A sudden, fearful death (9 page)

"There are other things that
have to be considered also...."

"Of course there are."
Her voice was harsh with anger and misery. "The worst of this is how Julia
will feel about it. She will be destroyed. How can she ever feel the same about
me, even if she truly believes it was the farthest thing from my wishes? I did
nothing whatsoever to lead him to think I would ever be willing, and that is
true, Mr. Monk! I swear it by all I hold dear—"

"I know that," he said,
interrupting her. "That is not what I mean."

"Then what?" she demanded
abruptly. "What else could be of importance beside that?'

"Why do you believe that it
will never happen again?"

Her face was white. She swallowed
with difficulty. She started to speak, and then stopped.

"Have you any protection
against it happening again?" he insisted quietly.

"I—but..." She looked
down. "Surely that was just one terrible lapse in—in an otherwise
exemplary man? I am sure he loves Julia...."

"What would you have said
about the possibility of it ever happening a week before it did? Did you know
or expect him to do such a thing?"

Now her eyes were blazing.

"Of course not. That is a
dreadful thing to say. No! No, I had no idea! Never!" She turned away
abruptly, violently, as if he had offered her some physical attack.

"Then you cannot say that it
will not happen again," he reasoned. "I'm sorry." He hovered on
the edge of adding the possibility of becoming with child, and then remembered
what Hester and Callandra had said. Marianne might not even be aware of how
children were begotten, and he said nothing. Helplessness and inadequacy choked
him.

"It must have cost you to tell
me that." She looked back at him slowly, her face drained. "There are
many men who would not have found the courage. Thank you at least for
that."

"Now I must see Mrs. Penrose.
I wish I could think of another way, but I cannot."

"She is in the withdrawing
room. I shall wait in my bedroom. I expect Audley will ask me to leave and
Julia will wish me to." And with quivering lips she turned and walked to
the door too rapidly for him to reach it ahead of her. She fumbled with the
knob, then flung it open and went out across the hall to the stairway, head
high, her step clumsy.

He stood still for a moment,
tempted to try one more time to think of another way. Then intelligence
reasserted itself over emotion, and he went the now familiar way to knock on
the withdrawing room door.

He was bidden to enter. Julia was
standing at the central table before a vase of flowers, a long, bright stem of
delphinium in her hand. Apparently she had not liked the position of it and
had chosen to rearrange it herself. When she saw who it was she poked the flower
in the back lopsidedly and without bothering to adjust it.

"Good morning, Mr. Monk."
Her voice shook a little. She searched his face and saw something in its
expression that frightened her. "What is it?'

He closed the door behind him. This
was going to be acutely painful. There was no escape, no way even to mitigate
it.

"I am afraid that what I told
you yesterday was not the truth, Mrs. Penrose."

She stared at him without speaking.
The shadow of surprise and anger across her eyes did not outweigh the fear.

This was like looking at something
and deliberately killing it. Once he had told her it would be irretrievable.
He had already made the decision, and yet he found himself hesitating even now.

"You had better explain
yourself, Mr. Monk," she said at last, her voice catching. She swallowed
to clear her throat. "Merely to say that is not sufficient. In what
respect have you lied to me, and why?"

He answered the second question
first. "Because the truth is so unpleasant that I wished to spare you from
it, ma'am. And it was Miss Gillespie's wish also. Indeed, she denied it at
first, until the weight of evidence made that no longer possible. Then she
implored me not to tell you. She was prepared to accept any consequence of it
herself rather than have you know. That was why it was necessary for me to
speak to her this morning to tell her I could no longer keep my word to
her."

Julia was so white he was afraid
she would faint from lack of blood. Very slowly she backed away from the table
with its bright flowers and reached behind her for the arm of the settee. She
sank into it, still staring at him.

"You had better tell me what
it is, Mr. Monk. I have to know. Do you know who raped my sister?"

"Yes, I am afraid I do."
He took a deep breath. He tried one last thing, although he knew it would be
futile. "I still think it would be better if you did not pursue the
matter. You cannot prosecute. Perhaps if you were to find some other area for
your sister to live, where she could not encounter him again? Do you have a
relative, an aunt perhaps, with whom she could stay?"

Her eyebrows rose. "Are you
suggesting that this man who did this thing should be allowed to go entirely
unpunished, Mr. Monk? I am aware that the law will not punish him, and that a
prosecution would in any case be as painful for Marianne as it would ever be
for him." She was sitting so tensely her body must ache with the rack of
her muscles. "But I will not countenance his escaping scot-free! It seems
you do not think it a crime after all. I confess I am disappointed. I had
thought better of you."

Anger boiled up in him, and it cost
him dearly to suppress it. "Fewer people would be hurt."

She stared at him.

"That is unfortunate, but it
cannot be helped. Who was it? Please do not prevaricate any further. You will
not change my mind."

"It was your husband, Mrs.
Penrose."

She did not protest outrage or
disbelief. She sat totally motionless, her face ashen. Then at last she licked
her lips and tried to speak. Her throat convulsed and no sound came. Then she
tried again.

"I assume you would not have
said this—if—if you were not totally sure?"

"Of course not." He
longed to comfort her, and there was no possible comfort. "Even then I
would prefer not to have told you. Your sister begged me not to, but I felt I
had to, in part because you were determined to pursue the matter, if not
through me, then with another agent. And also because there is the danger of it
happening again, and there is the possibility she may become with child—"

"Stop it!" This time the
cry was torn from her in a frenzy of pain. "Stop it! You have told me.
That is sufficient." With a terrible effort she mastered herself,
although her hands were shaking uncontrollably.

"When I taxed her with it, she
denied it at first, to protect you." He went on relentlessly. It had to
be finished now. "Then when it was obviously true from her own testimony,
and that of your neighbors, she admitted it, but implored me not to say so. I
think the only reason she made any mention of the incident at all was to
account for her extreme distress after it, and for the bruising. Otherwise I
think she would have remained silent, for your sake."

"Poor Marianne." Her
voice trembled violently. "She would endure that for me. What harm have I
done her?"

He moved a step nearer to her,
undecided whether to sit without invitation or remain standing, towering over
her. He opted to sit.

"You cannot blame
yourself," he said earnestly. "You of all people are the most
innocent in this."

"No I am not, Mr. Monk."
She did not look at him but at some distance far beyond the green shadow of
leaves across the window. Her voice was now filled with self-loathing.
"Audley is a man with natural expectations, and I have denied him all the
years we have been married." She hunched into herself as if suddenly the
room were intolerably cold, her fingers gripping her arms painfully, driving
the blood out of the flesh.

He wanted to interrupt her and tell
her the explanation was private and quite unnecessary, but he knew she needed
to tell him, to rid herself of a burden she could no longer bear.

"I should not have, but I was
so afraid." She was shivering very slightly, as if her muscles were
locked. "You see, my mother had child after child between my birth and
Marianne's. All of them miscarried or died. I watched her in such pain."
Very slowly she began rocking herself back and forth as if in some way the movement
eased her as the words poured out. "I remember her looking so white, and
the blood on the sheets. Lots of it, great dark red stains as though her life
were pouring out of her. They tried to hide them from me, and keep me in my own
room. But I heard her crying with the pain of it, and I saw the maids hurrying
about with bundles of linen, and trying to fold it so no one saw." The
tears were running down her own face now and she made no pretense of concealing
them. "And then when I was allowed in to see her, she would look so tired,
with dark rings 'round her eyes, and her lips white. I knew she had been crying
for the baby that was lost, and I couldn't bear it!"

Without thinking Monk put out his
hands and held hers.

Unconsciously she clung to him, her
fingers strong, grip ping him like a lifeline.

“I knew she had dreaded it, every
time she was with child. I felt the terror in her, even though I didn't know
then what caused it. And when Marianne was born she was so pleased." She
smiled as she remembered, and for a moment her eyes were tender and brilliant
with gentleness. "She held her up and showed her to me, as if we had done
it together. The midwife wanted to send me away, but Mama wouldn't let her. I
think she knew then she was dying. She made me promise to look after Marianne
as if I were in her place, to do for her what Mama could not."

Julia was weeping quite openly now.
Monk ached for her, and for his own helplessness, and for all the terrified,
lost, and grieving women.

"I stayed with her all that
night," she went on, still rocking herself. "In the morning the
bleeding started again, and they took me out, but I can remember the doctor
being sent for. He went up the stairs with his face very grave and his black
bag in his hand. There were more sheets carried out, and all the maids were
frightened and the butler stood around looking sad. Mama died in the morning. I
don't remember what time, but I knew it. It was as if suddenly I was alone in
a way I never had been before. I have never been quite as warm or as safe since
then."

There was nothing to say. He felt
furious, helpless, stupidly close to weeping himself, and drenched with the
same irredeemable sense of loneliness. He tightened his grasp a little closer
around her hands. For several moments they remained in silence.

At last she looked up and
straightened her back, fishing for a handkerchief. Monk gave her his, and she
accepted it without speaking.

"I have never been able to
think of getting with child myself. I could not bear it. It frightens me so
much I should rather simply die with a gunshot than go through the agony that
Mama did. I know it is wrong, probably wicked. All women are supposed to yield
to their husbands and bear children. It is our duty. But I am so terrified I
cannot This is a judgment on me. Now Marianne has been raped because of
me."

"No! That's nonsense," he
said furiously. "Whatever is between you and your husband, that is no
excuse for what he did to Marianne. If he could not maintain continence, mere
are women whose trade it is to cater to appetites and he could perfectly easily
have paid one of them." He wanted to shake her to force her to understand.
"You must not blame yourself," he insisted. "It is wrong and
foolish, and will be of no service to you or to Marianne. Do you hear me?"
His voice was rougher than he had intended, but it was what he meant and it
could not be withdrawn.

She looked up at him slowly, her
eyes still swimming in tears.

To blame yourself would be
self-indulgent and debilitating," he said again. "You have to be
strong. You have a fearful situation to deal with. Don't look back—look forward,
only forward. If you cannot bring yourself to consummate your marriage, then
your husband must look elsewhere, not to Marianne. Never to Marianne."

"I know," she whispered.
"But I am still guilty. He has a right to expect it of me—and I have not
given it him. I am deceitful, I cannot escape that."

"Yes—that is true." He
would not evade it either. It would not serve either of them. "But your
deceit does not excuse his offense. You must think what you are going to do
next, not what you should have done before."

"What
can
I do?"
Her eyes searched his desperately.

"This is a decision no one
else can make for you," he answered. "But you must protect Marianne
from it ever happening again. If she were to bear a child it would ruin
her." He did not need to explain what he meant. They both knew no
respectable man would marry a woman with an illegitimate child. Indeed, no man
at all would regard her as anything but a whore, no matter how untrue that was.

"I will," she promised,
and for the first time there was steel in her voice again. "There is no
other answer for it.