Weighed in the balance - Anne Perry [114]
Zorah’s departure was as different as could be. The crowds were still there, still pressing forward, eager for a glimpse of her, but their mood had changed to one of ugliness and abuse. Nothing was thrown, but Rathbone found himself clenching as if to dodge and instinctively placing himself between Zorah and the crowd.
He almost hustled her to the hansom, and climbed in after her rather than leave her alone, in case the crowd should bar the way and the cabby be unable to make a path into the clearway of the street.
But only one woman pushed forward, shouting unintelligibly, her voice shrill with hatred. The horse was startled and lunged forward, knocking her off balance. She shrieked.
“Get outta the way, yer stupid cow!” the cabby yelled, frightened and taken by surprise himself as the reins were all but yanked out of his grasp. “Sorry, ma’am,” he apologized to Zorah.
Inside the vehicle, Rathbone was jolted against the sides, and Zorah bumped into him and kept her balance only with difficulty.
A moment later they were moving smartly and the angry shouts were behind them. Zorah regained her composure swiftly. She looked straight ahead without rearranging her skirts, as though to do so would be to acknowledge a difficulty and she would not do that.
Rathbone thought of a dozen things to say, and changed his mind about all of them. He looked sideways at Zorah’s face. At first he was not sure if he could see fear in it or not. A dreadful thought occurred to him that perhaps she sought this. The rush of blood, the excitement, the danger might be intoxicants to her. She was the center of attention, albeit hatred, rage, a will to violence. There were some people, a very few, to whom any sort of fame is better than none. To be ignored is a type of death, and it terrifies, it is an engulfing darkness, an annihilation. Anything is better, even loathing.
Was she mad?
If she was, then it was his responsibility to make decisions for her, in her best interest, rather than to allow her to destroy herself, as one would govern a child too young to be answerable. One had a duty to the insane, a legal obligation apart from a humanitarian one. He had been treating her as someone capable of rational judgment, a person able to foresee the results of her actions. Perhaps she was not. Perhaps she was under a compulsion and he had been quite wrong to do so, remiss in his duty both as a lawyer and as a man.
He studied her face. Was that calm he saw in her an inability to understand what had happened and foresee it would get worse?
He opened his mouth to speak, and then did not know what he was going to say.
He looked down at her hands. They were clenched on her skirt, the leather gloves pulled shiny across the knuckles, both hands shaking. He looked up at her face again and knew that the eyes staring straight ahead, the set of the jaw, were not born of indifference or unawareness but were the manifestations of fear even deeper than his own—and a very good knowledge that what was to come would be both ugly and painful.
He sat back and looked ahead, even more confused than before and more confounded as to what he should do.
He had been at home for over two hours when his servant announced that Miss Hester Latterly had called to see him. For a second he was delighted, then his spirits sank again as he realized how little he could tell her that was good, or even clear enough in his mind to be put into words.
“Ask her to come in,” he said rather sharply. It was a cold night. She should not be kept waiting.
“Hester!” he said eagerly when she entered. She looked lovelier than he had remembered. There was color in her cheeks and a gentleness in her eyes, a depth of concern which smoothed out the tension in him and even made the fears recede for a space. “Come in,” he went on warmly. He had already dined, and he assumed she would have also. “May I offer you a glass of wine, perhaps Port?”
“Not yet, thank you,” she declined. “How are you? How is Countess Rostova? I saw how ugly it was when you were leaving the court.”
“You were there?