William Monk 03 - Defend and Betray

is it?” Her mouth tightened in a sad little smile. “It lacks the heroic.”
    Hester had not thought of it before. She had been too aware of the reality of death and loss, having experienced the sudden and tragic deaths of her younger brother and both her parents within a year of each other. Now she visualized General Carlyon’s accident and realized precisely what Edithmeant. To fall over the banister at a dinner party and spear yourself on the halberd of an empty suit of armor was hardly a glorious military death. It might take a better man than his father, Colonel Carlyon, not to feel a certain resentment and sting to family pride. She said nothing of it, but she could not keep from her mind the thought that perhaps the general had been a great deal less than sober at the time.
    “I imagine his wife is very shocked,” she said aloud. “Had they family?”
    “Oh yes, two daughters and a son. Actually, both daughters are older and married, and the younger was present at the party, which makes it so much worse.” Edith sniffed sharply, and Hester could not tell if it was a sign of grief, anger, or merely the wind, which was decidedly cooler across the grass now they were out of the shelter of the trees.
    “They had quarreled,” Edith went on. “According to Peverell, Damaris’s husband. In fact, he said it was a perfectly ghastly party. Everyone seemed to be in a fearful temper and at each other’s throats half the evening. Both Alexandra, Thaddeus’s wife, and Sabella, his daughter, quarreled with him both before dinner and over the table. And with Louisa Furnival, the hostess.”
    “It sounds very grim,” Hester agreed. “But sometimes family differences can seem a great deal more serious than they really are. I know, it can make the grief afterwards much sharper, because quite naturally it is added to by guilt. Although I am sure the dead know perfectly well that we do not mean many of the things we say, and that under the surface there is a love far deeper than any momentary temper.”
    Edith tightened her grip in gratitude.
    “I know what you are trying to say, my dear, and it is not unappreciated. One of these days I must have you meet Alexandra. I believe you would like her, and she you. She married young and had children straightaway, so she has not experienced being single, nor had any of the adventures you have. But she is of as independent a mind as her circumstancesallow, and certainly not without courage or imagination.”
    “When it is suitable I shall be delighted,” Hester agreed, although she was not in truth looking forward to spending any of her very precious free time in the company of a recent widow, however courageous. She saw more than sufficient pain and grief in the course of her profession. But it would be gratuitously unkind to say so now, and she was genuinely fond of Edith and would have done much to please her.
    “Thank you.” Edith looked sideways at her. “Would you think me unforgivably callous if I spoke of other things?”
    “Of course not! Had you something special in mind?”
    “My reason for making an appointment to meet you where we could speak without interruption, and instead of inviting you to my home,” Edith explained, “is that you are the only person I can think of who will understand, and who might even be able to help. Of course in a little while I will be needed at home for the present, now this terrible thing has happened. But afterwards …”
    “Yes?”
    “Hester, Oswald has been dead for close to two years now. I have no children.” A flicker of pain crossed her features, showing her vulnerable in the hard spring light, and younger than her thirty-three years. Then it was gone again, and resolve replaced it. “I am bored to distraction,” she said with a firm voice, unconsciously increasing her pace as they turned on the path that led down to a small bridge over ornamental water and on towards the Royal Botanical Society Gardens. A small girl was throwing bread to the ducks.
    “And I have very little money of my own,” Edith went on. “Oswald left me too little to live on, in anything like the way I am accustomed, and I am dependent upon my parents—which is the only reason I still live at Carlyon House.”
    “I assume you have no particular thoughts on marrying again?”
    Edith shot her a look of black humor, not without self-mockery.
    “I think it is unlikely,” she said frankly. “The marriagemarket is drenched with