The Silent Cry - Anne Perry [92]
Monk did not speak.
“Find out who they are, if you can, by all means,” Runcorn went on. “And tell your client. But if she provokes the local men into attacking those responsible, even killing them, then we still step in. Murder’s another thing. We’ll have to go on with it until we find them. Is that what you want?”
Runcorn was right. It was choking to have to concede it.
“I’ll find out who they are,” Monk said almost under his breath. “And I’ll prove it … not to Vida Hopgood or to you. I’ll prove it to their own bloody society. I’ll see them ruined!” And with that he turned on his heel and went out of the door.
It was dark and snowing outside, but he barely noticed. His rage was blazing too hotly for mere ice in the wind to temper it.
7
Rhys progressed only very slowly. Dr. Wade pronounced himself satisfied with the way in which his external wounds were healing. He came out of Rhys’s room looking grave but not more concerned than when Hester had shown him in. As always, he had chosen to see Rhys alone. Bearing in mind the site of some of the injuries, and a young man’s natural modesty, it was easy to understand why. Hester was not as impersonal a nurse to him as she had been to the men in the hospitals of the Crimea. There were so many of them she had had no time to become a friend to any one, except in brief moments of extremity. With Rhys she was far more than merely someone who attended to his needs. They spent hours together; she talked to him, read to him, sometimes they laughed. She knew his family and his friends, like Arthur Kynaston, and now also Arthur’s brother, Duke, a young man she found less attractive.
“Satisfactory, Miss Latterly,” Wade said with a very slight smile. “He seems to be responding well, although I do not wish to give false encouragement. He is certainly not recovered yet. You must still care for him with the greatest skill you possess.”
His brows drew together and he looked at her intensely. “And I cannot impress upon you too strongly how important it is that he should not be disturbed or caused anxiety, fear or other turbulence of spirit that can be avoided. You must not permit that young policeman, or any other, to force him to attempt a recollection of what happened the night of his injury. I hope you understand that. I imagine you do. I feel that you are very fully aware of his pain and would do anything, even place yourself at risk, to protect him.” He looked very slightly self-conscious, a faint color on his cheeks. “I have a high opinion of you, Miss Latterly.”
She felt a warmth inside her. Simple praise from a colleague for whom she had a supreme regard was sweeter than the greatest extravagance from someone who did not know precisely what it meant.
“Thank you, Dr. Wade,” she said quietly. “I shall endeavor not to give you cause ever to think otherwise.”
He smiled suddenly, as if for an instant he forgot the care and unhappiness which had brought them together.
“I have no doubt of you,” he replied, then bowed very slightly and walked past her and down the stairs to where Sylvestra would be waiting for him in the withdrawing room.
Early in the afternoon Hester tried to spin out small domestic tasks, getting smears out of Rhys’s nightshirt where one of his bandages had been pulled crooked and blood from the still-open wound had seeped through; mending a pillowcase before the tiny tear became worse; sorting the books in the bedroom into some specific order. There was a knock on the door, and when she answered it the maid informed her that a gentleman had called to see her and had been shown to the housekeeper’s sitting room.
“Who is he?” Hester asked with surprise. Her immediate thought was that it was Monk, then she realized how unlikely that was. It had come to her mind only because some thought of him was so close under the surface of her consciousness. It would be Evan, come to see if he could enlist her help in solving the mystery of Rhys’s injuries, at least in learning something more about the family and the relationship between father