A Breach Of Promise Part 30

"After. You'll be back."

"How do I know you'll be back, eh?"

"I'll pledge it to the harbormaster. I'll leave it with him." Monk lifted the staff a little, and behind him one of the fishermen fingered his spike.

The captain shrugged. He would not have got much for the girls anyway; they were as ugly as sin, and stupider than cows.

He came back less than four minutes later half struggling with two girls of about twenty years of age or a little more. They were matted with filth, clothed in little more than rags, and obviously terrified. They both had mouths with twisted lips drawn back from their teeth in something close to a snarl or a sneer, but their eyes were wide and, even through the filth, clear and lovely. Above the twisted mouths their bones were delicate, with winged brows and soft, exquisite hairlines.

Monk stared at them in shattering, overwhelming disbelief. He was almost choked by it, his heart beating in his throat. He was looking at faces which were caricatures of Delphine Lambert's. Robbed of speech, almost of coherent thought, he simply held out his hands and let the staff fall.

"Come ..." he croaked. "I've come to take you home ... Leda... Phemie!"

Chapter 12.

Monk thanked the fishermen, unnecessarily for them. In their eyes the act had been its own reward. One of them had a sister who was blind. His imagination told him all too clearly how such a fate could have happened to her. They even helped Monk find a hansom and get the two terrified girls into it and made sure Monk had sufficient money for the fare to Tavistock Square.

It was late afternoon and still raining hard. They were all filthy and s.h.i.+vering with cold. Perhaps it would have been more reasonable to go around to the back door, but Monk was so fired with triumph he did not even consider it. He paid the driver and helped the girls down onto the curb. He had actually given little thought as to what Martha would do with them, or what Gabriel Sheldon's reaction would be to these two ragged and all but uncivilized creatures brought unannounced to his home. But surely he, of all people, would at least accept their deformities without mockery or revulsion.

All the journey from the Surrey Docks, as he had sought to comfort and rea.s.sure the girls, his mind had been filled with the shattering realization that Delphine Lambert must be the same person as Dolly Jackson. The turmoil of emotions in her heart he could barely guess at! Now he set all thought of her aside and knocked on the door, then stood, holding the girls on either side of him, his arms around their shoulders. They were thin, undernourished, nothing like Zillah Lambert. But then Zillah was no blood relative, as he knew.

The door was opened by Martha Jackson. At first she did not recognize Monk, let alone the two young women with him. Her face showed weariness and impatience, not unmixed with pity.

"If you go to the kitchen door Cook will give you a hot cup of soup," she offered with a shake of her head.

"Miss Jackson," Monk said clearly, grinning at her in spite of himself. He had meant to retain some dignity and detachment. "These are your nieces, Leda and Phemie." He kept his arms around them. "They've had a bad experience, and they are cold and hungry and frightened, but I told them they were coming home and that you would be very pleased to see them."

Martha stared at him, unable to grasp or believe. She looked at the two girls in front of her, their faces wide with wonder, not daring to hope that Monk's words were true. They were dazed with exhaustion and the speed with which things had happened. And they only heard part of what was said. They needed to see a face, read an expression. They had to have words said slowly and with clear enunciation.

Martha searched their expressions, their features beneath the dirt, and slowly her eyes widened and filled with tears. She took a gulp of air and with a mighty effort controlled herself.

"Phemie?" she whispered, swallowing again. "Leda?"

They nodded, still clinging to Monk.

"I'm... Martha.... I'm your papa's sister." The tears spilled over as she said it, a rush of memory overwhelming her.

"M-Martha?" Phemie said awkwardly. Her voice was not unpleasant, but she found speech difficult as no one had taken the time to try to teach her to master her disability.

"That's right," Monk encouraged her. He looked at Leda, the younger, and he already knew her the more serious, more conscious of her affliction.

"M-Mar-tha?" Leda tried hard, licking her misshapen lip.

Martha smiled through her tears, taking a step forward instinctively, then stopping. It was plain in her face she was afraid of moving too quickly. They did not know her. They might not wish to be touched by a stranger... and she was a stranger to them still.

Phemie held out her hand in response, slowly at first.

Martha took it gently, holding out her other hand to Leda.

There was a moment's silence as the lights inside the hallway shone out into the gray afternoon, reflecting in the drifting rain and the cabs and carriages splas.h.i.+ng along the street behind the sodden man with hair plastered across his face in dark streaks, his clothes sticking to him, and two gaunt and ragged young women, hair like rats' tails, clothes torn and thin.

Then Leda stretched her hand and gave it to Martha, holding on to her with surprising strength.

"Come inside," Martha invited. "Get warm and dry ... and have some hot soup."

Monk found himself grinning idiotically. He wanted to laugh with joy.

"I think you had better come too, Mr. Monk," Martha said in a very unbusinesslike tone. "You look terrible. I'll find you some better clothes before you see Miss Latterly. I'm sure something of Mr. Gabriel's will fit you, for the time being. Then I'll let Miss Latterly know you are here."

He wanted to tell Hester himself, see her face when he said he had found the girls. It was perhaps childish, but it mattered to him with a fierceness that startled him.

"I..." he began, then did not know what to say. How could he explain what he felt without sounding absurd? Then he remembered Delphine Lambert. "I have something very urgent to tell her."

Martha looked at him doubtfully, but she was too grateful to deny him anything at all.

"I'll tell her you are here," she agreed. She regarded his filthy and disreputable state ruefully. "You'd better wait in the pantry. But don't stand on the carpet... and don't sit down!"

"I won't," he promised, then followed her obediently as she led the two girls towards the green baize door through to the servants' quarters, guiding them as they stared in awe. They had never been inside a house so large or so clean-or so warm-in their lives.

Martha pointed to the butler's pantry, which was presently empty, and promised to send the maid up with a message to Hester.

It was less than five minutes before she came down, only the most momentary surprise on her face when she saw his state. She closed the door.

"What happened?" she demanded, her face eager. "Tillie said Martha has two fearful-looking girls with her, wet as rats and about as pretty. Did you find them?" Her eyes were wide, her whole expression burning with hope.

He had meant to be calm, to have dignity, to behave as if he had been in control of himself all the time. It slipped away without his even noticing it.

He did not speak, he simply nodded, smiling so widely he could hardly form the words.

She abandoned any thought of restraint and ran forward, throwing her arms around him, holding him so fiercely she knocked the breath from him.

He hesitated a moment. This was not really what he had intended to do. It was impulsive, too careless of consequence. But even while the thoughts were in his mind, his arms tightened around her and he held her close to him, feeling the strength of her. He bent his head to her cheek, her hair, and smelled its sweetness. She was crying with relief.

"That's ... wonderful!" She sobbed, sniffing hard. "You are superb! I didn't think you could do it. It's marvelous. Are they going to be all right?" She did not let go of him or look up, but left her head buried on his shoulder and her grip around him as if letting go might destroy the reality of what he had said.

"I don't know," he answered honestly, still holding her too. He had no need to, but it seemed natural. He thought of letting go, of straightening up, but he really did not want to. "I've no idea what she's going to do with them. They're not fit for ordinary service."

"We'll have to find something," she answered, as if it were a simple thing and to be taken for granted.

"That is not all," he said more thoughtfully. He had to tell her the other fact, the one which now was beginning to make such hideous sense.

She was quite still. "What else is there?"

"You remember Martha told us their mother abandoned them ... Dolly Jackson, Samuel's widow?"

"Yes?"

"I know where she is."

This time she did move. She straightened up and pulled away, staring up at him, her face defiant, eyes blazing.

"She can't have them back! She left them... that is the end of it for her!" Her indignation dared him to argue.

"Of course it is," he agreed. "Except that that is not all...."

She caught the emotion in his face, the sense of something new and of vital and different meaning.

"What?" she demanded. "What is it, William?"

"Delphine Lambert," he answered.

She blinked. She had no idea what he meant. The truth had not entered her mind as a possibility.

"Delphine Lambert," he repeated. "I am almost certain, certain in my own mind, that she and Dolly Jackson are the same person."

She gasped. "That's absurd! How could they be? Dolly Jackson was ... well-" She stopped. He could see in her eyes that now she was considering it. "Well... she ... why? Why would you think that?"

"If you had seen her and then seen those girls, you wouldn't ask. When Samuel died, Dolly Jackson put the two girls into an orphanage and disappeared, to try to improve her position, marry again, presumably as well as possible. She was a very pretty and ambitious woman. She succeeded superbly. She married Barton Lambert, who gave her everything she wanted."

She looked at him with slowly dawning comprehension.

"But she did not dare to give him the one thing he wished: children," he went on. "She had already had two deformed children. So she adopted a child-a perfect child-and she groomed her for the perfect marriage."

Hester did not speak, but her face reflected her sense of awe and pity.

The door opened and Perdita burst in in a flurry of skirts, breathless.

"Martha says you've found the girls! They are down in the kitchen right now!"

Reluctantly, Monk let go of Hester, amazed that he was not more self-conscious of being seen in such a position.

Perdita looked at his filthy appearance with surprise. A month ago she would have been scandalized. Now she was only concerned.

"Is it true? Have you?"

"Yes," Monk answered. "Only just rescued them from being s.h.i.+pped abroad as white slaves." He heard Hester gasp. "I found them actually on the boat." He glanced down at the floor where he had created a pool of water. "I'm sorry. I half fell in the river." He smiled ruefully.

"You must be frozen!" Perdita exclaimed-the white slave trade was not in her knowledge as it was in Hester's. "I'll have someone draw you a hot bath. I'm sure you can borrow some of Gabriel's clothes. Then we must think what to do with these girls."

Hester swallowed, unconsciously smoothing down her dress, now thoroughly wet, also more than a little dirty, where she had pressed against Monk.

"Can you train them to work here?" She turned from Perdita to Monk and back again. "Can you?" There was a faint flush in her cheeks at the presumption.

Before Perdita could reply, Monk interrupted. Hester had not seen them. She had no idea of the reality of their disfigurement, or their deafness, their sheer uncouthness from a lifetime of neglect and abuse. In their entire lives they had seen and heard nothing but the insides of taverns, gin mills and brothels.

"You can't use them as-" He stopped again. How could he say this? Hester was watching him with anxiety and disbelief. "They're..." He glanced down at his filthy clothes, then up at Perdita. There was no point in anything but the truth. "They've spent their lives in gin mills and brothels. They're deaf-and they're disfigured."

Perdita's face filled with horror, then pity. Her chin lifted. "Well, we don't have much company at present, maybe not at all. This could be the very best house in which to train such people." She did not add any note of anger or bitterness, nor was there any in her face. There was no thought of self.

Hester looked at her with a respect which was wholehearted and full of joy.

Perdita recognized it, and it was the final seal upon her resolve.

"Shall we go and tell Gabriel?" she suggested. "Then you really must get warmed up, Mr. Monk. You must be feeling wretched."

"Of course," he agreed. He wished to see Gabriel's reaction himself. He could not rest until he did. He followed Perdita and Hester out of the butler's pantry and along the corridor to the servants' stairs, up them and then through the top door to the main wing. He was aware of squelching with every step, and that someone else would have to clean up after him, but perhaps it was worth it this time.

Perdita threw open Gabriel's door. "It's right!" she said without waiting. "He has got them! They're here!"

Gabriel looked at Monk, his eyes bright.

Monk nodded. "They're in the kitchen, getting cleaned up and fed." Gabriel would know what he meant. "They've been on the streets since they were three years old."

Gabriel's face also filled with pity, and a hard, hurting rage. Even his own disfigurement could not mask it.

"We'll look after them," he said without hesitation.

Monk did not argue. He was so cold that in spite of the pleasure he felt, the almost overwhelming sense of exhilaration and relief, he was now shaking and his legs had almost lost sensation. s.h.i.+vers were running through him and his teeth were chattering.

Hester must have noticed, because she excused them and took him to the guest bathroom and sent for hot water while she then went to Gabriel's wardrobe to find him clean, dry clothes.

Afterwards Martha sent up a bowl of hot thick soup from the kitchen and Monk sat in a chair by the banked-up fire in Hester's sitting room enjoying the heat inside and out, and the savory taste in his mouth of chicken and herbs.

Hester was watching him, her eyes narrowed, her brows drawn together.

"Did you really mean it that you believe Delphine Lambert is the same person as Dolly Jackson?"

He had no doubt. "Yes. If you look at those girls, especially Leda, the resemblance is startling. It is almost a mirror image, only distorted by the mouth. But you can see what she was meant to be. No one could look at them both and not think of it. She had not only one deformed child, Hester, she had two! No wonder she had to leave them behind her if she was going to make her way. She could never admit that to anyone. It's like having madness in the blood. What chance would Zillah have of marrying well?"

"But she's not related!" Hester protested, though her voice was hollow. She knew, as Monk did, that even if they knew Zillah was adopted people would not make that distinction. She was looking at him steadily, searching his face, waiting for him to go on.

"She knew I was looking into the family past, anything I could find that could have put Melville off marrying Zillah. She must have known that if I went on long enough I should find that Zillah was adopted. Perhaps if Melville had gone on fighting the case, I would even have traced her back as far as Putney ... and Samuel Jackson."

"If Keelin had lived?" She repeated the words in a voice little more than a whisper. "Are you saying that Delphine Lambert could have killed her?"

"I don't know ... perhaps I am." He watched her face, seeing her eyes widen and slowly belief follow incredulity.

"But how?" she breathed softly. "How did she do it? She was never alone with her ... you said so. In fact, you said there was no way anyone could have poisoned her. She didn't eat or drink anything in the court all afternoon." She shook her head. "You couldn't even work out how she could have taken it herself."

"So obviously we missed something." He poked his finger at the table in which his empty soup bowl rested. "She did take it. That is the one thing we can be certain of. It was done ... whomever by. We missed it."

She thought for a few moments in silence, her elbows on the table, her chin resting on her hands.