall girl with fair, wavy hair. Later he would ask who she was. There was no time now, without being rude.
There was someone else in the room, a girl in her early twenties, slender, dark gold hair. She looked too like Eldon Prentice not to be his sister, but the steady look that in him had been arrogant, in her was merely candid.
Mrs. Prentice introduced them. “This is my daughter, Belinda. Captain Reavley has been kind enough to come early, to talk with us. It was he who . . . brought Eldon back to . . . from no-man’s-land.” She