Charlotte faced Narraway across the breakfast table in Mrs Hogan’s quiet house the next morning, her mind still in conflict as to what she would say to him. She needed far more time to weigh what she had heard, although even that might not help.
‘Very enjoyable,’ she answered his enquiry as to the previous evening. And she realised with surprise how much that was true. It was a long time since she had been at a party of such ease and sophistication. Although this was Dublin, not London, society was not very different.
There were no other guests in the dining room this late in the morning. Most of the other tables had already been set with clean, lace-edged linen ready for the evening. She concentrated on the generous plate of food before her. It contained far more than she needed for good health. ‘They were most kind to me,’ she added.
‘Nonsense,’ he replied quietly.
She looked up, startled by his abruptness.
He was smiling, but the sharp morning light showed very clearly the tiredness in his face, and something that might even have been fear. Her resolve to lie to him wavered. There were many ways in which he was unreadable, but not in the deep-etched lines in his face or the hollows around his eyes.
‘All right,’ she conceded. ‘They were hospitable, and a certain glamour in it was fun. Is that more precise?’
He was amused. He gave nothing so obvious as a smile, but his expression was just as plain to her.
‘Whom did you meet, apart from Fiachra, of course?’
‘You’ve known him a long time?’ she asked, remembering McDaid’s words with a slight chill.
‘Why do you say that?’ He took more toast and buttered it. He had eaten very little. She wondered if he had slept.
‘Because he asked me nothing about you,’ she answered. ‘But he seems very willing to help.’
‘A good friend,’ he replied, looking straight at her.
She smiled. ‘Nonsense,’ she said with exactly the same inflexion he had used.
‘Touche,’ he acknowledged. ‘You are right, but we have known each other a long time.’
‘Isn’t Ireland full of people you have known a long time?’
He put a little marmalade on his toast.
She waited.
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘But I do not know the allegiances of most of them.’
‘If Fiachra McDaid is a friend, what do you need me for?’ she asked bluntly. Suddenly to learn that seemed very urgent. Was she a diversion, someone to watch while he did the real discovering? Then a worse thought occurred to her: perhaps he did not want her in London where Pitt could reach her. Just how complicated was this, and how ugly? Where was the embezzled money now? Was it really about money, and not old vengeances at all? Or was it both?
It was more urgent than ever that she learn the truth, or at least all of it that still shadowed the present.
He had not answered.
‘Because you are using me, or both of us, with selected lies,’ she suggested.
He winced as if the blow had been physical as well as emotional. ‘I am not lying to you, Charlotte.’ His voice was so quiet she had to lean forward a little to catch his words. ‘I am. . being highly selective about how much of the truth I tell you.’
‘And the difference is. .?’ she asked.
He sighed. ‘You are a good detective — in your own way almost as good as Pitt — but Special Branch work is very different from ordinary domestic murder.’
‘Domestic murder isn’t always ordinary,’ she contradicted him. ‘Human love and hate very seldom are. People kill for all sorts of reasons, but it is usually to gain or protect something they value passionately. Or it is outrage at some violation they cannot bear. And I do not mean necessarily a physical one. The emotional or spiritual wounds can be far harder to recover from.’
‘I apologise,’ he responded. ‘I should have said that the alliances and loyalties stretch in far more complicated ways. Brothers can be on opposite sides, as can husband and wife. Rivals can help each other, even die for each other, if allied in the cause.’
‘And the casualties are the innocent as well as the guilty.’ She echoed McDaid’s words. ‘My role is easy enough. I would like to help you, but I am bound by everything in my nature to help my husband, and of course myself. .’
‘I had no idea you were so pragmatic,’ he said with a slight smile.
‘I am a woman, I have a finite amount of money, and I have children. A degree of pragmatism is necessary.’ She spoke gently to take the edge from the sting in her words.
He finished spreading his marmalade. ‘So you will understand that Fiachra is my friend in some things, but I will not be able to count on him if the answer should turn out to be different from the one I suppose.’
‘There is one you suppose?’
‘I told you: I think Cormac O’Neil has found the perfect way to be revenged on me, and has taken it.’
‘For something that happened twenty years ago?’ she questioned.
‘The Irish have the longest memories in Europe.’ He bit into the toast.
‘And the greatest patience too?’ she said with disbelief. ‘People take action because something, somewhere has changed. Crimes of state have that in common with ordinary, domestic murders. Something new has caused O’Neil, or whoever it is, to do this now. Perhaps it has only just become possible. Or it may be that for him, now is the right time.’
Narraway ate the whole of his toast before replying. ‘Of course you are right. The trouble is that I don’t know which of those reasons it is. I’ve studied the situation in Ireland and I can’t see any reason at all for O’Neil to do this now.’
She ignored her tea. An unpleasant thought occurred to her, chilling and very immediate. ‘Wouldn’t O’Neil know that this would bring you here?’ she asked.
Narraway stared at her. ‘You think O’Neil wants me here? I’m sure if killing me were his purpose, he would have come to London and done it. If I thought it was simply murder I wouldn’t have let you come with me, Charlotte, even if Pitt’s livelihood rests on my return to office. Please give me credit for thinking that far ahead.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised. ‘I thought bringing someone that nobody would see as assisting you might be the best way of getting round that.You never suggested it would be comfortable, or easy. And you cannot prevent me from coming to Ireland if I want to.’ He was not Pitt’s superior any more: he was simply a clever and dangerous man who had been a good friend, and was now in trouble of his own.
‘I had to tell you something of the situation, for Pitt’s sake,’ he said. ‘For your own, I cannot tell you all that I know, of Ireland or anywhere else. I don’t know any reason why O’Neil should choose now. But then I don’t know any reason why anyone should. It is unarguable that someone, with strong connections in Dublin, has chosen to steal the money I sent for Mulhare, and so bring about the poor man’s death. Then they made certain it was evident first to Austwick, and then to Croxdale, and so brought about my dismissal.’
He poured more tea for himself. ‘Perhaps it was not O’Neil who initiated it; he may simply have been willingly used. I’ve made many enemies. Knowledge and power both make that inevitable.’
‘Then think of other enemies,’ Charlotte urged. ‘Whose circumstances have changed? Is there anyone you were about to expose?’
‘My dear, do you think I haven’t thought of that?’
‘And you still believe it is O’Neil?’
‘Perhaps it is a guilty conscience.’ He gave a smile so brief it reached barely his eyes and was gone again.‘“The wicked flee where no man pursueth”,’ he quoted. ‘But there is knowledge in this that only people familiar with the case could have.’
‘Oh.’ She poured herself more tea. ‘Then we had better learn more about O’Neil. He was mentioned yesterday evening. I told them that my grandmother was Christina O’Neil.’
He swallowed. ‘And who was she really?’
‘Christine Owen,’ she replied.
He started to laugh, and she heard the raw note in it just a little out of control, too close to sadness. She said nothing, but finished her toast and then the rest of her tea.
Charlotte spent the morning and most of the afternoon quietly, reading as much as she could of Irish history, realising the vast gap in her knowledge and a little ashamed of it. Ireland was geographically so close to England, and because the English had occupied it one way or another for so many centuries, in their minds its individuality had been swallowed up in the general tide of British history. The Empire covered a quarter of the world. Englishmen tended to think of Ireland as part of their own small piece of it, linked by a common language — disregarding the existence of the Irish tongue — and of course by the Crown and the government in London.
So many of Ireland’s greatest sons had made their names on the world stage indistinguishably from the English. Everyone knew Oscar Wilde was Irish, even though his plays were absolutely English in their setting. They probably knew Jonathan Swift was Irish, but did they know it of Bram Stoker, the creator of the monstrous Count Dracula? Did they know it of the great Duke of Wellington, victor of Waterloo, and later prime minister? The fact that these men had left Ireland in their youth did not in any way alter their heritage.
Her own family was not Anglo-Irish, but in pretending to have a grandmother who was, perhaps she should be a little more sensitive to people’s feelings and treat the whole subject less casually.
By evening she was again dressed in her one black gown, this time with different jewellery and different gloves, and her hair decorated with an ornament Emily had given her years ago. Then she was worried that she was overdressed for the theatre. Perhaps other people would be far less formal. They were a highly literate culture, educated in words and ideas, but also very familiar with them. They may not consider an evening at the theatre a social affair but an intellectual and emotional one. They might think she was trivialising it by making such an issue of her own appearance, when it was the players who mattered.
She took the ornament out of her hair, and then had to restyle it not to look as if it were incomplete. All of which meant she was late, and flustered, when Narraway knocked on the door to tell her that Fiachra McDaid was here to escort her for the evening again.
‘Thank you,’ she said, putting the comb down quickly and knocking several loose hairpins onto the floor. She ignored them.
He looked at her with anxiety. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes! It is simply an indecision as to what to wear.’ She dismissed it with a slight gesture.
He regarded her carefully. His eyes travelled from her shoes, which were visible beneath the hem of her gown, all the way to the crown of her head. She felt the heat burn up her face at the candid appreciation in his eyes.
‘You made the right decision,’ he pronounced. ‘Diamonds would have been inappropriate here. They take their drama very seriously.’
She drew in a breath to say that she had no diamonds, and realised he was laughing at her. She wondered if he would have given a woman diamonds, if he loved her. She thought not. If he were capable of that sort of love, it would have been something more personal, more imaginative: music; a cottage by the sea, however small; a carving of a bird.
‘I’m so glad,’ she said, meeting his eyes. ‘I thought diamonds were too trivial.’ She accepted his arm, laying her fingers so lightly on the fabric of his jacket that he could not have felt her touch.
Fiachra McDaid was as elegant and graceful as the previous evening, although on this occasion dressed less formally. He greeted Charlotte with apparent pleasure at seeing her again, even so soon. He expressed his willingness to help her to understand as much of Irish theatre as was possible for an Englishwoman to grasp. He smiled at Charlotte as he said it, as if it were some secret aside that she already understood.
It was some time since she had been to the theatre at all. It was not an art form Pitt was particularly fond of, and she did not like going without him, even though occasionally she went with Emily and Jack, and enjoyed it enormously. What was most fun was to go with Aunt Vespasia, but Vespasia was presently so very distressed over the outcry against Oscar Wilde, and the whole case between himself and Lord Queensberry, that she had not felt inclined to visit the theatre at all.
Here in Dublin it was quite different from London. The theatre building itself was smaller; indeed there was an intimacy to it that made it less an occasion to be seen, and more of an adventure in which to participate.
McDaid introduced her to various of his own friends who greeted him. They seemed very varied in age and apparent social status, as if he had chosen them from as many walks of life as possible.
‘Mrs Pitt,’ he explained cheerfully. ‘She is over from London to see how we do things here, mostly from an interest in our fair city, but in part to see if she can find some Irish ancestry. And who can blame her? Is there anyone of wit or passion who wouldn’t like to claim a bit of Irish blood in their veins?’
She responded warmly to the welcome extended her, finding the exchanges easy, even comfortable. She had forgotten how interesting it was to meet new people, with new ideas. But she did wonder exactly what Narraway had told McDaid. From the way he answered the enquiries of one or two more curious ladies, again Charlotte thought perhaps he knew quite a lot more than Narraway had implied.
She searched his face, and saw nothing in it but good humour, interest, amusement, and a blank wall of guarded intelligence that intended to give away nothing at all.
They were very early for the performance, but most of the audience were already present. While McDaid was talking Charlotte had an opportunity to look around and study faces. They were different from a London audience only in subtle ways. There were fewer fair heads, fewer blunt Anglo-Saxon features, a greater sense of tension and suppressed energy.
And of course she heard the music of a different accent, and now and then people speaking in a language utterly unrecognisable to her. There was in them nothing of the Latin or Norman-French about the words, or the German from which so much English was derived. She assumed it was the native tongue. She could only guess at what they said by the gestures, the laughter and the expression in faces.
She noticed one in particular. His hair was black with a loose, heavy wave streaked with grey. His head was narrow-boned, and it was not until he turned towards her that she saw how dark his eyes were. His nose was noticeably crooked, giving his whole aspect a lopsided look, a kind of wounded intensity. Then he turned away, as if he had not seen her, and she was relieved. She had been staring, and that was ill-mannered, no matter how interesting a person might seem.
‘You saw him,’ McDaid observed, so quietly it was little more than a whisper.
She was taken aback. ‘Saw him? Who?’
‘Cormac O’Neil,’ he replied.
She was startled. Had she been so very obvious? ‘Was that. . I mean the man with the. .?’ Then she did not know how to finish the sentence.
‘Haunted face,’ he said it for her.
‘I wasn’t going to. .’ She saw in his eyes that she was denying it pointlessly. Either Narraway had told him, or he had pieced it together himself. It made her wonder how many others knew; indeed, if all those involved might well know more than she, and her pretence was deceiving no one. Did Narraway know that? Or was he as naive in this as she?
‘Do you know him?’ she asked instead.
‘I?’ McDaid raised his eyebrows. ‘I’ve met him, of course, but know him? Hardly at all.’
‘I didn’t mean in any profound sense,’ she parried. ‘Merely were you acquainted.’
‘In the past, I thought so.’ He was watching Cormac while seeming not to. ‘But tragedy changes people. Or then on the other hand, perhaps it only shows you what was always there, simply not yet uncovered. How much does one know anybody? Most of all oneself.’
‘Very metaphysical,’ she said drily. ‘And the answer is that you can make a guess, more or less educated, depending on your intelligence and your experience with that person.’
He looked at her steadily. ‘Victor said you were. . direct.’
She found it odd to hear Narraway referred to by his given name, instead of the formality she was used to, the slight distance that leadership required.
Now she was not sure if she were on the brink of offending McDaid. On the other hand, if she were too timid even to approach what she really wanted, she would lose the chance.
She smiled at him. ‘What was O’Neil like, when you knew him?’
McDaid’s eyes widened. ‘Victor didn’t tell you? How interesting.’
‘Did you expect him to have?’ she asked.
‘Why is he asking, why now?’ He sat absolutely still. All around him people were moving, adjusting position, smiling, waving, finding seats, nodding agreement to something or other, waving to friends.
‘Perhaps you know him well enough to ask him that?’ she suggested.
Again he countered. ‘Don’t you?’
She kept her smile warm, faintly amused. ‘Of course, but I would not repeat his answer. You must know him well enough to believe he would not confide in someone he could not trust.’
‘So perhaps we both know, and neither will trust the other,’ he mused. ‘How absurd, how vulnerable and incredibly human; indeed, the convention of many comic plays.’
‘To judge by Cormac O’Neil’s face, for him at least, it was a tragedy,’ she countered. ‘One of the casualties of war that you referred to.’
He looked at her steadily, and for a moment the buzz of conversation around them ceased to exist. ‘So he was,’ he said softly. ‘But that was twenty years ago.’
‘Does one forget?’
‘Irishmen? Never. Do the English?’
‘Sometimes,’ she replied.
‘Of course. You could hardly remember them all!’ Then he caught himself immediately and his expression changed. ‘Do you want to meet him?’ he asked.
‘Yes — please.’
‘Then you shall,’ he promised.
There was a rustle of anticipation in the audience and everyone fell silent. After a moment or two the curtain rose and the play began. Charlotte concentrated on it so that she could speak intelligently when she was introduced to people in the interval. To know nothing would imply that she was uninterested, which would be unforgivable here.
She found it difficult. There were frequent references to events she was not familiar with, even words she did not know. There was an underlying air of sadness as if the main characters knew that the ending would include a loss that nothing could ever alter, no matter what they said or did.
Was that how Cormac O’Neil felt: helpless, predestined to be overwhelmed? Everybody lost people they loved. Bereavement was a part of life. The only escape was to love no one. She stopped trying to understand the drama on the stage and as discreetly as she could, she studied O’Neil.
He seemed to be alone. He looked neither to right nor left of him, and the people on either side seemed to be with others. Not once all the time she was watching did they speak to O’Neil, or he to them, not even to glance and catch the eye at some particularly poignant line on the stage, or a moment when the audience seemed utterly in the grasp of the players.
The longer she watched him, the more totally alone did he seem to be. But she was equally sure that neither did he look bored. His eyes never strayed from the stage, yet at times his expression did not reflect the drama. She wondered what was passing through his mind: other times and events, other tragedies related to this only in the depth of their feeling?
By the time the interval came Charlotte was moved by the passion she could not escape, which emanated from the players and audience alike, but also confused by it. It made her feel more sharply than the lilt of a different accent, or even the sound of another language, that she was in a strange place teeming with emotions she caught and lost again.
‘May I take you to get something to drink?’ McDaid asked her when the curtain fell and the lights were bright again. ‘And perhaps to meet one or two more of my friends? I’m sure they are dying of curiosity to know who you are, and, of course, how I know you.’
‘I would be delighted,’ she answered. ‘And how do you know me? We had better be accurate, or it will start people talking.’ She smiled to rob the words of offence.
‘But surely the sole purpose of coming to the theatre with a beautiful woman is to start people talking?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Otherwise one would be better to come alone, like Cormac O’Neil, and concentrate on the play, without distraction.’
‘Thank you. I’m flattered to imagine I could distract you.’ She inclined her head a little, enjoying the trivial play of words. ‘Especially from so intense a drama. The actors are superb. I have no idea what they are talking about at least half the time, and yet I am conquered by their emotions.’
‘Are you sure you are not Irish?’ he pressed.
‘Not sure at all. Perhaps I am, and I should simply look harder. But please do not tell Mr O’Neil that my grandmother’s name was O’Neil also, or I shall be obliged to admit that I know very little about her, and that would make me seem very discourteous, as if I did not wish to own that part of my heritage. The truth is I simply did not realise how interesting it would be.’
‘I shall not tell him, if you don’t wish me to,’ McDaid promised.
‘But you have not told me how we met,’ she reminded him.
‘I saw you across a room and asked a mutual acquaintance to introduce us,’ he said. ‘Is that not always how one meets a woman one sees, and admires?’
‘I imagine it is. But what room was it? Was it here in Ireland? I imagine not, since I have been here only a couple of days. But have you been to London lately?’ She smiled at him. ‘Or ever, for that matter?’
‘Of course I’ve been to London. Do you think I am some provincial bumpkin?’ He shrugged. ‘Only once, mind you. I did not care for it — nor it for me. It was so huge, so crowded with people, and yet at the same time, anonymous.You could live and die there, and never be seen.’
‘But I have been in Dublin only a couple of days,’ she repeated to fill the silence.
‘Then I was bewitched at first sight,’ he said reasonably, suddenly smiling again. ‘I’m sorry I insulted your home. It was unforgivable. Call it my own inadequacy in the midst of three million English.’
‘Oh, quite a few Irishmen, believe me,’ she said with a smile. ‘And none of them in the least inadequate.’
He bowed.
‘And I accepted your invitation because I was flattered, and irresponsible?’ she challenged.
‘You are quite right,’ he conceded. ‘We must have mutual friends — some highly respectable aunt, I dare say. Do you have any such relations?’
‘My Great-aunt Vespasia, by marriage. If she recommended you I would accompany you anywhere on earth,’ she responded unhesitatingly.
‘She sounds charming.’
‘She is. Believe me, if you had met her really, you would not dare to treat me other than with the utmost respect.’
‘Where did I meet this formidable lady?’
‘Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould. It doesn’t matter. Any surroundings would be instantly forgotten once you had seen her. But London will do.’
‘Vespasia Cumming-Gould.’ He turned the name over on his tongue. ‘It seems to find an echo in my mind.’
‘It has set bells ringing all over Europe,’ she told him. ‘You had better be aware that she is of an indeterminate age, but her hair is silver and she walks like a queen. She was the most beautiful, and most outrageous woman of her generation. If you don’t know that, they will know that you never met her.’
‘I am now most disappointed that I did not.’ He offered her his arm.
She accepted it, and together they walked down to the room where refreshments were already being served, and the audience had gathered to greet friends and exchange views on the performance.
There were several minutes of pleasant exchange before McDaid introduced Charlotte to a woman with wildly curling hair named Dolina Pearse, and a man of unusual height whom he addressed as Ardal Barralet. Beside them, but apparently not with them, was Cormac O’Neil.
‘O’Neil!’ McDaid said with surprise. ‘Haven’t seen you for some time. How are you?’
Barralet turned as if he had not noticed O’Neil standing so close as to brush coat-tails with him.
‘’Evening, O’Neil. Enjoying the performance? Excellent, don’t you think?’ he said casually.
O’Neil had either to answer or offer an unmistakable rebuff.
‘Very polished,’ he said, looking straight back at Barralet. His voice was unusually deep and soft, as if he too were an actor, caressing the words. He did not even glance at Charlotte. ‘Good evening, Mrs Pearse.’ He acknowledged Dolina.
‘Good evening, Mr O’Neil,’ she said coldly.
‘You know Fiachra McDaid?’ Barralet filled in the sudden silence. ‘But perhaps not Mrs Pitt? She is newly arrived in Dublin.’
‘How do you do, Mrs Pitt?’ O’Neil said politely, but without interest. McDaid he looked at with a sudden blaze of emotion in his eyes.
McDaid stared back at him calmly, and the moment passed.
Charlotte wondered if she had seen it, or imagined it.
‘What brings you to Dublin, Mrs Pitt?’ Dolina enquired, clearly out of a desire to relieve the tension by changing the subject. There was no interest either in her voice or her face.
‘Good report of the city,’ Charlotte replied. ‘I have made a resolution that I will no longer keep on putting off into the future the good things that can be done today.’
‘How very English,’ Dolina murmured. ‘And virtuous.’ She added the word as if it were insufferably boring.
Charlotte felt her temper flare. She looked straight back at Dolina. ‘If it is virtuous to come to Dublin, then I have been misled,’ she said drily. ‘I was hoping it was going to be fun.’
McDaid laughed sharply, his face lighting with sudden amusement. ‘It depends how you take your pleasures, my dear. Oscar Wilde, poor soul, is one of us, of course, and he made the world laugh. For years we have tried to be as like the English as we can. Now at last we are finding ourselves, and we take our theatre packed with anguish, poetry and triple meanings. You can dwell on whichever one suits your mood, but most of them are doom-laden, as if our fate is in blood. If we laugh, it is at ourselves, and as a stranger you might find it impolite to join in.’
‘That explains a great deal.’ She thanked him with a little nod of her head. She was aware that O’Neil was watching her, possibly because she was the only one in the group he did not already know, but she wanted to engage in some kind of conversation with him. This was the man Narraway believed had contrived his betrayal. What on earth could she say that did not sound forced? She looked directly at him, obliging him either to listen or deliberately to snub her.
‘Perhaps I sounded a bit trivial when I spoke of fun,’ she said half-apologetically. ‘I like my pleasure spiced with thought, and even a puzzle or two, so the flavour of it will last. A drama is superficial if one can understand everything in it in one evening, don’t you think?’
The hardness in his face softened. ‘Then you will leave Ireland a happy woman,’ he told her. ‘You will certainly not understand us in a week, or a month, probably not in a year.’
‘Because I am English? Or because you are so complex?’ she pursued.
‘Because we don’t understand ourselves, most of the time,’ he replied with the slightest lift of one shoulder.
‘No one does,’ she returned. Now they were speaking as if there were no one else in the room. ‘The tedious people are the ones who think they do.’
‘We can be tedious by perpetually trying to, aloud.’ He smiled, and the light of it utterly changed his face. ‘But we do it poetically. It is when we begin to repeat ourselves that we try people’s patience.’
‘But doesn’t history repeat itself, like variations on a theme?’ she said. ‘Each generation, each artist, adds a different note, but the underlying tune is the same.’
‘England’s is in a major key.’ His mouth twisted as he spoke. ‘Lots of brass and percussion. Ireland’s is minor, woodwind, and the dying chord. Perhaps a violin solo now and then.’ He was watching her intently, as if it were a game they were playing and one of them would lose. Did he already know who she was, and that she had come with Narraway, and why?
She tried to dismiss the thought as absurd, and then she remembered that someone had already outwitted Narraway, which was a very considerable feat. It required not only passion for revenge, but a high intelligence. Most frightening of all, it needed connections in Lisson Grove sufficiently well-placed, and disloyal, to have put the money in Narraway’s bank account.
Suddenly the game seemed a great deal more serious. Charlotte was aware that, because of her hesitation, Dolina was watching her curiously as well, and Fiachra McDaid was standing at her elbow.
‘I always think the violin sounds so much like the human voice,’ she said with a smile. ‘Don’t you, Mr O’Neil?’
Surprise flickered for a moment in his eyes. He had been expecting her to say something different, perhaps more defensive.
‘Did you not expect the heroes of Ireland to sound human?’ he asked her, but there was a bleak, self-conscious humour in his eyes at his own melodrama.
‘Not entirely.’ She avoided looking at McDaid, or Dolina, in case their perception brought her and O’Neil back to reality. ‘I had thought of something heroic, even supernatural.’
‘Touche,’ McDaid said softly. He took Charlotte by the arm, holding her surprisingly hard. She could not have shaken him off even had she wished to. ‘We must take our seats.’ He excused them and led her away after only the briefest farewell. She nearly asked him if she had offended someone, but she did not want to hear the answer. Nor did she intend to apologise.
As soon as she resumed her seat she realised that it offered her as good a view of the rest of the audience as it did of the stage. She glanced at McDaid, and saw in his expression that he had arranged it so intentionally, but she did not comment.
They were only just in time for the curtain going up and immediately the drama recaptured their attention. She found it difficult to follow because although the emotion in it was intense, there were so many allusions to history, and to legend with which she was not familiar that half the meaning was lost to her. Perhaps because of that, she began to look at the audience again, to catch something of their reaction and follow a little more.
John and Bridget Tyrone were in a box almost opposite. With the intimate size of the theatre she could see their faces quite clearly. He was watching the stage, leaning a little forward as if not to miss a word. Bridget glanced at him, then — seeing his absorption — turned away. Her gaze swept around the audience. Charlotte put up the opera glasses McDaid had lent her, not to see the stage but to hide her own eyes, and keep watching Bridget Tyrone.
Bridget’s searching stopped when she saw a man in the audience below her, to her left. From where she was, she must see his profile. To Charlotte all that was visible was the back of his head, but she was certain she had seen him before. She could not remember where.
Bridget remained staring at him, as if willing him to look back at her.
On the stage the drama heightened. Charlotte was only dimly aware of it; for her the emotional concentration was in the audience. John Tyrone was still watching the players. In the audience at last the man turned and looked back up at the boxes, one after the other until he found Bridget. It was Phelim O’Conor. As soon as she saw his profile Charlotte knew him. He remained with his eyes fixed on Bridget, his face unreadable.
Bridget looked away just as her husband became aware of her again, and switched his attention from the stage. They spoke to each other briefly.
In the audience below, O’Conor turned back to the stage. His neck was stiff, his head unmoving, in spite of the scene in front of them reaching a climax where the actors all but hurled themselves at each other.
In the second interval, McDaid took Charlotte back outside to the bar where once more refreshments were liberally served. The conversation buzzed about the play. Was it well performed? Was it true to the intention of the author? Had the main actor misinterpreted his role?
Charlotte listened, trying to fix her expression in an attitude of intelligent observation. Actually she was watching to see who else she recognised among those queuing for drinks or talking excitedly to people they knew. All of them were strangers to her, and yet in a way they were familiar. Many were so like those she had known before her marriage that she half-expected them to recognise her. It was an odd feeling, pleasant and nostalgic, even though she would have changed nothing of her present life.
‘Are you enjoying the play?’ McDaid asked her. They drifted towards the bar counter, where Cormac O’Neil had a glass of whiskey in his hand.
Did McDaid know how little she had watched it? He might very well. She did not want either to lie to him, or to tell him the truth.
Now O’Neil was also waiting for her answer with curiosity.
‘I am enjoying the whole experience,’ she replied. ‘I am most grateful that you brought me. I could not have come alone, nor would I have found it half so pleasant.’
‘I am delighted you enjoy it,’ McDaid replied with a smile. ‘I was not sure that you would. The play ends with a superb climax, all very dark and dreadful. You won’t understand much of it at all.’
‘Is that the purpose of it?’ she asked, looking from McDaid to O’Neil and back again. ‘To puzzle us all so much that we will be obliged to spend weeks or months trying to work out what it really means? Perhaps we will come up with half a dozen different possibilities?’
For a moment there was surprise and admiration in McDaid’s eyes, then he masked it and the slightly bantering tone returned. ‘I think perhaps you overrate us, at least this time. I rather believe the playwright himself has no such subtle purpose in mind.’
‘What meanings did you suppose?’ O’Neil asked softly. He had said it as if it were mere conversation to amuse during the interval, but she thought he was probing to learn something deeper.
‘Oh, ask me in a month’s time, Mr O’Neil,’ she said casually. ‘There is anger in it, of course. Anyone can see that. There seems to me also to be a sense of predestination, as if we all have little choice, as if birth determines our reactions. I dislike that. I don’t wish to feel so. . controlled by fate.’
‘You are English. You like to imagine you are the masters of history. In Ireland we have learned that history masters us,’ he responded, and the bitterness in his tone was laced with irony and laughter, but underneath the pain was plainly real.
It was on her tongue to contradict him, then she realised her opportunity. ‘Really? If I understand the play rightly, it is about a certain inevitability in love and betrayal that is quite universal — a sort of darker and older Romeo and Juliet.’
O’Neil’s face tightened and even in the lamplight of the crowded room Charlotte could see his colour pale. ‘Is that what you see?’ His voice was thick, almost choking on the words. ‘You romanticise, Mrs Pitt.’ Now the bitterness in him was clearly overwhelming.
‘Do I?’ she asked him, moving aside to allow a couple arm in arm to pass by them. In so doing, she deliberately stepped close to O’Neil, so he could not leave without pushing her aside. ‘What harder realities should I see? Rivalry between opposing sides, families divided, a love that cannot be fulfilled, betrayal and death? I don’t think I really find that romantic, except for us as we sit in the audience watching. For the people involved it must be anything but.’
He stared at her, his eyes hollow with a kind of black despair. She could believe very easily that Narraway was right, and O’Neil had nursed a hatred for twenty years, until fate had given him a way to avenge it. But what was it that had changed?
‘And what are you, Mrs Pitt?’ he asked, standing close to her and speaking so McDaid almost certainly would not hear him. ‘Audience or player? Are you here to watch the blood and tears of Ireland, or to meddle in them, like your friend Narraway?’
She was stunned. She had no idea how to answer. For a moment the rest of the crowd were just a babble of noise. They could as easily have been a field full of geese. Was there any point at all in pretence? Surely now to feign innocence would be ridiculous?
‘I would like to be a Deus ex machina,’ she replied. ‘But I imagine that’s impossible.’
‘God from a machine?’ he said with an angry shrug. ‘You want to descend at the last act and arrange an impossible ending that solves it all? How very English. And how absurd, and supremely arrogant. You are twenty years too late. Tell Victor that, when you see him. There’s nothing left to mend any more.’ He turned away before she could answer again, pushing past her and spilling what was left of his whiskey as he bumped into a broad man in a blue coat. The moment after, he was gone.
Charlotte was aware of McDaid next to her, and a certain air of discomfort about him.
‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised. There was no point in trying to explain. Reasons did not matter, and she did not know how much McDaid was aware of either Narraway’s present trouble, or his part in O’Neil’s past tragedies. ‘I allowed myself to express my opinions too freely.’
He bit his lip. ‘You couldn’t know it, but the subject of Irish freedom, and traitors to the cause, is painfully close to O’Neil. It was through his family that our great plan was betrayed twenty years ago.’ He winced. ‘We never knew for sure by whom. Sean O’Neil murdered his wife, Kate, and was hanged for it. Even though it was because she was the one who told the English our plans, some thought it was because Sean found her with another man. Either way, we failed again, and the bitterness still lasts.’
Murder, and then hanging. No wonder O’Neil was bitter and the grief had never died — and Narraway still felt the guilt weigh dark and heavy on him also.
‘It was an uprising that you intended?’ she asked quietly. She heard the chatter around her.
‘Of course,’ McDaid replied, his voice carefully ironed of all expression so it sounded unnaturally flat. ‘Home Rule was in the very air we breathed then. We could have been ourselves, without the weight of England around our necks.’
‘Is that how you see it?’ She turned as she spoke and looked at him, searching his face.
His expression softened. He smiled back at her, rueful and a little self-deprecating. ‘I did at the time. Seeing Cormac brings it back. But I’m cooler-headed now. There are better places to put one’s energy — causes less narrow.’ She was aware of the colour and whisper of fabric around them, silk against silk. They were surrounded by people in one of the most interesting capital cities in the world, come out to an evening at the theatre. Some of them, at least, were also men and women who saw themselves living under a foreign oppression in their own land, and some of them, at least, were willing to kill and to die to throw it off. She looked just like them — cast of feature, tone of skin and hair — and yet she was not, she was different in heart and mind.
‘What causes?’ she asked with interest.
His smile widened, as if to brush it aside. ‘Social injustices, old-fashioned laws to reform,’ he replied. ‘Greater equality. Exactly the same as, no doubt, you fight for at home. I hear there are some great women in London battling for all manner of things. Perhaps one day you will tell me about some of them?’ He made it a question, as if he were interested enough to require an answer.
‘Of course,’ she said lightly, trying to master facts in her mind so she could answer sensibly, if the necessity arose.
He took her arm as people milled around her, returning to their seats, courteous, hospitable, full of dry wit and a passion for life. How easy, and dangerous, it would be for her to forget that she did not belong here — she particularly, because her husband was in Special Branch, and his friend Victor Narraway could be the man who had used Kate O’Neil to betray her own people, and destroy her family.
Narraway was uncertain what Charlotte would learn at the theatre. As he walked along Arran Quay, on the north bank of the Liffey, his head down into the warm, damp breeze off the water, he was afraid that she would discover a few things about him that he would very much rather she did not know, but he knew no way to help that. He knew, from Fiachra McDaid, that she would meet Cormac O’Neil, and perhaps judge some depth of his hatred, and the reasons for it.
He smiled bitterly as he pictured her pursuing it, testing, pushing until she found the facts behind the pain. Would she be disillusioned to hear his part in it all? Or was that his vanity, his own feelings — that she cared enough for him that disillusion was even possible, let alone would wound her?
He would never forget the days after Kate’s death. Worst was the morning they hanged Sean. The brutality and the grief of that had cast a chill over all the years since. Why had he exposed himself to the hurt of Charlotte learning anything about it? Perhaps because he was afraid she would, and he would rather deal the blow himself than endure the waiting for someone else to do it.
He should know better. His years in Special Branch should have taught him both patience and control. Usually he was so good at it that people thought him a cold man. Charlotte thought it, he knew. Was that the real reason why he risked her discovering so terribly that he was not?
He did not want her affection, or her grief for him, if it were based on a misconception of who he was.
He laughed at himself; it was just a faint sound, almost drowned by his quick footsteps along the stones of the quayside. Why, at this time in his life, did he care so much for the opinion of another man’s wife?
He forced his attention to where he was going, and why. If he did not learn who had diverted the money meant for Mulhare and placed it in his, Narraway’s, own account, knowing anything else about O’Neil was pointless. Someone in Lisson Grove had been involved. He blamed none of the Irish. They were fighting for their own cause, and at times he even sympathised with it. But the man in Special Branch who had done this had betrayed his own people, and that was different. He wanted to know who it was, and prove it. The damage this traitor could cause would have no boundary. If he hated England enough to plan and execute a way of disgracing Narraway, then what else might he do? Was his real purpose to replace him? This whole business of Mulhare might be no more than a means to that end. But was it simply ambition, or was there another, darker purpose behind it as well?
Without realising it he increased his pace, moving so swiftly he almost passed the alley he was looking for. He turned in and fumbled in the lightless construction of it and the uneven stones under his feet. He had to feel his way along one of the walls. Third door. He knocked sharply, a quick rhythm.
He had brought Charlotte to Ireland because he wanted to, but she had her own compelling reasons to be here. If he was right about the traitor in Lisson Grove then one of the first things that person would do would be to get rid of Pitt. If Pitt were fortunate, he would simply be dismissed.There were much worse possibilities. Some of them passed through Narraway’s mind as the door was opened. He was let into a small, extremely stuffy office piled high with ledgers, account books and sheaths of loose papers. A striped cat had claimed itself a space in front of the hearth and did not stir when he came in and took a seat on a chair opposite the cluttered desk.
O’Casey sat in the chair behind it, his bald head gleaming in the gaslight.
‘Well?’ Narraway asked, masking his eagerness as closely as he could.
O’Casey hesitated.
Narraway considered threatening him. He still had power, albeit illegal now. He drew in his breath. Then he looked at O’Casey’s face again, and changed his mind. He had few enough friends, he could not afford to alienate any of them.
‘So what is it you expect of me, then?’ O’Casey asked, cocking his head a little to one side. ‘I’ll not help you, not more than I owe. Only for old times’ sake, but that’s little enough.’
‘I know,’ Narraway agreed. There were wounds and debts between them, some still unpaid. ‘I need to know what’s changed for Cormac O’Neil.’
‘For God’s sake, leave the poor man alone! Have you not already taken all he has?’ O’Casey exclaimed. ‘You’ll not be after the child, will you?’
‘The child?’ For a moment Narraway was at a loss. Then memory flooded back. Kate’s daughter by Sean. She had been only an infant, six or seven years old, when her parents died. ‘Did Cormac raise her?’ he asked.
‘A little girl?’ O’Casey squinted at him contemptuously. ‘Of course he didn’t, you fool. And what would Cormac O’Neil do with a six-year-old girl, then? Some cousin of Kate’s took her — Maureen, I think her name was. She and her husband. Raised her as their own.’
Narraway felt a stab of pity for the child — Kate’s child. That should never have happened.
‘But she knows who she is?’ he said aloud.
‘Of course. Cormac would have told her, if no one else.’ O’Casey lifted one shoulder slightly. ‘Although, of course, it might not be the truth as you know it, poor child. There are things better left unsaid.’
Narraway felt chilled. He had not thought of Kate’s daughter. They had been so close to the violence erupting and spreading beyond control, he had thought only of preventing that. He had not expected Kate to die; it was never planned. He knew Sean.To deceive him in rebellion was one thing, to deceive him over Kate was another.
Looking back, even weeks afterwards, he knew that she had crossed sides because she believed it was a doomed uprising, and more Irishmen would die in it than English, far more. But she knew Sean as well. He had been willing enough to use her beauty to shame Narraway, even lead him to his death, but in his wildest imagination he had never considered that she might even give herself willingly to Narraway, or worse, care for him.
And when she did, it was beyond Sean’s mind or heart to forgive. He had said he killed her for Ireland, but Narraway knew it was for himself, just as, in the end, Sean knew it too.
And Cormac? He too had loved Kate. Did he feel an Irishman bested in deviousness by an Englishman, in a fight where no one was fair? Or a man betrayed by a woman he wanted and could never have: his brother’s wife, who had sided with the enemy — for her own reasons, good or bad, political or personal?
What had he told Talulla?
Could it possibly be anything new in the last few months? And if it were, how could she have moved the money from Mulhare’s account back to Narraway’s, using some traitor in Lisson Grove? Not by herself. Then with whom?
‘Who betrayed Mulhare?’ he asked O’Casey.
‘No idea,’ O’Casey answered. ‘And if I did know, I wouldn’t tell you. A man who’ll sell his own people deserves to have his thirty pieces of silver slip out of his hands. Deserves to have it put in a bag o’ lead around his neck, before they throw him into Dublin Bay.’
Narraway had not much liked Mulhare, but he needed to keep his promises; to whom they were made was irrelevant. A broken word is as self-defeating as a broken sword.
He rose to his feet. The cat by the fire stretched out and then curled up on the other side.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘Don’t come back,’ O’Casey replied. ‘I’ll not harm you, but I’ll not help you either.’
‘I know,’ Narraway replied.
Charlotte did not have the opportunity to speak at any length with Narraway after returning from the theatre, nor did she the following day. They met only briefly at breakfast and there were others eating at nearby tables. Narraway said he had business to attend to, but that he had heard from Dolina Pearse that Charlotte would be most welcome to attend the opening of an art exhibition, if she cared to, and to take tea with Dolina and her friends afterwards. He had accepted on her behalf.
‘Thank you,’ she said a little coolly.
He caught the intonation, and smiled. ‘Did you wish to decline?’ he asked, eyebrows raised.
She looked at his dark face, at the mercurial amusement and awareness of the absurdity of it in his eyes. To have taken the slightest notice of his pride now would be idiotic. He was facing disgrace, and a loneliness deeper than anything she had known. If he failed in this, Pitt too might lose his ability to support his family.
‘No, of course not,’ she replied, smiling at Narraway. ‘I am just a little nervous about it. I met some of them at Bridget Tyrone’s party, and I am not sure that the encounter was entirely amicable.’
‘I can imagine,’ he said wryly. ‘But I know you, and I know something of Dolina. Tea should be interesting. And you’ll like the art. It is Impressionist, I think.’ He rose from the table.
‘Victor!’ She used his name for the first time without thinking, until she saw his face, the quickening, the sudden vulnerability. She wanted to apologise but that would only make it worse. She forced herself to smile up at him where he stood, half turned to leave. He was naturally elegant; his jacket perfectly cut, his cravat tied with care.
She hardly knew how to begin, and yet certain necessity compelled her.
He was waiting.
‘If I am to go to the exhibition I would like to purchase a new blouse.’ She felt the flush of embarrassment hot in her face. ‘I did not bring-’
‘Of course,’ he said quickly. ‘We will go as soon as you have finished your breakfast. Perhaps we should get two. You cannot be seen in precisely the same costume at every function. Will you be ready in half an hour?’ He glanced at the clock on the mantel.
‘Good heavens! I could have luncheon as well in that time. I shall be ready in ten minutes,’ she exclaimed.
‘Really? Then I shall meet you at the front door.’ He looked surprised, and quite definitely pleased.
They walked perhaps three hundred yards, then quite easily found a hansom to take them into the middle of the city. Narraway seemed to know exactly where he was going and stopped at the entrance to a very elegant couturier.
Charlotte imagined the prices, and knew that they would be beyond her budget. Surely Narraway must know what Pitt earned? Why was he bringing her here?
He opened the door for her and held it.
She stood where she was. ‘May we please go somewhere a little less expensive? I think this is beyond what I should spend, particularly on something I may not wear very often.’
He looked surprised.
‘Perhaps you have never bought a woman’s blouse before,’ she said a little tartly, humiliation making her tongue sharp. ‘They can be costly.’
‘I wasn’t proposing that you should buy it,’ he replied. ‘It is necessary in pursuit of my business, not yours. It is rightly my responsibility.’
‘Mine also. .’ she argued.
‘May we discuss it inside?’ he asked. ‘We are drawing attention to ourselves standing in the doorway.’
She moved inside quickly, angry with both him and herself. She should have foreseen this situation and avoided it somehow.
An older woman came towards them, dressed in a most beautifully cut black gown. It had no adornment whatever, the sheer elegance of it was sufficient. She was the perfect advertisement for her establishment. Charlotte would have loved a gown that fitted so exquisitely. She still had a very good figure, and such a garment would have flattered her enormously. She knew it, and the temptation to enquire into the purchase was so sharp she could feel it like a sweet taste in her mouth.
‘May we see some elegant blouses, please?’ Narraway asked. ‘Suitable for attending an exhibition of art, or an afternoon tea party.’
‘Certainly, sir,’ the woman agreed. She regarded Charlotte for no more than a minute, assessing what might both fit and suit her, then another mere instant at Narraway, perhaps judging what he would be prepared to pay.
Looking at his elegant, and no doubt expensive clothes, Charlotte’s heart sank. The woman had probably jumped to the obvious conclusion that they were husband and wife. Who else would a respectable woman come shopping with, for such intimate articles as a blouse? She should have insisted that he take her somewhere else, and wait outside. Except that she would have to borrow the money from him anyway.
‘Victor, this is impossible!’ she said under her breath, as soon as the woman was out of earshot.
‘No it isn’t,’ he contradicted her. ‘It is necessary. Do you want to draw attention to yourself by wearing the same clothes all the time? People will notice, which you know even better than I do. Then they will wonder what our relationship is — that I do not take better care of you.’
She tried to think of a satisfactory argument, and failed.
‘Or perhaps you want to give up the whole battle?’ he suggested.
‘No, of course I don’t!’ she retaliated. ‘But-’
‘Then be quiet and don’t argue.’ He took her arm and propelled her forward a little, holding her firmly. She determined to have words with him later, in no uncertain fashion.
The woman returned with several blouses, all of them beautiful.
‘If madame would care to try them, there is a room available over here,’ she offered.
Charlotte thanked her and followed immediately. Every one of the garments was ravishing, but the most beautiful was one in black and bronze stripes, which fitted her as if it had been both designed and cut for her personally; and one in white cotton and lace with ruffles and pearl buttons, which was outrageously feminine. Even as a girl, in the days when her mother was trying to marry her to someone suitable, she had never felt so attractive, even verging on the really beautiful.
Temptation to have them both ached inside her like a physical hunger.
The woman returned to see if Charlotte had made a decision, or if perhaps she wished for a further selection.
‘Ah!’ she said, drawing in her breath. ‘Surely madame could not wish for anything lovelier.’
Charlotte hesitated, glancing at the striped blouse on its hanger.
‘An excellent choice. Perhaps you would like to see which your husband prefers?’ the woman suggested.
Charlotte started to say that Narraway was not her husband, but she wanted to phrase it graciously, and not seem to correct the woman. Then she saw Narraway just beyond the woman’s shoulder, and the admiration in his face. For an instant it was naked, vulnerable and completely without guard. Then he must have realised, and he smiled.
‘We’ll take them both,’ he said decisively, and turned away.
Without contradicting him in front of the saleswoman, and embarrassing them all, Charlotte had no alternative but to accept. She stepped back, closed the door, and changed into her own very ordinary blouse.
‘Victor, you shouldn’t have done that,’ she said as soon as they were outside in the street again. ‘I have no idea how I am going to repay you.’
He stopped and looked at her crossly for a moment.
Suddenly his anger evaporated and she remembered the expression in his eyes only a few moments before, and she was very afraid.
He reached up and with his fingertips touched her face. It was only her cheek, but it was an extraordinarily intimate gesture, with a great tenderness.
‘You will repay me by helping me to clear my name,’ he replied. ‘That is more than enough.’
To argue would be pointlessly unkind, not only to his very obvious emotion, but also to the hope of success that they both needed so much.
‘Then we had better set about it,’ she agreed, then moved a step away from him and started walking along the pavement again.
The art exhibition was beautiful, but Charlotte could not turn her attention to it and knew that to Dolina Pearse she must have appeared terribly ignorant. Dolina seemed to know each artist at least by repute, and be able to say for what particular technique he was famous. Charlotte simply listened with an air of appreciation, and hoped she could remember enough of it to recite back as if she had been interested.
While they walked around the rooms looking at one picture after another, Charlotte watched the other women, who were fashionably dressed exactly as they would have been in London. Sleeves were worn large at the shoulder this season, and slender from the elbow down. Even the most unsophisticated were puffed, or flying like awkward wings. Skirts were wide at the bottom, padded and bustled at the back. It was very feminine, like flowers in full bloom — large ones, like magnolias or peonies. With the movement of walking, parasols high to shade the face when outside, however briefly, a group of women gave the fleeting impression of a herbaceous border in the wind. One of the painters should have tried such a thing! Or perhaps they had, and she had been too inattentive to notice.
Tea reminded her of the days before she was married, accompanying her mother on suitable ‘morning calls’, which were actually always made in the afternoon. Behaviour was very correct, all the unwritten laws obeyed. And beneath the polite exchanges the gossip was ruthless, the cutting remarks honed to a razor’s edge.
‘How are you enjoying Dublin, Mrs Pitt?’ Talulla Lawless asked courteously. ‘Do have a cucumber sandwich. Always so refreshing, don’t you think?’
‘Thank you,’ Charlotte accepted. It was the only possible thing to do, even if she had not liked them. ‘I find Dublin fascinating. Who would not?’
‘Oh, many people,’ Talulla replied. ‘They think us very unsophisticated.’ She smiled. ‘But perhaps that is what you enjoy?’ She left it hanging in the air as to whether Charlotte herself were unsophisticated, or if perhaps this was a rustic escape for her from the rigours of London society.
Charlotte smiled back, utterly without warmth. ‘Either they were not serious, or if they were, then they missed the subtlety of your words,’ she replied. ‘I think you anything but simple,’ she added for good measure.
Talulla laughed. It was a brittle sound. ‘You flatter us, Mrs Pitt. It is “Mrs”, isn’t it? I do hope I have not made the most awful mistake.’
‘Please don’t concern yourself, Miss Lawless,’ Charlotte replied. ‘It is very far from the most awful mistake. Indeed, were it a mistake, which it isn’t, it could still quite easily be put right. Would that all errors were so simply mended.’
‘Oh dear!’ Talulla affected dismay. ‘How much more exciting your life must be in London than ours is here. You imply dark deeds. You have me fascinated.’
Charlotte hesitated, then plunged in. ‘I dare say the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. After watching the play last night I imagined life was full of passion and doom-laden love here. Please don’t tell me it is all just the fervour of a playwright’s imagination. You will entirely ruin the reputation of Ireland abroad.’
‘I didn’t know you had such influence,’ Talulla said drily. ‘I had better be more careful of what I say.’ There was mocking and anger in her face.
Charlotte cast her eyes down towards the floor. ‘I am so sorry. I seem to have spoken out of turn, and struck some feeling of pain. I assure you, it was unintentional.’
‘I can see many of your actions are unintentional, Mrs Pitt,’ Talulla snapped. ‘And cause pain.’
There was a rustle of silk against silk as a couple of the other women moved slightly in discomfort. Someone drew breath as if to speak, glanced at Talulla, and changed her mind.
‘Just as I am sure yours are not, Miss Lawless,’ Charlotte replied. ‘I find it easy to believe that every word you say is entirely both foreseen, and intended.’
There was an even sharper gasp of breath. Someone giggled nervously.
‘May I offer you more tea, Mrs Pitt?’ Dolina asked. Her voice was quivering, but whether it was with laughter or tears it was impossible to say.
Charlotte held out her cup. ‘Thank you. That is most kind.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Talulla said tartly. ‘For heaven’s sake, it’s a pot of tea!’
‘The English answer to everything,’ Dolina ventured. ‘Is that not so, Mrs Pitt?’
‘You would be surprised what can be done with it, if it is hot enough,’ Charlotte looked straight at her.
‘Scalding, I shouldn’t wonder,’ Dolina muttered.
Charlotte relayed the exchange to Narraway later that night, after dinner. They were alone in Mrs Hogan’s sitting room with the doors open on to the garden, which was quite small, and overhung with trees. It was a mild evening, and a moon almost full cast dramatic shadows. In unspoken agreement they stood up and walked outside into the balmy air.
‘I didn’t learn anything more,’ she admitted finally. ‘Except that we are still disliked. But how could we imagine anything else? At the theatre Mr McDaid told me something of O’Neil. It is time you stopped skirting around it and told me what happened. I don’t want to know, but I have to.’
Narraway was silent for a long time. She was acutely aware of him standing perhaps a yard away from her, half in the shadow of one of the trees. He was slender, not much taller than she, but she had an impression of physical strength, as if he were muscle and bone, all softness worn away over the years. She did not want to look at his face, partly to allow him that privacy, but just as much because she did not want to see what was there. It would be easier for both of them, and allow a certain pretence to be rebuilt after the moments in the couturier and, after, in the street.
‘I can’t tell you all of it, Charlotte,’ he said at last. ‘There was quite a large uprising planned. We had to prevent it.’
‘How did you do that?’ She was blunt.
Again he did not answer. She wondered how much of the secrecy was to protect her, and how much was simply that he was ashamed of his role in it, necessary or not.
Why was she standing out here shivering? What was she afraid of? Victor Narraway? It had not occurred to her before that he might hurt her. She was afraid that she would hurt him. Perhaps that was ridiculous. If he had loved Kate O’Neil, and still been able to sacrifice her in his loyalty to his country, then he could certainly sacrifice Charlotte. She could be one of the casualties of war that Fiachra McDaid had referred to — just part of the price. She was Pitt’s wife, and Narraway had shown a loyalty to Pitt, in his own way. She was also quite certain now that he was in love with her. But how naive of her to imagine that it would change anything he had to do in the greater cause.
She thought of Kate O’Neil, wondering what she had looked like, how old she had been, if she had loved Narraway. Had she betrayed her country, and her husband to him? How desperately in love she must have been. Charlotte should have despised her for that, and yet all she felt was pity, and a belief that she could have been in the same place, but for a grace of circumstance. If she hadn’t loved Pitt, she could easily have believed herself in love with Narraway.
That was a stupid equivocation! She would have been in love, cared totally, and completely. What other way was there to care?
‘You used Kate O’Neil, didn’t you?’ she said aloud.
‘Yes.’ His voice was so soft she barely heard it. The faint rustling of the night wind in the leaves was almost as loud. She had no doubt at all that he was ashamed, but it had not stopped him. Thank goodness, at least, he had not lied.
But was this old case really the reason for the present manufactured charge of embezzlement against him?
What were they missing?
What was Pitt doing in France?
Should she and Narraway be here in Ireland? Or had Narraway, the brilliant, devious schemer, been outplayed by someone who knew his vulnerability too well, and the real issue was somewhere else altogether?
She turned quietly and walked back the few steps into Mrs Hogan’s sitting room. There wasn’t anything more to say, not here, in the soft night wind and the scents of the garden.