Trial by Desire (Carhart #2)(65)
Kate set her hand on her friend’s shoulder. “I know it’s not easy. But you’re going to have to do something.”
“I can shoot him,” Louisa offered hopefully. “Isn’t that ridiculous?” Her voice shook. “I can’t imagine looking him in the eyes and telling him no, but I can see myself shooting him.” Her voice dropped. “I can see myself shooting him very easily.”
“Perhaps we might consider solutions that do not lead to your subsequent hanging,” Kate suggested.
Ned flicked a glance at Kate. She had no notion what he intended. The hardest part of her hobby had always been convincing the women in question to act. She didn’t understand why it was so hard to make the decision to leave a violent husband. A man who was willing to break bones didn’t deserve much consideration, in Kate’s opinion. And yet there was this vacillation. She tried not to let it irritate her.
Sometimes it still did.
Louisa pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them to her, as if making herself smaller would shrink her problems. “It’s easy for you to tell me to make a choice,” she said. “But when I try to think of the future, my head just hurts. I can’t face it.”
Kate exhaled in exasperation. “But you shall have to do so.”
Louisa set her fingers to her temples and didn’t respond.
“You know what?” Ned’s voice rang out, doubling Kate’s annoyance. “Did I ever tell you about my experience with Captain Adams in China?”
At those words, Louisa looked up, and Kate pressed her lips together. This hardly seemed the place to exchange anecdotes. They needed to plan, to think, to charge forward. They had little enough time as it was. Kate turned toward her husband, and her brows drew down.
But at least Louisa had uncurled from her little ball, as if once the tension was released, she could sit straight again.
“No,” she said softly. “You didn’t. I’ve heard almost nothing about your journey. What was China like? Was it foreign? Exotic?”
Ned rested one hand easily on his knee and leaned back. He looked toward Louisa, as if she were the only person in the room, and Kate felt her annoyance grow.
“It was frustrating,” he replied. “Very frustrating. I arrived, thinking my mission would take me maybe a month or two. But when I first got to the Eastern hemisphere, hostilities had broken out. The ship I was on rerouted, so as to find a safe place to land. It took me months just to make my way to Hong Kong. But I’d promised Gareth I would investigate the opium situation in China. And I was bound and determined to go forward, war or no war, hostilities or no hostilities. After all, I hadn’t traveled halfway round the globe, just to be fobbed off with secondhand accounts. I wanted to see the British action in China, and I wanted to see it personally.”
Kate tapped her foot, one hand on her hip.
Ned put his hands behind his head and looked up. “The man I needed to talk to was Captain Adams. He’d been appointed as a liaison to all the silly, foolish second sons and aimless aristocrats who’d been shipped out East for no reason other than that nobody wanted us back in England. I suspect he despised us all. He took one look at me and knew precisely what to make of me.”
“He thought you were someone he had to respect, as the heir to a marquess?” Kate asked. “The sort of person who could solve problems decisively?”
Ned cast a glance at her, that smile on his face, but ignored her. “Absolutely not. He thought I was useless, and that I would prove to be a headache.”
“Well. I hope he learned his lesson, judging you so quickly,” Kate said. “But back to Louisa…”
Ned shrugged. “He was right. I went to his office day after day, requesting that he allow me aboard one of the ships they were sending down to the mouth of the Pearl River, to observe what was happening. At first, he said no. Then I began to wear into the thin veneer of his patience, at which point he said, ‘Definitely not.’ After about three weeks of my constant badgering, it turned into, ‘My God, man, don’t you frivolous idiots have the brains to see I have real work to do? Stop pestering me.’”
“But then he gave in,” Kate predicted. “As for Louisa…”
Ned smiled more broadly. “No. He didn’t. It took another week to turn into ‘Mr. Carhart, as God is my witness, if you set foot in my office one more time, you will regret it for the rest of your life.’”
At this point, Kate noticed that Louisa had begun to lean forward, her eyes alight. And when Ned paused contemplatively, she let out a little gasp. “Oh, don’t stop there. Did you? Set foot in his office, I mean.”
“Of course I did. I was scared out of my wits, too. I had promised Gareth I’d not leave until I had personally seen what was happening. And so the next morning, I presented myself once more. By that time, I wasn’t really sure why I continued to march into his office. I surely did not expect to meet with success. I had all the feeling of throwing myself against a brick wall, violently, repeatedly, for no other reason than there were no other brick walls available. It was pure foolishness. Only idiots and madmen continue to better themselves in the face of persistent failure, and by that time, I was certain I was both.”
There was a certain gentle humor in his retelling, a glint in his eye, and out of the corner of her eye, Kate could see Louisa smile. Ned had always had this skill, even when she’d first met him—this ability to say something funny and unassuming, to set someone at ease, to bring out the light in shadowed eyes.