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

and loved briefly. She had begged for his help, assumed his loyalty, and could not forgive his failure. In her eyes, there were but two possibilities: either her father was not as she had believed or her husband was not. It was all her life, all the memories, the fabric of who she was compared with a short marriage to a man she had cared for but perhaps never been passionately in love with. Looking back, Rathbone thought there had never been a real conflict in her mind. Of course she had chosen her father.
    After his terrible death she had no longer wanted to be under the same roof as Rathbone. Her grief, her rage had been overwhelming. She had taken the few belongings that were hers and gone back to comfort her mother in her new widowhood and social disgrace.
    At first Rathbone had believed that she would return within a few weeks, but time had gone on, and it was now more than a year since she had left. Several times he had attempted to bridge the gulf between them. He had thought she would realize that she was being unfair, blaming him for Ballinger’s death. She would accept that there was never anything he could have done to save him.
    But every attempt at reconciliation had only driven the wedge deeper between them. Now he began to question whether they had ever loved each other at all, or if it had been more a matter of wanting to love, wanting not to be alone, and therefore seeing the good, building on it, slowly sharing more of the small pleasures of their daily lives.
    When tragedy had come the fabric had proved too weak.
    Should he have loved her more? Or should he have waited for a searing passion, a love that governed his whole life, before he married?
    That was ridiculous. How many people even felt such a thing? Perhaps it was no more than a fever that passed anyway. Infatuation is not love. Love needs trust and balance. It needs both sharing and also the ability to be at peace in silence. Perhaps it needs a common faith in certain values, in honor and compassion, and the courage to go forward in the face of pain. It has to contain mercy, and gratitude for the joys of life, on both sides.
    It must not demand perfection. What would perfection know orunderstand of the frailties of a vulnerable person, the failures of someone brave enough to try what is difficult?
    Margaret had been immature.
    Rathbone had been immature also. He should have been gentler with her. Certainly he should have been wise enough not to undertake Ballinger’s defense alone. But if he had taken assistance she would have blamed him for not having thrown his whole weight behind it. She would have said his backing away from the case in any regard would make the court assume he thought Ballinger guilty from the start.
    He had still not told her the whole story about the dreadful legacy her father had deliberately left to him, his final vengeance. She would still blame Rathbone, and hate him the more for it. It would mend nothing.
    Was it a gentleness in him that stilled his tongue? Disillusion is one of the bitterest pains anyone can face. Some people cannot bear it; they break under the weight. Margaret was one of those. Maybe he still had some lingering tenderness toward her, a need to protect her from the truth if she did not have to know it.
    Or was he simply too bruised and too weary inside to face another series of quarrels and rejections? Not that it mattered. There was no need to tell her.
    He had never had to face the worst of disillusion himself, not one that came anywhere near hers. His own father was the best man he had ever known. Even standing here on the edge of the empty summer garden, watching the birds and the few butterflies sitting on the silent, brilliant flowers, he smiled thinking of Henry Rathbone. Of course, his father was fallible, and he himself would be the first to admit it. He was a mathematician and inventor, a man whose mind was brilliant, yet when others spoke of him it was his kindness they spoke of first.
    He