Revenge in a Cold River by Anne Perry

Author:Anne Perry [Perry, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2016-09-05T23:00:00+00:00

MONK WALKED SLOWLY UP the hill toward his home. The night was intensely dark. The lights along the shore seemed hemmed in by wreaths of mist, and clouds blocked the moon.

But he knew the way so well that even the gaps in the cobbles seemed familiar.

So Piers Astley was dead, and had been for nearly twenty years. He had been murdered in the time Monk could no longer remember. In fact, it was even possible that Monk himself had been in San Francisco when it had occurred.

Astley had apparently been Aaron Clive’s chief lieutenant, if a military term were appropriate. Perhaps it was, in such a hectic age when power was extreme. Gold made fortunes in a week, a day, and violence was easy, and there was no law except whatever you provided in agreement with others, and such decency as was not tainted with gold.

What sort of man had Aaron Clive been then? Had his ease and apparent sophistication come with power? Or had he always possessed it? What Monk had heard suggested the latter. If anything, the extraordinary preeminence he had had in the gold rush seemed to have tarnished a little of it, overlaid the original modesty with a certain sense of entitlement. But was any man free from hubris, if circumstances gilded everything he touched? The great landed aristocracy of England certainly was not. Some saw their position as a call to duty. For others it was a birthright, to be used as they chose.

Monk turned the last corner and continued to climb. In a few minutes he would see the lighted windows of his home. Hester would be waiting for him. He would ask about her day at the clinic, and for a while he would put off his own decisions about McNab, the question of a plot to rob Clive, and the fact that Astley could have had no part in it.

Tired as he was, he increased his stride.

Hester opened the door before he had time to take out his own key. He stepped inside, finding himself smiling with the pleasure of seeing her. He pushed the door closed behind him and then took her in his arms, holding her so closely she gasped and pushed him away a couple of inches so she could breathe.

Then after tightening her arms about him just as fiercely, she stepped back and looked at him with her clear, unwavering gaze. She had been skirting around the issue for some time. Now she was characteristically blunt.

“What is it, William?” She bit her lip so slightly the movement was almost invisible. “What are you afraid is going to happen?”

That was it…fear of what was going to happen? Now it was either lie to her, or tell her the whole truth. As long as he had known her she had trusted him, even when it seemed impossible that he could be either honest, or completely right about the facts. That trust was perhaps the most precious thing in his life. Certainly it seemed so now.

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