Acceptable Loss

CHAPTER

1

HESTER WAS HALF-ASLEEP when she heard the slight sound, as if someone were taking in a sharp breath and then letting out a soft, desperate gasp. Monk was motionless beside her, his hand loose on the pillow, his hair falling over his face.

It was not the first time in the last two weeks that Hester had heard Scuff crying in the night. It was a delicate relationship she had with the boy she and Monk had befriended. He had lived on the streets by the river and had largely provided for himself, which had made him wise beyond his age, and fiercely independent. He considered he was looking after Monk, who in Scuff’s opinion lacked the knowledge and the fierce survival instincts required for his job as head of the Thames River Police at Wapping, in the heart of the London docks.

Until last month Scuff had come and gone as he’d pleased, spending only the occasional night at Monk’s house in Paradise Place. However, since his kidnapping, and the atrocity on the boat at Execution Dock, he had come to live with them, going out only for short periods during the day, and tossing and turning at night, plagued by nightmares. He would not talk about them, and his pride would not let him admit to Hester that he was frightened of the dark, of closed doors, and, above all, of sleep.

Of course she knew why. Once the tight control he kept over himself in his waking hours slipped from him, he was back on the boat again, curled up on his side beneath the trapdoor to the bilges, nailed in with the half-rotted corpse of the missing boy, fighting the swirling water and the rats, the stench of it making him gag.

In his nightmares it did not seem to matter that he was now free, or that Jericho Phillips was dead; Scuff had seen the man’s body himself, imprisoned in the iron cage in the river, his mouth gaping open as the rising tide trapped him, choking off his voice forever.

Hester heard the gasping sound again, and slipped out of bed. She pulled on a wrap, not so much for warmth in the late September night, but for modesty so as not to embarrass Scuff if he was awake. She crept across the room and along the passage. His bedroom door was open just wide enough for him to pass through. The gas lamp was on low, maintaining the fiction that she had forgotten and left it on, as she did every night. Neither of them ever mentioned this.

Scuff was lying tangled in the sheets, the blankets slipped halfway to the floor. He was curled up in just the same position as they had found him in when she and the rat-catcher, Sutton, had pried open the trapdoor.

Without debating with herself anymore, Hester went into the room and picked up the blankets, placing them over him and tucking them in lightly. Then she stood watching him. He whimpered again, and pulled at the sheet as if he were cold. She could see in the faint glow of the gaslight that he was still dreaming. His face was tight, eyes closed hard, jaw so clenched he must have been grinding his teeth. Every now and again his body moved, his hands coming up as if to reach for something.

How could she wake him without robbing him of his pride? He would never forgive her for treating him like a child. And yet his cheeks were smooth, his neck so slender and his shoulders so narrow that there was nothing of the man in him yet. He said he was eleven, but he looked about nine.

What lie would he not see through? She could not waken him without tacitly admitting that she had heard him crying in his dream. She turned and walked back to the door and went a little way along the passage. Then a better idea came to her. She tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen and poured a glass of milk. Then she took four cookies and put them on a plate. She went back upstairs, careful not to trip over her nightgown. Just before she reached his room, she deliberately banged the door of the linen cupboard. She knew it might waken Monk as well, but that could not be helped.

When she reached Scuff’s room, he was lying in bed with the blankets up to his chin, fingers gripping them, eyes wide open.

“You awake too?” she said, as if mildly surprised. “So am I. I’ve got some milk and cookies. Would you like half?” She held up the plate.

He nodded. He could see there was only one glass, but the milk did not matter. It was the chance to be awake and not alone that he wanted.

She came in, leaving the door ajar, and sat on the edge of the bed. She put the glass on the table beside him and the plate on the blankets.

He picked up a biscuit and nibbled it, watching her. His eyes were wide and dark in the low lamplight, waiting for her to say something.

“I don’t like being awake at this time of the night,” she said, biting her lip a little. “I’m not really hungry; it just feels nice to eat something. Have the milk if you want it.”

“I’ll take ’alf,” he said. Food was precious; he was always fair about it.

She smiled. “Good enough,” she agreed, picking up a biscuit herself so he would feel comfortable eating.

He reached for the glass, holding it with both hands. He drank some, then looked at it to measure his share, drank a little more, then handed it to her. He sat very upright in the bed, his hair tousled and a rim of white on his upper lip.

She wanted to hold him, but she knew better. He might have wanted it too, but he would never have allowed such an admission. It would mean he was dependent, and he could not afford that. He had lived in the docks, scavenging for pieces of coal off the barges, brass screws, and other small valuable objects that had fallen off boats into the Thames mud. The low tide allowed boys like him—mudlarks—to survive. He had a mother somewhere, but perhaps she had too many younger children, and neither the time nor room to care for him. Or maybe she had a new husband who did not want another man’s son in the house. Boys like himself had been his friends, sharing food, warmth, and one another’s pain, comrades in survival.

“Have another biscuit,” Hester offered.

“I’ve ’ad two,” he pointed out. “That was ’alf.”

“Yes, I know. I took more than I wanted,” she replied. “I thought I was hungry, but now I’m just awake.”

He looked at her carefully, deciding if she meant it, then took the last biscuit and ate it in three mouthfuls.

She smiled at him, and after a moment he smiled back.

“Are you sleepy?” she asked.

“No …”

“Nor am I.” She hitched herself up a little so she could sit on the bed with her head against the headboard beside him, but still keeping a distance away. “Sometimes when I’m awake I read, but I haven’t got a good book at the moment. The newspaper’s full of all sorts of things I don’t really want to know.”

“Like wot?” he asked, twisting round so he was facing her a little more, settling in for a conversation.

She listed off a few social events she remembered, adding where they had been held and who had attended. Neither of them cared, but it was something to say. Presently she wandered off the subject and remembered past events, describing clothes and food, then behavior, wit, flirting, disasters, anything to keep him entertained. She even recalled the chaotic remembrance service where her friend Rose had been hopelessly and unintentionally drunk; she had climbed onto the stage and seized the violin from the very earnest young lady who had been playing it, and had then given her own rendition of several current music hall songs, growing bawdier with each.

Scuff giggled, trying to picture it in his mind. “Were it terrible?” he asked.

“Ghastly,” Hester affirmed with relish. “She told them all the truth of what a fearful person the dead man had been, and why they had really come. It was awful then, but I laugh every time I think of it now.”

“She were yer friend.” He said the word slowly, tasting its value.

“Yes,” she agreed.

“D’yer ’elp ’er?”

“As much as I could.”

“Fig were my friend,” he said very quietly. “I din’t ’elp ’im. Nor the other neither.”

“I know.” She felt the lump, hard and painful, in her throat. Fig was one of the boys Jericho Phillips had murdered. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Yer can’t ’elp it,” he said reasonably. “Yer did yer best. No one can stop it.” He moved an inch or two closer to her. “Tell me some more about Rose and the others.”

She had seen survivor’s guilt before. In her nursing in the Crimea she had heard soldiers cry out from the same nightmares and had seen them waken with the same shocked and helpless eyes, staring at the comfort around them, and feeling the horror inside.

She tried to think of something else to say to Scuff, happy things, anything to take away his memory of his own lost friends, adding a little more until she looked at him and saw his eyes closing. She lowered her voice, and then lowered it even more. He was so close to her now that he was touching her. She could feel the warmth of him through the sheet that separated them. A few minutes later he was asleep. Without being aware of it he had put his head against her shoulder. She stopped talking and lay still. It was a little cramped, but she did not move until morning, when she pretended to have been asleep also.

After a breakfast of hot porridge, toast, and marmalade, Monk sent Scuff out on an errand and turned to Hester.

“Nightmares again?” he asked.

“Sorry,” she apologized. “I knew I’d probably waken you, but I couldn’t leave him alone. I banged the door so—”

“You don’t need to explain.” He cut across her. The ghost of a smile softened the angular planes of his face for a moment, and then it was gone again. He looked grim, full of a pain he did not know how to deal with.

She knew he was remembering the terrible night on the river when Jericho Phillips had kidnapped Scuff to prevent Monk from completing the case against him, for which he would have assuredly hanged. Phillips had so very nearly succeeded. Had it not been for Sutton’s little dog, Snoot, they would never have found the boy.

“He’s still afraid,” she said quietly. “He knows Phillips is dead—he saw the drowned body in the cage—but there are other people doing the same thing, other boats on the river that use boys for pornography and prostitution—boys just like him, his friends. People we can’t help. I don’t know what to say to him, because he’s far too clever to believe comforting lies. And I don’t want to lie to him anyway. Then he’d never trust me in anything. I wish he didn’t care about them so much, and yet I’d hate it if he could feel safe only by never looking back. He thinks we can’t help.” She blinked hard. “William, parents ought to be able to help. That’s part of what they are for. He sees us not even trying, just accepting defeat. He doesn’t even understand why he feels so guilty, and thinks he’s betraying them by being all right. He won’t believe that we don’t secretly think the same of him, whatever we say.”

“I know.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “And that isn’t the only problem.”

She waited, her heart pounding. They had avoided saying it; all their time and emotion was concentrated on Scuff. But she had known it would have to come. Now she looked at the lines of strain in Monk’s face, the shadows around his eyes, the lean, high cheekbones. There was a vulnerability there that only she understood.

She thought of Oliver Rathbone, who had been both Monk’s friend and hers for so long, and beside whom they had fought desperate battles for justice, often at the risk of their reputations, even their lives. They had sat up for endless nights searching for answers, had faced victory and disaster together, horrors of grief, pity, and disillusion. Rathbone had once loved Hester, but she had chosen Monk. Then he had married Margaret Ballinger and found a happiness far better suited to his nature. Margaret could give him children, but more obvious than that, she was socially his equal. She was of a calmer, more judicious nature than Hester; she knew how to behave as Lady Rathbone, wife of the most gifted barrister in London, should.

Was it really conceivable that Margaret’s father had been the power and the money behind Jericho Phillips’s abominations? That is what Lord Justice Sullivan had claimed, right before his terrible suicide at Execution Dock. Hester longed for Monk to tell her that it was not true.

“You heard what Rathbone said about Arthur Ballinger and Phillips?” Monk said.

“Yes. Has he said anything more?”

“No. I suppose there’s nothing legal, or he would have. He’d have no choice.”

“You mean there’s no proof, just Sullivan’s word—and he’s dead anyway?”

“Yes.”

“But you believe it?” That also was not really a question.

“Of course I do,” he said very softly. “Rathbone believes it, and do you think he would if there were any way in heaven or hell that he could avoid it?”

Monk lifted up his hand and touched Hester’s cheek so softly, she felt the warmth of him more than the brush of his skin against hers.

“I have to know if Ballinger was involved, for Scuff, so at least he knows I’m trying,” he continued. “And Rathbone has to know too, however much he would prefer not to.”

“Are you going to speak to him?”

“I’ve been avoiding it, and so has he. He’s been in court on another case for the last two weeks, but it’s finished now and I can’t put it off any longer.”

“Are you sure he needs to know?” she pressed. “The pain of it would be intolerable, and he would have no choice but to do something about it.”

“That’s not like you,” he said ruefully.

“To want to avoid someone else’s pain?” She was momentarily indignant.

“To be evasive,” he corrected her. “You are too good a nurse to want to put a bandage on something that you know needs surgery. If it’s gangrene, you must take off the arm, or the patient will die. You taught me that.”

“Am I being a coward?” She winced as she said the word. She knew that to a soldier, “coward” was the worst word in any language, worse even than “cheat” or “thief.”

Monk leaned forward and kissed her, lingering only a moment. “You don’t need courage if you aren’t afraid,” he answered. “It takes a little while to be certain you have no alternative. Scuff needs to know that we care enough for the truth itself, not just to rescue him and then turn away. I think Rathbone would want that too, whatever the cost.”

“Whatever?” she questioned.

He hesitated. “Maybe not at any cost, but that doesn’t change the reality of it.”

HESTER WENT TO THE clinic that she had set up to treat and care for prostitutes and other street women who were sick or injured. It survived on charitable donations, and Margaret Rathbone was by far the most dedicated and the most able among those who sought and obtained such money. Margaret also spent a certain amount of time actually working there, cooking, cleaning, and practicing the little light nursing that she had learned from Hester. Of course she had done rather less of such work since her marriage, and no longer did nights. Still, Hester did not look forward to seeing her today and hoped it would be one of those times when Margaret was otherwise engaged.

She walked from Paradise Place down the hill to the ferry. The autumn wind was blustery, salt-smelling. From Wapping she took an omnibus westward toward Holborn. It was a long journey, but it was necessary that they live near Monk’s work. His was a reasonably new position, back in the police again after years of being a private agent of inquiry, when he’d lurched from one case to another with no certainty of payment. For less than a year he had been head of the River Police in this area, which was a profoundly responsible position. There was no one in England with better skills in detection, or more courage and dedication—and, some might say, ruthlessness. But his art in managing men and placating his superiors in the political hierarchy was altogether another matter.

If the circumstances caused Hester a little more traveling, it was a small enough contribution to his success. Added to which, she really did like the house in Paradise Place, with its view over the infinitely changing water, not to mention the freedom from financial anxiety that a regular income gave them.

She walked briskly along Portpool Lane under the shadow of the Reid Brewery, and in at the door of the house that had once been part of a huge brothel. It was Oliver Rathbone who had helped her obtain the building, quite legally, but with considerable coercion of its previous owner, Squeaky Robinson. Squeaky had remained here, a partially reformed character. To begin with he had stayed because he had had nowhere else to go, but now he took a certain pride in the place, oozing self-righteousness at his newfound respectability.

Squeaky was in the entrance as she came in, his face gaunt, his stringy gray-white hair down to his collar as usual. He was wearing an ancient frock coat and today had on a faded silk cravat.

“We need more money,” he said as soon as Hester was through the door. “I dunno how you expect me to do all these things on sixpence ha’penny!”

“You had fifty pounds just a week ago,” she replied. She was so used to Squeaky’s complaints that she would have worried if he had said that all was well.

“Mrs. Margaret says we’re going to need new pans in the kitchen soon,” he retaliated. “Lots of ’em. Big ones. Sometimes I think we’re feeding half London.”

“Lady Rathbone,” Hester corrected him automatically. “And pans do wear out, Squeaky. They get to the point where they can’t be mended anymore.”

“Then, you tell her ladyship to come up with some money for ’em,” he said waspishly.

“What happened to the fifty pounds?”

“Sheets and medicines,” he replied instantly. “You can tell her now. She’s through there.” He jerked his head sideways, indicating the door to his left.

There was no point in putting it off. Not only would it look like cowardice, it would feel like it. As if obedient to his instruction, she went through into the next room.

Margaret Rathbone was standing near the central table with a pale blue notepad in her hand, and a pencil poised. She looked up as Hester came in. There was a moment’s total silence between them, as if neither had expected to see the other, and yet both of them must have been preparing for this inevitable meeting. It was the first since Lord Justice Sullivan’s suicide, and the accusations he had then made against Margaret’s father—that he was the force behind the pornography—and the blackmail that had finally ruined the judge. There was no proof, just unforgettable words, and drowned bodies. Margaret would never admit the possibility, but Hester could not deny it. It left them no bridge to each other.

Margaret was not a beautiful woman, but her features were regular and her bearing unusually graceful. She had a dignity without arrogance—an unusual gift. Now she put the notepad down and looked unblinkingly at Hester. Her expression was guarded, as yet without warmth.

“I have the new sheets,” she remarked. “Two dozen of them. They will more than make up for those we have to get rid of.”

“The old ones will be good to tear up for bandages,” Hester replied, walking farther into the room. “Thank you.”

Margaret looked a little surprised, as if thanking her were inappropriate. “It was not my money,” she observed.

“We would not have it if you had not persuaded someone to donate it,” Hester pointed out. She made herself smile. “But as always, Squeaky is now complaining that the old pans cannot be mended anymore and we need new ones.”

“Do we?”

Hester relaxed a little. “We will do. All I said was that we should start saving for them. I swear he wouldn’t be happy if he didn’t have something to be miserable about.”

There was a polite tap on the door. Hester answered it, and Claudine Burroughs came in. She was a broad-hipped middle-aged woman with a face that had once been handsome, but time and unhappiness had taken away her bloom. She had discovered both her independence of spirit and a considerable purpose in life when she had volunteered to help in the clinic, mostly to irritate her unimaginative husband. She had defied his orders to cease her association with such a place, with more courage than she had known she possessed.

“Good morning, Mrs. Monk,” she said cheerfully. “Morning, Lady Rathbone.” Without waiting for a reply she launched into an account of the new patients who had been admitted since yesterday evening, and the progress of the more serious cases that had been there for some time. There were the usual fevers, stab wounds, a dislocated shoulder, sores, and infestations. The only thing less ordinary was an abscess, which Claudine reported triumphantly she had lanced, and which was now clean and should heal.

Margaret winced at the thought of the pain, not to mention the mess.

Hester applauded Claudine’s medical confidence. They moved on to other housekeeping matters. Then they went to see the more serious cases, speaking only of business, and the morning passed quickly.

When Hester came downstairs to the entrance hall again, she found Oliver Rathbone waiting. She was startled to see him, off guard because she had been trying not to imagine what Monk would have said to him about Ballinger. Now a glance at Rathbone’s face—sensitive, intelligent, faintly quizzical—and she knew that Monk had not spoken to him yet. She felt guilty, as if in knowing what was to come and not saying it, she were somehow deceiving him.

“Good morning, Oliver,” she said with a slight smile. “If you are looking for Margaret, she is in the medicine room.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Are you in a hurry?”

She could have kicked herself for dismissing him so quickly. She had not only been discourteous, she had made her unease obvious. Would apologizing make it worse?

“Are you all right, Hester?” he asked, taking a step toward her. “What about Scuff? How is he?”

Rathbone had been with them when they had searched so frantically for Scuff. He knew exactly how she’d felt. The horror of that day had touched him as nothing else had ever done in his life of prosecuting or defending some of the worst crimes in London. She saw the memory of it in his eyes now, and the gentleness. Stupidly the tears prickled in her own, and her throat was tight with the fear of what might come for him, if Sullivan had been telling the truth. She turned away so he could not read her face.

“He still has awful nightmares,” she replied a little huskily. “I’m afraid it’s going to take …” She hesitated. “Time.”

“What will it take for him ever to be over it?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Thinking it’s over for his friends, other boys like him. Not lies.”

He smiled very slightly. “He’d never believe you anyway, Hester. You’re a terrible liar. Totally transparent.”

She met his eyes with a flash of wit. “Or else I’m so good that you’ve never caught me?”

For an instant his face was blank with surprise, and then he laughed.

At that moment Margaret came in. Hester turned toward her and was struck with a sudden, quite unnecessary stab of guilt. She was relieved when Rathbone stepped around her, his face lighting with pleasure.

“Margaret! My big case is over. Have you time to join me for luncheon?”

“I’d be delighted,” she replied without looking at Hester. “Especially if you can help me think of anyone further whom I can ask for money. We have new sheets, but soon we shall need pots and pans.” She did not add that she was the only one raising funds, but it hung, unspoken, in the air.

Hester felt ashamed for her own failure to raise money, but Margaret’s marriage to Rathbone gave her a position in society that Hester would never have. That fact was too obvious for either of them to need to say it. It was also unnecessary to add that Margaret’s courtesy and natural good manners yielded far more reward than Hester’s outspoken candor. People liked to feel that they were doing their Christian duty toward the less fortunate, but definitely not that they owed it in any way. And they certainly did not wish to hear the details of poverty or disease.

“Thank you,” Hester said mildly, although it cost her an effort. “It would certainly be a great help.”

Margaret smiled and took Rathbone’s arm.

BY THE MIDDLE OF the afternoon Hester had had little more for luncheon than a cold cheese sandwich and a cup of tea. She was helping one of the women finish the scrubbing when Rupert Cardew arrived. She was on her knees on the floor, a brush in her hand, a pail of soapy water beside her. She heard the footsteps and then saw the polished boots stop about a yard in front of her.

She sat back and looked up slowly. He was at least as tall as Monk, but fair where Monk was dark, and, on his recent visits to the clinic to add to their funding, so relaxed as to be casual. Monk, on the other hand, was always intensely alive, waiting to move.

“Sorry,” Rupert apologized with a smile. “Didn’t mean to catch you on your knees. But if you were praying for more money, then I’m here with the answer.”

Hester climbed to her feet, declining his outstretched hand to assist her. Her plain blue skirt was wet where she had kneeled; and her white blouse, unadorned with lace, was rolled up above her elbows, and also wet in places. Her hair—not always her best feature—had been pinned back and adjusted several times as it had escaped, and was now completely shapeless.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Cardew.” She could not call him “sir”—and she did not think he wished it—although she was perfectly aware of his father’s title. Should she apologize for looking like a servant? Their friendship was recent, but she had liked him immediately, in spite of being aware that his beneficence toward the clinic sprang at least in part from a professional familiarity with some of its patients. His father, Lord Cardew, had sufficient wealth and position to make work unnecessary for his only surviving son. Rupert wasted his time, means, and talents with both charm and generosity, although lately he had lost some of his usual ease.

“I wasn’t praying,” she added, looking ruefully at her wet, rather red hands. “Perhaps I should have had more faith. Thank you.” She took the considerable amount of money he held out. She did not count it, but there was clearly several hundred pounds in the bundle of Treasury notes he put in her hand.

“Debts of pleasure,” he said with a wide smile. “Do you really have to do that yourself?” He eyed the floor and the bucket.

“Actually, it’s quite satisfying,” she told him. “Especially if you’re in a temper. You can attack it, and then see the difference you have made.”

“Next time I am in a temper, perhaps I’ll try it,” he promised with a smile. “You were an army nurse, weren’t you?” he observed. “They should have set you at the enemy. You’d have frightened the wits out of them.” He said it good-naturedly, as if in approval. “Would you like a cup of tea? I should have brought some cake.”

“Bread and jam?” she offered. She could enjoy a few minutes’ break and the light, superficial conversation with him. He reminded her of the young cavalry officers she had known in the Crimea: charming, funny, seemingly careless on the surface, and yet underneath it trying desperately not to think of tomorrow, or yesterday, and the friends they had lost, and would yet lose. However, as far as she knew, Rupert had no war to fight, no battle worth winning or losing.

“What kind of jam?” he asked, as if it mattered.

“Black currant,” she replied. “Or possibly raspberry.”

“Right.” To her surprise he bent and picked up the bucket, carrying it away from himself a little so it did not soil his perfect trousers or splash his boots.

She was startled. She had never before seen him even acknowledge the necessity, never mind stoop to so lowly a task. She wondered what had made him think of it today. Certainly not any vulnerability in her. It had made no difference before.

He put the pail down at the scullery door. Emptying it could wait for someone else.

In the kitchen Hester pushed the kettle over onto the cooktop and started to cut bread. She offered to toast it, and then passed the fork over to him to hold in front of the open door of the stove.

They spoke easily of the clinic and some of the cases that had come in. Rupert had a quick compassion for the street women’s pain, in spite of being one of those very willing to use their services.

With tea, toast, and jam on the table, conversation moved to other subjects with which there was no tension, no glaring contrasts: social gossip, places they had visited, exhibitions of art. He was interested in everything, and he listened as graciously as he spoke. Sometimes she forgot the great kitchen around her, the pots and pans, the stove, and in the next room the copper for boiling linen, and the laundry tubs, the scullery sinks, the racks of vegetables. She could have been at home as a young woman, fifteen years ago, before the war, before experience, passion, grief, or real happiness. There had been a kind of innocence to her life then; everything had been possible. Her parents had still been alive, and also her younger brother, who had been killed in the Crimea. The memories were both sweet and painful.

Deliberately she steered the subject back to the clinic. “We’re very grateful for your gift. I had asked Lady Rathbone to see if she could raise some more money, but it is always difficult. We keep on asking, because there is so much needed all the time, but people do get tired of us.” She smiled a trifle ruefully.

“Lady Rathbone. Is she the wife of Sir Oliver?” he asked with apparent interest, although it might merely have been the feigning required by good manners.

“Yes. Do you know them?”

“Only by repute.” The idea seemed to amuse him. “Our paths don’t cross, except perhaps at the theater, and I dare say he goes for reasons of business, and she, to be seen. I go because I enjoy it.”

“Isn’t that why you do most things?” she replied, and then wished she had not. It was too perceptive, too sharp.

He winced, but appeared unoffended. “You are about the only truly virtuous woman that I actually like,” he said, as if surprised at it himself. “You haven’t ever tried to redeem me, thank God.”

“Good heavens!” She opened her eyes wide. “How remiss of me! Should I have, at least for appearances’ sake?”

“If you told me you cared about appearances, I should not believe you,” he answered, trying to be serious, and failing. “Although for some, there is nothing else.” He was suddenly tense, muscles pulling in his neck. “Wasn’t it Sir Oliver who defended Jericho Phillips and got him off?”

Hester felt a moment of chill, simply to be reminded of it. “Yes,” she said with as little expression as she could.

“Don’t look like that,” he said gently. “The miserable devil got his just deserts in the end. He drowned—slowly—feeling the water creep up his body inch by inch as the tide came in. And he was terrified of drowning, phobic about it. Much worse for him than being hanged, which is supposed to be all over in a matter of seconds, so they say.”

She stared at him, her mind racing.

He blushed, his fair skin coloring easily. “I’m sorry. I’m sure that’s more detail than you wanted to know. I shouldn’t have said that. Sometimes I speak too frankly to you. I apologize.”

It was not the detail that had sent the icy chill creeping through her, for she knew all too well how Jericho Phillips had died. She had seen his dead face. It was the fact that Rupert Cardew knew of Phillips’s terror of water. That meant that he had known Phillips himself. Why should that surprise her? Rupert had made no secret of the fact that he knew prostitutes and was prepared to pay for his pleasure. Perhaps that was more honest than seducing women and then leaving them, possibly with child. But Jericho Phillips had been a different matter—a blackmailer, a pornographer of children, of little boys as young as six or seven years.

Perhaps Rupert had known Phillips only casually, without realizing that he did? Was that one of the many scrapes from which Rupert’s father had bailed him out? It should not surprise her. How easy it is when you like someone to be blind to the possibilities of ugliness in them, of weaknesses too deep to be passed over with tolerance.

What horror might be ahead for Margaret, if Sullivan had been telling the truth about Arthur Ballinger, and one day Margaret was forced to realize it? Margaret’s loyalties would be torn apart, the whole fabric of love and belief threatened. Margaret was loyal to her father; of course she was, as Rupert was to his. And perhaps he had even more cause. His father had protected him, right or wrong. The cost to Lord Cardew must have been far more than money, and yet he had never failed.

Love does forgive, but can it forgive everything? Should it? Which loyalties came first—family, or belief in right and wrong?

What about her own father? That pain twisted deep into places she dared not look. Her father had died alone in England, betrayed and ashamed, while she had been out in the Crimea caring for strangers, ignorant to his plight. What loyalty was that?

“Hester?” Rupert’s voice broke through her thoughts.

She looked up. She was glad that Rupert was just a friend, someone she was deeply grateful to but not tied to by blood, or love.

“You’re right,” she agreed. “It sounds as if fate were harsher to Phillips than the law would have been.”

MONK WENT TO OLIVER Rathbone’s office in the city late in the morning, and was informed courteously by his clerk that Sir Oliver had gone to luncheon. Monk duly returned at half past two, and was still obliged to wait. It might have been simpler to catch Rathbone with time to spare at his home in the evening, but Monk needed to speak with him when Margaret was not present.

At quarter to three Rathbone came back, entering with a smile on his face and the easy elegant manner he usually had when the taste of victory was still fresh on his tongue.

“Hello, Monk,” he said with surprise. “Got another case for me already?” He came in and closed the door quietly. His pale gray suit was perfectly cut and fitted to his slender figure. The sunlight shone in through the long windows, catching the smoothness of his fair hair and the touches of gray at the temples.

“I hope I don’t,” Monk answered. “But I can’t let this go by default.”

“What are you talking about?” Rathbone sat down and crossed his legs. He appeared reasonably comfortable, even if in fact he was not. “You look as if you have just opened someone’s bedroom door by mistake.”

“I may have,” Monk said wryly. The reference was meant only as an illustration, but it was too close to the truth.

Rathbone regarded him levelly, his face serious now. “It’s not like you to be oblique. How bad is it?”

Monk hated what he had to say. Even now he was wondering if there were some last, desperate way to avoid it. “That night on Phillips’s ship, after we found Scuff, and the rest of the boys, you told me that Margaret’s father was behind it—”

“I told you that Sullivan said so. He told me while you were occupied with Phillips.” Rathbone cut across him quickly. “Sullivan had no proof, and he’s dead by his own hand now. Whatever he knew, or believed, is gone with him.”

“The proof may be dead”—Monk did not move his eyes from Rathbone’s—“but the question isn’t. Someone is behind it. Phillips hadn’t the money or the connections in society to run the boat and find the clients who were vulnerable, let alone blackmail them afterward.”

“Could it have been Sullivan himself?” Rathbone suggested, and then looked away. Monk did not bother to answer—they both knew Sullivan had not had the nerve nor the intelligence it would have required. He’d been a man ruined by his appetite, and eventually killed by it. In the end, he’d been one more victim.

Rathbone looked up again. “All right, not Sullivan. But he could have implicated anyone, as long as it wasn’t himself. There’s nothing to act on, Monk. The man was desperate and pathetic. Now he’s very horribly dead, and he took Phillips with him, which no man more richly deserved. There’s nothing more I can do, or would. The boat has been broken up, the boys are free. Let the other victims nurse their wounds in peace.” His face tightened in revulsion too deep to hide. “Pornography is cruel and obscene, but there’s no way to prevent men looking at whatever they wish to, in their own homes. If you want a crusade, there are more fruitful causes.”

“I want to stop Scuff’s unhappiness,” Monk replied. “And to do that I have to stop it from happening to other boys, the friends he’s left behind.”

“I’ll help you—but within the law.”

Monk rose to his feet. “I want whoever’s behind it.”

“Give me evidence, and I’ll prosecute,” Rathbone promised. “But I’m not indulging in a witch hunt. Don’t you … or you’ll regret it. Witch hunts get out of hand, and innocent people suffer. Leave it, Monk.”

Monk said nothing. He shook Rathbone’s hand and left.