William Monk 15 - Dark Assassin

as he could remember.
    A thought flashed across his mind. “Will you be looking for another position after this, Mrs. Kitching?”
    “I’ve no need to. I’ve saved a bit. I’m going to live with my brother and his wife, in Dorking. I’m just staying here till matters are settled.”
    He smiled. She was exactly the witness he was looking for, and so he returned to his earlier question. “What I mean, Mrs. Kitching, was he in love with her, and she with him?”
    She gave a little sigh. “She certainly wasn’t in love with him, but she started out liking him well enough. He was very personable, and he had wit and intelligence.”
    “And how did he feel about her?”
    “Oh, she was handsome, Miss Mary.” She blinked and took a deep breath. It was very clearly difficult for her to govern her distress. She glared at him, as if waking her grief were his fault. “That’s what most gentlemen like, until they know you a little better.”
    “And then?” He kept his expression perfectly bland.
    “Then they’d rather you didn’t have too many opinions of your own,” she said tartly, the tears standing out in her eyes. The thought flashed to him that perhaps she was thinking not only of Mary Havilland, but perhaps of some grief of her own now long in the past but still tender, still haunting her with loss. Many cooks and housekeepers were given the honorary title of
Mrs.,
even if they had never married. It was a mark of adulthood rather than marriage, just as when a man moves from being
master
to
mister.
It was a distinction that had not occurred to him before. But then women were not legal entities in the same way that men were.
    Again he found his sympathy for Mary clouding his judgment. He was imagining her as someone with courage, honor, and wit—someone he would have liked. But it might not have been so at all. In the beginning, he had loathed Hester. No, that was not true—he had been fascinated by her, attracted to her, but afraid of his own weakness. He had been certain that he wanted someone far more comfortable: a soft woman who did not challenge him, did not force him to live up to the best in himself, sometimes even beyond what he believed was in him. Hester’s gentleness was deeper than mere agreeability; it was a passion, a tenderness of honesty, not of indifference or lack of the courage or interest to argue. Never, ever was it the lack of an opinion of her own.
    Before her, he had fallen in love with quiet, discreet women who never argued, and then realized he was desperately, soul-achingly lonely. Nothing within them touched anything deeper than his skin.
    What had happened to Toby Argyll? Had he had the courage to love Mary? Or had he found her too challenging, too thwarting of his vanity?
    “You say he did not like her opinions, Mrs. Kitching, but was he in love with her?”
    For the first time in their interview her uncertainty was sharp in her face.
    He smiled bleakly. “My wife and I frequently disagree. Yet she would be loyal to me and love me through anything, good or bad. I know this because she has done so, without ever telling me I was right, if she thought otherwise.”
    She stared at him, shaking her head. “Then you wouldn’t have liked Mr. Toby,” she said with conviction. “He expected obedience. He had the money, you see, and ambitions. And he was clever.”
    “Cleverer than his brother?” he said quickly.
    “I don’t know. But I’ve a fancy he was beginning to think so.” She suddenly realized how bold she was being in so speaking her mind; a flash of alarm crossed her face, then disappeared again. She was tasting a new and previously unimagined freedom.
    In spite of the gravity of their discussion, Monk found himself smiling at her. Cardman would have been horrified. She was perhaps a year or two older than he. Monk wondered what the relationship had been between them. Superficial? Or had their station in life prevented what would have been a testing but rewarding love?
    He thrust the notion from his mind. “Mr. Alan Argyll was different?” he asked. “And was Mrs. Argyll at all like her sister?”
    Mrs. Kitching’s face hardened. “Mr. Alan’s a very clever man, a lot cleverer than Mr. Toby realized,” she answered without hesitation. “Mr. Toby might have thought he’d get the upper hand in time, but he wouldn’t. Miss Mary told me that. Not that I didn’t think so myself, just seeing them in the withdrawing room. Miss Jenny’s a realist, never was