William Monk 12 - Funeral in Blue

decisions she had made and carried through, the courage or the pain, or anything else?
    Monk spoke to her gently, and she nodded without having heard. If Imogen had driven Charles to that, would she now at least stand by him if Runcorn started questioning, probing, and the net tightened around him? What if he were arrested, even tried? Would she leave the gambling and stand strong and loyal beside him? Or would she crumble—weak, frightened, essentially selfish? If she did that, Hester might not find it within her ever to forgive Imogen. And that was a bitter and terrible thought. Not to forgive is a kind of death.
    And yet if Imogen could not now be loyal, place Charles before her own fears, it would hurt him beyond his ability to survive, perhaps beyond his desire to. And if that was weak, too, so much the more must Imogen be strong.
    That was illogical, perhaps unfair, but it was what she felt as she looked at the congealed mess in the saucepan and started to consider what to do with it.
     
     
    Callandra stood in the middle of her garden looking at the last of the roses, the petals carrying that peculiar warmth of tone that only late flowers possess, as if they knew their beauty would be short. There were a dozen tasks that needed doing, and the gardener overlooked half of them if she did not tell him specifically. There were dead flower heads to take off, Michaelmas daisies to tie up before the weight of the flowers bent them too far and they broke. The buddleia needed pruning, it was far too big; and there were windfall apples to pick up before they rotted.
    She could not be bothered with any of them. She had come out with gloves and a knife, and a trug to carry the dead heads, thinking she wanted to throw herself into the effort of a physical job. Now that she was there she could not concentrate. Her mind was leaping from one thing to another, and always around and around the same black center. About the only thing she was fit for was weeding. She bent down and started to pull, first one, then another, ignoring the trug and leaving the weeds in little piles to be picked up later.
    She had acknowledged to herself some time ago that she loved Kristian Beck, even if it would never lead to anything but the profoundest friendship. She would not marry again. Francis Bellingham had asked her. She liked him deeply, and he could have offered her a life of companionship, loyalty and a very considerable freedom to pursue the causes she believed in. He was intelligent, honorable and not in the least unattractive. If she had met him a few years ago she would have accepted his offer.
    What she felt for him was affection, kindness, respect, but no more. If she had married him, as many of her friends had expected her to, then she would have had to cut Kristian from her dreams, and that she was not prepared to do. Perhaps she was not even able to do it. She could not commit the dishonor of marrying one man while loving another, not at her age, when there was no need. She had more than sufficient money to care for herself, the social position of a titled widow, work for charity to fill her time, friends she valued. She was perfectly aware of her own foolishness.
    Her fingers stopped moving in the cold earth as she remembered what Hester had told her yesterday afternoon. She had known immediately that it was bad news of some kind. She had seen too many doctors with just that expression, the mixture of resolution and pity, the stiff shoulders and pale face, the softness in the eyes.
    At the moment it could only concern Kristian. She had not needed to ask what it was about. She was already prepared to hear that he could not prove his innocence. She had always known, from very early in their acquaintance, that there was a loneliness in his life. She sensed it as she felt the deep, hidden pain in her own. She had never asked about his wife and he had not spoken of her. She had not consciously even tried to visualize her, but gradually, unwittingly, she had drawn in her mind a rather ordinary woman with a bitter face, critical of small things, always expecting something she was not given. How could anyone else have failed to offer a man like Kristian all the love she could?
    Then Hester had said she was younger, and not just beautiful, but with that haunting quality that stays in the mind, bringing back the eyes, the lips, the turn of the head at unexpected moments, as if the person never entirely left you.
    That had been so hard