The Sins of the Wolf - Anne Perry [88]
Deirdra was sitting opposite at the farther side of the table, and several times he caught her eye and smiled. He was beginning to think it was a waste of his time, although he knew at least one reason why Oonagh had invited him. She wished to know if he had progressed in discovering where Deirdra spent her money. Did she already know, and was she only looking for him to provide proof so she could confront Deirdra, and perhaps precipitate the quarrel Mary had been killed in order to avoid?
Looking across the table at Deirdra’s warm, intelligent, stubborn face, he did not believe it. She might be what some people would refer to as immoral, apparently she was extravagant, but he did not believe she had murdered Mary Farraline, certainly not over something as easily curbed as extravagance.
But he had been wrong before, especially where women were concerned.
No—that was unfair. He had been wrong as to their strength, their loyalty, even their ability to feel passion or conviction—but not their criminality. Why did he doubt himself so deeply?
Because he was failing Hester. Even as he sat there eating a sumptuous meal amid the clatter of cutlery, the chink of glasses, the blaze of lights and murmur of voices, the rustle of silks and creak of stays, Hester was in Newgate Prison awaiting trial, after which, if she were found guilty, they would hang her.
He felt a failure because he was failing.
“… most becoming gown, Mrs. Farraline,” someone was saying to Deirdra. “Most unusual.”
“Thank you,” Deirdra acknowledged, but without the pleasure Monk would have expected her to show at such a compliment.
“Charming,” the large lady next to him added with a downward turn of her ungenerous mouth. “Quite charming. I am very fond of those lines, and jet beading is so elegant, I always think. I had one very like it myself, very like it indeed. Cut a little differently around the shoulder, as I recall, but the design of the stitching was just the same.”
One gentleman looked at her with surprise. It was an odd thing to remark, and not altogether polite.
“Last year,” the large lady added with finality.
On a wild impulse, a flicker of thought, Monk asked an inexcusable question.
“Do you still have it, ma’am?”
She gave an inexcusable answer.
“No … I disposed of it.”
“How wise,” Monk retorted with sudden viciousness. “That gown”—he glanced at her ample figure—“is more becoming to your … station.” He had so nearly said “age”; everyone else had, in their minds, said it for him.
The woman turned puce, but said nothing. Deirdra also blushed a light shade of pink, and Monk knew in that moment, although he could not yet prove it, that whatever Deirdra spent her money on, it was not gowns, as she had claimed. She bought hers secondhand, and presumably had a discreet dressmaker alter them to fit her and change them just enough that they were no longer completely identifiable.
She stared at him across the salmon mousse and cucumber and the remains of the sorbet, her eyes pleading.
He smiled and shook his head fractionally, which was ridiculous. He had no reason to keep her secret.
When he encountered Oonagh later, he met her eyes and told her he was investigating the matter but as yet had found no conclusive evidence. The lie troubled him not in the slightest.
In the morning post there was a letter from Callandra. Monk tore it open and read:
My dear William,
I am afraid the news from here is all of the very worst. I have visited Hester as often as I am permitted. She has great courage, but I can see that the strain is telling on her profoundly. I had foolishly imagined that her time in the Scutari hospital would have inured her to at least some of the hardships that Newgate would offer. Of course it is wildly different. The physical portion is relatively negligible. It is the mental suffering, the endless tedium of day after day with nothing to do but let her imagination conjure the worst. Fear is more debilitating than almost anything