The William Monk Mysteries_ The First Three Novels - Anne Perry [419]
“Oh.” She saw the point of what he was saying and it made excellent sense. “Yes.” She looked at his eyes, expecting criticism, and saw a gentleness and a humor that for an instant robbed her of her concentration. She was far too comfortable here with the two of them she liked so much. It would be so easy to wish to stay, to wish to belong. She recalled herself rapidly to the subject.
“It doesn’t make sense as it is,” she said quietly, lowering her eyes and looking away from him. “You said he was an excellent father, with the exception a couple of years ago of forcing Sabella to marry instead of taking the veil.”
“Then if it doesn’t make sense as it is,” Henry said thoughtfully, “it means that either there is some element which you have not thought of, or else you are seeing something wrongly.”
Hester looked at his mild, ascetic face and realized what intelligence there was in his eyes. It was the cleverest face she had seen that held absolutely nothing spiteful or ungenerous whatever. She found herself smiling, without any specific reason.
“Then we had better go back and look at it again,” she resolved aloud. “I think perhaps it is the second of those two cases, and we are seeing something wrongly.”
“Are you sure it is worth it?” Henry asked her gently. “Even if you do discover why she killed him, will it alter anything? Oliver?”
“I don’t know. Quite possibly not,” Oliver confessed. “But I cannot go into court with no more than I know now.”
“That is your pride,” Henry said frankly. “What about her interests? Surely if she wished you to defend her with the truth, she would have told it you?”
“I suppose so,” he conceded. “But I should be the judge of what is her best defense in law, not she.”
“I think you simply don’t wish to be beaten,” his father said, returning to his plate. “But I fear you may find the victory very small, even if you can obtain it. Who will it serve? It may merely demonstrate that Oliver Rathbone can discover the truth and lay it bare for all to see, even if the wretched accused would rather be hanged than reveal it herself.”
“I shan’t reveal it if she does not give me permission,” Oliver said quickly, his face pink, his dark eyes wide. “For heaven’s sake, what do you take me for?”
“Occasionally hotheaded, my dear boy,” Henry replied. “And possessed of an intellectual arrogance and curiosity, which I fear you have inherited from me.”
They continued the evening very pleasantly speaking of any number of things other than the Carlyon case. They discussed music, of which all were fond. Henry Rathbone was quite knowledgeable, having a great love of Beethoven’s late quartets, composed when Beethoven himself was already severely deaf. They had a darkness and a complexity he found endlessly satisfying, and a beauty wrought out of pain which excited his pity but also reached a deeper level of his nature and fed a hunger there.
They also spoke of political events, the news from India and the growing unrest there. They touched only once on the Crimean War, but Henry Rathbone was so infuriated by the incompetence and the unnecessary deaths that after a quick glance at each other, Hester and Oliver changed the subject and did not hark back to it again.
Before leaving Hester and Oliver took a slow stroll around the garden and down to the honeysuckle hedge at the border of the orchard. The smell of the first flowers was close and sweet in the hazy darkness and she could see only the outline of the longest upflung branches against the starlit sky. For once they did not talk of the case.
“The news from India is very dark,” she said, staring across at the pale blur of the apple blossoms. “It is so peaceful here it seems doubly painful to think of mutiny and battle. I feel guilty to have such beauty …”
He was standing very close to her and she was aware of the warmth of him. It was an acutely pleasant feeling.
“There is no need for