This was the time to tell her of his jolting memory, his sense of familiarity with the whole process of surveying for railways, and the land purchase with its difficulties. He had told her long ago of the snatches he had remembered of Arrol Dundas and his helplessness to prove the truth at the time. She would understand why he was compelled now to learn the truth about Baltimore and Sons, whether Katrina Harcus needed it or not. If he explained his fears it would make it easier if he had to admit later on that he had been at least partly implicated in the fraud—and the disaster afterwards which it may have caused.

He thought of her work with the women in Coldbath Square. She would be going back there tonight. She was dressed for it already, a long night’s hard and thankless labor. He might not see her again until after he came back from Derbyshire. It should wait until another time, when he would have the opportunity to be with her, to assure her of . . . what? That whatever he had been in the past, he was no longer that man anymore?

“I don’t know,” he said. That was in essence true, even if not all of it. “I don’t know what better to try.”

She picked up her knife and fork and started to eat again. “If I hear anything more about Nolan Baltimore, I’ll tell you,” she promised.

Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

Hester had spent a strange, unhappy evening after Monk’s return, aware that there was something powerful in him that she could not reach. He was either unwilling or unable to share it. She had missed him while he was away, and taken the opportunity to put in as much work as possible at the house on Coldbath Square, and she would have been happy to go there far later, or even not at all, had he said only once that he wished her to stay.

But he did not. He was brittle, absorbed in thought, and he seemed almost relieved when she said good-bye just before ten o’clock and went out into the lamp-lit darkness and took the first passing hansom to Coldbath Square.

The night was chill and she was glad of the warmth that enveloped her when she pushed the door of the clinic open and went inside. Bessie was sitting at the table stitching buttons onto a white blouse, and she looked up, her face filling with pleasure when she saw Hester.

“Yer look pinched,” she said with concern. “Nice ’ot cup o’ tea’ll do yer good.” She put the sewing down and rose to her feet. “Like a drop o’ the ’ard stuff with it?” She did not even reach for it, knowing Hester would refuse. She always did, but Bessie always offered. It was a sort of ritual.