A Sunless Sea Read Online Free PDF Page B

her eyes.
    Rathbone found himself floundering for words. He knew she wanted a reconciliation between himself and Margaret, hoped that their happiness could be rebuilt, even if her own could not. Margaret’s anger and misery must weigh even more heavily on her than any other. Rathbone was certain of that as he looked at her face now. He had never really liked her. She had seemed to him self-absorbed, unimaginative, in many ways superficial in her judgments. Now he was overwhelmed with compassion for her, and he knew he could do nothing to help, except perhaps keep his temper, try harder to reach some accommodation with Margaret.
    Had Margaret ever thought what her bitterness was costing her mother? Or was she too filled with her own pain to consider anyone else’s? Rathbone realized with a cutting self-awareness that the very anger he wanted to control for Mrs. Ballinger’s sake had welled up inside again, scalding him.
    They were standing, facing each other in silence. It was up to him to speak first, to explain why he had come, uninvited and at this hour of the evening. Without planning to be, he was uncharacteristically gentle.
    “I wanted to see how you were,” he began, as if that were the kind of emotion he often felt. “There might be something I could do that I haven’t thought of. If you would permit me?”
    She was silent for several moments, weighing his intention behind the words.
    “For Margaret’s sake?” she asked finally. “You must still hate Mr. Ballinger and me because of him. I had no idea …” It sounded like an excuse, and she stopped as soon as she realized it.
    “I never imagined that you knew,” he said quickly, and honestly. “The shock of finding out such a thing, and beginning to understand what it meant is enough to paralyze almost anyone. And you had no alternative except loyalty. By the time you knew of it there was nothing to be done to save anyone.”
    She looked puzzled for a moment, as if trying to distinguish between his judgment of her, and his judgment of Margaret.
    “You were his wife,” he said, in self-defense as well as by way of explanation.
    “Have you come to see Margaret?” Hope refused to die in her.
    “If I may?” That was a polite fiction. Mrs. Ballinger had never refused him access to Margaret; it was Margaret herself who would not speak to him.
    She hesitated. He knew she was considering not whether to take the message, but how; what manner would offer any chance of success.
    “I will go to ask her,” she said at last. “Please wait here. I …” She swallowed with difficulty. “I would rather not have a scene that would embarrass any of us.”
    “Of course,” he agreed.
    It was nearly a quarter of an hour before she returned, which showed a measure of the difficulty she had had in persuading Margaret. As Rathbone thanked her and followed her back across the hall, he found himself increasingly angry with Margaret, not on his own behalf but on her mother’s. He could not even imagine the blow Mrs. Ballinger had taken from her husband’s guilt, and then his murder cutting off all hope of a reprieve. Not that there had been any. He would have died with the hangman’s noose around his throat. Her entire world had collapsed hideously. She had no one but her children on whom to lean. The failure of Margaret’s marriage and her refusal to accept her father’s guilt must keep all the wounds open and bleeding.
    Margaret was standing in the middle of the overcrowded parlor, waiting for him. She was very plainly dressed. Like her mother, she was still in black, although hers was relieved by jet jewelry and a brooch setwith seed pearls, a tiny glimmer of white against the darkness. As always, she stood with grace, her head high, but she was thinner than the last time he had seen her, and very pale, almost colorless.
    She did not speak.
    To ask how she was would be absurdly formal, setting a tone that would be hard to break. Her health had always been