Weighed in the Balance (22 page)

Robert opened his mouth, then clenched his hands and gazed at her in silence. For a moment it was beyond him to speak.

Dagmar took a step forward, then changed her mind.

Hester knew that nothing she could say would help. For the moment the pain was all-consuming. It would have to change, almost certainly be in part replaced by anger, at least for a while, then perhaps despair, self-pity, and finally acceptance, before the beginning of adjustment.

Dagmar moved forward again and sat down on the edge of the bed. She took Robert’s hand in hers and held it. He tightened his grip, as if all his mind and his will were in that one part of him. His eyes stared straight ahead, seeing nothing.

Hester stepped back and pulled the door closed.

*   *   *

It was the middle of the next morning when Hester saw Bernd again. She was sitting in the green morning room in front of the fire writing letters, one or two of her own, but mostly to assist Dagmar in conveying apologies and explanations to friends, when Bernd came in.

“Good morning, Miss Latterly,” he said stiffly. “I believe I owe you an apology for my words yesterday. They were not intended as any personal discourtesy. I am most … grateful … for the care you have shown my son.”

She smiled, putting down her pen. “I did not doubt that, sir. Your distress is natural. Anyone would have felt as you did. Please do not consider it necessary to think of it again.”

“My wife tells me I was … rude …”

“I have forgotten it.”

“Thank you. I … I hope you will remain to look after Robert? He is going to need a great deal of assistance. Of course, in time we shall obtain an appropriate manservant, but until then …”

“He will learn to do far more than you think now,” she assured him. “He is disabled; he is not ill. The greatest help would be a comfortable chair with wheels so that he can move around …”

Bernd winced. “He will hate it! People will be … sorry for him. He will feel—” He stopped, unable to continue.

“He will feel some degree of independence,” she finished for him. “The alternative is to remain in bed. There is no need for that. He is not an invalid. He has his hands, his brain and his senses.”

“He will be a cripple!” He spoke of it in the future, as if to acknowledge it in the present made it more of a fact and he still could not bear that.

“He cannot use his legs,” she said carefully. “You must help him to make all the use he can of everything else. And people may begin by being sorry for him, but they will only remain so if he is sorry for himself.”

He stared at her. He looked exhausted; there were dark smudges around his eyes and his skin had a thin, papery quality.

“I would like to think you are correct, Miss Latterly,” he said after a moment or two. “But you speak so easily. I know you have seen a great many young men disabled by war and injuries perhaps far worse than Robert’s. But you see only the first terrible shock, then you move on to another patient. You do not see the slow years that follow afterwards, the disappointed hopes, the imprisonment that closes in, that ruins the … the pleasures, the achievements of life.”

“I haven’t nursed only soldiers, Baron Ollenheim,” she said gently. “But please don’t ever allow Robert to know that you believe life is so blighted for him, or you will crush him completely. You may even make your fears come true by your belief in them.”

He stared at her, doubt, anger, amazement, and then comprehension passing across his face.

“Who are you writing to?” He glanced at the paper and pen in front of her. “My wife said you had agreed to assist her with some of the letters which have become necessary. Perhaps you would be good enough to thank Miss Stanhope and say that she will no longer be needed. Do you think it would be appropriate to offer her some recompense for her kindness? I understand she is of very restricted means.”

“No, I do not think it would be appropriate,” she said sharply. “Furthermore, I think it would be a serious mistake to tell her she is no longer needed. Someone must encourage Robert to go out, to learn new pastimes.”

“Go out?” He was startled, and two spots of color stained his pale cheeks. “I hardly think he will wish to go out, Miss Latterly. That is a most insensitive remark.”

“He is disabled, Baron Ollenheim, not disfigured,” she pointed out. “He has nothing whatever of which to be ashamed—”

“Of course not.” He was thoroughly angry now, perhaps because shame was precisely what he had felt that any member of his family should be less than whole, less than manly, and now dependent upon the help of others.

“I think it would be wise to encourage him to have Miss Stanhope visit,” Hester repeated steadily. “She is already aware of his situation, and it would be easier for him than trusting someone new, at least to begin with.”

He thought for several moments before replying. He looked appallingly tired.

“I do not want to be unfair to the girl,” he said finally. “She has sufficient misfortune already, by her appearance and by what my wife tells me of her circumstances. We can offer her no permanent post. Robert will need a trained manservant, and naturally, in time, if he resumes his old friendships, those who are willing to make adjustments to his new state …” His face pinched as he spoke. “Then she would find herself excluded. We must not take advantage of either her generosity or her vulnerable position.”

His choice of words was not meant to hurt, but Hester saw reflected in them her own situation: hired to help in a time of pain and despair, leaned on, trusted, at the heart of things for a brief while; then, when the crisis was past, paid, thanked and dismissed. Neither she nor Victoria was part of permanent life; they were not socially equal, and were friends only in a very narrow and closely defined sense.

Except that Victoria was not to be paid, because her situation was so less well understood.

“Perhaps we should allow Robert to make the decision,” she said with less dignity or control than she had wished. She felt angry for Victoria, and for herself, and very pointedly alone.

“Very well,” he agreed reluctantly, totally unaware of her emotions. It had not even occurred to him that she might have any. “At least for the time being.”

*   *   *

In fact, Victoria came the very next morning. Hester saw her before she went upstairs. She beckoned her to the landing, close to a huge Chinese vase planted with a potted palm. The sunlight streamed in through the windows, making bright squares on the polished wood of the floor.

Victoria was dressed in a dark plum-colored wool. The dress must be one left over from more fortunate days. It became her very well, lending a little color to her cheeks, and the white collar lightened her eyes, but it could not remove the anxiety or the quick flash of understanding.

“He knows, doesn’t he?” she said before Hester had time to speak.

There was no point in evasion. “Yes.”

“How about the Baron and Baroness? They must be very hurt.”

“Yes. I … I think you may be able to help. You will be less closely caught up. In a sense, you have been there already. The shock and the anger have passed.”

“Sometimes.” Victoria smiled, but there was bleakness in her eyes. “There are mornings when I wake up, and for the first few minutes I’ve forgotten, and then it all comes back just as if it were new.”

“I’m sorry.” Hester felt ashamed. She thought of all the hopes and dreams any young girl would have—for parties and balls, romance, love and marriage, children of her own one day. To realize in one blow that that was never possible must be as bad as everything Robert could face. “That was a stupid thing for me to say,” she apologized profoundly. “I meant that you have learned to control it, instead of it controlling you.”

Victoria’s smile became real for a moment, before it faded and the trouble came back to her eyes. “Will he see me, do you think?”

“Yes, although I am not sure what mood he will be in or what you should hope for, or say.” Victoria did not reply, but started across the landing, her
back straight, swishing her skirts a little, the color rich where it caught the sunlight. She wanted to look pretty, graceful, and she moved awkwardly. Behind her, Hester could tell that it was a bad day for pain. Suddenly she almost hated Bernd for his dismissal of the girl as not a lasting friend for Robert, not someone who could have a place in his life once he was resigned to his dependence and had learned to live within it.

Victoria knocked, and when she heard Robert’s voice, opened the door and went in. She left the door open, as propriety demanded.

“You look better,” she said as soon as she was inside. “I was afraid you might feel ill again.”

“Why?” he asked. “The disease is over.”

She did not evade the issue. “Because you know you will not get better. Sometimes shock or grief can make you feel ill. It can certainly give you a headache or make you sick.”

“I feel terrible,” he said flatly. “If I knew how to die, as an act of will, I probably would … except that Mama would be bound to feel as if it were her fault. So I’m caught.”

“It’s a beautiful day.” Her voice was quite clear and matter-of-fact. “I think you should come downstairs and go out into the garden.”

“In my imagination?” he asked with a hard edge of sarcasm. “Are you going to describe the garden for me? You don’t need to. I know what it looks like, and I’d rather you didn’t. That’s like pouring vinegar in the wound.”

“I can’t tell you about it,” she replied honestly. “I’ve never been in your garden. I’ve always come straight up here. I meant that you should get someone to carry you down. As you say, you are not ill. And it isn’t cold. You could sit out there perfectly well and see for yourself. I should like to see the garden. You could show me.”

“What, and have the butler carry me around while I tell you ’This is the rose bed, these are the Michaelmas daisies, there are the chrysanthemums!’ ” he said bitterly. “I don’t think the
butler is strong enough! Or do you envisage a couple of footmen, one on either side?”

“The footman could bring you down, and you could sit on a chair on the lawn,” she replied, still refusing to respond emotionally, whatever hurt or anger was inside her. “From there you could point out the beds to me. I don’t feel like walking very far today myself.”

There was a minute’s silence.

“Oh,” he said at last, his tone different, subdued. “You have pain?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”

“Will you show me the garden, please?”

“I should feel—” He stopped.

“Then stop thinking how you feel,” she replied. “Just do it! Or are you going to spend the rest of your life here in bed?”

“Don’t you dare speak …” His voice trailed off.

There was a long silence.

“Are you coming?” Victoria said at last.

The bell by Robert’s bed rang, and Hester straightened her apron and knocked on the door.

“Come in,” Robert replied.

She pushed the door wide.

“Would you be good enough to ask the footman to assist me downstairs, Hester?” Robert said, biting his lip and looking at her self-consciously, fear and self-mockery in his eyes. “Miss Stanhope wishes me to show her the garden.”

Hester had promised Rathbone she would learn everything she could about Zorah and Gisela, or anything else which might help him. She was moved by curiosity to know what truth lay behind such wild charges, what emotions drove those two so different women and the prince who was between them. But far more urgently than that, she was afraid for Rathbone. He had undertaken the case in good conscience, only later to
discover that the physical facts made it impossible Gisela could be guilty. There was no other possible defense for Zorah’s behavior. Now the height of his career, which he had so recently achieved, looked like being short-lived and ending in disaster. Regardless of public opinion, his peers would not excuse him for such a breaking of ranks as to attack a foreign royal family with a charge he could not substantiate.

Zorah Rostova was a woman they would not ever forgive. She had defied all the rules. There was no way back for her, or for those who allied themselves with her … unless she could be proved innocent—in intent, if not in fact.

It was not easy to choose a time when anyone would be receptive to a conversation about Zorah. Robert’s tragedy overshadowed anything else. Hester found herself growing desperate. Rathbone was almost always on her mind, and the urgency of the case became greater with every day that passed. The trial was set for late October, less than two weeks away.

She was obliged to contrive a discussion, feeling awkward and sinkingly aware that she might, by clumsiness, make future questions impossible. Dagmar was sitting by the open window in the afternoon light, idly mending a piece of lace on the neck of a blouse. She did so only to keep her fingers busy. Hester sat a little distance from her, sewing in her hand also, one of Robert’s nightshirts that needed repair where the sleeve was coming away from the armhole. She threaded a needle and put on her thimble and began to stitch.

She could not afford to hesitate any longer. “Will you go to the trial?”

Dagmar looked up, surprised.

“Trial? Oh, you mean Zorah Rostova? I hadn’t thought of it.” She glanced out of the window to where Robert was sitting in the garden in a wheelchair Bernd had purchased. He was reading. Victoria had not come, so he was alone. “I wonder if he’s cold,” she said anxiously.

“If he is, he has a rug,” Hester replied, biting back her
irritation. “And the chair moves really quite well. Please forgive me for saying so, but he will be better if you allow him to do things for himself. If you treat him as if he were helpless, then he will become helpless.”

Dagmar smiled ruefully. “Yes. I’m sorry. Of course he will. You must think me very foolish.”

“Not at all,” Hester replied honestly. “Just hurt and not sure how best to help. I imagine the Baron will go?”

“Go?”

“To the trial.” She could not give up. Rathbone’s long, meticulous face, with its humorous eyes and precise mouth, was very sharp in her mind. She had never seen him doubting himself before. He had confronted defeat for others with resolution and skill and unflagging strength. But for himself it was different. She did not doubt his courage, but she knew that underneath the habitual composure he was profoundly disconcerted. He had discovered qualities in himself he did not care for, vulnerabilities, a certain complacency which had been shattered.