A Breach of Promise (15 page)

“I know nothing to her detriment,” Melville insisted. “Do you think I am being noble and letting her family sue me without a word in my defense? Is that what you imagine?” There seemed to be a brittle ring of amusement in him, as if the idea were funny.

“I don’t know what to think.” Rathbone half turned as the last woman went out of the doors and the usher looked at him enquiringly. “But if there is nothing about Zillah, then I must
conclude that Sacheverall is right and it is something to do with you.”

He had longed to read an answer, a vulnerability or a fear in Melville’s eyes which would give him the clue he needed, but there was nothing. Melville remained staring at him with a blank, defiant despair.

“Is there someone else you love?” Rathbone guessed. “It doesn’t excuse you, but it would at least explain—to me, if no one else.”

“There is no one else I wish to marry,” Melville replied. “I have already told you that.” He gave a little shiver. “There is no purpose in your asking me, Sir Oliver. I have nothing to tell you which can help. The only truth of the matter is that I never asked Zillah to marry me. I have no intention of ever marrying anyone.” There was a curious bleakness in his eyes as he said it, and a momentary pull at his lips. “It was arranged without consulting me and I was foolish enough not to realize that all the chatter was taken to be sufficient notification. I was blind, I fully acknowledge that; naive, if you like.” His chin came up. “I admit to carelessness of her feelings because I did not think of her as more than a friend I cared for dearly. It did not cross my mind that she felt otherwise. That was clumsy, looking back with the clarity of hindsight. I will not make that error again.”

“That’s not enough,” Rathbone said bitterly.

“That is all there is.” A self-mockery filled Melville’s eyes. “I could say I had suddenly discovered madness in my family, if you like, but since it is not true, it would be impossible to prove. They’d be fools to believe me. Any young man could say that to escape an engagement if no proof were required.”

“Except that it would disqualify him from all future engagements as well,” Rathbone pointed out. “And possibly other things. It is not a tragedy one would wish upon anyone.”

The irony vanished from Melville’s face, leaving only pain behind. “No, of course it isn’t. I did not mean to make light of the affliction of madness. It is just that this whole situation invites the thought of farce. I am sorry.”

“It won’t feel like farce when the jury finds against you and
awards costs and damages,” Rathbone replied, watching Melville’s expression.

“I know,” Melville answered in little above a whisper, looking away. “But there is nothing I can do except employ the best lawyer there is and trust in his skill.”

Rathbone grunted. He had done his utmost, and it was insufficient. He let go of Melville’s arm and stood up. The ushers were waiting. “You know where to find me if you should change your mind or think of anything at all which may be useful.”

Melville rose also. “Yes, of course. Thank you for your patience, Sir Oliver.”

Rathbone sighed.

At first Rathbone decided to go home and have a long, quiet evening turning the case over in his mind to see if he could discover something which had so far eluded him. But the prospect was unpromising, and he had been in his study only half an hour, unable to relax, when he abandoned the whole idea and told his manservant that he was going out and did not know when he would be back.

He took a hansom all the way to Primrose Hill, where his father lived, and arrived just as the shadows were lengthening and the sun was going down in a limpid sky.

Henry Rathbone was at the far end of the long lawn staring at the apple trees whose gnarled branches were thick with blossom buds. He was a taller man than his son, and leaner, a little stooped with constant study. Before his retirement he had been a mathematician and sometime inventor. Now he dabbled in all sorts of things for pleasure and to keep his mind occupied. He found life far too interesting to waste a day of it, and all manner of people engaged his attention. His own parents had been of humble stock; in fact, his maternal grandfather had been a blacksmith and wheelwright. He made no pretensions to superiority, except that when he judged a man to have sufficient intelligence to know better, he suffered fools with great impatience.

“Good evening, Father,” Rathbone called as he stepped through the French doors across the paved terrace and onto the grass.

Henry turned with surprise.

“Hello, Oliver! Come down and look at this. Do you know the honeysuckle in this hedge flowered right on until Christmas, and it’s coming well into leaf again already. And the orchard is full of primroses. How are you?” He regarded his son more closely. The evening light was very clear and perhaps more revealing than the harsher sun would have been. “What is wrong?”

Oliver reached him and stopped. He put his hands in his pockets and surveyed the hedge with the aforementioned honeysuckle twined through it, and the bare branches of the orchard beyond. His father frequently read him rather too easily.

“Difficult case,” he answered. “Shouldn’t really have taken it on in the first instance. Too late now.”

Henry started to walk back towards the house. The sun was barely above the trees and any moment it would disappear. There was a golden haze in the air and it was appreciably colder than even a few minutes before. A cloud of starlings wheeled above a distant stand of poplars, still bare, although in the next garden a willow trailed weeping branches like streamers of pale chiffon. The breeze was so slight it did not even stir them.

Henry took a pipe out of his pocket but did not bother even to pretend to light it. He seemed to like just to hold it by the bowl, waving it to emphasize a point as he spoke.

“Well, are you going to tell me about it?” he asked. He gestured towards a clump of wood anemones. “Self-seeded,” he observed. “Can’t think how they got there. Really want them in the orchard. What sort of case?”

“Breach of promise,” Oliver replied.

Henry looked at him sharply, his face full of surprise, but he made no comment.

Oliver explained anyway. “At first I refused. Then the same evening I went to a ball, and I was so aware of the matrons
parading their daughters, vying with one another for any available unmarried man, I felt like a quarry before the pack myself. I could imagine how one might be cornered, unable to extricate oneself with any grace or dignity, or the poor girl either.”

Henry merely nodded, putting the pipe stem in his mouth for a moment and closing his teeth on it.

“Too much is expected of marriage,” Oliver went on as they came to the end of the grass and stepped across the terrace to the door. He held it open while Henry went inside, then followed him in and closed it.

“Draw the curtains, will you?” Henry requested, going over to the fire and taking away the guard, then placing several more coals on it and watching it flame up satisfactorily.

Oliver walked over towards the warmth and sat down, making himself comfortable. There was always something relaxing about this room, a familiarity, books and odd pieces of furniture he remembered all his life.

“I’m not decrying it, of course,” he went on. “But one shouldn’t expect someone else to fill all the expectations in our lives, answer all the loneliness or the dreams, provide us with a social status, a roof over our heads, daily bread, clothes for our backs, and a purpose for living as well, not to mention laughter and hope and love, someone to justify our aspirations and decide our moral judgments.”

“Good gracious!” Henry was smiling but there was a shadow of anxiety in his eyes. “Where did you gather this impression?”

Oliver retracted immediately. “Well, all right, I am exaggerating. But the way these girls spoke, they hoped everything from marriage. I can understand why Melville panicked. No one could fill such a measure.”

“And did he also believe that was expected of him?” Henry enquired.

“Yes.” Oliver recalled it vividly, seeing Zillah in his mind. “I met his betrothed. Her face was shining, her eyes full of dreams. One would have thought she was about to enter heaven itself.”

“Perhaps,” Henry conceded. “But being in love can be quite consuming at times, and quite absurd in the cold light of others’ eyes. I think you are stating a fear of commitment which is not uncommon, but nevertheless neither is it admirable. Society cannot exist if we do not keep the promises we have made, that one above most others.” He regarded him gently, but not without a very clear perception. “Are you certain it is not your rather fastidious nature, and unwillingness to forgo your own independence, which you are projecting onto this young man?”

“I’m not unwilling to commit myself!” Oliver defended, thinking with sharp regret of the evening not long before when he had very nearly asked Hester Latterly to marry him. He would have, had he not been aware that she would refuse him and it would leave them hesitant with each other. A friendship they both valued would be changed and perhaps not recapturable with the trust and the ease it had had before. At times he was relieved she had forestalled him. He did value his privacy, his complete personal freedom, the fact that he could do as he pleased without reference to anyone, without hurt or offense. At other times he felt a loneliness without her. He thought of her more often than he intended to, and found her not there, not where he could assume she could listen to him, believe in him. There were times when he deeply missed her presence to share an idea, a thing of beauty, something that made him laugh.

Henry merely nodded. Did he know? Or guess? Hester was extraordinarily fond of him. Oliver had even wondered sometimes if part of his own attraction for her was the regard she had for Henry, the wider sense of belonging she would have as part of his family. That was something William Monk could not give her! He had lost his memory in a carriage accident just after the end of the Crimean War, and everything in his life before that was fragments pieced together from observation and deduction, albeit far more complete now than even a year ago. Still, there was no one in Monk’s background like Henry Rathbone.

Could that be it? Was it not Zillah who was unacceptable but someone else in her family? Barton Lambert? Delphine? No, that was unlikely in the extreme. Barton Lambert had been
Melville’s friend far more than most men could expect of a father-in-law. And Delphine was proud of her daughter, ambitious, possibly overprotective, but then was that not usual, and what one expected, even admired, in a mother? If she disliked Melville now, she certainly had ample cause.

“There seems to be no defense,” he said aloud.

“What does he say?” Henry asked, taking the pipe out of his mouth and knocking the bowl sharply against the fireplace. He looked enquiringly at Oliver as he cleaned out the pipe and refilled it with tobacco. He seldom actually smoked it, but fiddling with it seemed to give him satisfaction.

“That’s it,” Oliver replied with exasperation. “Nothing! Simply that he did not ask her in the first place and he cannot bear the thought of marrying anyone at all. He states emphatically that he knows nothing to her discredit, and has no impediment to marriage himself, and trusts in me to defend him as well as may be done.”

“Then surely there is something he is not telling you,” Henry observed, putting the pipe between his teeth again but still not bothering to light it.

“I know that,” Oliver agreed. “But I have no idea what it is. Every moment in court I dread Sacheverall facing him with it. I imagine he is going to produce it, like a conjurer, and any hope I have will evaporate.”

“Is that Wystan Sacheverall?” Henry asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Yes. Why?”

Henry shrugged. “Knew his father. Always thought him very ambitious socially, something of an opportunist. Big man with fair hair and large ears.”

Oliver smiled. “Definitely his son,” he agreed. “But he is a very competent man. I shall not make the error of underrating him simply because he has a clownish face. I think he is extremely serious beneath it.”

“Then you had better find out for yourself what your client will not tell you,” Henry stated. “Have you told Hester about this situation? A ferninine point of view might help.”

“I hadn’t thought of it,” Oliver admitted. She had been in his mind on many occasions, but not as a possible source of help. “Actually, I have not been in touch with her for a few weeks. She will almost certainly be with a new patient.”

“Then you can ask Lady Callandra Daviot,” Henry pointed out. “She will know where Hester is.”

“Callandra is in Scotland,” Oliver replied stubbornly. “Traveling around from place to place. I had a letter from her posted from Ballachulish. I believe that is somewhere on the west coast, a little short of Fort William in Inverness-shire.”

“I know where Fort William is,” Henry said patiently. “Then you will have to enquire from Monk. It should not be beyond his ability to find her. He is an excellent detective … assuming he does not already know.”

Oliver loathed the idea of going to Monk to ask him where Hester was. He would feel so vulnerable. It would entirely expose his disadvantage that he did not know himself, and yet he assumed Monk would. His only satisfaction would be if Monk did not know either. But then he would be no further forward. Now that Henry had suggested it, he realized how much he wanted to consult Hester. In fact, this case could provide the perfect reason to go to her again without their personal emotions intruding so much that the whole meeting would be impossibly awkward. On reflection, it had been a mistake not to see her more often in the intervening time. It would then have been so much easier.

Now he was reduced to going to Monk, of all people, for help.

Henry was watching him reflectively.

“I suppose it would be quite a good idea,” Oliver conceded. “I may even end up employing him myself!” He meant it as a joke. He could not use a detective against his own client, but he was tempted to do it simply to have the weapon of knowledge in his hand.