The Consequences of Fear, Jacqueline Winspear [most important books to read TXT] 📗

the man she had once loved, a soldier who had returned from service in the Great War with terrible facial wounds. That visit to the square in 1929 had itself been a walk down memory lane for Maisie. When she was younger, some months after Maurice first became her mentor and began directing her studies so that she might gain a place at university, he had brought her to see various friends and associates who lived in and around the square, which had become an enclave of writers, artists and philosophers, both women and men, who had clustered in the area in search of like-minded intellectual neighbors.

Now she had returned to see Gabriella Marie Hunter, a woman who had once told Maisie that she preferred the companionshipof her books and papers to most human fellowship, though in her recent letter she had admitted to a certain “yearning forthe company of someone who knew Maurice.” The letter inspired Maisie to pay a visit sooner rather than later. She had alwaysliked Gabriella, and—if truth be told—despite the woman’s admission regarding her devotion to her work, she thought Gabriellawas wise in matters of the heart. With the exception of her beloved family, matters of the heart had always been Maisie’sAchilles’ heel, so she welcomed the opportunity to seek the older woman’s counsel.

Hunter’s connection with Maurice had been seeded in childhood, though she was a good deal younger than Maisie’s former mentor.Both were the offspring of a union between France and Britain: in the case of Maurice, his Scottish mother had married a Frenchman;Gabriella’s mother was French, her father English. They were drawn together by their shared backgrounds when Hunter was astudent and Maurice her professor. Maisie had sometimes wondered if they had been lovers, but always put the thought out ofher head. Imagining Maurice in the intimate presence of a woman would have been akin to speculating about one’s parents havinga wild, passion-filled affair—though the suspicion remained. Maisie suppressed a laugh as she took hold of the bellpull andwaited.

A housekeeper answered the door with a curt “May I help you?”

Maisie smiled. It was her break-down-the-portcullis smile, for she suspected the woman might be overly protective of her employer.“Good afternoon. My name is Maisie Dobbs, and I’m an old friend of Miss Hunter. She wrote asking me to call—I sent a postcardby return to let her know I’d pay a visit this afternoon, though I am later than promised—and of course, the postcard mightnot have arrived.” She reached into her bag for a calling card and held it out to the housekeeper. “Here you are.”

There was an instant change in the housekeeper’s demeanor upon reading the card. She ushered Maisie into the hall, where sheasked if she would care to take a seat while she inquired if Miss Hunter might accept her visit.

Maisie smiled as the housekeeper departed along the narrow passageway toward the second room on the right, which she knewwas Gabriella Marie Hunter’s study and library. She rarely took advantage of her position but on occasion found it usefulto eschew the card introducing her as a “Psychologist and Investigator” for one of the personal calling cards her mother-in-lawhad given her upon her marriage to James Compton. It announced her as “Lady Margaret Compton”—a position underlined by theimpressive Compton family crest. Maisie knew Gabriella would find it rather amusing.

Gabriella Hunter came to her feet and held out both hands as Maisie entered the library and the housekeeper took her leave. “Maisie, dear—it has been far too long.” She kissed Maisie on each cheek and extended a hand toward an armchair next to the fireplace. A needlepoint screen with a geometric pattern in bold primary colors stood in front of the cold grate. Maisie knew not to expect the austere working study, which as a rule would be associated with an academic. This was a room where walls that were not covered with stacks of books were painted in a pale peach color and complemented by curtains of the same hue, just a shade or two deeper. The combination gave Hunter’s surroundings an aura of calm. The Art Deco armchairs would have been as out of place in a gentleman’s club as they would in the home of a dowager who favored cabbage roses. Each chair was upholstered in heavy pale-cream fabric, with lines of brown piping fanned to resemble a shell. Wide rounded arms set off by the same piping dominated the two armchairs, which gave the impression of enfolding a person as they settled into the thick cushioned seats.

Maisie sat down, at once feeling as she had in those days when she and Maurice would sit before the fireplace in the DowerHouse library. There was a certain anticipation of deep and worthy conversation, a feeling that she would be stretched intellectually.As with the exercise of any muscle, though, she could expect some strain, and there would be an almost painful pleasure inthe outcome.

Gabriella Marie Hunter was a woman with bearing, though she now used a cane to steady herself. She wore a plain navy blueday dress of linen and silk—a blend Maisie recognized, for although it had the look, movement and texture of silk, there wasa heavier weight to the fabric. A single strand of pearls adorned the woman’s neck, with delicate matching pearl earrings.A silver watch appeared to be draped rather than buckled on her wrist, and Maisie remembered that Gabriella told her oncethat she hated the feeling of anything tight fitting, confiding that she had never, nor would she ever, wear a corset. Herstill-slender frame seemed not to need the confining article of clothing.

With hair a blend of different shades of gray, as if an artist had taken a fine brush and painted long sweeps of silver nextto charcoal, and a cut reminiscent of the same short bob she had worn some forty years earlier, Gabriella Hunter was the epitomeof elegance.

“Tell me how you’ve been, Maisie—how is your heart? Mended? Scarred? Still rather an open wound? Losing James was