Defend and Betray Page 2

  She had come home on fire to reform nursing in England, as Miss Nightingale had in the Crimea. Indeed most of the women who had served with her had espoused the same cause, and with similar fervor.

  However, Hester’s first and only hospital appointment had ended in dismissal. The medical establishment was not eager to be reformed, least of all by opinionated young women, or indeed by women at all. And considering that no women had ever studied medicine, and such an idea was unthinkable, that was not to be wondered at. Nurses were largely unskilled, employed to wind bandages, fetch and carry, dust, sweep, stoke fires, empty slops and keep spirits high and morality above question.

  “Well?” Edith interrupted. “Surely it is not a hopeless cause.” There was a lightness in her voice but her eyes were earnest, full of both hope and fear, and Hester could see she cared deeply.

  “Of course not,” she said soberly. “But it is not easy. Too many occupations, of the forms that are open to women, are of a nature where you would be subject to a kind of discipline and condescension which would be intolerable to you.”

  “You managed,” Edith pointed out.

  “Not indefinitely,” Hester corrected. “And the fact that you are not dependent upon it to survive will take a certain curb from your tongue which was on mine.”

  “Then what is left?”

  They were standing on the gravel path between the flowers, a child with a hoop a dozen yards to the left, two little girls in white pinafores to the right.

  “I am not sure, but I shall endeavor to find out,” Hester promised. She stopped and turned to look at Edith’s pale face and troubled eyes. “There will be something. You have a good hand, and you said you speak French. Yes, I remember that. I will search and enquire and let you know in a few days’ time. Say a week or so. No, better make it a little longer, I would like to have as complete an answer as I can.”

  “A week on Saturday?” Edith suggested. “That will be May the second. Come to tea.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes of course. We shall not be entertaining socially, but you are coming as a friend. It will be quite acceptable.”

  “Then I shall. Thank you.”

  Edith’s eyes widened for a moment, giving her face a brightness, then she clasped Hester’s hand quickly and let it go, turning on her heel and striding along the path between the daffodils and down towards the lodge without looking back.

  Hester walked for another half hour, enjoying the air before returning to the street and finding another hansom to take her back to Major Tiplady and her duties.

  The major was sitting on a chaise longue, which he did under protest, considering it an effeminate piece of furniture, but he enjoyed being able to stare out of the window at passersby, and at the same time keep his injured leg supported.

  “Well?” he asked as soon as she was in. “Did you have a pleasant walk? How was your friend?”

  Automatically she straightened the blanket around him.

  “Don’t fuss!” he said sharply. “You didn’t answer me. How was your friend? You did go out to meet a friend, didn’t you?”

  “Yes I did.” She gave the cushion an extra punch to plump it up, in spite of his catching her eye deliberately. It was a gentle banter they had with each other, and both enjoyed it. Provoking her had been his best entertainment since he had been restricted to either his bed or a chair, and he had developed a considerable liking for her. He was normally somewhat nervous of women, having spent most of his life in the company of men and having been taught that the gentle sex was different in every respect, requiring treatment incomprehensible to any but the most sensitive of men. He was delighted to find Hester intelligent, not given to fainting or taking offense where it was not intended, not seeking compliments at every fit and turn, never giggling, and best of all, quite interested in military tactics, a blessing he could still hardly believe.

  “And how is she?” he demanded, glaring at her out of brilliant pale blue eyes, his white mustache bristling.

  “In some shock,” Hester replied. “Would you like tea?”

  “Why?”

  “Because it is teatime. And crumpets?”

  “Yes I would. Why was she shocked? What did you say to her?”

  “That I was very sorry,” Hester smiled with her back to him, as she was about to ring the bell. It was not part of her duty to cook—fortunately, because she had little skill at it.

  “Don’t prevaricate with me!” he said hotly.

  Hester rang the bell, then turned back to him and changed her expression to one of sobriety. “Her brother met with a fatal accident last evening,” she told him. “He fell over the banister and died immediately.”

  “Good gracious! Are you sure?” His face was instantly grave, his pink-and-white skin as usual looking freshly scrubbed and innocent.

  “Perfectly, I am afraid.”

  “Was he a drinking man?”

  “I don’t believe so. At least not to that extent.”

  The maid answered the summons and Hester requested tea and hot crumpets with butter. When the girl had gone, she continued with the story. “He fell onto a suit of armor, and tragically the halberd struck his chest.”

  Tiplady stared at her, still not totally sure whether she was exercising some bizarre female sense of humor at his expense. Then he realized the gravity in her face was quite real.

  “Oh dear. I am very sorry.” He frowned. “But you cannot blame me for not being sure you were entirely serious. It is a preposterous accident!” He hitched himself a little higher on the chaise longue. “Have you any idea how difficult it is to spear a man with a halberd? He must have fallen with tremendous force. Was he a very large man?”

  “I have no idea.” She had not thought about it, but now that she did, she appreciated his view. To have fallen so hard and so accurately upon the point of a halberd held by an inanimate suit of armor, in such a way that it penetrated through clothes into the flesh, and between the ribs into the body, was an extraordinary chance. The angle must have been absolutely precise, the halberd wedged very firmly in the gauntlet, and as Major Tiplady said, the force very great indeed. “Perhaps he was. I had never met him, but his sister is tall, although she is very slight. Maybe he was of a bigger build. He was a soldier.”

  Major Tiplady’s eyebrows shot up. “Was he?”

  “Yes. A general, I believe.”

  The major’s face twitched with an amusement he found extreme difficulty in concealing, although he was perfectly aware of its unsuitability. He had recently developed a sense of the absurd which alarmed him. He thought it was a result of lying in bed with little to do but read, and too much company of a woman.

  “How very unfortunate,” he said, staring at the ceiling. “I hope they do not put on his epitaph that he was finally killed by impaling himself upon a weapon held by an empty suit of armor. It does seem an anticlimax to an outstanding military career, and to smack of the ridiculous. And a general too!”

  “Seems not at all unlikely for a general to me,” Hester said tartly, remembering some of the fiascoes of the Crimean War, such as the Battle of the Alma, where men were ordered first one way and then the other, and were finally caught in the river, hundreds dying unnecessarily; not to mention Balaclava, where the Light Brigade, the flower of the English cavalry, had charged into the mouths of the Russian guns and been mown down like grass. That was a nightmare of blood and slaughter she would never forget, nor the succeeding days and nights of sleepless labor, helplessness and pain.

  Suddenly Thaddeus Carlyon’s death seemed sadder, more real, and at the same time far less important.

  She turned back to Major Tiplady and began straightening the blanket over his legs. He was about to protest, then he recognized the quite different quality in her expression and submitted wordlessly. She had changed from a pleasant and efficient young woman, whom he liked, into the army nurse she used to be such a short time since, seeing death every day and hideously aware of the magni
tude and the futility of it.

  “You said he was a general.” He watched her with a pucker between his brows. “What was his name?”

  “Carlyon,” she replied, tucking in the ends of the blanket firmly. “Thaddeus Carlyon.”

  “Indian Army?” he asked, then before she could reply, “Heard of a Carlyon out there, stiff sort of fellow, but very much admired by his men. Fine reputation, never backed down in the face of the enemy. Not all that fond of generals myself, but pity he should die like that.”

  “It was quick,” she said with a grimace. Then for several moments she busied herself around the room, doing largely unnecessary things, but the movement was automatic, as if remaining still would have been an imprisonment.

  Finally the tea and crumpets came. Biting into the crisp, hot dough and trying to stop the butter from running down her chin, she relaxed and returned to the present.

  She smiled at him.

  “Would you like a game of chess?” she offered. She was exactly skilled enough to give him a good game without beating him.

  “Oh I would,” he said happily. “Indeed I would.”

  Hester spent her free time for the next several days in pursuing possible opportunities for Edith Sobell, as she had promised. She did not think nursing offered any openings Edith would find either satisfying or indeed available to her. It was regarded as a trade rather than a profession, and most of the men and women employed in it were of a social class and an education, or lack of it, which resulted in their being regarded with scant respect, and paid accordingly. Those who had been with Miss Nightingale, now a national heroine only a little less admired than the Queen, were viewed differently, but it was too late for Edith to qualify for that distinction. And even though Hester herself most definitely did qualify, she was finding employment hard enough, and her opinions little valued.

  But there were other fields, especially for someone like Edith, who was intelligent and well-read, not only in English literature but also in French. There might well be some gentleman who required a librarian or an assistant to research for him whatever subject held his interest. People were always writing treatises or monographs, and many needed an assistant who would perform the labor necessary to translate their ideas into a literary form.

  Most women who wished a lady companion were intolerably difficult and really only wanted a dependent whom they could order around—and who could not afford to disagree with them. However, there were exceptions, people who liked to travel but did not find it pleasurable to do so alone. Some of these redoubtable women would be excellent employers, full of interest and character.

  There was also the possibility of teaching; if the pupils were eager and intelligent enough it might be highly rewarding.

  Hester explored all these areas, at least sufficiently to have something definite to tell Edith when she accepted the invitation to go to Carlyon House for afternoon tea on May the second.

  Major Tiplady’s apartments were at the southern end of Great Titchfield Street, and therefore some distance from Clarence Gardens, where Carlyon House was situated. Although she could have walked, it would have taken her the better part of half an hour, and she would have arrived tired and overheated and untidy for such an engagement. And she admitted with a wry humor that the thought of afternoon tea with the elder Mrs. Carlyon made her more than a little nervous. She would have cared less had Edith not been her friend; then she could have been free to succeed or fail without emotional damage. As it was, she would rather have faced a night in military camp above Sebastopol than this engagement.

  However there was no help for it now, so she dressed in her best muslin afternoon gown. It was not a very glamorous affair, but well cut with pointed waist and softly pleated bodice, a little out of date, though only a lady of fashion would have known it. The faults lay all in the trimmings. Nursing did not allow for luxuries. When she went to bid Major Tiplady good-bye, he regarded her with approval. He had not the least idea of fashion and very pretty women terrified him. He found Hester’s face with its strong features very agreeable, and her figure, both too tall and a little too thin, to be not at all displeasing. She did not threaten him with aggressive femininity, and her intellect was closer to that of a man, which he rather liked. He had never imagined that a woman could become a friend, but he was being proved wrong, and it was not in any way an experience he disliked.

  “You look very … tidy,” he said with slightly pink cheeks.

  From anyone else it would have infuriated her. She did not wish to look tidy; tidiness was for housemaids, and junior ones at that. Even parlormaids were allowed to be handsome; indeed, they were required to be. But she knew he meant it well, and it would be gratuitously cruel to take exception, however much distinguished or appealing would have been preferred. Beautiful was too much to hope for. Her sister-in-law, Imogen, was beautiful—and appealing. Hester had discovered that very forcefully when that disastrous policeman Monk had been so haunted by her last year during the affair in Mecklenburg Square. But Monk was an entirely different matter, and nothing to do with this afternoon.

  “Thank you, Major Tiplady,” she accepted with as much grace as she could. “And please be careful while I am away. If you wish for anything, I have put the bell well within your reach. Do not try to get up without calling Molly to assist you. If you should”—she looked very severe—“and you fall again, you could find yourself in bed for another six weeks!” That was a far more potent threat than the pain of another injury, and she knew it.

  He winced. “Certainly not,” he said with affronted dignity.

  “Good!” And with that she turned and left, assured that he would remain where he was.

  She hailed a hansom and rode along the length of Great Titchfield Street, turned into Bolsover Street and went along Osnaburgh Street right into Clarence Gardens—a distance of approximately a mile—and alighted a little before four o’clock. She felt ridiculously as if she were about to make the first charge in a battle. It was absurd. She must pull herself together. The very worst that could happen would be embarrassment. She ought to be able to cope with that. After all, what was it—an acute discomfort of the mind, no more. It was immeasurably better than guilt, or grief.

  She sniffed hard, straightened her shoulders and marched up the front steps, reaching for the bell pull and yanking it rather too hard. She stepped back so as not to be on the very verge when the door was opened.

  It happened almost immediately and a smart maid looked at her enquiringly, her pretty face otherwise suitably expressionless.

  “Yes ma’am?”

  “Miss Hester Latterly, to see Mrs. Sobell,” Hester replied. “I believe she is expecting me.”

  “Yes of course, Miss Latterly. Please come in.” The door opened all the way and the maid stepped aside to allow her past. She took Hester’s bonnet and cloak.

  The hallway was as impressive as she had expected it to be, paneled with oak to a height of nearly eight feet, hung with dark portraits framed in gilt with acanthus leaves and curlicues. It was gleaming in the light from the chandelier, lit so early because the oak made it dim in spite of the daylight outside.

  “If you please to come this way,” the maid requested, going ahead of her across the parquet. “Miss Edith is in the boudoir. Tea will be served in thirty minutes.” And so saying she led Hester up the broad stairs and across the first landing to the upper sitting room, reserved solely for the use of the ladies of the house, and hence known as the boudoir. She opened the door and announced Hester.

  Edith was inside staring out of the window that faced the square. She turned as soon as Hester was announced, her face lighting with pleasure. Today she was wearing a gown of purplish plum color, trimmed with black. The crinoline was very small, almost too insignificant to be termed a crinoline at all, and Hester thought instantly how much more becoming it was—and also how much more practical than having to swing around so much fabric and so many stiff hoops. She had little time to notice muc
h of the room, except that it was predominantly pink and gold, and there was a very handsome rosewood escritoire against the far wall.

  “I’m so glad you came!” Edith said quickly. “Apart from any news you might have, I desperately need to talk of normal things to someone outside the family.”

  “Why? Whatever has happened?” Hester could see without asking that something had occurred. Edith looked even more tense than on their previous meeting. Her body was stiff and her movements jerky, with a greater awkwardness than usual, and she was not a graceful woman at the best of times. But more telling was the weariness in her and the total absence of her usual humor.

  Edith closed her eyes and then opened them wide.

  “Thaddeus’s death is immeasurably worse than we first supposed,” she said quietly.

  “Oh?” Hester was confused. How could it be worse than death?

  “You don’t understand.” Edith was very still. “Of course you don’t. I was not explaining myself at all.” She took a sudden sharp breath. “They are saying it was not an accident.”

  “They?” Hester was stunned. “Who is saying it?”

  “The police, of course.” Edith blinked, her face white. “They say Thaddeus was murdered!”

  Hester felt momentarily a little dizzy, as though the room with its gentle comfort had receded very far away and her vision was foggy at the edges, Edith’s face sharp in the center and indelible in her mind.

  “Oh my dear—how terrible! Have they any idea who it was?”

  “That is the worst part,” Edith confessed, for the first time moving away and sitting down on the fat pink settee.