William Monk 11 - Slaves of Obsession

decorated with gardenias. She looked flushed with excitement and quite lovely.
    “Brothers?” Hester said very softly to Monk. “Hypocrites!”
    “Cain and Abel,” he replied under his breath.
    Hester swallowed her snort of abrupt laughter and turned it into a cough just as Merrit saw them and stopped. For an instant her face registered only shock. There was a brief moment while she struggled to remember from where she recognized them. Then it came, and she walked forward, her smile uncertain but her head high.
    Hester had thought she knew how she would feel when she saw Merrit again; now it all vanished and she struggled to read in the girl’s face whether it was brazen defiance which lit her expression or if she had no idea what had happened in the warehouse yard. Certainly there was no fear in her at all, and no apology.
    Breeland introduced them, and there was a brief instant when they were all uncertain whether to acknowledge past acquaintance or not.
    Merrit drew in her breath and then did not speak.
    Hester glanced at Monk.
    “Good evening, Miss Alberton,” he said with a slight smile, just enough to be courteous. “Mr. Breeland speaks very highly of you.” It was ambiguous, committing him to nothing.
    She blushed. It obviously pleased her. She looked very young. For all the womanly curves of her body and the romantic gown, Hester could see the child in her. It did not take much imagination to put her back in the schoolroom with her hair down her back, a pinafore on and ink on her fingers.
    In a wild moment Hester longed for any escape from the truth, any answer but the dead bodies in the warehouse yard and Lyman Breeland on his way to Manassas with the Union army—and Daniel Alberton’s guns.
    They were talking and she had not heard.
    Monk answered for her.
    Somehow she stumbled through the rest of the conversation until they excused themselves and moved on to speak to someone else.
    Later that night Trace came to Monk and Hester’s room, his face grave, his dark eyes hollow and deep lines from nose to mouth accentuating his weariness.
    “Have you made your decision?” he asked, looking at each of them in turn.
    Hester knew what he meant. She turned to Monk, who was standing near the window which opened over the rooftops. It was close to midnight and still stiflingly hot. The sounds of the city drifted up in the air along with the smell of flowers, dust and tobacco smoke, and the overtaxed drains that everyone complained about.
    Monk answered softly, aware of other open windows.
    “We don’t think she knows of her father’s death,” he answered. “We plan to tell her, and what we do after that depends upon her reaction.”
    “She may not believe you,” Trace warned, glancing at Hester and back to Monk again. “She certainly won’t believe it was Breeland.”
    Hester thought of the watch. She remembered Merrit’s pride in it and how her fingers had caressed its shining surface.
    “I think we can persuade her,” she said grimly. “But I don’t know what she will do when she realizes.”
    “At all costs, we must keep them apart.” Monk was watching Trace. “If he can, Breeland may hold her as hostage. He won’t go back to England without a fight.” His voice made it half a question. Hester knew he was trying to judge what stomach Trace had for a confrontation and the violence that might go with it.
    He could not have been disappointed in the reaction. Trace smiled, and for the first time Hester did not see in him the gentle man who had such pity for the Irishwoman on the ship, or who behaved with such charm at Judith Alberton’s dinner table, nor the person who grieved for the conflict that engulfed his people. She saw instead the naval officer who went to England to buy guns for war and who had beaten Lyman Breeland to the purchase.
    “I’d dearly love to take him back to face a court and answer for Daniel Alberton’s death.” He spoke in little above a whisper, but his words were sharp and clear as steel. “Daniel was a good man, an honorable man, and Breeland could have taken the guns without killing him. That was a barbarity that war doesn’t excuse. He killed out of hate, because Alberton refused to go back on his word to me. I say we go after him, unless it costs us Merrit to do that.”
    “We’ll tell her tomorrow,” Monk promised.
    “How?” Trace asked.
    “We’ve thought of that.” Monk relaxed a little and came farther into the room, away from the window.