Gracie and Minnie Maude returned early in the evening, accompanied by Tellman, who carried Minnie Maude’s luggage. He took it up to the room that not long ago had been Gracie’s, then excused himself to take Gracie home. Minnie Maude began to unpack her belongings and settle in, helped by Jemima, and watched from a respectful distance by Daniel. Clothes were women’s business.
Once she had made certain that all was well, Charlotte telephoned Great-aunt Vespasia. Immensely relieved to find her at home, she asked if she might visit her.
‘You sound very serious,’ Vespasia’s voice came across the rather crackly wire.
Charlotte gripped the instrument more tightly in her hand. ‘I am. I have a great deal to tell you, and some advice to seek. But I would much prefer to tell you in person rather than this way. In fact, some of it is most confidential.’
‘Then you had better come to see me,’Vespasia replied. ‘I shall send my carriage for you. Are you ready now? We shall have supper. I was going to have Welsh rarebit on toast, with a little very good Hock I have, and then apple flan and cream. Apples at this time of year are not fit for anything except cooking.’
‘I would love it,’ Charlotte accepted. ‘I shall just make certain that my new maid is thoroughly settled and aware of what to cook for Daniel and Jemima, then I shall be ready.’
‘I thought you had had her since Gracie’s wedding,’ Vespasia remarked. ‘Is she still not able to decide what to prepare?’
‘Mrs Waterman gave notice last night and left this morning,’ Charlotte explained. ‘Gracie found me someone she has known for years, but the poor girl has only just arrived. In fact, she is still unpacking.’
‘Charlotte?’ Now Vespasia sounded worried. ‘Has something happened that is serious?’
‘Yes. Oh. . we are all alive and well, but yes, it is serious, and I am in some concern as to whether the course of action I plan is wise or not.’
‘And you are going to ask my advice? It must be serious indeed if you are willing to listen to someone else.’ Vespasia was vaguely mocking, but the anxiety all but overwhelmed her.
‘I’m not,’ Charlotte told her. ‘I have already given my word.’ She realised how final that sounded, and felt the chill rise inside her.
‘I shall dispatch my coachman immediately,’ Vespasia responded. ‘If Gracie recommends this new person then she will be good.You had better wear a cape. The evening has turned somewhat cool.’
‘Yes, yes, I will,’ Charlotte agreed, then she said goodbye, and replaced the receiver on its hook.
Half an hour later, Vespasia’s coachman knocked on the door. Minnie Maude seemed confident enough for Charlotte to leave her, and Daniel and Jemima were not in the least concerned. Indeed, they seemed to be enjoying showing her the cupboards and drawers, and telling her exactly what was kept in each.
Charlotte answered the door, told the coachman that she would be ready in a minute, then went to the kitchen. She stopped for a moment to stare at Jemima’s earnest face explaining to Minnie Maude which jugs were used to keep the day’s milk, and where the milkman was to be found in the morning. Daniel was moving from foot to foot in his urgency to put in his advice as well, and Minnie Maude was smiling at first one, then the other.
‘I may be late back,’ Charlotte interrupted. ‘Please don’t wait up for me.’
‘No, ma’am,’ Minnie Maude said quickly. ‘But I’ll be happy to, if you wish?’
‘Thank you, but please make yourself comfortable,’ Charlotte told her. ‘Good night.’
She went straight out to the carriage, and for the next half-hour rode through the streets to Vespasia’s house in Gladstone Park — which was really not so much a park as a small square with flowering trees. She sat and tried to compose in her mind exactly how she would tell Vespasia what she meant to do.
At last Charlotte sat in Vespasia’s quiet sitting room. The colours were warm, muted to a familiar gentleness. The curtains were drawn across the window onto the garden and the fire burned in the hearth with a soft whickering of flames. She looked into Vespasia’s face, and it was not so easy to explain to her the wild decision to which Charlotte had already committed herself.
Vespasia had been considered by many to be the most beautiful woman of her generation, as well as the most outrageous in her wit and her political opinions — or maybe passions would be a more fitting word. Time had marked her features lightly and if anything, liberated her temperament even more. She was secure enough in her financial means and her social pre-eminence not to have to care what other people thought of her, as long as she was certain in her own mind that a course of action was for the best. Criticism might hurt, but it was a long time since it had deterred her.
Now she sat stiff-backed — she had never lounged in her life — her silver hair coiffed to perfection. A high lace collar covered her throat and the lamplight gleaming on the three rows of pearls.
‘You had better begin at the beginning,’ she told Charlotte. ‘Supper will be another hour.’
At least Charlotte knew what the beginning was. ‘Earlier this week Mr Narraway came to see me at home, to tell me that Thomas had been in pursuit of a man who had committed a murder, almost in front of him. He and his junior had been obliged to follow this person to France, and had not had the opportunity to inform anyone of what they were doing. Mr Narraway knew that they were in France. They sent a telegram. He told me of it so that I would not worry when Thomas did not come home, or call me.’
Vespasia nodded. ‘It was courteous of him to come himself,’ she observed a trifle drily.
Charlotte caught the tone in her voice and her eyes widened.
‘He is fond of you, my dear,’ Vespasia responded. Her amusement was so slight it could barely be seen, and was gone again the second after. ‘What has this to do with the maid?’
Charlotte looked at the drawn curtains, the pale design of flowers on the carpet. ‘He came again yesterday evening,’ she said quietly, ‘and stayed for much longer.’
Vespasia’s voice changed almost imperceptibly. ‘Indeed?’
Charlotte raised her eyes to meet Vespasia’s. ‘There appears to have been a conspiracy within Special Branch to make it look as if he embezzled a good deal of money.’ She saw Vespasia’s look of disbelief. ‘They have dismissed him, right there on the spot.’
‘Oh dear,’ Vespasia said with infinite shades of meaning. ‘I see why you are distressed. This is very serious indeed. Victor may have his faults, but financial dishonesty is not one of them. Money does not interest him. He would not even be tempted to do such a thing.’
Charlotte did not find that comforting. What faults was Vespasia implying that Narraway did possess? It seemed she knew him better than Charlotte had appreciated, even though Vespasia had interested herself in many of Pitt’s cases, and therefore of Narraway’s.Then the moment after, studying Vespasia’s expression, Charlotte realised that Vespasia was deeply concerned for him, and that she believed what he had said.
Charlotte found the tension in her body easing and she smiled. ‘I did not believe it of him either, but there is something in the past that troubles him very much.’
‘There will be a good deal,’ Vespasia said with the ghost of a smile. ‘He is a man of many sides, but the most vulnerable one is his work, because that is what he cares about.’
‘Then he wouldn’t jeopardise it, would he?’ Charlotte pointed out.
‘No. Someone finds it imperative that Victor Narraway be driven out of office, and out of credit with Her Majesty’s government. There are many possible reasons, and I have no idea which of them it is, so I have very little idea where to begin.’
‘We have to help him.’ Charlotte hated asking this of Vespasia, but the need was greater than the reluctance. ‘Not only for his sake, but for Thomas’s. In Special Branch Thomas is regarded as Mr Narraway’s man. I know this because, apart from my own sense, Thomas has told me so himself, and so has Mr Narraway. Aunt Vespasia, if Mr Narraway is gone, then whoever got rid of him may very well try to get rid of Thomas too-’
‘Of course,’ Vespasia cut across her. ‘You do not need to explain it to me, my dear. And Thomas is in France, not knowing what has happened, or that Victor can no longer give him the support from London that he needs.’
‘Have you friends-’ Charlotte began.
‘I do not know who has done this, or why,’ Vespasia answered even before the question was finished. ‘So I do not know whom I can trust.’
‘Victor. . Mr Narraway. .’ Charlotte felt a faint heat in her cheeks, ‘. . said he believed it was an old case in Ireland, twenty years ago, for which someone now seeks revenge. He didn’t tell me much about it. I think it embarrassed him.’
‘No doubt.’ Vespasia allowed a bleak spark of humour into her eyes for an instant. ‘Twenty years ago? Why now? The Irish are good at holding a grudge, or a favour, but they don’t wait on payment if they don’t have to.’
‘“Revenge is a dish best served cold”?’ Charlotte suggested wryly.
‘Cold, perhaps, my dear, but this would be frozen. There is more to it than a personal vengeance, but I do not know what. By the way, what has this to do with your maid leaving? Clearly there is something you have. . forgotten. . to tell me.’
Charlotte found herself uncomfortable. Had Vespasia been less gentle, or less obviously afraid, she would have been angry.
‘Oh, Mr Narraway called after dark, and since the matter was of secrecy, for obvious reasons, he closed the parlour door. I’m afraid Mrs Waterman thought I was — am — a woman of dubious morals. She doesn’t feel she can remain in a household where the mistress has “goings-on”, as she put it.’
‘Then she is going to find herself considerably restricted in her choice of position,’ Vespasia said waspishly. ‘Especially if her disapproval extends to the master as well.’
‘She didn’t say.’ Charlotte bit her lip, but couldn’t conceal her smile. ‘But she would be utterly scandalised, so much so that she might have left that night, out into the street alone, with her suitcase in her hand, if she had known that I promised Mr Narraway that I would go to Ireland with him, to do whatever I can to find the truth and help him clear his name. I have to. His enemies are Thomas’s enemies, and Thomas will have no defence against them without Mr Narraway there. Then what shall we do?’
Vespasia was silent for several moments. ‘Be very careful, Charlotte,’ she said gravely. ‘I think you are unaware of how dangerous that could become.’
Charlotte clenched her hands. ‘What would you have me do? Sit here in London while Mr Narraway is unjustly ruined, and then wait for Thomas to be ruined as well? At best he will be dismissed because he was Mr Narraway’s man, and they don’t like him. At worst he may be implicated in the same embezzlement, and end up charged with theft.’ Her voice cracked a little and she realised how tired she was, and how very frightened. ‘What would you do?’
Vespasia reached across and touched her hand very gently, just fingertip to fingertip. ‘The same as you, my dear. That’s not the same thing as saying that it is wise. It is simply the only choice you can live with.’
There was a tap on the door, and the maid announced that supper was ready. They ate in the small breakfast room. Slender-legged Georgian mahogany furniture glowed dark amid golden yellow walls, as if they were dining in the sunset, although the curtains were closed and the only light came from the gas brackets on the walls.
Charlotte and Vespasia did not resume the more serious conversation until they had returned to the sitting room and were assured of being uninterrupted.
‘Do not forget for a moment that you are in Ireland,’ Vespasia warned. ‘Or imagine it is the same as England. It is not. They wear their past more closely wound around themselves than we do. Enjoy it while you are there, but don’t let your guard down for a second. They say you need a long spoon to sup with the devil. Well, you need a strong head to dine with the Irish. They’ll charm the wits out of you, if you let them.’
‘I won’t forget why I’m there,’ Charlotte promised.
‘Or that Victor knows Ireland very well, and the Irish also know him?’ Vespasia added. ‘Do not underestimate his intelligence, Charlotte, or his vulnerability. By the way, you have not mentioned how you intend to carry this off without causing a scandal that might damage Narraway’s good name further, but would certainly ruin yours. I assume your sense of fear and injustice did not blind you to that?’ There was no criticism in her voice, only concern.
Charlotte felt the blood hot in her face. ‘Of course I have. I can’t take a maid — I don’t have one, or the money to pay her fare if I did. I am going to say I am Mr Narraway’s sister — half-sister. That will make it decent enough.’
A tiny smile touched the corners of Vespasia’s lips. ‘Then you had better stop calling him “Mr Narraway” and learn to use his given name, or you will certainly raise eyebrows.’ She hesitated. ‘Or perhaps you already do.’
Charlotte looked into Vespasia’s steady silver-grey eyes, and chose not to elaborate.
Narraway came early the following morning in a hansom cab. When Charlotte answered the door he hesitated only momentarily. He did not ask her if she were certain of the decision. Perhaps he did not want to give her the chance to waver. He called the cab driver to put her case on the luggage rack.
‘Do you wish to go and say goodbye?’ he asked her. His face looked bleak, with shadows under his eyes as if he had not slept in many nights. ‘There is time.’
‘No thank you,’ she answered. ‘I have already done so. And I hate long goodbyes. I am quite ready to go.’
He nodded and walked behind her across the footpath. Then he handed her up onto the seat, going round to the other side to sit next to her. The cabby apparently knew the destination.
She had already decided not to tell him that she had visited Vespasia. He might prefer to think Vespasia did not know of his dismissal. She also chose not to let him know of Mrs Waterman’s suspicions. It could prove embarrassing, even as if she herself had considered the journey as something beyond business. The very thought of that made the heat rise up her face.
‘Perhaps you would tell me something about Dublin,’ she requested. ‘I have never been there, and I realise that beyond the fact that it is the capital of Ireland, I know very little.’
The idea seemed to amuse him. ‘We have a long train journey ahead of us, even on the fast train, and then a crossing of the Irish Sea. I hear that the weather will be pleasant. I hope so, because if it is rough, then it can be very violent indeed. There will be time for me to tell you all I know, from 7,500 BC until the present day.’
She was amazed at the age of the city, but she would not allow him to see that he had impressed her so easily. It might look as if she were being deliberately gentle with the grief she knew he must be feeling.
‘Really? Is that because our journey is enormously long after all, or because you know less than I had supposed?’
‘Actually there is something of a gap between 7,500 BC and the Celts arriving in 700 BC,’ he said with a smile. ‘And after that not a great deal until the arrival of St Patrick in AD 432.’
‘So we can leap eight thousand years without further comment,’ she concluded. ‘After that surely there must be something a little more detailed?’
‘The founding of St Patrick’s Cathedral in AD 119?’ he suggested. ‘Unless you want to know about the Vikings, in which case I would have to look it up myself. Anyway, they weren’t Irish, so they don’t count.’
‘Are you Irish, Mr Narraway?’ Charlotte asked suddenly. Perhaps it was an intrusive question, and when he was Pitt’s superior she would not have done it, but now the relationship was far more equal, and she might need to know. With his intensely dark looks he easily could be.
He winced slightly. ‘How formal you are. It makes you sound like your mother. No, I am not Irish, I am as English as you are, except for one great-grandmother. Why do you ask?’
‘Your precise knowledge of Irish history,’ she answered. That was not the real reason. She asked because she needed to know more about his loyalties, even his nature and, emotionally, the truth about what had happened in the O’Neil case twenty years ago.
‘It is my job to know,’ he said quietly. ‘As it was. Would you like to hear about the feud that made the King of Leinster ask Henry II of England to send over an army to assist him?’
‘Is it interesting?’
‘The army was led by Richard de Clare, known as Strongbow. He married the king’s daughter and became king himself in 1171, and the Anglo-Normans took control. In 1205 they began to build Dublin Castle. “Silken” Thomas led a revolt against Henry VIII in 1534, and lost. Do you begin to see a pattern?’
‘Of course I do. Do they burn the King of Leinster in effigy?’
He laughed, a brief, sharp sound. ‘I haven’t seen it done, but it sounds like a good idea. We are at the station. Let me get a porter. We will continue when we are seated on the train.’
The hansom pulled up as he spoke and he alighted easily. There was an air of command in him that attracted attention within seconds, and the luggage was unloaded into a wagon, the driver paid, and Charlotte walked across the pavement into the vast Paddington railway station for the Great Western rail to Holyhead.
It had great arches, as if it were some half-finished cathedral, and a roof so high it dwarfed the massed people all talking and clattering their way to the platform. There was a sense of excitement in the air, and a good deal of noise and steam and grit.
Narraway took her arm. For a moment his grasp felt strange and she was about to object, then she realised how foolish that would be. If they were parted in the crowd they might not find each other again until after the train had pulled out. He had the tickets, and he must know which platform they were seeking.
They passed groups of people, some greeting each other, some clearly stretching out a reluctant parting. Every so often the sound of belching steam and the clang of doors drowned out everything else. Then a whistle would blast shrilly, and one of the great engines would come to life, beginning the long pull away from the platform.
It was not until they had found their train and were comfortably seated that they resumed any kind of conversation. Charlotte found Narraway courteous, even considerate, but she could not help being aware of the inner tensions in him, the quick glances as if he memorised the faces of those around them, the concern, the way his hands were hardly ever completely still.
It would be a long journey to Holyhead, on the west coast. It was up to her to make it as agreeable as possible, and also to learn a good deal more about exactly what he wanted her to do.
Sitting on the rather uncomfortable seat, upright, with her hands folded in her lap, she must look very prim. It was not an image she liked, and yet now that they were embarked on this adventure together, each for his or her own reasons, she must be certain that she did not make any irretrievable mistakes, first of all in the nature of her feelings. She liked Victor Narraway. He was highly intelligent, individual, he could be very amusing at rare times, but she knew only one part of his life: the professional part, which Pitt also knew, and knew better than she ever would. Perhaps that was most of Narraway. Vespasia had hinted as much.
But Charlotte knew that there must be more, the private man. Somewhere beneath the pragmatism there had been dreams; she had seen the knowledge of their loss in his eyes.
‘Thank you for the lesson on ancient Irish history,’ she began, feeling clumsy. ‘But I need to know far more than I do about the specific matter that we are going to investigate, otherwise I will not recognise something important if I hear it. I cannot possibly remember everything to report it accurately to you.’
‘Of course not.’ He was clearly trying to keep a straight face, and not entirely succeeding. ‘I will tell you as much as I can. You understand there are aspects of it that are still sensitive. . I mean politically.’
She studied his face, and knew that he also meant they were personally painful to him. He was aware that she saw it in him and there was self-mockery in his smile.
‘Perhaps you could tell me something of the political situation?’ she suggested. ‘As much as is public knowledge — to those who were interested,’ she added, now it was her turn to mock herself very slightly. ‘I’m afraid I was more concerned with dresses and gossip at the time of the O’Neil case.’ She would have been about fifteen. ‘And thinking who I might marry, of course.’ ‘Of course,’ he nodded. ‘A subject that engages most of us, from time to time. All you need to know of the political background is that Ireland, as always, was agitating for Home Rule. Various British prime ministers had attempted to put it through Parliament, and it proved their heartbreak and, for some, their downfall. This is the time of the spectacular rise of Charles Stewart Parnell. He was to become leader of the Home Rule Party in’seventy-seven.’
‘I remember that name,’ Charlotte agreed.
‘Naturally, but this was long before the scandal that ruined him.’
‘Did he have anything to do with what happened with the O’Neil family?’
‘Nothing at all, at least not directly. But the fire and hope of a new leader was in the air, and Irish independence at last, and everything was different because of it.’ He looked out of the window at the passing countryside, and she knew he was seeing another time and place.
‘But we had to prevent it?’ she assumed.
‘I suppose it came to that, yes. We saw it as the necessity to keep the peace. Things change all the time; it is how they do it that must be controlled. There is no point in leaving a trail of death behind you in order merely to exchange one form of tyranny for another.’
‘You don’t have to justify it to me,’ she told him. ‘I am aware enough of the feeling. I only wish to understand something of the O’Neil family, and why one of them should hate you personally so much that twenty years later you believe he would stoop to manufacturing evidence that you are guilty of a crime you did not commit. What sort of a man was he then? Why has he waited so long to do this?’
Narraway turned his head away from the sunlight coming through the carriage window. He spoke reluctantly. ‘Cormac? He was a good-looking man, very strong, quick to laugh, and quick to anger — but it was usually only on the surface, and gone before he would dwell on it. But he was intensely loyal, first to Ireland above all, then to his family. He and his brother, Sean, were very close.’ He smiled. ‘Quarrelled like Kilkenny cats, as they say, but let anyone else step in and they’d turn on them like furies.’
‘How old was he then?’ she asked, picturing them in her imagination.
‘Close to forty,’ he replied without hesitation.
She wondered if he knew that from records, or if he had been close enough to Cormac O’Neil that such things were open between them. She had the increasing feeling that this was far more than a Special Branch operation. There was deep, many-layered personal emotion as well, but Narraway would only ever tell her what he had to.
She must remind herself that he had lost all he valued — not in material goods; she agreed with Vespasia that that to him was trivial — it was the loss of purpose, the fire and energy that drove him and defined who he was that most wounded him.
‘Were they from an old family?’ she pursued. ‘Where did they live, and how?’
He looked out of the window again. ‘Cormac had land to the south of Dublin — Slane. Interesting place. Old family? Aren’t we all supposed to go back to Adam?’
It was a mild evasion, and she was aware of it.
‘He doesn’t seem to have bequeathed the heritage to us equally,’ she answered.
‘I’m sorry. Am I being evasive?’
‘Yes.’
‘Cormac had enough means not to have to work more than in an occasional overseeing capacity. He and Sean between them owned a brewery as well. I dare say you know the waters of the Liffey River are famous for their softness. You can make ale anywhere, but nothing else has quite the flavour of that made with Liffey water. But you want to know what they were like.’ He made that a statement.
‘Yes,’ Charlotte replied. ‘Don’t you need me to seek him out? Because if he hates you as deeply as you think, he will tell you nothing that could help.’
The light vanished from his face. ‘If it’s Cormac, he’s thought this out very carefully. He must have known all about Mulhare and the whole operation: the money, the reason for paying it as I did, and probably that taking it instead of paying it as it was supposed to be paid, would cost Mulhare his life.’
She was not going to keep on saying she was sorry for the pain, the loss, the dishonesty of it. There was nothing to add.
‘And he must also have been able to persuade someone in Lisson Grove to help him,’ she pointed out.
Narraway winced. ‘Yes. I’ve thought about that a lot.’ Now his face was very sombre indeed. ‘I’ve been piecing together all I know: Mulhare’s connections; what I did with the money to try and make certain it would never be traced back to Special Branch, or to me personally, which in the knowledge of some would be the same thing; all the past friends and enemies I’ve made; where it happened. It always comes back to O’Neil.’
‘Why would anyone at Lisson Grove be willing to help O’Neil?’ Charlotte asked. It was like trying to take gravel out of a wound, only far deeper than a scraped knee or elbow. She thought of Daniel’s face as he sat on one of the hard-backed kitchen chairs, dirt and blood on his legs, while she tried to clean where he had torn the skin off, and pick out the tiny stones. There had been tears in his eyes and he had stared resolutely at the ceiling, trying to stop them from spilling over and giving him away.
‘Many reasons,’ Narraway replied. ‘You cannot do a job like mine without making enemies. You hear things about people you might very much prefer not to know, but that is a luxury you sacrifice when you accept the responsibility.’
‘I know that.’
His eyes wandered a little. ‘Really? How do you know that, Charlotte?’
She saw the trap and slipped around it. ‘Not from Thomas. He doesn’t discuss his cases since he joined Special Branch. And anyway, I don’t think you can explain to someone else such a complicated thing.’
He was watching her intently now. His eyes were so dark it was hard to read the expression in them. The lines in his face showed all the emotions that had passed over them through the years: the anxiety, the laughter and the grief.
‘My eldest sister was murdered, many years ago now,’ she explained. ‘But perhaps you know that already. Several young women were at that time. We had no idea who was responsible. We were all mistaken as to the entire nature of it. But in the course of the investigation we learned a great deal about each other that it would have been far more comfortable not to have known. But we cannot unlearn such things.’ She remembered it with pain now, even though it was fourteen years ago. She had absolutely no intention whatever of telling him what those discoveries were, most especially the things she had realised about herself.
She looked up at him and saw his surprise, and a gentleness that made her acutely self-conscious. The only way to cover the discomfort was to continue talking.
‘After that, when Thomas and I were married, I am afraid I meddled a good deal in many of his cases, particularly those where society people were involved. I had an advantage in being able to meet them socially, and observe things he never could. One listens to gossip as a matter of course. It is largely what society is about. But when you do it intelligently, actually trying to learn things, comparing what one person says with what another does, asking questions obliquely, weighing answers, you cannot help but learn much that is private to other people, painful, vulnerable, and absolutely none of your affair. Both pity and disillusionment can be much more painful than one has any idea, until you taste them.’
He moved his head very slightly in assent; he knew it was not necessary to speak.
For a little while they rode in silence. The rhythmic clatter of the wheels over the railway ties was comfortable, almost somnolent. It had been a difficult and tiring few days and Charlotte found herself drifting into a daze, and woke with a start. Please heaven she had not been lolling there with her mouth open!
She did not yet know anything like enough about what she could do to help.
‘Do you know who it was at Lisson Grove who betrayed you?’ she said aloud.
He answered immediately, as if he had been waiting for her to speak. Had he been sitting there watching her? It was an extraordinarily uncomfortable thought.
‘No, I don’t,’ he admitted. ‘I have considered several possibilities. In fact, the only people I am certain it is not are Thomas, and a man called Stoker. It makes me realise how incompetent I have been that I suspected nothing. I was always looking outward, at the enemies I knew. In this profession I should have looked behind me as well.’
She did not argue. It would have been a transparent and perhaps rather patronising attempt at giving comfort.
‘So we can trust no one in Special Branch, apart from Stoker,’ she concluded. ‘Then I suppose we need to concentrate on Ireland. Why does Cormac O’Neil hate you so much? If I am to learn anything, I need to know what to build upon.’
This time Narraway did not look away from her, but she could hear the reluctance in his voice. He told her only because he had to. ‘When he was planning an uprising I was the one who learned about it, and prevented it. I did it by turning his sister-in-law, Sean’s wife, and using the information she gave me to have his men arrested and imprisoned.’
‘I see.’
‘No, you don’t,’ he said quickly, his voice tight. ‘And I have no intention of telling you any further. But because of it Sean killed her, and was hanged for her murder. It is that which Cormac cannot forgive. If it had simply been a battle he would have considered it the fortunes of war. He might have hated me at the time, but it would have been forgotten, as old battles are. But Sean and Kate are still dead, still tarred as a betrayer and a wife murderer. I don’t know why he waited so long. That is the one piece of it I don’t understand.’
‘Perhaps it doesn’t matter,’ she said sombrely. It was a tragic story, even ugly, and she was certain he had edited it very heavily in the telling. It might be to hide a Special Branch secret, but she was sure that he was also ashamed of his part in it.
‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked.
‘I still have friends in Dublin, I think,’ he answered. ‘I cannot approach Cormac myself. I need someone I can trust, who looks totally innocent and unconnected with me. I. . I can’t even go anywhere with you, or he would suspect you immediately. Bring me the facts. I can put them together.’ He seemed about to add something more, then changed his mind.
‘Are you worried that I won’t know what is important?’ she asked. ‘Or that I won’t remember and tell you accurately?’
‘No. I know perfectly well that you can do both.’
‘Do you?’ She was surprised.
He smiled, briefly. ‘You tell me about helping Pitt, when he was in the police, as if you imagined I didn’t know.’
‘You said you didn’t know about my sister Sarah,’ she pointed out. ‘Or was that discretion rather than truth?’
There was a look of hurt in his face, instantly covered. ‘It was the truth. But perhaps I deserved the remark. I learned about you mostly from Vespasia. She did not mention Sarah, perhaps out of delicacy. And I had no need to know.’
‘You had some need to know the rest?’ she said with disbelief.
‘Of course. You are part of Pitt’s life. I had to know exactly how far I could trust you. Although given my present situation, you cannot be blamed for doubting my ability in that.’
‘That sounds like self-pity,’ she said tartly. ‘I have not criticised you, and that is not out of either good manners or sympathy — neither of which we can afford just at the moment, if they disguise the truth. We can’t live without trusting someone. It is an offence to betray, not to be betrayed.’
‘It is a good thing you did not marry into society,’ he retorted. ‘You would not have survived. Or, on the other hand, perhaps society would not have, and that might not have been so bad. A little shake-up now and then is good for the constitution.’
Now she was not sure if he were laughing at her, or defending himself. Or possibly it was both.
‘So you accepted my assistance because you believe I can do what you require?’ she concluded.
‘Not at all. I accepted it because you gave me no alternative. Also, since Stoker is the only other person I trust, and he did not offer, nor has he the ability, I had no alternative anyway.’
‘Touche,’ she said quietly.
They did not speak again for quite some time, and when they did it was about the difference between society in London and in Dublin. Narraway described quite a lot of the city itself and some of the surrounding countryside with such vividness she began to look forward to seeing it herself. He even spoke of the festivals, saints’ days, and other occasions that people celebrated.
When the train drew into Holyhead they went straight to the boat. After a brief meal, they returned to their cabins for the crossing. They would arrive in Dublin before morning, but were not required to disembark until well after daylight.
Dublin was utterly different from London, but at least to begin with Charlotte was too occupied with getting ashore at Dun Laoghaire, and seeing that she did not lose sight of the porter with her luggage, or of Narraway, to have time to stare about her. Then there was the ride into the city itself, which was just waking up to the new day, the rain-washed streets clean and filling with people about their business. She saw plenty of horse traffic — mostly trade at this hour; the carriages and broughams would come later. The few women were laundresses, maids going shopping, or factory workers wearing thick skirts and with heavy shawls wrapped around them, much as they would have been at home.
Narraway hailed a cab and they set out to look for accommodation. He seemed to know exactly where he was going and gave very precise directions to the driver, but he did not explain them to her. They rode in silence. He stared out of the window and she watched his face, the harsh early morning light showing even the smallest lines around his eyes and mouth. It made him seem older, far less sure of himself.
She wondered what he was remembering as he watched streets that must be familiar to him. How much of the passion or the grief of his life had been here? She was glad she did not know, and it seemed intrusive even to think about it. She hoped that she never had to learn.
She thought of Daniel and Jemima, and hoped Minnie Maude was settling in. They had seemed to like her, and surely anyone Gracie vouched for would be good. She could not resent Gracie’s happiness, but she missed her painfully at times like this.
That was absurd: there had never been another time like this. All the past cases and adventures had been in London, or very near it. Here she was in a foreign country, with Victor Narraway, riding around the streets looking for lodgings. Little wonder Mrs Waterman was scandalised. Perhaps she was right to be. Charlotte had no idea where she was, and not much more as to what possible use she could be, to Narraway or to Pitt.
And Pitt was in France, pursuing someone who thought nothing of slitting a man’s throat in the street and leaving him to die as if he were no more than a sack of rubbish. Pitt didn’t even have a clean shirt, socks or personal linen. Narraway had sent him money, but he would need more. He would need help, information, probably the assistance of the French police. Would Narraway’s replacement provide all this? Was he loyal? Was he even competent?
And worse than any of that, if he was Narraway’s enemy, then he was almost certainly Pitt’s enemy as well, only Pitt would not know that. He would go on communicating as if it were Narraway at the other end.
She turned away and looked out of the window on her own side. They were passing handsome Georgian houses and, every now and then, public buildings and churches of classical elegance. There were glimpses of the river, which she thought did not seem to curve and wind as much as the Thames.
She saw several horse-drawn trams, not unlike those in London, and — in the quieter streets — children playing with spinning tops or jumping ropes.
Twice she drew in breath to ask Narraway where they were going, but each time she looked at the tense concentration on his face, she changed her mind.
Finally they stopped outside a house in Molesworth Street in the south-eastern part of the city.
‘Stay here.’ Narraway came suddenly to attention. ‘I shall be back in a few moments.’ Without waiting for her acknowledgement he got out, strode across the footpath and rapped sharply on the door of the nearest house. After less than a minute it was opened by a middle-aged woman in a white apron, her hair tied in a knot on top of her head. Narraway spoke to her and she invited him in, closing the door again behind him.
Charlotte sat and waited, suddenly cold now and aware of how tired she was. She had slept poorly last night, aware of the rather cramped cabin and the constant movement of the boat. But far more than anything physical, it was the rashness of what she was doing that kept her awake. Now, alone, waiting, she wished she were anywhere but here. Pitt would be furious. What if he had returned home to find the children alone with a maid he had never seen before? They would tell him Charlotte had gone off to Ireland with Narraway, and of course they would not even be able to tell him why!
She was shivering when Narraway came out again and spoke to the driver, then at last to her.
‘There are rooms here. It is clean and quiet and we shall not be noticed, but it is perfectly respectable. As soon as we are settled I shall go to make contact with the people I can still trust.’ He looked at her face carefully. She was aware that she must look rumpled and tired, and probably ill-tempered into the bargain. She had not a very flattering picture of herself in her mind. A smile would help: it normally did. But in the circumstances it would also be idiotic.
‘Please wait for me,’ he went on. ‘Rest, if you like. We may be busy this evening. Unfortunately we have no time to waste.’
He held out his arm to assist her down, meeting her eyes earnestly, questioning, before letting go. He was clearly concerned for her, but she was glad that he did not say anything more. It had all been discussed. It was inevitable there would be times of terrible doubt, perhaps even times when she was quite sure they would fail, and the whole undertaking was completely irresponsible. They must be endured with as much fortitude and as little complaint as possible. She should not forget that it was his career that was ruined, not hers, and it was he who would in the end have to bear it alone. He was the one accused of theft and betrayal. No one would blame her for any of this.
But of course there was every likelihood that they would blame Pitt.
‘Thank you,’ she said with a quick smile, then turned away to look at the house. ‘It seems very pleasant.’
He hesitated, then with more confidence he went ahead of her to the front door. When the landlady opened it for them, he introduced Charlotte as Mrs Pitt, his half-sister, who had come to Ireland to meet with relatives on her mother’s side.
‘How do you do, ma’am?’ Mrs Hogan said cheerfully. ‘Welcome to Dublin, then. A fine city it is.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Hogan. I look forward to seeing it very much,’ Charlotte replied.
Narraway went out almost immediately. Charlotte began by unpacking her case and shaking the creases out of the few clothes she had brought. There was only one dress suitable for any sort of formal occasion, but she had some time ago decided to copy the noted actress, Lillie Langtry, and add different effects to it each time: two lace shawls, one white, one black; special gloves; a necklace of haematite and rock crystals; earrings; anything that would draw the attention from the fact that it was the same gown. At least it fitted remarkably well. Women might be perfectly aware that it was the same one each time, but with luck, men would notice only that it became her.
As she hung it up in the wardrobe along with a good costume with two skirts, and a lighter-weight dress, she remembered the days when Pitt had still been in the police, and she and Emily had tried their own hands at helping the detection.
Of course, at that time Pitt’s cases had been rooted in human passions, and occasionally social ills, but never secrets of state. There had been no reason why he would not discuss them with her, and benefit from her greater insight into society’s rules and structures, and especially the subtler ways of women whose lives were so different from his own he could not guess what lay behind their manners and their words.
At times it had been dangerous; almost always it had involved tragedy, and afterwards a greater anger at injustice, and compassion for confusion or grief. But she had loved the adventure of both heart and mind, the cause for which to fight. She had never for an instant been bored, or suffered that greater dullness of soul that comes when one does not have a purpose one believes in passionately. What does one value, if one cannot imagine losing it?
She laid out her toiletries, both on the dressing table and in the very pleasant bathroom, which she shared with another female guest. Then she took off her travelling skirt and blouse, and the pins out of her hair, and lay down on the bed in her petticoat.
She must have fallen asleep because she woke to hear a tap on the door. She sat up, for a moment completely at a loss as to where she was. The furniture, the lamps on the walls, the windows were all unfamiliar. Then it came back to her and she rose so quickly she was dragging the coverlet with her.
‘Who is it?’ she asked.
‘Victor,’ he replied quietly, perhaps remembering he was supposed to be her brother, and Mrs Hogan might have excellent hearing.
‘Oh.’ She looked down at herself in her underclothes, hair all over the place. ‘A moment, please,’ she requested. There was no chance in the world of redoing her hair, but she must make herself decent. She was suddenly self-conscious of her appearance. She seized her skirt and jacket and pulled them on, misbuttoning the latter in her haste and having then to undo it all and start anew. He must be standing in the corridor, wondering what on earth was the matter with her.
‘I’m coming,’ she repeated. There was no time to do more than put the brush through her hair, then pull the door open.
He looked tired, but it did not stop the amusement in his eyes when he saw her, or a flash of appreciation she would have preferred not to be aware of. Perhaps she was not beautiful — certainly not in a conventional sense — but she was a remarkably handsome woman with a fair, warm-toned skin and rich hair. And she had never, since turning sixteen, lacked the shape or allure of womanhood.
‘You are invited to dinner this evening,’ he said as soon as he was inside the room and the door closed. ‘It is at the home of John and Bridget Tyrone, whom I dare not meet yet. My friend Fiachra McDaid will escort you. I’ve known him a long time and he will treat you with courtesy. Will you go. . please?’
‘Of course I will,’ she said instantly, as much to commit herself before she could let her caution prevent her as to assure Narraway. ‘Tell me something about Mr McDaid, and about Mr and Mrs Tyrone. Any advantage I can have, so much the better. And what do they know of you? Will they be startled that you suddenly produce a half-sister?’ She smiled slightly. ‘And how well do you and I know each other? Do I know you work with Special Branch? We had better have grown up quite separately, because we know too little of each other. Even one mistake would arouse suspicion.’
He leaned against the doorjamb, hands in his pockets. He looked completely casual, nothing like the man she knew professionally. She had a momentary vision of how he must have been twenty years ago: intelligent, elusive, emotionally unattainable — but to some women that in itself was an irresistible temptation. Before her marriage, and occasionally since, she had known women for whom that was an excitement far greater than the thought of a suitable marriage, even than a title or money.
She stood still, waiting for his reply, conscious of her travelling costume and extremely untidy hair.
‘My father married your mother, after my mother died,’ he began.
She was about to express sympathy, then realised she had no idea whether his mother was dead, or if he were making it up for the story they must tell. Perhaps better she was not confused with the truth, whatever that was.
‘By the time you were born,’ he continued, ‘I was already at university — Cambridge — you should know that. That is why we know each other so little. My father is from Buckinghamshire, but he could perfectly well have moved to London, so you may have grown up wherever you did. Always better to stay with the truth where you can. I know London. I would have visited.’
‘What did he do — our father?’ she asked. This all had an air of unreality about it, even ridiculousness, but she knew it mattered, perhaps vitally.
‘He had land in Buckinghamshire,’ he replied. ‘He served in the Indian Army.You don’t need to have known him well. I didn’t.’
She heard the sharpness of regret in his voice, anger at loss, then it was gone. ‘He died some time ago. Keep the mother you have. You and I have become close only recently. This trip is in part for that purpose.’ An unreadable expression flickered through his eyes and vanished again.
‘Why Ireland?’ she asked. ‘Someone is bound to ask me.’
‘My grandmother was Irish,’ he replied.
‘Really?’ she was surprised, but perhaps she should have known it.
‘No.’ This time he smiled fully, with both sweetness and humour. ‘But she’s dead too. She won’t mind.’
‘I see,’ she said quietly. ‘And this relative that I am looking for? How is it that I remain here without finding them? In fact, why do I think to find them anyway?’
‘Perhaps it is best if you don’t,’ he answered. ‘You merely want to see Dublin. I have told you stories about it and we have seized the excuse to visit. That will flatter our hosts and be easy enough to believe. It’s a beautiful city and has a character that is unique.’
She did not argue, but she felt that nothing very much would happen if she did not ask questions. Polite interest could be very easily brushed aside and met with polite and uninformative answers.
Charlotte collected her cape and they left Molesworth Street, and in the pleasant spring evening walked in companionable silence the half a mile to the house of Fiachra McDaid.
Narraway knocked on the carved mahogany door and after a few moments it was opened by an elegant man wearing a casual, velvet jacket of dark green. He was quite tall, but even under the drape of the fabric, Charlotte could see that he was a little plump around the middle. In the lamplight by the front door his features were melancholy, but as soon as he recognised Narraway, his expression lit with a vitality that made him startlingly attractive. It was difficult to know his age from his face, but he had white wings to his black hair, so Charlotte judged him to be close to fifty.
‘Victor!’ he said cheerfully, holding out his hand and grasping Narraway’s fiercely. ‘Wonderful invention, the telephone, but there’s nothing like seeing someone.’ He turned to Charlotte. ‘And you must be Mrs Pitt, come to our queen of cities for the first time. Welcome. It will be my pleasure to show you some of it. I’ll pick the best bits, and the best people, there’ll be time only to taste it and no more. Your whole life wouldn’t be long enough for all of it. Come in, and have a drink before we start out.’ He held the door wide and after a glance at Narraway, Charlotte accepted.
Inside the rooms were elegant, very Georgian in appearance. They could easily have been in any good area of London, except perhaps for some of the pictures on the walls, and a certain character to the silver goblets on the mantel. She was interested in the subtle differences, but it would be discourteous to stare. He would not know she admired it rather than criticised. And they had no time for such indulgence anyway.
‘You’ll be wanting to go to the theatre,’ Fiachra McDaid went on, looking at Charlotte. It was a discreet regard, passing as no more than courteous interest, but she noticed that he was studying her quite carefully.
He offered her sherry, which she merely sipped. She needed a very clear head and she had eaten little.
‘Naturally,’ she answered with a smile. ‘I could hardly hold my head up in society at home if I came to Dublin and did not visit the theatre.’ With a touch of satisfaction she saw an instant of puzzlement in his eyes. It had been a trivial remark, such as a woman might make who cares what others thought of her rather than who she was to herself — not a person Narraway would befriend by choice. What had he told this man of her? For that matter, what did Fiachra McDaid know of Narraway? She had asked, but he had not answered.
The look in McDaid’s eyes, quickly masked, told her that it was quite a lot. She smiled, not to charm but in her own amusement.
He saw it, and understood.Yes, most certainly he knew quite a lot about Narraway.
‘I imagine everybody of interest is at the theatre, at one time or another,’ she said aloud.
‘Indeed,’ McDaid nodded his head. ‘And many will be there at dinner tonight at the home of John and Bridget Tyrone. It will be my pleasure to introduce you to them. It is a short carriage ride from here, but certainly too far to return you to Molesworth Street on foot, at what may well be a very late hour.’
‘It sounds an excellent arrangement,’ she accepted. She turned to Narraway. ‘I shall see you at breakfast tomorrow? Shall we say eight o’clock?’
Narraway smiled. ‘I think you might prefer we say nine,’ he replied.
Charlotte and Fiachra McDaid spoke of trivial things on the carriage ride, which was, as he had said, quite short. Mostly he named the streets through which they were passing, and mentioned a few of the famous people who had lived there at some time in their lives. Many she had not heard of, but she did not say so, although she thought he guessed. Sometimes he prefaced the facts with ‘as you will know’, and then told her what indeed she had not known.
The home of John and Bridget Tyrone was larger than McDaid’s. It had a splendid entrance hall with staircases rising on both sides, which curved around the walls and met in a gallery arched above the doorway into the first reception room. The dining room was to the left beyond that, with a table set for above twenty people.
Charlotte was suddenly aware of being an outsider privileged to be included by some means of favour owed or returned.There were already more than a dozen people present, men in formal black and white, women in exactly the same variety of colours one might have found at any fashionable London party. What was different was the vitality in the air, the energy of emotion in the gestures, and now and then the lilt of a voice that had not been schooled out of its native music.
She was introduced to the hostess, Bridget Tyrone, a handsome woman with very white teeth and the most magnificent auburn hair, which she had hardly bothered to dress. It seemed to have escaped her attempts like autumn leaves in a gust of wind.
‘Mrs Pitt has come to see Dublin,’ McDaid told her. ‘Where better to begin than here?’
‘Is it curiosity that brings you, then?’ John Tyrone asked, standing at his wife’s elbow, a dark man with bright blue eyes.
Sensing rebuke in the question, Charlotte seized the chance to begin her mission. ‘Interest,’ she corrected him with a smile she hoped was warmer than she felt it. ‘Some of my grandmother’s family were from this area, and spoke of it with such vividness I wanted to see it for myself. I regret it has taken me so long to do so.’
‘I should have known it!’ Bridget said instantly. ‘Look at her hair, John! That’s an Irish colour, if you like, now isn’t it? What were their names?’
Charlotte thought rapidly. She had to invent, but let it be as close to the truth as possible, so she wouldn’t forget what she had said, or contradict herself. And it must be useful. There was no point in any of this if she learned nothing of the past. Bridget Tyrone was waiting, eyes wide.
Charlotte’s mother’s mother had been Christine Owen. ‘Christina O’Neil,’ she said with the same sense of abandon she might have had were she jumping into a raging river.
There was a moment’s silence. She had an awful thought that there might really be such a person. How on earth would she get out of it, if there were?
‘O’Neil,’ Bridget repeated. ‘Sure enough there are O’Neils around here. Plenty of them.You’ll find someone who knew her, no doubt. Unless, of course, they left in the famine. Only God Himself knows how many that’d be. Come now, let me introduce you to our other guests, because you’ll not be knowing them.’
Charlotte accompanied her obediently and was presented to one couple after another. She struggled to remember unfamiliar names, trying hard to say something reasonably intelligent, and at the same time gain some sense of the gathering, and whom she should seek to know better. She must tell Narraway something more useful than that she had gained an entry to Dublin society. At that rate it could take half a year before she acquired any information that led to finding who had betrayed him into the wilderness.
She introduced her fictitious grandmother again.
‘Really?’ Talulla Lawless said with surprise, raising her thin, black eyebrows as soon as Charlotte mentioned the name, now as determined to be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. She would gain nothing by timidity, and time was short. ‘You sound fond of her,’ Talulla continued. She was a slender woman, almost bony, but with marvellous eyes, wide and bright, and of a shade neither blue nor green.
Charlotte thought of the only grandmother she knew, and found impossibly cantankerous. ‘She told me wonderful stories of Dublin society, of the intrigue,’ she lied confidently. ‘I dare say they were a little exaggerated, but there was a truth in them of the heart, even if events were a trifle inaccurate in the retelling.’
Talulla exchanged a brief glance with a fair-haired man called Phelim O’Conor, but it was so quick that Charlotte barely saw it.
‘Am I mistaken?’ Charlotte asked apologetically.
‘Oh, no,’ Talulla assured her. ‘That would be long ago, no doubt?’
Charlotte swallowed. ‘Yes, about twenty years, I think. There was a cousin she wrote to often, or it maybe it was her cousin’s wife. A very beautiful woman, so my grandmama said.’ She tried rapidly to calculate the age Kate O’Neil would be were she still alive. ‘Perhaps a second cousin,’ she amended. That would allow for a considerable variation.
‘Twenty years ago,’ Phelim O’Connor said slowly. ‘A lot of trouble then. But you wouldn’t be knowing that — in London. Might have seemed romantic to your grandmother, Charles Stewart Parnell, and all that. God rest his soul. Other people’s griefs can be like that.’ His face was smooth, almost innocent, but there was a darkness in his voice.
‘I’m sorry,’ Charlotte said quietly. ‘I didn’t mean to touch on something painful. Do you think perhaps I shouldn’t ask?’ She looked from Phelim to Talulla, and back again.
He gave a very slight shrug. ‘No doubt you’ll hear anyway. If your cousin’s wife was Kate O’Neil, she’s dead now, God forgive her. .’
‘How can you say that?’ Talulla spat the words between her teeth, the muscles in her thin jaw clenched tight. ‘Twenty years is nothing! The blink of an eye in the history of Ireland’s sorrows.’
Charlotte tried to look totally puzzled, and guilty. Actually she was beginning to be a little afraid. The rage in Talulla was like the touch on an exposed nerve.
‘Because there’s been new blood, and new tears since then,’ Phelim answered, speaking to Talulla, not Charlotte. ‘And new issues to address.’ He left the sentence hanging as if there were more to say.
Good manners might have dictated that Charlotte apologise again and withdraw, leaving them to deal with the memories in their own way, but she thought of Pitt in France, alone, trusting in Narraway to back him up. She feared there were only Narraway’s enemies in Lisson Grove now, people who might so easily be Pitt’s enemies too. Good manners were a luxury for another time.
‘Is there some tragedy my grandmother knew nothing of?’ she asked innocently. ‘I’m sorry if I have woken an old bereavement, or injustice. I certainly did not mean to. I’m so sorry.’
Talulla looked at her with undisguised harshness, a slight flush in her sallow cheeks. ‘If your grandmother’s cousin was Kate O’Neil, she trusted an Englishman, an agent of the Queen’s government who courted her, flattered her into telling him her own people’s secrets, then betrayed her to be murdered by those whose trust she gave away.’
O’Conor winced. ‘I dare say she loved him. We can all be fools for love,’ he said wryly.
‘I dare say she did!’ Talulla snarled. ‘But that son of a whore never loved her, and with half a drop of loyalty in her blood she’d have known that. She’d have won his secrets, then put a knife in his belly. He might have been able to charm the fish out of the sea, but he was her people’s enemy, and she knew that. She got what she deserved.’ She turned and moved away sharply, her dark head high and stiff, her back ramrod straight, and she made no attempt to offer even a glance backward.
‘You’ll have to forgive Talulla,’ O’Conor said ruefully. ‘Anyone would think she’d loved the man herself, and it was twenty years ago. I must remember never to flirt with her. If she fell for my charm I might wake up dead of it.’ He shrugged. ‘Not that it’d be likely, God help me!’ He did not add anything more, but his expression said all the rest.
Then with a sudden smile, like spring sun through the drifting rain, he told her about the place where he had been born and the little town to the north where he had grown up and his first visit to Dublin when he had been six.
‘I thought it was the grandest place I’d ever seen,’ he said with a smile. ‘Street after street of buildings, each one fit to be the palace of a king. And some so wide it was a journey just to cross from one side to another.’
Suddenly Talulla’s hatred was no more than a lapse in manners, and was easily forgotten as someone accidentally knocking your elbow and spilling your wine.
But she did not forget it. O’Conor’s sudden charm had been as much a desire to hide something he was ashamed to expose in front of a stranger, as his own clear love for the lyrical voice of his countrymen. She was certain that he would find Talulla afterwards, and when they were alone, berate her for allowing a foreigner, and an Englishwoman at that, to see a part of their history that should have been kept private. It was like a family airing soiled linen where any passer-by could see it, and read their secrets.
The party continued. The food was excellent, the wine flowed generously. There was laughter, sharp and poignant wit, even music as the evening approached midnight. But Charlotte did not forget the emotion she had seen, and the hatred.
She rode home in the carriage with Fiachra McDaid, and in spite of his gentle enquiries, she said nothing except how much she had enjoyed the hospitality.
‘And did anyone know your cousin?’ he asked. ‘Dublin’s a small town, when it comes to it.’
‘I don’t think so,’ she answered easily. ‘But I may find trace of her later. O’Neil is not a rare name. And anyway, it doesn’t matter very much.’
‘Now there’s something I doubt our friend Victor would agree with,’ he said candidly. ‘I had the notion it mattered to him rather a lot. Was I wrong, then, do you suppose?’
For the first time in the evening she spoke the absolute truth. ‘I think maybe you know him a great deal better than I do, Mr McDaid. We have met only in one set of circumstances, and that does not give a very complete picture of a person, do you think?’
In the darkness inside the carriage she could not read his expression.
‘And yet I have the distinct idea that he is fond of you, Mrs Pitt,’ McDaid replied. ‘Am I wrong in that too, do you suppose?’
‘I don’t do much supposing, Mr McDaid. . at least not aloud,’ she said. The certainty was increasing inside her that it was Narraway of whom Talulla had been speaking when she referred to Kate O’Neil’s betrayal — both of her country, and of her husband — because she had loved a man who had used her, and who then allowed her to be murdered for it. Then she remembered what Phelim O’Conor had said of Narraway, and she wondered how much she really knew him.
There must be more to the story; there always was. But would it make the tragedy and the ugliness of it any better? Narraway had said Cormac O’Neil had sought revenge. The only mystery was why he had waited twenty years for it.
Pitt had believed in Narraway; Charlotte knew that without doubt. But she also knew that Pitt thought well of most people, even if he accepted that they were complex, capable of cowardice, greed and violence. But had he ever understood any of the darkness within Narraway, the human beneath the fighter against his country’s enemies? They were so different. Narraway was subtle, where Pitt was instinctive. He understood people because he could imagine himself in their place. He understood weakness, fear; he had felt need and knew how powerful it could be.
But he also understood gratitude. Narraway had offered him dignity, purpose and a means to feed his family when he had desperately needed it. He would never forget that.
Was he also just a little naive?
She remembered with a smile how disillusioned he had been when he had discovered the shabby behaviour of the Prince of Wales. She had felt his shame for a man he thought should have been better. He had believed more in the honour of his calling than the man did himself. She loved Pitt intensely for that, even in the moment she understood it.
Narraway would never have been misled; he would have expected roughly what he eventually found. He might have been disappointed, but he would not have been hurt.
Had he ever been hurt?
Could he have loved Kate O’Neil, and still used her? Not as Charlotte understood love.
But then perhaps Narraway always put duty first. Maybe he was feeling a deep and insuperable pain for the first time, because he was robbed of the one thing he valued: his work, in which his identity was so bound up.
Why on earth was she riding through the dark streets of a strange city, with a man she had never seen before tonight, taking absurd risks, telling lies, in order to help a man of whom she knew so little? Why did she ache with a loss for him?
Because she imagined how she would feel if he were like her — and he was not. She imagined he cared about her, because she had seen it in his face in unguarded moments. It was probably loneliness she saw, an instant of lingering for a love he would only find an encumbrance if he actually had it.
‘I hear Talulla Lawless gave you a little display of her temper,’ McDaid interrupted her thoughts. ‘I’m sorry for that. Her wounds are deep, and she sees no need to hide them. But it is hardly your fault. But then there are always casualties of war, the innocent often as much as the guilty.’
She turned to look at his face in the momentary light of a passing carriage lamp. His eyes were bright, his mouth twisted in a sad little smile. Then the darkness shadowed him again and she was aware of him only as a soft voice, a presence beside her, the smell of fabric and a faint sharpness of tobacco.
‘Of course,’ she agreed very quietly.
They reached Molesworth Street and the carriage stopped.
‘Thank you, Mr McDaid,’ she said with perfect composure. ‘It was most gracious of you to have me invited, and to accompany me. Dublin’s hospitality is all that has been said of it, and believe me, that is high praise.’
‘We have just begun,’ he replied warmly. ‘Give Victor my regards, and tell him we shall continue. I won’t rest until you think this is the fairest city on earth, and the Irish the best people. Which of course we are, in spite of our passion and our troubles. You can’t hate us, you know.’ He said it with a smile that was wide and bright in the lamplight.
‘Not the way you hate us, anyway,’ she agreed gently. ‘But then we have no cause. Good night, Mr McDaid.’