William Monk novels - 12 - Funeral in Blue by Anne Perry

William Monk novels - 12 - Funeral in Blue by Anne Perry

Author:Anne Perry
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780345440020
Publisher: Fawcett Books
Published: 2002-08-27T07:00:00+00:00


Chapter Nine

Keeping her appointment with Fuller Pendreigh had been difficult for Callandra because of the element of self-control necessary to hide the depth of her emotions. As far as he was concerned she was no more than a good friend and colleague who wished to help and was quite naturally grieved by the whole matter. For everyone's sake, his perception must remain exactly that.

Now as she left Lincoln's Inn she was startled to find herself shaking with release from the tension. Her head was pounding and her hands felt clammy, in spite of the cold.

She had not seen Kristian alone since the death of Elissa, except for moments in the hospital, standing in the corridor with the certain knowledge that someone might pass at any moment. They had spoken of trivia. She had been thinking a hundred other things that she longed to be able to say, and the frustration of silence was almost unbearable. She was sorry for his pain and his loss. She wanted him to fight back with more passion, to defend himself, at least to speak openly, to share his grief rather than to close it away.

She had said none of it. She had allowed him all the time and the privacy he had wanted, simply watching and grieving for him. She had set aside her own hurt at being excluded, her confusion as to what he had felt for Elissa that he had deceived by silence as to what she was like.

Then she had begun to doubt herself. She had to remember more clearly the long hours they had spent together in the fever hospital in Limehouse, working all day and so often all night with the one passionate aim of saving lives, containing the infection. Had she deluded herself that their bond was personal, when it was only the shared understanding of suffering? Was it compassion for the sick which had warmed his eyes, and the knowledge that she felt it, devoted herself to it as he did, that had made him reach out to her?

He had never betrayed his marriage even by a word. Was that honour that had bound him, and for which she had so profoundly admired him? Or was there nothing in his silence that concerned her? Not unspoken loneliness at all?

She looked in the glass and saw herself as she had always been, a little short, definitely too broad, a face which her friends would have said was intelligent and full of character. Those indifferent to her would have described it with condescension as agreeable, but plain. She had good skin, and good teeth even now, but she lacked prettiness, and the blemishes of age were all too apparent. How could she have been vain enough or silly enough to imagine any man married to Elissa would have felt anything but professional regard for her, a shared desire to heal some small portion of the world's pain?

At least she had not ever spoken aloud although that was decency, not lack of emotion.



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