William Monk 08 - The Silent Cry

knew what she was thinking. She laughed outright. “It was not a broken affair of the heart, I promise you. I wanted the adventure, the freedom to use such brains and talents as I have where I would be sufficiently needed that necessity would remove prejudices against women’s initiative.”
    “I imagine you succeeded?” There was vivid interest in Sylvestra’s face.
    Hester smiled. “Most assuredly.”
    “My husband would have admired that,” Sylvestra said with certainty. “He loved courage and the fire to be different, inventive.” She looked rueful. “I sometimes wonder if he would have liked to have gone somewhere like India, or perhaps Africa. Amalia’s letters would thrill him, but I had a feeling they also awoke a restlessness in him, even a kind of envy. He would have loved new frontiers, the challenge of discovery, the chance of great leadership. He was an outstanding man, Miss Latterly. He had a most remarkable mind. Amalia gets her courage from him, and Constance too.”
    “And Rhys?” Hester said quietly.
    The shadow returned to Sylvestra’s face. “Yes … Rhys too. He wanted so much for Rhys. Is it terrible of me to say that there is a kind of way in which I am glad he did not live to see this? … Rhys so ill, unable to speak … and so … so changed.” She shook her head a little. “It would have hurt him beyond bearing.” She stared down at her hands. “Then I wish with all my heart that Leighton could have lived longer, and they could have grown closer together. Now it is too late. Rhys will never know his father man-to-man, never appreciate his qualities as I did.”
    Hester thought of Monk’s vision of what had happened in the dark alley in St. Giles. She hoped with an overwhelming fierceness that it was not true. It was hideous. For Sylvestra it would be more than she could live through and keep her sanity.
    “You will have to tell him,” Hester said aloud. “There will be a great deal you can say to make his father’s true character and skills real to him. He will need your company as he recovers, and your encouragement.”
    “Do you think so?” Sylvestra asked quickly, hope and doubt in her eyes. “At the moment he seems to find even my presence distressing. There is much anger inside him, Miss Latterly. Do you understand it?”
    Hester did not, and it frightened her with its underlying cruelty. She had seen that exultancy in the power to hurt a number of times, and it chilled her even more than Monk’s words.
    “I daresay it is only the frustration of not being able to speak,” she lied. “And of course the physical pain.”
    “Yes … yes, I suppose so.” Sylvestra picked up her embroidery again and resumed stitching.
    The maid came in and banked up the fire, taking the coal bucket away with her to refill it.
    The following evening Fidelis Kynaston called again, as she had promised she would, and Sylvestra urged Hester to take time away from Ebury Street and do as she pleased, perhaps visit with friends. She had accepted with pleasure, most particularly because Oliver Rathbone had again invited her to dine with him and to attend the theater, if she cared to.
    Normally clothes were of less interest to her than to most women, but that evening she wished she had a wardrobe full of gowns to choose from, all selected for their ability to flatter, to soften the line of shoulder and bosom, to give color and light to the complexion and depth to the eyes. Since she had already worn her best gown on the previous occasion, she was reduced to wearing a dark green which was over three years old—and really a great deal more severe than she would have chosen had she any other available to her. Still, she must make the best of what she had and then think about it no more. She dressed her hair softly. It was straight and unwilling to fall into the prescribed coils and loops, but it was thick, and there was a nice sheen on it. Her skin had not sufficient color, but pinching it now would serve no purpose by the time she arrived at the theater, and in a hansom it would hardly matter.
    And indeed when Rathbone came for her and she was unintentionally a few minutes late, thought of appearance lingered only a moment before it vanished in the pleasure of seeing him, and a quickening of her pulse as she recalled their last parting and the touch of his lips upon hers.
    “Good evening, Oliver,” she said breathlessly as she almost tripped on the last stair and hurried