The Twisted Root Page 0,18

A love that was forever held in check by the existence of his wife? And would she want him to betray that? She knew without even having to waste time on the thought that such a thing would destroy the man she believed he was.

Nothing could be sweeter than to hear him say he loved her. And nothing could be more dangerous, more threatening to the sweetness of what they now had.

Was she being a coward, leaving him alone when he most needed to share, to be understood? Or being discreet when he most needed her silence?

Or was friendship all he wanted? He had a wife - perhaps all he needed here, in this separate life from the personal, was an ally.

"There are still medicines missing," she said, changing the subject radically.

He drew in his breath. "Have you told Thorpe?"

"No!" It was the last thing she intended to do. "No," she repeated more calmly. "It's almost certainly one of the nurses. I'd rather find out who myself and put a stop to it before he ever has to know."

He frowned. "What sort of medicines?"

"All sorts, but particularly morphine, quinine, laudanum, Dutch liquid and several mercurial preparations."

He looked down, his face troubled. "It sounds as if she's selling them. Dutch liquid is one of the best local anesthetics I know. No one could be addicted to all those or need them for herself." He moved towards the door. "I've got to start seeing patients. I'll never get through them all. Have you any idea who it is?"

"No," she said unhappily. It was the truth. She had thought about it hard, but she barely knew the names of all the women who fetched and carried and went about the drudgery of keeping the hospital clean and warm, the linen washed and ironed and the bandages rolled, let alone then- personal lives or their characters. All her attention had been on trying to improve their conditions collectively.

"Have you asked Hester?" he said.

Her hand was on the doorknob.

"I don't think she knows either," she replied.

His face relaxed very slightly in a smile - humor, not happiness. "She's rather a good detective, though," he pointed out.

Callandra did not need to tell Hester that medicines were missing, she was already unhappily aware of it. However, it was not at the forefront of her mind as she left Callandra and Kristian and went to the patients' waiting room. She resented bitterly Fermin Thorpe's admonition to her to go and offer comfort to the troubled and moral guidance to the nurses, although both were tasks she fully believed in and intended to carry out. It was their limitations she objected to, not their nature.

She passed one of the nurses, a comfortable woman of almost fifty, pleasant-faced, gray-brown hair always falling out of its pins, a little like Callandra's. Had their backgrounds not been so different the resemblance might have been more apparent. This woman could barely read or write, not much more than her name and a few familiar words of her trade, but she was intelligent and quick to learn a new task, and Hester had frequently seen her actually tending to patients when she knew there were no doctors anywhere near. She seemed to have an aptitude for it, an instinctive understanding of how to ease distress, lower a fever, or whether someone should eat or not. Her name was Cleo Anderson.

She lowered her eyes now as Hester passed her, as if she wished to avoid attracting attention. Hester was sorry. She would have liked to encourage her, even with a glance.

There were some patients in the waiting room already, five women and two men. All but one of them were elderly, their eyes watchful in unfamiliar surroundings, afraid of what would happen to them, of what they could be told was wrong, of the pain of treatment, and of the cost. Their clothes were worn thin. Here and there a clean shirt showed under a faded coat.

Some of their treatment was free, but they still had to pay for food while they were in hospital, and then, after they left, for medicine as well if it was necessary.

She chose the most wretched looking of the patients and went over to him.

He peered up at her, his eyes full of fear. Her bearing suggested authority to him, and he thought he was about to be chastised, although he had no idea what for.

"What's your name?" she enquired with a smile.

He gulped. "'arry Jackson, ma'am."

"Is this your