Blind Justice: A William Monk Novel by Anne Perry Page A

given it. He would not look for excuses to pass it on.
    A FEW WEEKS LATER, INTO the real warmth of the summer, Rathbone stood in the doorway of his drawing room and gazed at the immaculate beauty of the garden. Beyond the shade of the poplars the sun was hot. The first roses were in full bloom. The house next door had a rambler that had spread up into the lower branches of the trees, and its clusters of white blossoms gleamed in the sun.
    His eyes took in the beauty of it, but it was curiously meaningless to him. His instinct to turn and say “Isn’t that lovely?” was so strong he had to remind himself there was nobody in the house to say it to. It was far too personal a thing to say to a servant. A maid would think it inappropriate and perhaps even be alarmed at the familiarity of it. A butler or footman would be embarrassed. To any of them it would betray his loneliness, and one did not do that. Servants knew perfectly well that masters or mistresses were flawed, made mistakes. No one was more aware of that than a lady’s maid or a valet. They knew of physical weaknesses and many emotional ones as well. But it was all unspoken.
    He had lived alone quite happily before his marriage. In fact, long ago, when he had been in love with Hester and considering asking her to marry him, it has been the loss of his privacy, the thought of always having someone else in the house that had stopped him.
    Could he have made her happy? Probably not the same way Monk did. He had not Monk’s fierce, brave, erratic passion. That was what Hester needed, to match her own.
    But would Rathbone have tried, if he had had the courage to risk the hurt as well as the happiness? Now he would never know.
    Should he have behaved differently with Margaret? He had been so certain of her, of them, in the beginning; it seemed incredible now howthat had changed. Was he deluding himself? He remembered it all so clearly with a sharpness that was like the edge of a knife on the skin. She was not beautiful, but she had had a grace that was worth far more to him. That was an inner quality. Too often beauty masked the lack of anything deeper. How long could one remain fascinated by the glow of lovely skin or the perfect curve of a cheek or a neck if there were no courage or passion beneath it, no laughter or imagination, above all, no tenderness?
    He had seen those things in Margaret, or he thought he had. Was it his fault that they had not survived her father’s disgrace and Rathbone’s failure to save him? It was unclear to him what else he could or should have done to try and fix them.
    It was, after all, Margaret who had insisted Rathbone defend Arthur Ballinger. He had seemed the obvious choice then. He had been the most brilliant lawyer in London. That was not an affectation, simply the truth. And both of them had been certain that Ballinger was innocent.
    The unraveling evidence had shown Rathbone his error, but Margaret had never accepted it. Even now, after Ballinger’s death, she refused. She still blamed Rathbone. He could see her face in his mind’s eye, ash pale, twisted with fury and a pain she could not bear. She had accused him of putting ambition before loyalty, love of himself before love of his family. She believed he had sacrificed her father on the altar of his own pride.
    Nothing he said could persuade her that he had had no choice. Ballinger had been guilty, and whatever Rathbone had wanted, he could not prove anything else. God knew he had tried! To begin with, the evidence had been slight and could have been used to argue several different conclusions. Then, one by one, other events had driven the case to the final tragedy. Rathbone would never forget the horror of that, but nothing he could say or do mitigated his guilt in Margaret’s eyes. She knew Ballinger only as her father, the man who had loved her and protected her all her life. She could not see him as a blackmailer, a criminal.
    Rathbone was only the man she had married