His smile widened. “You must have said that so many times. You were prepared for it!”
She found herself relaxing. He was unexpectedly pleasant to converse with; frankness was always so much easier than continued courtesy. “Yes, I admit I was. It is …”
“Unoriginal,” he finished for her.
“Yes.”
“Perhaps what I wanted to say was unoriginal also, but I shall say it anyway, because I do want to know.” He frowned very slightly, drawing his brows together. His eyes were clear blue. “You must have exercised a great deal of courage out there, both physical and moral, especially when you were actually close to the battlefield. You must have made decisions which altered other people’s lives, perhaps saved them, or lost them.”
That was true. She remembered with a jolt just how desperate it had been, how remote it was from this quiet summer evening in an elegant London withdrawing room, where the shade of a gown mattered, the cut of a sleeve. War, disease, shattered bodies, the heat and flies or the terrible cold, all could have been on another planet with no connection to this world at all except a
common language, and yet no words could ever explain one to the other.
She nodded.
“Do you not find it extraordinarily difficult to adjust from that life to this?” he asked. His voice was soft, but edged with a surprising intensity.
How much had Callandra told Judith Alberton, or her husband? Would Hester embarrass her with the Albertons in future if she were to be honest? Probably not. Callandra had never been a woman to run from the truth.
“Well, I came back burning with determination to reform all our hospitals here at home,” she said ruefully. “As you can see, I did not succeed, for several reasons. The chief among them was that no one would believe I had the faintest idea what I was talking about. Women don’t understand medicine at all, and nurses in particular are for rolling bandages, sweeping and mopping floors, carrying coal and slops, and generally doing as they are told.” She allowed her bitterness to show. “It did not take me long to be dismissed, having to earn my way by caring for private patients.”
There was admiration as well as laughter in his eyes. “Was that not very hard for you?” he asked.
“Very,” she agreed. “But I met my husband shortly after I came home. We were … I was going to say friends, but that is not true. Adversaries in a common cause, would describe it far better. Did Lady Callandra tell you that he is a private agent of enquiry?”
There was no surprise in his face, certainly nothing like alarm. In high society, gentlemen owned land or were in the army or politics. They did not work, in the sense of being employed. Trade was equally unacceptable. But whatever family background Judith Alberton came from, her husband showed no dismay that his guest should be little better than a policeman, an occupation fit only for the least desirable element.
“Yes,” he admitted readily. “She told me she found some of his adventures quite fascinating, but she did not give me any details. I presumed they might be confidential.”
“They are,” she agreed. “I would not discuss them either, only to say that they have prevented me from missing any sense of excitement or decision that I felt in the Crimea. And for the most part my share in them has not required the physical privation or the personal danger of nursing in wartime.”
“And the horror, or the pity?” he asked quietly.
“It has not sheltered me from those,” she admitted. “Except for a matter of numbers. And I am not sure one feels any less for one person, if he or she is in desperate trouble, than one does for many.”
“Quite.” It was Robert Casbolt who spoke. He came up just behind Alberton, putting a companionable hand on his friend’s shoulder and regarding Hester with interest. “There is just so much the emotions can take, and one gives all one has, I imagine? From what I have just overheard, you are a remarkable woman, Mrs. Monk. I am delighted Daniel thought to invite you and your husband to dine. You will enliven our usual conversation greatly, and I for one am looking forward to it.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “No doubt we shall hear more of it over dinner-it is totally inescapable these days-but I have had more than sufficient of the war in America and its issues.”
Alberton’s face lightened. “So have I, but I would wager you a good carriage and pair that Breeland will regale us again with the virtues of the Union before the third course has been served.”
“Second!” Casbolt amended. He grinned at Hester, a broad, shining expression. “He is a very earnest young man, Mrs. Monk, and fanatically convinced of the moral rightness of his cause. To him the Union of the United States is a divine entity, and the Confederate desire to secede the work of the devil.”
Any further comment was cut short by the necessity of removing to the dining room, where dinner was ready to be served.
Monk found the house pleasing although he was not certain why. It was something to do with warmth of color and simplicity of proportion. He had spent the earlier part of the evening talking with Casbolt and Judith Alberton, with the occasional comment from Lyman Breeland, who seemed to find light conversation tedious. Breeland was too well mannered to show it overtly, but Monk at least knew that he was bored. He wondered why Breeland had come at all. It excited Monk’s curiosity. Looking around the room, including himself and Hester, it seemed an oddly disparate group of people. Breeland appeared to be in his early thirties, a year or two younger than Hester. The rest of them must have been in their middle to later forties, apart from Merrit Alberton. Why had she chosen to attend this dinner when she could surely have been in the company of other young girls, if not at a party?
Yet he saw in her no sign of tedium or impatience. Was she remarkably well mannered, or was there something which drew her here by choice?
The answer came at the end of the soup course and as the fish was served.
“Where do you live in America, Mr. Breeland?” Hester asked innocently.
“Our home is in Connecticut, ma’am,” he replied, ignoring his food and gazing at her steadily. “But at present we are in Washington, of course. People are coming in from all over the northern part of the Union to gather to the cause, as no doubt you know.” He raised his level eyebrows very slightly.
Casbolt and Alberton glanced at each other, and away again.
“We are fighting for the survival of an ideal of freedom and liberty for all men,” Breeland continued emphatically. “Volunteers are pouring in from every town and city and from the farms even far inland and to the west.”
Merrit’s face was suddenly alight. She looked for a moment at Breeland, her eyes shining, then back to Hester. “When they win, there will be no more slavery,” she proclaimed. “All men will be free to come and go as they choose, to call no man master. It will be one of the greatest and noblest steps mankind has taken, and they will do it even at the cost of their lives, their homes, whatever it takes.”