The William Monk Mysteries_ The First Three Novels - Anne Perry [303]
Hester could not help smiling. It was all incredibly trivial, but there was a kind of justice in it.
Mary saw her expression, and her own eased into one of satisfaction and something like conspiracy. “You see?” she said.
“I see,” Hester agreed.“ Yes—very appropriate.” And still with a smile she took her linen and left.
Upstairs Hester found Beatrice sitting alone in her room in one of the dressing chairs, staring out of the window at the rain beginning to fall steadily into the bare garden. It was January, bleak, colorless, and promising fog before dark.
“Good afternoon, Lady Moidore,” Hester said gently. “I am sorry you are unwell. Can I do anything to help?”
Beatrice did not move her head.
“Can you turn the clock back?” she asked with a tiny self-mocking smile.
“If I could, I would have done it many times,” Hester answered. “But do you suppose it would really make a difference?”
Beatrice did not reply for several moments, then she sighed and stood up. She was dressed in a peach-colored robe, and with her blazing hair she had all the warmth of dying summer in her.
“No—probably none at all,” she said wearily. “We would still be the same people, and that is what is wrong. We would all still be pursuing comfort, looking to save our own reputations and just as willing to hurt others.” She stood by the window watching the water running down the panes. “I never realized Fenella was so consumed with vanity, so ridiculously trying to hold on to the trappings of youth. If she were not so prepared to destroy other people simply to get attention, I should feel more pity for her. As it is I am embarrassed by her.”
“Perhaps it is all she feels she has.” Hester spoke equally softly. She too found Fenella repellent in her willingness to hurt, especially to expose the foibles of the servants—that was gratuitous. But she understood the fear behind the need for some quality that would earn her survival, some material possessions, however come by, that were independent of Basil and his conditional charity, if charity was the word.
Beatrice swung around to face her, her eyes level, very wide.
“You understand, don’t you? You know why we do these grubby things—”
Hester did not know whether to equivocate; tact was not what Beatrice needed now.
“Yes, it isn’t difficult.”
Beatrice dropped her eyes. “I’d rather not have known. I guessed some of it, of course. I knew Septimus gambled, and I thought he took wine occasionally from the cellars.” She smiled. “In fact it rather amused me. Basil is so pompous about his claret.” Her face darkened again and the humor vanished. “I didn’t know Septimus took it for Fenella, and even then I wouldn’t have cared about it if it were sympathy for her—but it isn’t. I think he hates her. She’s everything in a woman that is different from Christabel—that is the woman he loved. That isn’t a good reason for hating anyone, though, is it?”
She hesitated, but Hester did not interrupt.
“Strange how being dependent, and being reminded of it all the time, sours you,” Beatrice went on. “Because you feel helpless and inferior, you try to get power again by doing just the same to someone else. God how I hate investigations! It will take us years to forget all we’ve learned about each other—maybe by then it will be too late.”
“Maybe you can learn to forgive instead?” Hester knew she was being impertinent, but it was the only thing she could say with any truth, and Beatrice not only deserved truth, she needed it.
Beatrice turned away and traced her finger on the dry inside of the window, following the racing drops.
“How do you forgive someone for not being what you wanted them to be, or what