Read William Monk 18 - A Sunless Sea for Free Online Page A

burning with contempt. “You are a liar, perhaps first to yourself; you can consider actual morality when you want to. You can for Hester. You’ll bend all your own precious rules when she asks you to.”
    “Is that what this is?” he said with painful understanding. “Jealousy of Hester, because you think I would have done differently for her? Can’t you understand that she would never have asked me to?”
    Margaret gave a harsh, bitter laugh. The sound of it lacerated the last of his emotions. “You’re a coward, Oliver! Is that why you care for her so much? Because she’ll fight the battles for you, and never expect anything of you but to follow? What about Monk? Would you fight for him?”
    He did not know how to answer her. Could any of what she said be true?
    “Did you ask my father why he did all those things you accused him of?” she went on, perhaps sensing her victory. “Or did you not want to know? It might disturb your comfortable world of right and wrong where everything is decided for you by generations of lawyers from the past. No need to think! No need to make any difficult decisions, or stand alone. Certainly no need to take any dangerous action yourself, question any of your own comfortable certainties, or risk anything.”
    At last he was angry enough to reply. “I’ll risk my own safety, Margaret, but not anyone else’s.”
    Her eyes widened in amazement. “That man, Mickey Parfitt, he was filth!” she said with scorching contempt. “Worse than vermin. You know what he did.”
    “And the girl?” he said quietly.
    “What girl?” She looked blank.
    “The girl he killed as well?”
    “The prostitute!”
    “Yes, the
prostitute
,” he replied coldly. “Was she vermin, too?”
    “She would have had him hanged!” she exclaimed.
    “So that justified him killing her? That’s your courage, your brave morality? Personally deciding who lives and who dies, rather than leaving it to the law?”
    “He had reasons, terrible choices to make.” Now the tears ran freelydown her cheeks. “He was my father! I loved him.” She said it as if that explained it all. He began to realize at last that for her, it did.
    “So I should forgive him, no matter what he did?” he asked.
    “Yes! Is that so difficult?” It was a challenge, demanded in fury and despair.
    “Then what a pity you did not love me also.” He said the words so softly, they were little more than a whisper.
    She gasped. Her eyes went wide. “That’s not fair!”
    “It’s perfectly fair,” he replied. “And since I cannot place your family before what is right, then perhaps I did not love you, either. That seems to be your conclusion, and by your way of measuring love, you are right. I am sorry. I truly believed otherwise.” He stood still for a moment, but she did not say anything. He turned to leave. He had reached the door when finally she spoke.
    “Oliver …”
    He stopped, then looked back at her. “Yes?”
    She made a helpless little gesture with her hands. “I thought I had something to say, but I don’t.” It was an admission of failure, a closing of the door.
    The pain overwhelmed him, not for something lost so much as for the fading of a dream that had once seemed completely real. He walked out of the room.
    The parlor maid was waiting in the hall, as if she had known he would not be staying. She handed him his coat, and then his hat. Mrs. Ballinger was not in sight, and it seemed faintly ridiculous to go looking for her to tell her he was leaving. It would only embarrass them both. There was nothing to say. Better simply to go.
    He thanked the parlor maid and went out into the darkness. The air was cold now, but he barely noticed. He walked briskly until he came to the nearest cross street where he could find a hansom to take him home.
    R ATHBONE WALKED INTO HIS own wide, gracious hall to be told by Ardmore that there was someone waiting for him in his withdrawing room.
    “Who is it?” he asked with