William Monk 07 - Weighed in the Balance

country from unification into a greater Germany, which people say will almost certainly happen one day anyway. If you had seen them here you wouldn’t even have had such an idea.” Her voice dismissed it as ridiculous; there was even regret in it and a note of envy. “I’ve never known two people to love each other so much. Sometimes it was almost as if they spoke with one voice.” Her blue eyes were focused on something beyond his head. “She would finish what he was saying, or he would finish for her. They understood each other’s thoughts. I can only imagine what it would be like to have such utter companionship.”
    He looked at her and saw a woman who had been married several years, beginning to face the idea of maturity, the end of dreams and the beginning of the acceptance of reality, and who had newly realized that her own inner loneliness was not necessarily a part of everyone’s life. There were those who had found the ideal. Just when she had accepted that it did not exist, and came to terms with it, there it was, played out in front of her, in her own house, but not for her.
    And then the thought of Hester came to him with startling vividness, the sense of trust he knew towards her. She was opinionated and abrasive. There was much in her that irritated him like torn skin, catching every touch. The moment he thought it was healed, there it was again. But he knew her courage, her compassion and her honesty better than he knew his own. He also knew, with a sense of both anger and infinite value, that she would never intentionally hurt him. He did not want anything so precious. He might break it. He might lose it.
    But she might hurt him irreparably, beyond her power to help, if she loved Rathbone other than as a friend. That was something he refused to think about.
    “Possibly,” he said at last. “But it is most important, for reasons Lord Wellborough no doubt explained to you, that we learn the truth of precisely what did happen and find proof of it.The alternative is to have the investigation of it forced upon us at the trial.”
    “Yes,” she conceded. “I can see that. You have no need to labor the point, Mr. Monk; I have already instructed all the staff to answer your questions. What is it you believe I can tell you? I have been called by the Princess Gisela’s solicitors to testify to Countess Rostova’s slander.”
    “Naturally. During their stay here, did Count Lansdorff see Friedrich alone for any length of time?”
    “No.” It was plain from her face she understood the implication. “Gisela did not allow him to have visitors. He was far too ill.”
    “I mean before the accident.”
    “Oh. Yes. They spoke together quite often. They appeared to be healing some of the rift between them. It was rather prickly and uncomfortable to begin with. They had barely spoken in the twelve years since the abdication and Friedrich’s leaving the country.”
    “But they were at least amicable before the accident?”
    “They seemed so, yes. Are you saying Rolf asked him to return and he agreed? If he did, it would have been with Gisela, not without.” She said it with complete certainty, and at last she moved over to the large sofa and sat down, spreading her huge skirts with automatic grace. “I saw them too closely to be mistaken.” She smiled, biting her lip a little. “That may sound overconfident to you, because you are a man. But it is not. I saw her with him. She was a very strong woman, very certain of herself. He adored her. He did nothing without her, and she knew that.”
    She looked at him, and a shadow of amusement crossed her eyes. “There are dozens of small signs when a woman is uncertain of a man or when she feels she needs to make tiny efforts, listen, be obedient or flattering in order to hold him. She loved him, please do not doubt that for an instant. But she also knew the depth of his love for her, and that she had nocause to question any part of it.” She shook her head a little. “Not even duty to his country would have made him leave her. I would even say he needed her. She was very strong, you know. I said that before, didn’t I? But she was.”
    “You say it in the past,” he observed, sitting as well.
    “Well, his death has robbed her of everything,” she pointed out, her blue eyes wide. “She has been in seclusion ever since.”
    Monk realized with surprise that he did not even know where Gisela was. He had heard nothing about her since Friedrich’s