Revenge in a Cold River Read online

  Beata knew that very well. Her own father had been one of the wise ones, who did not look for gold themselves but made their way by providing for those who did. They lost a little on the failures, but made enormously on the successes, until he started to gamble. But she would not speak of that now; she had torn open enough wounds for the day.

  “You didn’t go alone?” she asked, really just to show her attention to Miriam’s story.

  “Yes I did, except for one of the men from Aaron’s homestead. I don’t even remember who he was. A friend of Zack’s, I think.” Miriam smiled ruefully. “A nice man. He was very kind to me, patient. I feel guilty that I can’t even think what he was called, or even exactly what he looked like. I was…stunned. The whole world changed for me in a few days.” She was looking into the past herself now, in turn acknowledging pain that would never entirely leave her.

  “It wasn’t Zack himself?” Beata asked it for something to say, not because it mattered. It was all so many years ago.

  Miriam shook her head. “No, poor Zack was dead by then. Over a year before. That was a bit before you and I really knew each other.

  “Zachary was the most totally honest man I ever knew. He and Aaron were closer than brothers. He was the only person whose opinion of him Aaron even cared about. Zachary’s father took a huge area of land over from the Indians and that’s where Aaron’s success began. He was better at defending it than Zachary.” Her words were perfectly plain, but there were conflicting emotions in her face, respect and doubt mixed.

  Beata knew something of the history of the West. This would not have been a purchase; it was plainly land-grabbing.

  “Zack didn’t agree with what his father had done,” Miriam went on. “He felt he shouldn’t have taken it, gold or not. His father gave Aaron command of it, and when the old man was killed, Aaron inherited it.”

  Beata was startled. “Not Zack?”

  “No. But Zack didn’t mind. He would have given it back; we all knew that. And the big gold stakes made it certain. There’d have been an Indian war, which the Indians would have lost, if they’d fought.”

  “And Zack?” Beata asked.

  “He yielded to the inevitable,” Miriam replied. “But he spent more and more time up in the Indian parts, trying to see they got something out of it. When he was killed, Aaron grieved for him terribly. That’s how he understood my grief over Piers, I think. The world changed for him when Zack died. He lost something of himself that day, something good inside him.” She remained silent for several minutes, seemingly imprisoned in memory.

  That was all about Aaron and Zachary. What of her first husband?

  Had Piers Astley not been anything like the man Miriam had allowed people to suppose? Beata thought that if Miriam meant her to know she would have told her now. Beata herself had led people to think that Ingram was a clever, subtle, cultivated man, interesting in public and quietly decent at home. Why should Miriam be any different? She was a beautiful woman fighting for acceptance within her own society. London, just as much as the frontier town of San Francisco, was a place where to be outcast was a kind of death. Perhaps it was the same everywhere.

  Had Aaron, who was clearly still in love with her, rescued her from a man who had abused her, and she dared not admit it? Why was a woman afraid to acknowledge that she had been beaten, or intimately used by a man who, at least in part, hated her?

  Aaron obviously still found Miriam beautiful, whole, and lovely, even after nearly twenty years of marriage. Would Oliver Rathbone ever see Beata in such a way? Perhaps, if she never let him know the truth! Could he possibly understand as Miriam seemed to? There was the gulf between empathy and pity that Beata could not bear that he should cross.

  But if she did tell him, wouldn’t he always have the question in his mind, whether he gave it words or not—“Why did you let him?”

  “You are very fortunate to have met Aaron,” she said quietly.

  Miriam looked at her for a long, steady moment, then turned her head away and stared out of the window.

  “It was a marvelous ride today,” she said softly. “Almost a gallop. Who would have thought you could do that in the middle of London, and all dressed up as if to meet the cream of the aristocracy…?”

  “We did meet some of them,” Beata said, allowing herself to embrace the complete change of subject. “We spoke to at least one marchioness, a duchess, and two viscounts.”

  “And with the horse you lent me, I felt the equal of any of them,” Miriam said, suddenly cheerful again, as if she could dismiss the past with a flick of her hand. “I am envious and grateful. With such a veil as you had, I doubt anyone recognized you. We must ride again. Please…”

  Beata had no hesitation in agreeing. A weight had gone from her, not far perhaps, but gone nevertheless.

  “Oh, certainly. I would like that very much.”

  —

  ACTUALLY, THE NEXT OCCASION on which Beata had any social contact at all was a brief visit to Dr. Finch’s chambers in Belgravia, regarding the university chair in Ingram’s name. She found the subject awkward because she did not really like Finch, and it was difficult to keep up the pretense that Ingram was an admirable man. She was relieved when Aaron Clive came into the room, interrupting a rather awkward conversation.

  As soon as Aaron saw Beata he came over to her, smiling, taking both her hands in his and searching her face.

  “How are you? You look wonderful, but you always do.”

  She knew she looked tired. She saw her own face in the glass enough to understand what she should wear, whether a dash of color was needed.

  “It gets easier every day.” It was a gracious answer that was also the truth.

  She saw his candid smile and knew that he understood. How utterly different he was from Ingram!

  “Are we progressing?” he asked Finch, turning to him with a smile of optimism.

  “Most certainly,” Finch agreed. He was polite and kept a very slight distance, yet Beata had the powerful impression that his respect for Aaron came somewhere close to awe. Was it no more than Aaron’s money, and therefore his power to endow the university with the funds it needed to obtain the very best from its teaching? Or was it the aura of power, and even romance that surrounded a man who had traveled, observed, created, and sustained an estate the size of a small country, as Aaron had? And yet still kept his grace, and always his temper?

  They concluded the business quickly. Beata had come in a hansom. It was not worth getting her own carriage out for such a comparatively short journey. Aaron offered to take her home, since he had his carriage, ready for a considerably longer journey back toward his offices down by the river. It was a pleasant afternoon for late November. Unusually, there was no wind.

  “Thank you,” she said, accepting with pleasure.

  As it was, it took longer than either of them had expected. There was no way to hurry traffic where a dray had turned too abruptly and lost some of its load. They were obliged to wait, since they could move neither back nor forward.

  “Miriam told me how much she had enjoyed your ride in the park,” Aaron said conversationally. “I hope you feel free to go again.”

  From his tone of voice she was not certain if he was being a little ironic. Had he any idea what Ingram had been like? Could Miriam have told him? Surely not! That thought was unbearable! Or possibly Ingram’s reputation was a good deal more accurate than he would have liked to think? She turned toward him, but there was no criticism in Aaron’s face, only a slight humor, as if he could see the joke, but thought it unkind to let her know that. Many wounds can be borne simply because we believe no one else knows.

  “I enjoyed it myself,” she replied. “I find the enforced silence and lack of any theater, opera, concert, even exhibition of anything that might be considered beautiful or frivolous, to be an addition to grief rather than a respite from it.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Are you sure that is not what it is meant to be? This is London, yo
u know? Ancient, and magnificent, the complicated heart of empire where manners and conventions are like an enamel on the surface of power. So elegant, but crack it, and you see the raw steel beneath. Your husband was a judge, my dear, one of the arbiters of judgment.”

  She looked straight at him, meeting his eyes. “I notice you say ‘of judgment,’ not ‘of justice.’ ”

  “I did,” he agreed. “Do you fault me for it?” He had been smiling; now suddenly he was totally serious.

  “Not at all; I am only surprised you are so candid,” she replied.

  As if changing the subject, he looked out at the passing street. “I like London. It surely is the heart of things. One might turn a corner and bump into a man from anywhere on earth, and it would all seem perfectly natural.” He hesitated only a second. “Take this policeman, Monk, who is investigating the wretched escape of the man from Customs, and the drowning of their own man, practically on my doorstep. He would be equally at home in San Francisco. Many of the conditions are similar, and the rules. He seems to know cargoes and seamen, as well as thieves and opportunists, and he is able to measure them up pretty quickly. At least that is my estimate of him. Is it correct, do you think?”

  “He is a very good policeman,” she said with care. She did not know Monk personally, but she knew he was Oliver’s closest friend. He had been loyal when Oliver was in trouble. Nothing had been too arduous or too dangerous for him to risk in helping him. And Oliver held a higher regard for Hester Monk than for anyone else she had heard him speak of. That was a subject she used to find painful, if she allowed herself to think of it too closely. At least it was so until she had gone to the clinic and met her. Now Hester seemed remarkably human. But still from what Oliver had said of her, Hester would never have been weak enough to allow any man to ill-use her, let alone do some of the things that Ingram had done to Beata.

  Now as Aaron Clive looked at her, she could feel the hot flush burn up her face at the memory.

  “I don’t doubt it,” he agreed. “Was he a seaman before he joined the police?”

  She had no idea. Oliver had never mentioned Monk’s youth or his upbringing in any way, let alone what other professions he might have followed. “I don’t know. It seems not impossible as he is in the River Police. Why do you ask?”

  He smiled widely and leaned back a little. “Just curious. The man will hold part of my fate in his hands, if his suspicions are correct. I am wondering if there really is a plot to rob me, as he believes, and if so, if he is equal to catching those involved. If they are land-based thieves, then I am not concerned. But if they are operating from the river, then their escape would be straight down into the open sea, and I would probably never get any part of my goods back again, if Monk is basically a landsman.”

  “Ask him,” she said with a smile in return, to rob the remark of any sting.

  “He reminds me of a seaman I knew very slightly in San Francisco, about twenty years ago,” Aaron said lightly. His words were well chosen, but he made them with a casual air. “Young man then, something of an adventurer; a chancer, one way or another. He had a bit of a lilt to his voice. Piers told me he must be from the north of England, Northumberland, perhaps.”

  “Oh, really? I didn’t detect that in Mr. Monk,” she answered. “But then I have seen him only a few times, and that mostly in court.”

  “In court?”

  “Testifying,” she explained. “In his role as commander of the Thames River Police. He has dealt with some very big cases.”

  “Of course. I don’t think of someone of his rank doing the groundwork where he could testify to anything.”

  “Oh, he does.” That she knew both from his testimony in court, and from Rathbone. “He doesn’t sit in an office and direct other people.”

  “An interesting man,” Aaron observed, completely without emotion. Was he merely making polite conversation during their stop in traffic? His comments now suggested it, and yet the tension in his body, still turned toward her, and the stiffness in his face, said that the subject stirred some kind of feeling in him.

  “You think the seaman you knew in San Francisco was Monk?” she asked bluntly.

  “I hope not.” This time his emotion was quite open. “He answers exactly the description of the man who murdered Piers Astley.”

  Beata barely even noticed the jolt as, without warning, the hansom started moving again, throwing her back in the seat. Thank heaven there was now enough noise of traffic outside that she could be excused from giving any answer. Had Monk been in San Francisco? Was that what Aaron was suggesting? Did he believe that? Did Oliver know?

  Or was Aaron Clive, for some reason or other, just making trouble?

  It was not until she was nearly at her own door that she finally spoke again.

  “Did you tell Miriam this?”

  He had been staring forward. Now he turned to her again. “I’m sorry, my attention was elsewhere. I beg your pardon?”

  “Did you tell Miriam that Monk might be the man who killed Piers? Or at least he might know who did?”

  “No,” he said, smiling gently. “There is nothing that could be done about it now. It was nearly twenty years ago, and thousands of miles away in another country. From here it seems almost like another world. There is nothing she could do, and it would only disturb her.”

  “Yes…” she said slowly, not meaning it, but what else was there that she could say? “I see.”

  —

  BEATA KEPT UP HER habit of walking alone in the park, regardless of the weather. In fact a windy or wet day gave her the excuse to wrap a shawl around her shoulders and keep it high under her chin. A suitable hat for such weather also made her hard to recognize, and thereby made polite and meaningless commiserations easily avoidable. Everyone had the best of excuses—“I’m so sorry, I did not realize it was you!”—and so was free to pass by without discourtesy.

  She was glad of it. It became harder and harder to think of something polite to say, and to repeat pleasant and artificial remarks about Ingram. Did she miss him? Yes! And the feeling was like breathing clean air again after the filth of fog and smoke, and the smells of the street.

  She had wanted to see Oliver so much she had several times considered writing him a letter asking him to call. Then she thought how precipitate that would be, and he could so easily misunderstand her. She had taken it for granted that the feeling between them was mutual, and not spoken in words for decency’s sake. As long as Ingram was alive, it could never be acted upon.

  He could not yet decently call on her alone, unless he had legal business and she were too unwell to visit his office. And since he was a trial lawyer, not conversant with wills and property, she had no call for his skills.

  Instead she purposely walked the same route, at the same hour, aware that if he were free to do so, he might take a brief walk that would cross her path.

  One morning she was pleased to hear, with a flutter of excitement, a lifting of the spirits, his footsteps behind her. She admitted to herself she had been hoping very much that he would come.

  “Good morning, Lady York. I hope you are well,” he said just as two men passed them walking in the opposite direction, too busy in their own conversation to notice others. They were dressed in black frock coats and striped trousers, each carrying a rolled umbrella and using it as if it were a walking stick.

  She smiled at the typical sight, then met Rathbone’s glance. “I am quite well, thank you. And you?”

  “Are we really reduced to such a level?” he asked bluntly.

  She felt herself coloring. Had she imagined it, all the teeming words that lay unspoken in the imagination? How unseemly it would be for her to speak first. And if she were wrong, how ridiculous! And mortifying…

  She must really collect her wits and tell him what she needed to, for Monk’s sake. She must share with Oliver what Aaron Clive had said.

  “I have been meeting with Aaron Clive once or twice regarding the endowment of a c
hair at the university, in Ingram’s name,” she began. She saw the look of distaste in Oliver’s highly expressive face, and understood it totally. “I know,” she murmured with a twisted smile. “But I cannot say anything to the contrary.”

  “But it troubles you?” he asked. “Don’t deny it: It is in your voice, and your eyes.”

  She knew that he was looking at her intently and was very conscious of it. And yet she wanted him to. She must control her voice and sound normal. She made a small gesture of dismissal with her hand. “That is not what concerns me at the moment. I was speaking with him in the carriage on the way home. He mentioned the death of Miriam’s first husband, Piers Astley….”

  “What of it? Was it not years ago?” He was puzzled. They stopped and stood facing each other on the path. The wind gusted and blew her skirts. He held his hat in his hand, in case it blew away. There is little more comical than an otherwise dignified man chasing his hat across the grass.

  “Nearly twenty,” she agreed. “And over five thousand miles away…” Why was she reluctant now to tell him? Would he think she was asking him to become involved? But of course she was.

  “Beata? What is it?” There was concern in his voice.

  She met his eyes and saw fear in them. Why? Was he afraid she was going to expect something of him more than he wanted to give?

  “What is it?” he repeated, more urgently.

  She could feel the heat in her face. “He said there was a man who looked very much as Mr. Monk must have, twenty years ago, in San Francisco. He was a seaman, an adventurer.”

  “Oh…?”

  Why did he look so worried?

  “It probably wasn’t him,” she added. “This man had a slight northern accent. Aaron thought Northumberland, or somewhere like that.”

  “Monk is Northumbrian,” Rathbone said quietly.

  She shook her head. “I didn’t hear it in his voice.”

  “He’s ambitious, and will have lost it deliberately.” He smiled very slightly as he said it, but there was a furrow between his brows. She knew the expression.