William Monk 17 - Acceptable Loss

She could feel the warmth of him through the sheet that separated them. A few minutes later he was asleep. Without being aware of it he had put his head against her shoulder. She stopped talking and lay still. It was a little cramped, but she did not move until morning, when she pretended to have been asleep also.
    After a breakfast of hot porridge, toast, and marmalade, Monk sent Scuff out on an errand and turned to Hester.
    “Nightmares again?” he asked.
    “Sorry,” she apologized. “I knew I’d probably waken you, but I couldn’t leave him alone. I banged the door so—”
    “You don’t need to explain.” He cut across her. The ghost of a smile softened the angular planes of his face for a moment, and then it was gone again. He looked grim, full of a pain he did not know how to deal with.
    She knew he was remembering the terrible night on the river when Jericho Phillips had kidnapped Scuff to prevent Monk from completing the case against him, for which he would have assuredly hanged. Phillips had so very nearly succeeded. Had it not been for Sutton’s little dog, Snoot, they would never have found the boy.
    “He’s still afraid,” she said quietly. “He knows Phillips is dead—he saw the drowned body in the cage—but there are other people doing the same thing, other boats on the river that use boys for pornography and prostitution—boys just like him, his friends. People we can’t help. I don’t know what to say to him, because he’s far too clever to believe comforting lies. And I don’t want to lie to him anyway. Then he’d never trust me in anything. I wish he didn’t care about them so much, and yet I’d hate it if he could feel safe only by never looking back. He thinks we can’t help.” She blinked hard. “William, parents ought to be able to help. That’s part of what they are for. He sees us not even trying, just accepting defeat. He doesn’t even understand why he feels so guilty, and thinks he’s betraying them by being all right. He won’t believe that we don’t secretly think the same of him, whatever we say.”
    “I know.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “And that isn’t the only problem.”
    She waited, her heart pounding. They had avoided saying it; all their time and emotion was concentrated on Scuff. But she had known it would have to come. Now she looked at the lines of strain in Monk’s face, the shadows around his eyes, the lean, high cheekbones. There was a vulnerability there that only she understood.
    She thought of Oliver Rathbone, who had been both Monk’s friend and hers for so long, and beside whom they had fought desperate battles for justice, often at the risk of their reputations, even their lives. They had sat up for endless nights searching for answers, hadfaced victory and disaster together, horrors of grief, pity, and disillusion. Rathbone had once loved Hester, but she had chosen Monk. Then he had married Margaret Ballinger and found a happiness far better suited to his nature. Margaret could give him children, but more obvious than that, she was socially his equal. She was of a calmer, more judicious nature than Hester; she knew how to behave as Lady Rathbone, wife of the most gifted barrister in London, should.
    Was it really conceivable that Margaret’s father had been the power and the money behind Jericho Phillips’s abominations? That is what Lord Justice Sullivan had claimed, right before his terrible suicide at Execution Dock. Hester longed for Monk to tell her that it was not true.
    “You heard what Rathbone said about Arthur Ballinger and Phillips?” Monk said.
    “Yes. Has he said anything more?”
    “No. I suppose there’s nothing legal, or he would have. He’d have no choice.”
    “You mean there’s no proof, just Sullivan’s word—and he’s dead anyway?”
    “Yes.”
    “But you believe it?” That also was not really a question.
    “Of course I do,” he said very softly. “Rathbone believes it, and do you think he would if there were any way in heaven or hell that he could avoid it?”
    Monk lifted up his hand and touched Hester’s cheek so softly, she felt the warmth of him more than the brush of his skin against hers.
    “I have to know if Ballinger was involved, for Scuff, so at least he knows I’m trying,” he continued. “And Rathbone has to know too, however much he would prefer not to.”
    “Are you going to speak to him?”
    “I’ve been avoiding it, and so has he. He’s been in