Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [27]
There was also no defense. Cullingford had never said or done anything even remotely improper with Judith. He had never touched her, not even called her by her Christian name. It was all in his imagination, in the momentary meeting of eyes, things that had not needed words: a great sweep of sky across the west, gilded by the fading sun, cloud-racks of searing beauty that hurt and healed with the same touch; understanding of laughter and pain; the knowledge when to be silent.
His guilt was deeper than acts, it was a betrayal of the heart. And yet the loneliness had been slowly killing him. He had protected Nerys at a cost to himself greater than he had realized before. Perhaps it was his fault, too, for allowing her to live in a world cocooned from reality, but he had left it too late to change it now. Nerys was at home, in another life. Judith was here, she was the one who had seen the grotesque ruin of no-man’s-land, the mud, the ice-rimmed craters with the limbs of dead men poking up as if in some last, desperate hold on life. He did not need to reach after impossible explanations for her, or speak with words that were too raw still to bear it.
“I only want a letter,” Prentice was talking again, unable to wait. “Just something to stop them hedging me in. I’m doing my job! And of course I’ll share anything I get with the other correspondents.” He put his good hand in his pocket, in a possibly unconscious imitation of Cullingford’s stance when he was at ease, moments he might have remembered before the war. “Thanks. It’ll help a lot.”
Cullingford would like to have thrown him out, possibly even physically, but he could not afford to. There was steel inside Prentice. He wanted to succeed. If he were prevented in a way he imagined unfair, he would bring down anyone he felt to blame. He would not care who else it hurt, but that it included Cullingford would please him. Cullingford had never liked him. He had tried, and failed. Perhaps he had not tried very hard; he was not a man to whom relationships were easy. Only Judith had crashed through his self-protection guard. She had put no artificial limits to her own feelings, no bounds at all to what she was prepared to know or to see. And then when she was hurt by it, her very hold on endurance, the courage to hope and purpose threatened, it was his strength she needed.
“I’ll give you a letter of authority,” he conceded, hating himself for such surrender. “But you can still be arrested if you get in anyone’s way.”
“I daresay that’ll do,” Prentice replied with the sharp relish of victory in his voice, making it high and a little abrupt. “At least for now. Thank you . . . Uncle Owen.”
Cullingford did not look at him. It was only when the letter was written and Prentice had put it rather awkwardly in his pocket with his one hand, and then gone out, that Cullingford realized that his muscles were clenched with the effort of self-control and the anger inside him was making him hold his breath.
Hadrian was standing in the doorway waiting for instructions. His face was watchful, his eyes unhappy. How well did he really know Prentice? Well enough to have believed blackmail of him?
“If Mr. Prentice comes again,” Cullingford told him, “I don’t want to see him. In fact, so help me God, if I never see him again it will suit me very well!”
Hadrian stared at him, his face dark with emotion. “Yes, sir,” he said quietly. “I’ll see to it.”
Cullingford turned away, suddenly embarrassed. He had not meant to reveal so much. “Will you tell Miss Reavley to get the car ready. I need to go to Zillebeke in half an hour.”
“Yes, sir,” Hadrian said.
Sam Wetherall sat on the fire-step in the sun, a packet of Woodbines in his hand. It was nearly five o’clock. He was smiling, but the sharp, warm light picked