William Monk 11 - Slaves of Obsession

lose reason in emotion. When you think of issues like war, injustice, slavery, the love of your family or your country, your way of life, are any of us guided purely by reason?”
    She shook her head minutely. “No,” she whispered. “I suppose not.” She took a deep breath. “But I know Lyman! He would not stoop to anything dishonorable. Honor, what is right, is dearer to him than anything. That is part of the reason I love him so much. Can’t you make them see that?”
    “And are you absolutely certain that what is right would not include sacrificing three men to the cause of obtaining guns for the Union?” he asked.
    She was very pale. “Not by murder!” But her voice shook. Her eyes filled with tears. “I know he was not in the warehouse yard that evening, Sir Oliver, because I was with him all the time, and I was not there. I swear that!”
    He believed her. “And how did the watch come to be there? How do I explain that to the jury?”
    Fear rippled through her. He could not mistake it.
    “I don’t know! It doesn’t make any sense. I can’t explain it.”
    “When did you last see the watch?”
    “I’ve been trying to think, but my mind is in such turmoil the harder I try the less clear it becomes. I remember showing it to Mrs. Monk, and I had it the day after that, because that was when Dorothea admired it, so of course I told her about it.” She flushed very faintly, hardly more than a suspicion of color in her pale face. “After that … I’m not certain. Times get muddled in my memory. So much happened, and I was furious with my father.…” The tears spilled over her eyes and she fought for self-control.
    Rathbone did not interrupt her or try to offer words they both knew he could not mean.
    “Could you have lost it, or left it on a garment you were not wearing?” he asked at length.
    “I suppose so.” She seized the explanation. “I must have. But Lyman would never have left it in the yard, and who else could?”
    “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I shall have Monk investigate it. It may now be possible your father took it with him.”
    “Oh, yes! That could be, couldn’t it?” At last there was a lift of hope in her voice. “Sir Oliver, who was it that killed him? Was it Mr. Shearer? That is very dreadful. I know my father trusted him. They had worked together for years. I only met him once. He was rather grim, sort of … I’m not sure … angry. At least I thought he was.” She searched his face to see if he understood what she found so difficult to say. “Was it for money?”
    “It seems as if it was.”
    “How could my father have been so wrong about him?”
    “I don’t know. Perhaps because we tend to judge others by our own standards.”
    She did not answer. And within a few moments he took his leave, trying to encourage her to keep heart.
    He did not especially wish to see Breeland, but it was a duty he must not shirk. He found him standing by the chair and small table in the room assigned for him. His face was stiff, his shoulders locked so tight they strained the fabric of his jacket. He looked accusingly at Rathbone, and Rathbone could not blame him for it. He disliked the man, and Breeland must know it, and also that Rathbone’s first loyalty was to Merrit Alberton. It was Judith, after all, who was paying him. It was Merrit’s desire, not Breeland’s, that they be charged as one, and she would not claim any special innocence. She was determined to stand with him, although Rathbone wondered if it was now love for Breeland or love of loyalty which kept her.
    Without warning he felt a keen pity for Breeland, thousands of miles from home and overwhelmingly among strangers who hated him for what they believed him to be.Perhaps had Rathbone been in similar circumstances he would have wrapped himself in the same icy dignity. It was the last protection Breeland had left, to seem not to care. And why should anyone parade his vulnerability for his enemies to stare at?
    Could Shearer have murdered Alberton without Breeland’s knowledge, and certainly without his complicity? And should Breeland, owing all his allegiance to his own people, locked in a terrible war, not have taken the guns so fortuitously offered him—simply because he suspected they had been obtained by deceit? It was war, not trade. For him they were the survival of a cause, not a matter of profit.
    Breeland stared at him. “I assume that at some point in this farce you will