William Monk 08 - The Silent Cry

could, but there are the other two.”
    “I can’t believe Arthur Kynaston was involved.” She met his eyes. “I would have to see proof that could not be argued. I would have to hear him admit it. Duke I do not know about.”
    “It could have been Rhys, Duke and someone else,” he pointed out.
    “Then why is Leighton Duff dead and Duke Kynaston unhurt?”
    He put out a hand as if to touch her, then let it fall.
    “Because Leighton Duff guessed there was something profoundly wrong, and he followed them and challenged his son,” he answered gravely, a pucker between his brows. “The one with whom he was most concerned, the one for whom he cared. And Rhys lost his temper, perhaps high on whiskey, fueled by guilt and fear and a belief in his own power. The others ran off. The result is what Evan found … two men who began a fight and couldn’t stop it, short of the death of one of them and the near-mortal injury of the other.”
    She shook her head, but it was to close out the vision, to defend herself from it, not because she could deny its possibility.
    This time he did put his hands on her shoulders, very gently, not to hold her, simply to touch.
    She stared at the floor, refusing to look up at him.
    “And perhaps some men of the area, husbands or lovers of the last victim, brothers, or even friends, caught up with them. They had stopped running for too long … and it was they who beat them both. Rhys cannot tell us … even if he wanted to.”
    There was nothing to say. The impulse was to deny it, and that was pointless.
    “I don’t know any way to find out,” she said defensively.
    “I know.” He smiled very slightly. “And if you did, you wouldn’t … until you had to know, for yourself. You would have to prove him innocent … and when you proved him guilty, you would say nothing, and I would know anyway.”
    She raised her eyes quickly. “No, you wouldn’t. Not if I chose to conceal it.”
    He hesitated, then stepped back half a pace.
    “I would know,” he repeated. “Why? Would you defend him for it? I should take you to see these women, beaten by poverty, dirt, ignorance, and now beaten by three young gentlemen who are bored by their comfortable lives and want a little more dangerous entertainment, something to make the heart beat a trifle faster and bring the blood to the head.” His voice was hard in his throat with outrage, a deep and abiding hurt he felt for the injured. “Some of them are no more than children. At their age you were in the schoolroom wearing apinafore and doing your sums, and your most urgent distress was being forced to eat your rice pudding.” He was exaggerating and he knew it, but it hardly mattered. The essence was real. “You wouldn’t defend that, Hester.… you couldn’t. You have more honor, more imagination than that.”
    She turned away. “Of course I do. But you haven’t seen Rhys’s pain now. Judgment is fine when you only know one side. It is much harder when you know the offender, and, like him, feel his pain too.”
    He stood close behind her. “I was not concerned with ease, only what was right. Sometimes we cannot have both. I know some people don’t understand that, or accept it, but you do. You have always been able to face the truth, no matter what it was. You will do it this time.”
    There was certainty in his voice, no doubt at all. She was Hester, reliable, strong, virtuous Hester. No need to protect her from pain or danger. No need even to worry about her.
    She wanted to lash out angrily at him for taking her for granted. She was exactly like anybody else inside, like any other woman. She ached to be protected sometimes, to be cherished and have ugliness and danger warded off by someone else, not because he thought she could not bear it but because he did not wish her hurt.
    But she could not possibly say that to him … not to Monk, of all people. To be worth anything at all, it had to be offered freely. It must be his wish, even his need. If she had been one of the fragile, warm, feminine women he so admired, he would have done it instinctively.
    What could she say? She was so angry and confused and hurt, words tumbled over each other in her mind, and all of them were useless, only betraying what she felt, which was the last thing she wished him to know. She could protect herself at least as much as that.
    “Of course,” she said stiffly, her voice thick in her throat. “There is little point in doing