“No.” She shook her head fractionally. “He came, of course, but not so very often, and he seldom stayed long. I am not sure if it was because Genevieve felt a certain . . . uncomfortableness here? I think my husband overawed her to a degree. He can be . . .” Again she hesitated, and he had a sudden sharp perception that it was not the words she was struggling with, nor even if she should express the thought to him, but the thought itself. It was something she had long avoided facing, because of its pain. He was stunned by how much it distressed him.

He hesitated. Perhaps it was not worth pursuing at such cost. It could all be left to the coroner to cover with polite decencies.

But the doubt lasted only a moment. He could not live with such cowardice, and it was not worthy of her.

He smiled, “Please, ma'am, tell me the truth as you feel it, as you saw it.

It is not a time for lies, however gently meant, or seemingly kind.”

“Isn't it?” She frowned. “Both Angus and Caleb are dead, poor creatures, and their hatred with them, whatever it was for. It is gone now . . .

finished.”

“I wish it were.” He meant it profoundly. “But there will have to be an inquest into Caleb's death. We need to know why suddenly he launched himself into such a violent and hopeless act.”

“Do we'?” Her face was calm, her inner decision made. “What does it matter now, Mr. Goode? It seems he never lived in peace. Cannot he now at least be buried and left to rest in whatever ease his soul can find? And we with him. My husband has known little but grief of one sort or another since he first took them into his home.”

“Even with Angus?”

“No. No, that was quite unfair of me. Angus brought him great joy. He was everything he could have wished.”

“But?” he said gently, insistently.

“He was!”

“There is a shadow in your voice, a hesitation,” he insisted. “What is it?

What was it in Angus, Lady Ravensbrook, which made Caleb hate him so passionately? They were close once. Why did they grow so hideously far apes?þ “I don't know!”

“But you guess? You must have thought about it, wondered. Even if only for the pain it brought your husband.”

“Of course I thought about it. I lay awake many hours wondering if there were some way they might be reconciled. I searched my mind. I asked my husband often, until I realized he knew as little as I, and that to speak of it gave him pain. He and Angus were not . . .”

“Not what?”

She spoke reluctantly. He was dragging the words out of her, and he knew it.

“Easy in each other's company,” she admitted. “It was as if the shadow of Caleb were always there, a darkness between them, a wound that could never be completely forgotten.”

“But you liked Angus?”