Читаем A Dangerous Fortune (1994) полностью

"He's the one I'm frightened of."

Maisie nodded. "I can understand why. He's a hardhearted old curmudgeon, as I know from personal experience. But if you let me talk to him I think I can make him see sense."

"Would you?" said Rebecca in a voice full of youthful optimism. "Would you do that?"

"Of course," Maisie said. "But I won't tell him where you are unless he promises to be kind."

Rebecca looked down. Her baby's eyes had closed and she had stopped sucking. "She's asleep," Rebecca said.

Maisie smiled. "Have you chosen a name for her yet?"

"Oh, yes," Rebecca said. "I'm going to call her Maisie."

Ben Greenbourne's face was wet with tears as he came out of the ward. "I've left her with Kate for a while," he said in a choked voice. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed ineffectually at his cheeks. Maisie had never seen her father-in-law lose his self-possession. He made a rather pathetic sight, but she felt it would do him a lot of good.

"Come to my room," she said. "I'll make you a cup of tea."

"Thank you."

She led him to her room and told him to sit down. He was the second man to weep in that chair this evening, she thought.

"All those young women," the old man said. "Are they all in the same position as Rebecca?"

"Not all," Maisie said. "Some are widows. Some have been abandoned by their husbands. Quite a lot have run away from men who beat them. A woman will suffer a lot of pain, and stay with a husband even if he injures her; but when she gets pregnant she worries that his blows will damage the child, and that's when she leaves. But most of our women are like Rebecca, girls who have simply made a stupid mistake."

"I didn't think life had much more to teach me," he said. "Now I find I have been foolish and ignorant."

Maisie handed him a cup of tea. "Thank you," he said. "You're very kind. I was never kind to you."

"We all make mistakes," she said briskly.

"What a good thing you are here," he said to her. "Otherwise where would these poor girls go?"

"They would have their babies in ditches and alleyways," Maisie said.

"To think that might have happened to Rebecca."

"Unfortunately the hospital has to close," Maisie said.

"Why is that?"

She looked him in the eye. "All our money was in Pilasters Bank," she said. "Now we are penniless."

"Is that so?" he said, and he looked very thoughtful.