Monk should have accepted the answer implicit in her words, and yet in spite of all sense he refused to. When Hester's father had shot himself because of the unanswerable debt he had been cheated into, she had returned from the Crimea, where she had been serving as a military nurse, and redoubled her efforts to strengthen her family and to fight all the wrongs she encountered. It had been her resolve that had strengthened Monk to struggle against the burden that had seemed impossible to him. She was acid-tongued-at least he had thought so-opinionated and unwise in her expression of it, hasty to judge and quick-tempered, but even he, who had found her so irritating, had never doubted her courage or her iron will.

Of course he had seen the passion, the laughter, and the vulnerability in her since then. Was he imagining in Mary Havilland something she had never possessed? Whatever the cost to Mrs. Argyll, he wanted to know.

"I understand that your father met his death recently," he said gravely. "And that Miss Havilland found it very difficult to come to terms with."

She looked at him wearily. "She never did," she answered. "She couldn't accept that he took his own life. She wouldn't accept it, in spite of all the evidence. I'm afraid she became… obsessed." She blinked. "Mary was very… strong-willed, to put it at its kindest. She was close to Papa, and she couldn't believe that something could be so wrong and he would not confide in her. I'm afraid perhaps they were not as… as close as she imagined."

"Could she have been distressed over the breaking of her betrothal to Mr. Argyll?" Monk asked, trying to grasp on to some reason why a healthy young woman should do something so desperate as plunge over the bridge.