William Monk 14 - The Shifting Tide

time of day when people were going into the city, tradesmen were beginning their rounds, everybody seemed to be jamming the roads.
    At the first traffic congestion everything came to a standstill. Two coachmen were arguing over whose fault it was that a horse had tried to bolt and broken his harness. Rathbone waited a short while, then finally paid his own driver and got out to walk. It was no more than three quarters of a mile farther, and the effort it would take was better than waiting cooped up and sitting.
    This time he was more fortunate. The footman informed him that Miss Ballinger was taking breakfast, and he would enquire if she would receive him. Rathbone paced back and forth in the morning room until the man returned and invited him through.
    Rathbone tried to compose himself, so as not to embarrass Margaret in front of her parents, should they be there. He followed the footman across the hall and into the long, very formal dining room, where he was drenched with relief to find her alone. She was dressed smartly in a dark suit a little like a riding habit. It was fashionable and extremely becoming, but she looked alarmingly pale.
    “Good morning, Sir Oliver,” she said with some reserve. Obviously she had not forgotten his coolness of the other evening. “Would you care for a cup of tea? Or perhaps more? Toast?” she invited him.
    “No, thank you.” He sat down, praying she would give the footman leave to go. “I have a legal matter I wish to discuss with you, of a most confidential nature.” He could not wait upon good luck.
    “Really?” She raised her eyebrows slightly. She thanked the footman and asked him to leave. She looked guarded, withdrawn, as if she was afraid he was going to hurt her. He found himself ashamed at the thought.
    “I know,” he said simply. “Monk came to see me yesterday afternoon. He told me of the situation at Portpool Lane.”
    Her eyes widened, dark and incredulous. “He . . . told you?” She reached out instinctively and grasped his wrist. “You must say nothing! I was sworn to secrecy, absolute! No exceptions at all! It—”
    “I understand,” he cut across her. “Monk told me because he needs me to defend a thief. He believes him to be innocent of murdering a watchman. It is not much—one small act of justice, and to a confessed thief at that—but it’s all I can do.” He felt ashamed saying it. “That, and help with funds. But he warned me not even to ask friends in case my urgency should cause speculation.”
    Her face was filled with a relief that set his heart surging, the blood pounding in his veins. There was a wild, almost hysterical gratitude in him that Margaret was not in the clinic, and could not go. Anyway, she was needed to raise funds, to purchase what they needed, and take it to them.
    “I know,” she said gently. “I am having to be so much more discreet than I want to be.” She met his eyes, her own brimming with tears. “I think of Hester in there, alone, and how she must feel, and I want to go to help her. I want to tell these people the truth and force them to give all they can, every last penny, but I know it would only drive them into hysterics—at least some of them.” She was shivering, her voice husky. “Fear does terrible things to people. Anyway I promised Sutton, which really means Hester, that I would tell no one. I couldn’t even tell you!”
    “I understand!” he said quickly, closing his hand over hers where it lay on his wrist. “Be careful. And . . . and when you take food to them, leave it. Don’t be . . . don’t be tempted to . . .”
    He saw an instant of pity in her eyes, not for Hester, or for the sick, but for him, because she recognized his horror of disease. It chilled him like ice at the heart. Suddenly he saw that he could lose her not to death but to contempt, that awakening of disgust that is the end of love between a woman and a man, and becomes the pity that a strong woman has for the weak, for children, and for the defenseless, but never for a lover.
    He looked away.
    “I will do what I have to,” she said quietly. “I do not intend to go inside the clinic; I am more use to them out here. But if Hester sends for me, perhaps because she is dying, then I will go. I might lose my life too, but if I didn’t, I could lose everything that would make life precious. I am sure you know that.” There was no certainty in her voice or her face. She was full of question. She needed his