Rachel opened her mouth to answer but it was empty of words. There was only the shine of light in his eyes and the feel of his skin against hers. All sensation, all awareness, seemed to crowd into the places where he touched her, so that nothing was missed, nothing not noticed. He regrets that I am wed. As simply as that, her mind cleared of all other hopes and fears, leaving a sudden, perfect clarity that, while it lasted, felt like the answer to everything. If he kissed me now, I would be his. Part of her yearned for him to do so, but behind that came relief when he did not. This relief clamoured to be heard; it grew into the perfect calm of the moment like threads of ice growing into water. It was fearful relief, it had doubts; it sent her the black, frightening thought that the hand now holding hers was the one that had taken her sister’s life. If that is true, I will know he is right – there are no kindnesses in this world. But I must know.
The Pump Room was so warm that the flecks of sleet on Rachel’s clothes melted at once, and soaked through. She was so distracted that she hardly noticed. The long, elegant room was crowded with people, walking and sitting and sipping at their beakers of hot water. It was the same water that filled the hot baths; steaming, raw from the earth and smelling faintly of eggs. There was a crush of wheeled chairs by the doors, as invalids were brought in for their dose. Rachel paced a circuit of the crowded room until she saw Harriet Sutton with a cup in her hand, talking to a group of middle-aged women. Rachel cut through the throng to reach her side.
‘Ah, Mrs Weekes! How lovely that you could join us. Let me introduce you to our little circle of health-seekers.’ Harriet took her hand, smiling as she introduced her friends. Rachel chafed with impatience as her manners kept her there, curtsying and exchanging pleasantries, until sufficient time had passed that she could draw Harriet to one side. The tiny woman took a sip of her water and grimaced. ‘Do you know, I am quite convinced that drinking this must be truly beneficial, though I’ve never noticed any particular effects, one way or the other, for why else would we be counselled to drink something that tastes so peculiar?’
‘I do not know, Mrs Sutton. I wanted to ask you, if I may, about… about the time Mr Alleyn left Brighton for Bathampton. When he received Alice’s letter. You told me that your husband was with him, as he read it?’
‘Yes, he was.’ Harriet’s face turned grave. ‘Are you all right, Mrs Weekes? You seem… anxious.’
‘Forgive me.’ There are dark spaces in his memory. Of all the things Jonathan had said to her, it was these two words that troubled her the most. Dark spaces. ‘I feel that I am… I’m perhaps close to finding out what became of Alice Beckwith. And I need to know… I need to know whether she is alive or dead.’
‘Alive or dead?’ Harriet breathed. ‘But what is this? What are you suggesting?’
‘I can’t explain here… but I will soon, I promise. I-’
‘You can’t mean that Jonathan did her harm?’
‘I know you think him incapable of it, but he has told me himself of the terrible things he saw and did in Spain and Portugal, and that his memories of the return to Brighton and then to Bathampton are… unreliable.’ Dark spaces, in which dark things might have happened. Harriet was looking at her strangely, with something almost like fear, or a warning. ‘Your husband was with him when he got the letter, and when he set off. I wanted to ask… was he violent? When he read the letter, did he fly into a rage?’
Harriet looked around uneasily, as if fearing to be overheard.
‘When he read the letter, he wept,’ she said. Rachel shut her eyes for a moment, as relief swept through her. ‘But in a man grief and violence often go hand in hand.’
‘Yes,’ said Rachel, softly. And if he killed her, my sister? If he killed her I won’t ever be able to forgive him. ‘He speaks of trying to make it right. Of atoning.’
‘Listen to me, Mrs Weekes. Jonathan Alleyn is a good man. I live with the proof of it, every day. I’m sorry to make such a statement and not explain myself fully, but there are things that happened at war, with my husband and Mr Alleyn, that I have been sworn never to speak about. He is a good man, and there was nothing in that letter that should have made him attack the girl…’
‘You saw the letter?’ Rachel interrupted, confused.
‘Yes, I-’ Her friend broke off, and looked down at her hands. ‘I have it still.’
‘You have the last letter that Alice wrote to Jonathan? How is this?’
‘He dropped it, after he read it. It was left on the floor as he rushed at once to catch the mail coach west. My husband was perplexed as to what could have caused such a reaction. He picked the letter up, meaning to return it to Mr Alleyn when he returned. But Mr Alleyn didn’t re-join the regiment for a good long while, and what with everything that happened with the girl’s elopement, my husband thought it better to…’
‘To keep it from him?’
‘He didn’t wish to deepen a wound so fresh and painful. Jonathan Alleyn was ever one to brood and… lose himself in thought. My husband thought that if he had the letter to pore over, it might only serve to torment him. I said that if he didn’t mean to return it, he ought to destroy it, but he said that the right time might come to return it to him.’ Harriet frowned guiltily. ‘There was nothing in it to make him violent…’ she whispered. ‘Only to make him grieve.’
‘Will you give it to me, to take back to him?’ said Rachel, gravely. In a man grief and violence often go hand in hand… is that what hides in the dark spaces? The thought made her stomach turn over, and for a second she thought she might be sick. She clamped her teeth together as Harriet nodded unhappily.
They walked back to the Suttons’ apartment, and Harriet fetched the letter from a small drawer in her bureau. She hesitated as she held it out to Rachel, who felt a shiver of anticipation when she saw the small square of folded paper.
‘You do understand, don’t you? Why my husband never returned this note?’ said Harriet. Her eyes were wide in a worried face.
‘His intentions were good. But the time has come to lay the matter to rest,’ said Rachel. Harriet nodded.
‘Stay a while if you want. You must want to read it,’ she said. Rachel looked up guiltily, and Harriet gave her a gently knowing look. ‘I think that you, too, have the best of intentions. And far easier to read it here than out in the cold wind.’ Rachel took the letter, sat down on the very edge of an armchair, and opened it.
When she left the Suttons’ apartment minutes later, Rachel went straight to Duncan Weekes’s rooms, but found them empty. The letter was in her pocket and her hand kept straying to touch the paper through the fabric, to check its safety. Her mind was clamouring as her rapid pace carried her through the city. Sleet fell from a collapsed sky, stinging in her eyes and forming small, wet drifts in the gutters. She felt as though she must hurry, must race to save Alice, though what had been done to her, or what she herself had done, was long past, and couldn’t be changed. Her father-in-law’s name was in the letter, and the suggestion that he knew more than he had ever said, so her path led, inevitably, to the Moor’s Head. Rachel peered in through the window. The rippled glass deformed the faces of the inn’s patrons, but since she saw no sign of her husband she steeled herself and went inside.
The transgression made her feel naked; eyes turned towards her, blatant and speculative. Keeping her face down, Rachel went to the bar where Sadie, whom she recognised from her wedding day, was leaning on her elbows, looking bored.
‘I’m looking for Mr Duncan Weekes,’ she said to the girl.
‘He’s over there.’ Sadie hooked her thumb towards the far corner of the room. ‘But I doubt you’ll get much sense from him. He’s proper swallowed a hare this afternoon.’