Weighed in the balance - Anne Perry [37]
Again he was silent for a long time.
Behind the door, Hester dared not make the slightest movement.
“Will your pain get better?” he said at last.
“No. I have been told not,” she replied.
He drew a breath as if to ask her more, perhaps about her means and why she feared cold and hunger, but even in his distress he pulled back from such indelicacy.
“I’m sorry.”
“Of course you are,” she agreed. “And it doesn’t help in the slightest, knowing that you are not the only one to suffer. I know that. It doesn’t help me either.”
He leaned back on the pillows, turning away from her. The soft brown hair flopped over his brow and he ignored it. The sunlight made bright patterns on the floor.
“I suppose you are going to tell me it will get better with time,” he said bitterly.
“No, I’m not,” she contradicted him. “There are days when it’s better and days when it’s worse. But when you can’t live in your body, then you must make the best of living in your mind.”
This time he did not reply, and eventually Victoria stood up. She half turned, and Hester could see in the light the tears on her face.
“I’m sorry,” the girl said gently. “I think perhaps I spoke when I should not have. It was too soon. I should have waited longer. Or perhaps I should not have been the one to say it at all. I did because it is too hard for those who love you so much and have never lain where you lie.” She shook her head a little. “They don’t know whether to be honest or not, or how to say it. They lie awake and hurt, helplessly, and weigh one choice against another, and cannot decide.”
“But you can?” He turned back to her, his face twisted with anger. “You have been hurt, so you know everything! You have the right to decide what to tell me, and how, and when?”
Victoria looked as if she had been slapped, but she did not retract.
“Will it be any different tomorrow or next week?” she asked, trying to steady her voice and not quite succeeding. She was standing awkwardly, and from the doorway Hester could see she was adjusting her weight to try to ease the pain. “You lie alone and wonder,” she went on. “Not daring to say the words, even in your mind, as if they could make it more real. Part of you has already faced it, another part is still screaming out that it is not true. And for you perhaps it won’t be. How much longer do you want to fight with yourself?”
He had no answer. He stared at her while the seconds ticked away.
She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders, then limped to the door, bumping against the chair. She turned back to him.
“Thank you for sharing Tristram and Isolde with me. I enjoyed your company and your voyage of the mind with me. Good night.” And without waiting for him to respond, she pulled the door wider and went out into the landing and down the stairs.
Hester left Robert alone until it was time to take him his supper. He was lying exactly as Victoria had left him, and he looked wretched.
“I don’t want to eat,” he said as soon as he realized Hester was there. “And don’t tell me it would be good for me. It wouldn’t. I should choke.”
“I wasn’t going to,” she answered quietly. “I agree with you. I think perhaps you need to be alone. Shall I close the door and ask that no one disturb you?”
He looked at her with slight surprise.
“Yes. Yes, please do that.”
She nodded, closing one door and then the other, leaving only one small lamp burning. If he wept himself to sleep, he should at least have privacy to do it, and no one to know or remember it afterwards.
4
HESTER WAS AWARE of Robert’s restlessness all night, but she knew she could not help, and to intrude would be inexcusable.
The following morning she found him still asleep, his face pale. He looked very young and very tired. He