The Face of a Stranger (24 page)

"Fine man," General Wadham was saying, staring into his claret
glass. "One of England's heroes. Lucan and Cardigan are related—I suppose
you know? Lucan married one of Lord Cardigan's sisters—what a family." He
shook his head in wonder. "What duty!"

"Inspires us all," Ursula agreed with shining eyes.

"They hated each other on sight," Hester said before she had
time for discretion to guard her tongue.

"I beg your pardon!" The general stared at her coldly, his
rather wispy eyebrows raised. His look centered all his incredulity at her
impertinence and disapproval of women who spoke when it was not required of
them.

Hester was stung by it. He was exactly the sort of blind, arrogant fool
who had caused such immeasurable loss on the battlefield through refusal to be
informed, rigidity of thought, panic when they found they were wrong, and personal
emotion which overrode truth.

"I said that Lord Lucan and Lord Cardigan hated each other from the
moment they met," she repeated clearly in the total silence.

"I think you are hardly in a position to judge such a thing,
madame." He regarded her with total contempt. She was less than a
subaltern, less than a private, for heaven's sake—she was a woman! And she had
contradicted him, at least by implication and at the dinner table.

“I was on the battlefield at the Alma, at Inkermann and at Balaclava,
and at the siege of Sebastopol, sir," she answered without dropping her
gaze. "Where were you?"

His face flushed scarlet. "Good manners, and regard for our hosts,
forbid me from giving you the answer you deserve, madame," he said very
stiffly. "Since the meal is finished, perhaps it is time the ladies wished
to retire to the withdrawing room?"

Rosamond made as if to rise in obedience, and Ursula laid her napkin
beside her plate, although there was still half a pear unfinished on it.

Fabia sat where she was, two spots of color in her cheeks, and very carefully
and deliberately Callandra reached for a peach and began to peel it with her
fruit knife and fork, a small smile on her face.

No one moved. The silence deepened.

"I believe it is going to be a hard winter," Lovel said at
last. "Old Beckinsale was saying he expects to lose half his crop."

"He says that every year," Menard grunted and finished the
remnant of his wine, throwing it back without savor, merely as if he would not
waste it.

"A lot of people say things every year." Callandra cut away a
squashy piece of fruit carefully and pushed it to the side of her plate. “It is
forty years since we beat Napoleon at Waterloo, and most of us still think we
have the same invincible army and we expect to win with the same tactics and
the same discipline and courage that defeated half Europe and ended an
empire.''

"And by God, we shall, madame!" The general slammed down his
palm, making the cutlery jump. "The British soldier is the superior of any
man alive!"

"I don't doubt it," Callandra agreed. "It is the British
general in the field who is a hidebound and incompetent ass."

"Callandra! For God's sake!" Fabia was appalled.

Menard put his hands over his face.

"Perhaps we should have done better had you been there, General
Wadham," Callandra continued unabashed, looking at him frankly. "You
at least have a very considerable imagination!"

Rosamond shut her eyes and slid down in her seat. Lovel groaned.

Hester choked with laughter, a trifle hysterically, and stuffed her
napkin over her mouth to stifle it.

General Wadham made a surprisingly graceful strategic retreat. He
decided to accept the remark as a compliment.

"Thank you, madame," he said stiffly. "Perhaps I might
have prevented the slaughter of the Light Brigade."

And with that it was left. Fabia, with a little help from Lovel, rose
from her seat and excused the ladies, leading them to the withdrawing room,
where they discussed such matters as music, fashion, society, forthcoming
weddings, both planned and speculated, and were excessively polite to one another.

When the visitors finally took their leave, Fabia turned

upon her sister-in-law with a look that should have shriveled her.

"Callandra—I shall never forgive you!"

"Since you have never forgiven me for wearing the exact shade of
gown as you when we first met forty years ago," Callandra replied, "I
shall just have to bear it with the same fortitude I have shown over all the
other episodes since."

"You are impossible. Dear heaven, how I miss Josce-lin." She
stood up slowly and Hester rose as a matter of courtesy. Fabia walked towards
the double doors. "I am going to bed. I shall see you tomorrow." And
she went out, leaving them also.

"You are impossible, Aunt Callandra," Rosamond agreed,
standing in the middle of the floor and looking confused and unhappy. "I
don't know why you say such things."

"I know you don't," Callandra said gently. "That is
because you have never been anywhere but Middleton, Shelburne Hall or London society.
Hester would say the same, if she were not a guest here—indeed perhaps more.
Our military imagination has ossified since Waterloo." She stood up and
straightened her skirts. "Victory—albeit one of the greatest in history
and turning the tide of nations— has still gone to our heads and we think all
we have to do to win is to turn up in our scarlet coats and obey the rules. And
only God can measure the suffering and the death that pigheadedness has caused.
And we women and politicians sit here safely at home and cheer them on without
the slightest idea what the reality of it is."

"Joscelin is dead," Rosamond said bleakly, staring at the
closed curtains.

"I know that, my dear," Callandra said from close behind her.
"But he did not die in the Crimea." .

"He may have died because of it!"

"Indeed he may," Callandra conceded, her face suddenly
touched with gentleness. "And I know you were extremely fond of him. He
had a capacity for pleasure,

both to give and to receive, which unfortunately neither Lovel nor
Menard seem to share. I think we have exhausted both ourselves and the
subject. Good night, my dear. Weep if you wish; tears too long held in do us no
good. Composure is all very well, but there is a time to acknowledge pain
also." She slipped her arm around the slender shoulders and hugged her
briefly, then knowing the gesture would release the hurt as well as comfort,
she took Hester by the elbow and conducted her out to leave Rosamond alone.

* * * * *

The following morning Hester overslept and rose with a headache. She did
not feel like early breakfast, and still less like facing any of the family
across the table. She felt passionately about the vanity and the incompetence
she had seen in the army, and the horror at the suffering would never leave
her; probably the anger would not either. But she had not behaved very well at
dinner; and the memory of it churned around in her mind, trying to fall into a
happier picture with less fault attached to herself, and did not improve either
her headache or her temper.

She decided to take a brisk walk in the park for as long as her energy
lasted. She wrapped up appropriately, and by nine o'clock was striding rapidly
over die grass getting her boots wet.

She first saw the figure of the man with considerable irritation, simply
because she wished to be alone. He was probably inoffensive, and presumably had
as much right to be here as herself—perhaps more? He no doubt served some
function. However she felt he intruded, he was another human being in a world
of wind and great trees and vast, cloud-racked skies and shivering, singing
grass.

When he drew level he stopped and spoke to her. He was dark, with an
arrogant face, all lean, smooth bones and clear eyes.

"Good morning, ma'am. I see you are from Shelburne Hall—"

"How observant," she said tartly, gazing around at the

totally empty parkland. There was no other place she could conceivably
have come from, unless she had emerged from a hole in the ground.

His face tightened, aware of her sarcasm. "Are you a member of the
family?" He was staring at her with some intensity and she found it
disconcerting, and bordering on the offensive.

"How is that your concern?" she asked coldly.

The concentration deepened in his eyes, and then suddenly there was a
flash of recognition, although for the life of her she could not think of any
occasion on which she had seen him before. Curiously he did not refer to it.

"I am inquiring into the murder of Joscelin Grey. I wonder if you
had known him."

"Good heavens!" she said involuntarily. Then she collected
herself. “I have been accused of tactlessness in my time, but you are certainly
in a class of your own." A total lie—Callandra would have left him
standing! "It would be quite in your deserving if I told you I had been
his fiancée—and fainted on the spot!"

"Then it was a secret engagement," he retorted. "And if
you go in for clandestine romance you must expect to have your feelings bruised
a few times."

"Which you are obviously well equipped to do!" She stood still
with the wind whipping her skirts, still wondering why he had seemed to
recognize her.

"Did you know him?" he repeated irritably.

"Yes!"

"For how long?"

"As well as I remember it, about three weeks."

"That's an odd time to know anyone!"

"What would you consider a usual time to know someone?" she
demanded.

"It was very brief," he explained with careful condescension.
"You can hardly have been a friend of the family. Did you meet him just
before he died?''

"No. I met him in Scutari."

"You what?"

"Are you hard of hearing? I met him in Scutari!" She
remembered the general's patronizing manner and all her memories of
condescension flooded back, the army officers who considered women out of
place, ornaments to be used for recreation or comfort but not creatures of any
sense. Gentlewomen were for cossetting, dominating and protecting from
everything, including adventure or decision or freedom of any kind. Common
women were whores or drudges and to be used like any other livestock.

"Oh yes," he agreed with a frown. "He was injured. Were
you out there with your husband?''

"No I was not!" Why should that question be faintly hurtful?
"I went to nurse the injured, to assist Miss Nightingale, and those like
her."

His face did not show the admiration and profound sense of respect close
to awe that the name usually brought. She was thrown off balance by it. He
seemed to be single-minded in his interest in Joscelin Grey.

"You nursed Major Grey?"

"Among others. Do you mind if we proceed to walk? I am getting cold
standing here."

"Of course." He turned and fell into step with her and they
began along the faint track in the grass towards a copse of oaks. "What
were your impressions of him?"

She tried hard to distinguish her memory from the picture she had
gathered from his family's words, Rosamond's weeping, Fabia's pride and love,
the void he had left in her happiness, perhaps Rosamond's also, his brothers'
mixture of exasperation and—what—envy?

"I can recall his leg rather better than his face," she said
frankly.

He stared at her with temper rising sharply in his face.

"I am not interested in your female fantasies, madame, or your
peculiar sense of humor! This is an investigation into an unusually brutal
murder!"

She lost her temper completely.

"You incompetent idiot!" she shouted into the wind. "You
grubby-minded, fatuous nincompoop. I was nursing him. I dressed and cleaned his
wound—which, in case you have forgotten, was in his leg. His face was
uninjured, therefore I did not regard it any more than the faces of the other
ten thousand injured and dead I saw. I would not know him again if he came up
and spoke to me."

His face was bleak and furious. "It would be a memorable occasion,
madame. He is eight weeks dead—and beaten to a pulp."

If he had hoped to shock her he failed.

She swallowed hard and held his eyes. "Sounds like the battlefield
after Inkermann," she said levelly. "Only there at least we knew what
had happened to them—even if no one had any idea why.''

“We know what happened to Joscelin Grey—we do not know who did it.
Fortunately I am not responsible for explaining the Crimean War—only Joscelin
Grey's death."

"Which seems to be beyond you," she said unkindly. "And I
can be of no assistance. All I can remember is that he was unusually agreeable,
that he bore his injury with as much fortitude as most, and that when he was
recovering he spent quite a lot of his time moving from bed to bed encouraging
and cheering other men, particularly those closest to death. In fact when I
think of it, he was a most admirable man. I had forgotten that until now. He
comforted many who were dying, and wrote letters home for them, told their
families of their deaths and probably gave them much ease in their distress.
It is very hard that he should survive that, and come home to be murdered
here."