Sylvestra looked up at her quickly, her eyes bright. "That would make some sense of it, wouldn't it?”
"Yes. Who are Rhys's friends? Who might he care about sufficiently to go to such a place to help them? Perhaps they had borrowed money. It can happen… a gambling debt they dared not tell their family about, or a girl of dubious reputation.”
Sylvestra smiled, it was full of fear, but there was self-mastery in it also. "That sounds like Rhys himself, I'm afraid. He tended to find respectable young ladies rather boring. That was the principal reason he quarrelled with his father. He felt it unfair that Constance and Amalia were able to travel to India to have all manner of exotic experiences, and he was required to remain at home and study, and marry well and then go into the family business.”
"What was Mr. Duffs business?" Hester felt considerable sympathy with Rhys. All his will and passion, all his dreams seemed to lie in the Middle East, and he was required to remain in London while his elder sisters had the adventures not only of the mind, but of the body as well.
"He was in law," Sylvestra replied. "Conveyancing, property. He was the senior partner. He had offices in Birmingham and Manchesteras well as the City.”
Highly respectable, Hester thought, but hardly the stuff of dreams. At least the family would presumably still have some means. Finance would not be an additional cause for anxiety. She imagined Rhys had been expected to go up to university, and then follow in his father's footsteps in the company, probably a junior partnership to begin with, leading to rapid promotion. His whole future was built ahead of him, and rigidly defined. Naturally it required that he make at the very least a suitable marriage, at best a fortunate one. She could feel the net drawing tight, as if it had been around herself. It was a life tens of thousands would have been only too grateful for.
She tried to imagine Leighton Duff, and his hopes for his son, his anger and frustration that Rhys was ungrateful, blind to his good fortune.
"He must have been a very talented man," she said, again to fill the silence.
"He was," Sylvestra agreed with a distant smile. "He was immensely respected. The number of people who regarded his opinion was extraordinary. He could perceive both opportunities and dangers that others, some very skilled and learned men, did not.”
To Hester it only made his journey into St. Giles the harder to understand. She had no sense of his personality, apart from an ambition for his son, and perhaps a lack of wisdom in his approach to pressing it. But then she had not known Rhys before the attack.
Perhaps he had been very wilful, wasted his time when he should have been studying. Maybe he had chosen poorly in his friends, especially his female ones. He could well have been a son over-indulged by his mother, refusing to grow up and accept adult responsibility. Leighton Duff may have had every reason to be exasperated with him. It would not be the first time a mother had over-protected a boy, and thereby achieved the very last thing she intended: left him unfit for any kind of lasting happiness, but instead a permanent dependant, and an inadequate husband in his turn.
Sylvestra was lost in her own thoughts, remembering a kinder past.
"Leighton could be very dashing," she said thoughtfully. "He used to ride over hurdles when he was younger. He was terribly good at it. He didn't keep horses himself, but many friends wanted him to ride for them. He won very often, because he had the courage… and of course the skill. I used to love to watch him, even though I was terrified he would fall. At that speed it can be extremely dangerous.”
Hester tried to picture it. It was profoundly at odds with the rather staid man she had envisioned in her mind, the dry lawyer drawing up deeds for property. How foolish it was to judge a person by a few facts, when there were so many other things to know! Perhaps the law offices were only a small part of him, a practical side which provided for the family life, and perhaps also the money for the adventure and imagination of his truer self. It could be from their father that Constance and Amalia had inherited their courage and their dreams.
"I suppose he had to give it up as he got older," she said thoughtfully.
Sylvestra smiled. "Yes, I'm afraid so. He realised it when a friend of ours had a very bad fall. Leighton was so upset for him. He was crippled. Oh, he learned to walk again, after about six months, but it was only with pain, and he was no longer able to practise his profession. He was a surgeon, and he could not hold his hands steadily enough. It was very tragic. He was only forty-three.”
Hester did not reply. She thought of a man whose life had been dedicated to one art, losing it in a moment's fall from a horse, not even doing anything necessary, simply a race. What regret would follow, what self-blame for the hardship to his family.
"Leighton helped him a great deal," Sylvestra went on. "He managed to sell some property for him, and invest the money so he was provided for, at least with some income for his family.”
Hester smiled quickly, in acknowledgement she had heard and appreciated it.
Sylvestra's face darkened again. "Do you think Rhys may have gone into that dreadful area searching for a friend in trouble?" she asked.
"It seems possible.”
"I shall have to ask Arthur Kynaston. Perhaps he will come to see Rhys, when he is a little better. He might like that.”
"We can ask him, in a day or two. Is he fond of Rhys?”
"Oh yes. Arthur is the son of one of Leighton's closest friends, the headmaster of Rowntrees that is an excellent boys' school near Q1 here." Her face softened for a moment and her voice lifted with enthusiasm. "Joel Kynaston was a brilliant scholar, and he chose to dedicate his life to teaching boys the love of learning, especially the classics. That is where Rhys learned his Latin and Greek, and his love of history and ancient cultures. It is one of the greatest gifts a young person can receive. Or any age of person, I suppose.”
"Of course," Hesteragreed.
"Arthur is Rhys's age," she went on. "His elder brother Marmaduke they call him Duke is also a friend. He is a little… wilder, perhaps?
Clever people sometimes are, and Duke is very talented. I know Leighton thought him headstrong. He is now at Oxford studying classics, like his father. Of course he is home for Christmas. They must both be terribly grieved by this.”
Hester finished her toast and drank the last of her tea. At least she knew a little more about Rhys. It did not explain what had happened to him, but it offered a few possibilities.
Nothing she had learned prepared her for what happened that afternoon when Sylvestra came into the bedroom for the third time that day. Rhys had had a very light luncheon, and then fallen asleep. He was in some physical pain. Lying in more or less one position was making him very stiff and his bruises were healing only slowly. It was impossible to know what injuries were causing pain within him, swelling or even bleeding. He was very uncomfortable, and after she had given him a sedative herbal drink with something to ease him at least a little, he fell into a light sleep.
He woke when Sylvestra came in.
She went over and sat in the chair next to him.
"How are you, my dear?" she said softly. "Are you rested?”
He stared at her. Hester was standing at the end of the bed and saw the pain and the darkness in his eyes.
Sylvestra put out her hand and stroked him gently on the bare arm above his splints and plasters.
"Every day will be a little better, Rhys," she said just above a whisper, her voice dry with emotion. "It will pass, and you will heal.”
He looked at her steadily, then slowly his lips curled back from his teeth in a cold glare of utter contempt.
Sylvestra looked as if she had been struck. Her hand remained on his arm, but as if frozen. She was too stunned to move.
"Rhys…?”
A savage hatred filled his face, as if, had he the strength, he would have lashed out at her physically, wounding, gouging, delighting in pain.