Wings of Fire - Charles Todd [70]
He knew, but didn’t tell her, that often the men who taunted death had a terrible fear of it. And reached out to it in bravery because that was easier than waiting for it to come and fetch them, cowering in some corner. He knew—he’d taken his own wild risks, hoping to put an end to suffering he didn’t know how to face.
When he didn’t answer, she added, “But it was Thomas Chambers I came to torment you about, wasn’t it?”
‘‘Short of fiercely twisting my arm, alarming Mr. Trask, not to mention giving the gossips an earful before morning, how do you propose to do that?” He fell back on teasing her while he considered what he wanted to say to her.
“You don’t want to talk about it?” She was disappointed.
“There is little to tell, if you want the truth,” he said mildly. “He wanted to know what in blazes I was doing here on his turf—sounded much like Cormac FitzHugh and Dr. Hawkins in that regard—and agreed that if Stephen inherited Olivia’s papers, he—Chambers—has no idea what’s become of them. And Susannah would be the most likely person to have charge of them now, once they are found.”
Rachel considered that. “I wonder what she’ll do with them?”
“They have great intrinsic value. I don’t know their monetary worth, on the auction block. Oxford would be delighted to have them. Or Cambridge. She was a major poet.”
“But a woman. I wonder if she’ll be valued so highly, now that everyone knows who O. A. Manning really is. The war poems, for one thing—they seemed so, I don’t know, so genuine, a part of personal experience. But she never went to France, she was a woman who wore a brace on her leg and hardly ever left Cornwall, much less came face to face with war.”
“Does she have to shoulder a rifle and kill to understand war?”
“I don’t know,” Rachel answered honestly. “I wasn’t in France either. I can appreciate the words on the page, but I wasn’t there.”
“You sent a husband off to war. Nicholas went to France. Stephen. You loved all three of them. What did you feel?”
He knew how Jean had felt—she had wanted him back without four years of suffering and guilt and pain coming between them. Unchanged, nothing to remind her that he’d ever gone away from her. The man he was now terrified her. The man he had been was lost somewhere still in France.
She hesitated. “Fear, mainly. I was so afraid. The war dragged on, it seemed as if it would never end. And you tell yourself, ‘He can make it a few more days, another month, he can last out this year, there’s so little of it left!’ But you know, deep down inside, that he can’t live forever, that simple arithmetic, the number of shots fired, the number of shells that fall, the number of assaults and snipers—they have to find their targets, sometimes. And it’s really a matter of chance—the hazards of war—” She broke off and spread her napkin across her lap, taking pains with it so that he couldn’t see her face. He wondered whether she was speaking mostly about Peter or Nicholas. And told himself that he was being unfair to judge her for Peter’s sake.
Then she said in a different voice, “That’s all that you had to say to Mr. Chambers? Or he to you?”
“What were you expecting him to tell me? That he’d been waiting for me or someone like me, to come down here and open Pandora’s Box?”
“No,” she said, wistfulness in her face. “I don’t know what I expected. Not really.”
“Did Olivia like flowers? Pansies, for an example? Did she plant pansies in the gardens at the Hall? Or out on the moors?”
“There’ve always been drifts of pansies in the borders at the Hall. I don’t have any idea who planted them first. But Nicholas was very fond of them, I do know that. As for pansies on the moors,” she shook her head, “I don’t recall ever finding pansies there. But then I never looked for them.”
“I’m having the moors searched again. For Richard’s body.”
Rachel sighed. “Do you think you’ll find it? After all these years?”
“Who knows? I have to look.”
“Constable Dawlish must have been very happy about that!”
Rutledge shrugged. “I didn’t make an inquiry into