Brunswick Gardens

11

A STRANGE PEACE had settled over the house in Brunswick Gardens. It was the kind of relief death brings when the illness has been long and filled with pain. The bereavement is there, the sense of loneliness and loss, but it is momentarily dulled by sheer exhaustion. For a little while all one can feel is that at last one can sleep without fear, without the gnawing anxiety and the guilt if even for a moment one relaxes and forgets to be watchful and afraid.
On the evening when Pitt was listening to the man in Haverstock Hill, Clarice and Tryphena had both retired early, Tryphena because she still preferred to mourn Unity alone, knowing no one else shared her feelings, and Clarice because she was hurt beyond bearing by her father’s death. Mallory chose to study. It was an escape from the present world, which he found too oppressive and in which he felt he had little place.
Vita had not wished to retire. She was dressed entirely in black and had behaved all day with solemnity, but there was a kind of ease about her, as if at last she had been able to let go of the foreboding which had gripped her ever since Unity’s fall. The color had returned to her face. She looked vulnerable as she sat on the large, overpadded sofa, and extraordinarily young in the soft gaslight.
“Would you prefer to be alone?” Dominic asked with concern. “I should understand perfectly if—”
“No!” she answered before he had finished speaking, looking up at him with her amazing eyes wide. “No—please! I should greatly prefer not to be alone. It is the very last thing I want.” She smiled with a trace of self-mockery, a shadow of laughter in her eyes. “I want to pretend for a little while that none of this has happened. I would like to talk about other things, ordinary things, just as if we were two friends with no tragedy between us. Does that sound miserably selfish?”
He was startled, uncertain how to answer. He did not want to sound dismissive of her grief, or as if he could take it lightly on her behalf, or indeed on his own. Was she thinking of herself, as she implied, or was it her generosity, knowing his own sense of failure, the near despair which weighed upon him because he had watched Ramsay drowning in pain and done nothing?
“Dominic?” she said gently, reaching up towards him and putting her fingers on his arm. Her touch was so light he saw it rather than felt it. He looked at her.
She smiled, and there was extraordinary warmth in it. “Grieve for Ramsay, my dear, but please don’t blame yourself. You and I are in the same position, only I even more. We must both believe we could have done something, how could we not? Failure is a bitter thing to bear.” She lifted her hand in a tiny movement of denial. “There is little else which hurts so constantly, which clouds everything else we try to do, which cripples other effort and in the end makes us doubt ourselves in everything, and finally even hate ourselves. Please don’t let that happen to us. It is the last thing Ramsay, in his true self, would have wanted.”
He did not answer, thinking of what she had said. It was profoundly true. She was right, and he wanted and needed to believe her. And yet it was not the entire truth. He could not walk away from the memory of Ramsay lying on the study floor in his own blood. That would be irredeemably callous. Decency owed more than that, let alone friendship—and gratitude.
“Dominic!” She repeated his name very softly. She was standing now, only a couple of feet away. There was no sound except the flickering of the fire. He could smell the fragrance of her skin and hair and some flower delicacy she wore. “Dominic, the kindest thing you can do for Ramsay is to remember him as he used to be, at his best, his wisest and kindest, when he had control of himself and was the man he wished to be … before he was ill.”
He smiled, a little halfheartedly.
“My dear,” she continued. “If you were in his place, if you were to become ill in your mind, would you want those you had loved to think of you as you were then, in the extremity of your illness, or as you had been at your best, your very finest?”
“At my best,” he said without hesitation, looking at her clearly at last.
Her face eased, the lines of anxiety disappearing from her brow. Her body relaxed, but she did not take her hand from his arm.
“Of course. So would I.” Her voice was urgent, charged with emotion so intense he was aware of nothing else in the room. “I should want it passionately,” she went on. “It would be the greatest kindness anyone could do for me, and from those whose opinion I valued the most, I should most want it. And he did care about you, you know. He thought you were going to be a great minister to the people, but far above that, he thought you were going to be a leader.” There was a warmth in her eyes and a faint flush of color to her cheeks. “We desperately need leadership, Dominic. You must know that! Everywhere there is increasing worldliness. All sorts of people are only too eager to step forward and proclaim themselves in politics or exploration or arts and ideas, but no one has the conviction to lead us in religion anymore. It is as if all the fire had gone out of everyone….”
Unconsciously she clenched her fingers, and her body was rigid with the power of her own feelings and the frustration that she could not lead herself. “Where are the voices of passion and certainty that we need, Dominic? Where are the men no new theories can shake, no worldly wisdom can make afraid or undermine, the men who have the courage to face them all and defy them, and lead us as we should be led?”
She gave a little gasp. “There are new scientific inventions almost every day, certainly every week. Because we can do so much now, we imagine we can do everything. We can’t! We shouldn’t!”
It was true. He knew exactly what she meant. There was a feeling not just of euphoria—that would have been all right. It was the arrogance, the delusion that man was supreme and all problems were capable of a purely human solution. There was a driving hunger to learn but little capacity to be taught.
“You will need all your courage,” Vita was saying urgently, her hand tightening on his arm. “There will be times when it will be terribly difficult, so many people will be against you, and they will be so sure they are right, your own faith will have to be a rock against all weathers, even the greatest storms. But I am sure you can do that. You have a strength poor Ramsay did not.” A smile of certainty crossed her mouth. “Your faith is rooted in goodness, in knowledge and understanding. You know what it is to suffer, to make mistakes and to find the courage and the trust in God to climb up again and go onward. It has given you the power to forgive both others and yourself.” Her hand was so tight now it hurt him. “You can be all the things Ramsay believed of you. You can take the place he was unable to. Is that not the best thing, the finest gift you could give him? Does that not make his life worthwhile?”
The chill inside him started to ease away. Some of the pain dissolved. Perhaps something was retrievable after all?
“Yes … yes, it would,” he answered her with immense gratitude. “It could be the best way possible, the only way with real meaning.”
“Then come and sit down,” she offered, letting go of his arm and leading the way towards the sofas by the fire. The flames burned up brightly, filling the room with a soft, yellow glow, reflecting on the table beside one of the sofas and making the wood seem even richer than it was. Vita sat gracefully, one hand flicking her skirt almost as if she were only half aware of it. The light was warm on her cheek, blending away the lines of tiredness and grief. She looked as if she could have obeyed her own injunction and for a few hours forgotten all memory of tragedy.
He sat down opposite her, relaxing at last. There was no sound in the room but the fire, the ormolu clock on the mantel with its enamel sides painted with cherubs, and the very faint rustle of the wind and tap as a branch bumped against the window. The rest of the household need not have existed for any intrusion of its presence upon the peace in the room.
Vita wriggled a little deeper into her seat, smiling. “Shall we talk of something that doesn’t matter at all?”
“What would you like?” he asked, falling into the mood.
“Well …” She thought for a moment. “I know! If you could go for a holiday anywhere you wished—expense making no difference at all—where would you choose?” She sat still, watching him, her eyes calm and happy, intent upon his face.
He gave himself over to dreaming. “Persia,” he said after a moment. “I would love to see ancient cities like Persepolis or Isfahan. I would love to hear camel bells in the night and smell the desert wind.”
Her smile widened. “Tell me more.”
He elaborated, describing what little he knew and all he imagined. Now and again he quoted verses of Fitzgerald’s translation of Omar Khayyam. He lost count of time. All their present griefs and suspicions disappeared. When at last they said good-night and parted at quarter to one, he was physically almost asleep where he stood on the landing near her bedroom door, but he felt less weary to the core than he had since Unity’s death—in fact, since long before that, perhaps since her arrival at Brunswick Gardens and the first awful horror of seeing her again.
    He slept deeply and without stirring until morning, and woke with the room full of sunlight. It was late, after eight o’clock, and it took him a moment or two to remember why he had slept in. Of course! He had sat up for hours talking to Vita. It had been most pleasant. She was excellent company. She gave her attention completely, as few people did. It was as if for that space of time no one else existed for her. It was very flattering.
He rose, washed, shaved and dressed. By the time he got to the dining room Mallory had already been and gone. Tryphena was taking breakfast in her room. Clarice and Vita were at the table.
“Good morning.” Clarice regarded him sadly and with a faintly hostile look.
He replied, then turned to Vita. She was still wearing black, of course, but she looked wonderful in it.
“Good morning, Dominic,” she said gently, smiling at him, her eyes very direct.
Suddenly he felt self-conscious. He mumbled his reply and helped himself to breakfast, unintentionally taking more than he really wanted. He sat down and began to eat.
“You look as if you’ve barely slept,” Clarice said pointedly.
“We were up rather late,” Vita explained, her smile widening slightly. She looked calm, very much in control of herself. Dominic admired her courage. It must be an immeasurable help to her family. How much harder their grief would be to bear were they having to support her also, instead of the other way around.
Clarice had obviously been weeping. Her face was pale and her eyes pink-rimmed.
“ ‘We’?” she asked sharply, looking from Vita to Dominic.
“We were just sitting talking, my dear,” Vita replied, passing her the butter although she had not asked for it. “I am afraid we rather forgot how late it was.”
“What is there left to talk about?” Clarice said miserably, pushing the butter away. “It has all been said, and none of it helped. I would have thought a little silence might have been advisable now. We have said too much as it is.”
“We didn’t talk about the things that have happened here,” Vita tried to explain. “We spoke of hopes and dreams, ideas, beautiful things we could share together.”
Clarice’s eyes were wide and hard. “You what?”
It had sounded too bold, far too insensitive. It was not at all how Dominic had seen it or intended it.
“What your mother means is that we spoke of travel and other countries and cultures,” he amended. “We escaped the present tragedy for an hour or two.”
Clarice barely regarded him. Her food was forgotten. She looked at Vita again, waiting.
Vita smiled in memory. “We simply sat by the fire and dreamed aloud of where we might travel if we were free to.”
“What do you mean ‘free’?” Clarice pressed. “Free in what way?” Her brows drew down, and she looked frightened and angry. “What sort of freedom are you talking about?”
“Nothing specific,” Dominic interrupted, rather too quickly. The conversation was becoming uncomfortable. An innocent evening was being misconstrued into something quite different. He could feel his face warm at the thought. And it surprised him how painful it was that Clarice, of all people, should be the one to misunderstand. “Only a little daydreaming,” he rushed on. “After all, one cannot simply throw away all one’s responsibilities and go careering off to Persia, or Kashmir, or wherever one has in mind. It would be expensive and probably dangerous …” He trailed off, looking at her face.
“And you spent all evening talking about it?” she said blankly. Her eyes were full of misery.
“And similar sorts of things,” Vita agreed. “My dear, you should not allow it to disturb you. Why should it? It was only a little happiness in the midst of all our troubles. We must remain as close as we can to each other. I cannot begin to say how grateful I am to Dominic for his understanding and the courage and the strength he has shown throughout this nightmare. For a while it was a perfect companionship. Is it strange that I should be happy to share beautiful ideas with him?”
Clarice swallowed. She seemed to have to force herself to speak.
“No …”
“Of course not.” Vita reached over and patted her hand. It was a familiar gesture, gentle, comforting, and yet oddly condescending as well, as if Clarice had been a child, on the periphery of things.
Dominic was suddenly acutely uncomfortable. Somehow the conversation had run from his control, but it was impossible to cancel the misimpression without churlishness. To say it had meant nothing personal would be absurd. It would be denying something no one but Clarice had thought. It would embarrass Vita, and that would be inexcusable. It must be the last thing she had thought.
Clarice pushed her plate away, the toast half eaten.
“I have things to do. Letters to write.” And without further excuse she went out, closing the door behind her with a sharp snap.
“Oh dear,” Vita said with a sigh. She gave a quick little shrug. “Was I indiscreet?”
He was confused. It was not what he had expected her to say, and momentarily he could think of no answer.
Vita was looking at him with a faint flicker of amusement and tolerance. “I am afraid she is a little jealous, my dear. I suppose it had to happen, but it is most unfortunate it should be now.”
“Jealous?” He was lost.
Now she was really amused. It was plain in her eyes.
“You are too modest. It is one of your virtues, I know, but can you really be so blind? She is extremely … fond of you. She is bound to feel … excluded.”
He did not know what to say. It was ridiculous. It had not been a romantic evening—how could it be? Vita was Ramsay’s wife! At least she was his widow—of barely a couple of days! Clarice could not be so foolish. She had once suggested that Dominic was in love with Vita, but that had been a desperate and totally flippant attempt to distract them all from blaming her father for Unity’s death. No one could have thought it anything but a joke in extraordinarily poor taste. That was all it was. Wasn’t it?
“Oh, I’m sure …” he began. Then he was not sure. He started to rise to his feet. “I must go and explain to her.…”
Vita reached across and took his hand. “Don’t! Please?”
“But …”
“No, my dear,” she said softly. “It is better this way, believe me. You cannot alter the way things are. It is kinder to be honest. Leave her to grieve for her father the way she needs to. Later she will understand. They all will. Just be true to yourself; never fail in that, never waver.”
He felt confused. Somewhere he had made a mistake, and he was not sure where; only there was a deepening fear in him that it had been a serious one.
“If you think so,” he accepted, loosening himself from her hand. “I had better go and start making the arrangements for the service. The bishop asked me to. I wish I could like him more.” And before she could chide him for lack of charity, he made his escape.
But upstairs in his room he could not compose his mind to the subject of Ramsay’s funeral. What could he say of him? Where did compassion and gratitude end and hypocrisy begin? If he excluded what seemed to be the truth of his death, might not the whole event descend into farce? What did he owe, and to whom? To Ramsay himself? To his children, especially Clarice, and Clarice was more and more often on his mind lately. What Vita had said about her was absurd. She liked him, most of the time, but it was certainly not love. The idea was foolish. Clarice was not that sort of person. If she loved it would be totally, with extravagant generosity. She would be honest, too honest.
He sat back in his chair, smiling at the thought, his papers forgotten. How could any man with ambitions in the church even consider marrying a woman like Clarice Parmenter? She was devastatingly outspoken; her humor was lethal. Clarice was … unconventional. She had beautiful eyes, and with a little attention her hair could be dressed quite well. It was thick and shiny. And he rather liked dark hair. And her mouth was pretty—very pretty.
But Vita was wrong.
The thought of Vita made him extremely uncomfortable. There was something in her face, in her eyes, which alarmed him. She seemed to have misunderstood his friendship and read it as … he was not sure what. Something for Clarice to be jealous of.
He was still sitting turning it over in his mind, trying to escape from a feeling of being hemmed in, almost claustrophobically so, his thoughts in increasing turmoil, when there was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” he said, his voice almost a squeak with nervous tension in case it was Vita.
But it was Emsley who stood in the entrance. The relief was intense. He could feel the sweat prickle over his skin.
“Yes?” he asked.
Emsley looked apologetic. “I’m sorry, Mr. Corde, but Superintendent Pitt is back again, and says he would like to see you, sir.”
“Oh. All right.” He rose and followed Emsley without any sense of foreboding. It would only be final details to tidy up. He did not wish to discuss the tragedy. He still felt the pain of loss sharply. He was realizing only now how much he had liked Ramsay. Certainly Ramsay had been a little dry, full of doubts and haunted by a sense of his own weaknesses. But he had also been gentle, extremely patient, tolerant of the shortcomings of others, and sometimes his humor had been startling, far quicker than Dominic had expected, and irreverent. Clarice was not unlike him, except she had a stronger will for life, less doubt of herself. And she seemed to have a more emotional faith, rather than intellectual, as Ramsay’s had been. Although she could argue theology with anyone. Dominic knew that to his cost. Her knowledge was both wider and deeper than his own.
Pitt was in the withdrawing room, standing alone in front of the fire, which had been lit early. He looked profoundly unhappy. In fact, Dominic could not remember ever having seen him look so wretched, not since Sarah’s death. His face was white, his whole body stiff.
Dominic closed the door with a sinking feeling so overwhelming the room seemed to waver around him.
“What is it?” he said hoarsely. He had no idea what Pitt was going to say. Was it something to do with Charlotte? Had there been some fearful accident? “What’s happened?” he demanded, going forward quickly now.
“You had better sit.” Pitt waved his hand at a chair.
“Why?” Dominic remained where he was. “What is it?” His voice was growing louder. He could hear the fear in it himself, but he could not control it.
Pitt’s face tightened; his eyes looked almost black. “I’ve been to Haverstock Hill.”
Dominic’s stomach knotted, and for a moment he thought he was actually going to be sick. The sweat broke out on his skin. Even as the fear gripped him, part of his conscious mind was telling him it was absurd. Why should he be terrified? He had not killed Unity. He was not even the father of her child—not this time. The thought of that other time still hurt like a raw wound. He’d thought it had healed, that time had covered the scar. He had found new hopes, new things to care about, labor for. He could laugh as easily as before. One day perhaps he would love, more than he had loved Sarah. Certainly more than he had loved Unity—if he could honestly say he had loved her at all. It was the child that tore at him, leaving that awful emptiness inside. It was his greatest task, to forgive her for that. He had not succeeded yet.
Pitt was staring at him. There was misery and contempt in his eyes.
Dominic wanted to be angry. How dare Pitt feel such superiority. He had no idea of the temptations Dominic had faced. He sat at home smug and safe with his beautiful, warm and happy wife. No real difficulty crossed his path. He who is never tempted can very easily be righteous.
But he knew all that was a lie which would not deceive Pitt. It did not even deceive him. He had behaved appallingly to Jenny. It had been as much stupidity as malice, but that pardoned nothing. If a parishioner had offered excuses like that, he would have torn him to shreds for the dishonesty they were.
Why should it hurt to see that scorn in Pitt’s face? What did he care what a gamekeeper’s son turned policeman should think of him?
A great deal. He cared very much what Pitt thought. Pitt was a man Dominic liked, in spite of the fact Pitt did not like him. He understood why. In Pitt’s place he would have felt the same.
“I assume from that that you have found out I knew Unity Bellwood in the past,” he said, stumbling over the words more than he wished to. He would like to have been icily dignified, not stiff-tongued, dry-lipped.
“Yes,” Pitt agreed. “Intimately, apparently.”
There was no point in trying to deny any of it. It would only add cowardice to everything else.
“I did then … not since. I don’t suppose you will believe that, but it is true.” He squared his shoulders and clenched his hands to stop them from shaking. Should he tell Pitt that Mallory was the father? How could he believe that, knowing what he did about the past? No one would. It would sound cowardly and self-serving. And there was no proof, only Mallory’s word, which he could easily take back. When he knew about Dominic and Unity he probably would. She could have lain with either of them, or both. Unity would do that. Anyone looking at her history would find that easy to accept.
“Who killed her, Dominic?” Pitt said grimly.
It had to come. For a moment his voice was strangled in his throat. He had to try twice to speak.
“I don’t know. I thought it was Ramsay.”
“Why? Are you going to tell me he was the father of her child?” Pitt’s voice was only mildly sarcastic. He still looked more hurt than angry.
“No.” Dominic swallowed. Why was his mouth still so dry? “No, I thought it was because of her constant erosion of his faith. She undermined him all the time. She was one of those women who made a crusade of proving people wrong and showing them every occasion. She never let an error slip.” His hands were clammy. He clenched and unclenched them. “I thought … I thought in the end he lost his temper and pushed her, without meaning even to injure her, let alone kill her. I thought that afterwards he was so horrified he refused to believe what he had done. Then it preyed on his mind and drove him to suicide in the end.”
“Suicide?” Pitt’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s hardly what Mrs. Parmenter said.”
“I know.” Dominic shifted his weight, not because he was lying but because his legs were cramping, his muscles were so tense. “I thought she made up that story to cover for him. Suicide is a crime in the eyes of the church.”
“So is murder.”
“I know that! But nobody’s proved murder against him. We could still say it was an accident.”
“His death … or Unity’s? Or both?”
Dominic shifted his weight again. “Both, I suppose. I know no one would believe that … but there would be nothing they could do. It—it is hardly a good answer, but it is all I can think of.” He was stammering, and that was ridiculous, because he was speaking the truth. “It’s the only thing that makes any kind of sense,” he went on desperately. “I can understand how she would defend him the only way she could think of. I know it’s hopeless.”
“I don’t think Ramsay killed Unity, accidentally or with intent,” Pitt replied. He seemed able to stand in the same spot without needing to move. His face was implacable. However much he hated this, he was not going to evade it or to stop until he was finished. “I think it was either Mallory or you.”
Dominic could hear the blood rushing in his ears. He could think of nothing to say except denial.
“I didn’t …” It was not much more than a whisper.
“Ramsay thought you did.”
“Wh-why?” It was a blow so hard it left him reeling. Ramsay had believed that of him? That he had killed Unity, which could be an accident, or at least an understandable crime? Heaven knew, she provoked people to the limits. It was almost a surprise, when one thought of it, that no one had hurt her physically before.
But he had never acknowledged, even in his worst thoughts, that Ramsay believed he was guilty. How it must have crushed him. He had hoped so much of Dominic, believed so much. It was his one real success, the achievement no one could take from him, no one would draw doubt on or call into question. He could no longer believe in God. His fragile faith could not stand up to Darwin’s ruthless reasoning. Evolution had swept away the foundation of his theology, leaving nothing behind. If God did not exist, how could one love Him? He had been left alone in a dark universe. But he had loved people—not all of them, but some. He had truly loved some. Dominic was one of them. That final failure must have been more than he could bear. Clarice was the only one who had never let him down, and in the end that was not enough.
“I didn’t,” he repeated helplessly. “I can’t say I didn’t have reason, if one can have reason for killing another person. She tried to manipulate me back into the old relationship, but I refused. There was nothing she could do except make a nuisance of herself, and she did that. But she couldn’t afford to lose this position, and she knew I knew that.” He smiled bitterly. There was a sour humor in it. “We had an equal power over each other.”
“Was she in love with Ramsay?” Pitt asked.
“What?” It was an incredible question. Pitt could have understood nothing about Unity to have asked that. Or was he playing some devious game?
The sunlight faded at the far side of the room and rain spattered against the windows. Pitt moved to the ornate chair beside the fire and sat down at last.
“Could she have been in love with Ramsay?” he said again, carefully. He was watching Dominic’s face for the tiniest change in his expression.
Dominic could have laughed, but he was too close to losing control of himself.
“No,” he said more levelly than he had thought he was capable of. He sat down as well, a little sharply, as if his legs were not entirely in his control. “If you think that, then you don’t understand Unity. Ramsay had qualities which might have made a woman love him, but she didn’t see that sort of integrity as interesting or exciting.” He loathed having to say this, but it was the truth, and Pitt had to understand. “She thought he was a bore, because she never saw his emotions. He didn’t like her, so he never showed her his humor or his imagination or his warmth. She was always criticizing.” A score of instances came to his mind. He could see the sneer on her face, the triumph in her eyes as if it had been only a moment ago. “She prevented the best in him from even showing itself in her company. I don’t think she realized that, but it doesn’t make any difference. He wasn’t even worth a challenge. He was unobtainable, perhaps because to her there was nothing to obtain.”
“A challenge?” Pitt lifted his eyebrows. “To destroy?”
“Yes … I suppose so. She resented the closed world of academia, which was entirely male dominated, to the exclusion of women no matter how excellent their scholarship—and hers was excellent.” This also was true, and he could remember the finer part of her in saying it. “In her own field she was brilliant, far better than most men. I—I can’t blame her for hating them. Their patronizing was insufferable, and in the end they paid lip service to her intellect and her talent, and then denied her the real chances. Appetite of the flesh was their one vulnerability, where she could beat them, wound them, even destroy them.”
“Including Ramsay Parmenter?”
“I don’t think so. I doubt she was a match for Vita, even had she wanted to be.” He was reluctant to say this, but he had left himself no choice. “No. Her challenge here was Mallory. He was far more vulnerable, and a better victory anyway. Much more personable in the taking, and a deeper wound for Ramsay and to the Establishment. After all, he is not only sworn to chastity but to celibacy as well.”
Pitt said nothing, but Dominic could see in his eyes that that at least he could believe.
Dominic swallowed. His tongue was sticking to his teeth. “I did not kill her,” he said again. He could feel the panic welling up inside him to the verge of hysteria. He must control himself. He must keep his grip. It would pass. There would be a way out.
He rose to his feet, barely realizing he was doing it. The rain was beating against the windows now, a sudden spring storm.
There was no way out. It was tightening around him. The panic was there again, high in his throat. His heart was beating too fast. His skin was clammy. Pitt did not believe him. Why should he? Why should anyone? The judge would not; the jury would not.
They would hang him! How long was it from trial to the rope? Three weeks … three short weeks. The last day would come, the last hour … and then the pain … and nothing.
“Dominic!” Pitt’s voice was sharp.
“Yes …” Pitt must be aware of his terror. He must be able to see it, even smell it. Would he believe it could be in an innocent man?
“You’d better sit down. You look dreadful.”
“No … no. I’ll be all right.” Why had he said that? He was not all right. “Is that all you wanted?”
Pitt was still watching him closely. “For the moment. But I don’t believe Ramsay killed her, and I mean to find out who did.”
“Yes … of course.” Dominic turned to leave.
“Oh …”
Dominic stopped. “What?”
“I found love letters between Ramsay and Unity, very passionate, very graphic. Do you know anything about those?”
“Love letters?” Dominic was amazed. Had the circumstances been any different he would have suspected Pitt of making a bad joke, but he searched Pitt’s face and saw no humor at all, only pain and harsh disappointment. “Are you sure?”
“They were in his study on the desk, in his writing and hers,” Pitt replied. “They mirror each other. There was no question they are letter and reply. Mrs. Parmenter saw them when she went in to speak to him. That was what precipitated the quarrel and why he attacked her. It was obviously something about which he felt violently.”
Dominic was lost for words. It was incredible. If it were true, then all his perceptions were false, everything he thought he knew was not so. It was as if he had touched snow and it had burned him.
“I can see you don’t know anything,” Pitt said dryly. “I wish I could say it cleared you of suspicion, but I am afraid it doesn’t.” He rose to his feet. “The fact that they wrote love letters suggests there was much for you to be jealous of, whether you loved her or not. And if Mallory was the father of her child—this time—there was that as well. She was a dangerous woman, both foolish and destructive. Perhaps it was only a matter of time before there was a tragedy. Don’t leave Brunswick Gardens, Dominic.” And with a bleak and unhappy little gesture, Pitt turned and went to the door.
When Pitt had left, Dominic stood alone in the room for minutes he did not count. He was unaware of the fire collapsing in a shower of sparks, and it was only when he heard the clock: on the mantel strike the hour that the thought occurred to him that someone should have muffled it. He must tell Emsley. He was surprised that Clarice had not done so. Had Vita omitted it because she knew it had been suicide, and one part of her regarded that as a sin?
He refused to harbor that thought. It was filled with too much pain, a great tangle of it which seemed to touch everything.
He moved suddenly, striding out of the room, and almost bumped into Emsley in the hall.
“Where is Mallory?” he demanded.
Emsley looked startled. His hair stood out in wisps at the crown where his brush had missed it. The pink had gone from his skin, and he looked unbearably tired.
“I’m sorry,” Dominic said quickly. “I did not mean to speak so abruptly.”
Emsley’s eyes opened wide. He was not used to anyone’s apologizing to him. One did not apologize to servants. He did not know what to say.
“Do you know where Mr. Mallory is?” Dominic asked. He could not bring himself to say “Mr. Parmenter.” That was still Ramsay. “And no one has muffled the clock in the withdrawing room. Would you do that, please?”
“Yes sir. I’m sorry, sir. It slipped my mind. I—I really am sorry.”
“I daresay you had a lot of other things to care for, more important things, like seeing that the rest of the staff are coping.” He looked at the older man closely. “Are they?”
“Oh yes, sir,” Emsley replied, and Dominic knew he was lying.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized again. “I haven’t even been through to see them. I—I am too upset. It was very selfish of me. When I’ve seen Mr. Mallory, I’ll come.”
“Perhaps, sir, if you could come for grace before the evening meal, that would be a good time?” Emsley suggested. “It might be better after the day’s work is over. Some of the maids could be … well, a bit emotional, if you understand me.”
“Yes, of course.” Dominic made a mental note to go, regardless of whatever else happened. They must be shocked by two deaths within days of each other, confused by the guilt and suspicion in the house, and the certain knowledge that one of the people they had served and depended upon, probably looked up to, was guilty of murder and now a death which was to them inexplicable. They must be wondering if it was accident, murder or suicide. The whole order they had grown up with, the safety that had surrounded them and provided all their physical needs, had collapsed. They must wonder whether they even had a home for the future. In the aftermath of Ramsay’s death the household would break up, and they might easily be homeless. Vita could not remain in church property now. The house would automatically pass to the next incumbent. It was something he had not even thought of. His own emotions had taken over his mind completely, driving out everything else.
“Mr. Mallory is in the library, sir,” Emsley told him. “Sir, Mr. Corde …”
Dominic waited, already half turned to face the library door.
“Thank you …”
Dominic forced a quick smile, then strode across the mosaic, his feet surprisingly loud. He would never get used to the sound of it. He flung the library door open without even bothering to knock. He closed it behind him.
Mallory was on his knees beside the lowest bookshelf. He looked up, irritated at the intrusion, then surprised to see who it was. He arose slowly, his back to the brown velvet curtains and the wet windows, gleaming now as the sun struck them.
“What is it?” There was a thin thread of rancor in his voice. He was the master now. The sooner Dominic realized it the better. Things would not continue as they had been in the past. “Did you want me?” he added.
“Pitt has just been here,” Dominic said peremptorily. “This can’t go on. I won’t permit it.”
“Then tell him to go.” Mallory’s face showed his impatience. “If you can’t deal with that, I will.” He moved forward as if to do so that moment.
Dominic remained with his back to the door.
“Pitt is police. He’ll come here as often as he wants to until the case is solved to his satisfaction …”
“It is solved.” Mallory stopped a couple of yards in front of Dominic. “I can’t think of anything further to say. It is a tragedy best left to sink into as much forgetfulness as we can manage. If that is all you have come for, then please allow me to continue studying. That at least serves some purpose.”
“It is not solved. Your father did not kill Unity …”
Mallory’s face was tight and bleak. “Yes, he did. For God’s sake, Dominic, this is hard enough for the family without raking it over and trying to find ways to escape the truth. There is no escape! Have the courage and the honor to accept that, and if the word applies to you, the faith.”
“I am trying to.” Dominic heard the anger in his own voice, and the contempt which was for himself as well as for Mallory, standing looking so sullen and defiant. “One of the truths to acknowledge is that Ramsay thought I killed her.”
Mallory’s eyes opened very wide. “Is that a confession?” His face was full of doubt and new pain as well. “Aren’t you a little late? Father is dead. You cannot bring him back now. It’s not much use being honest, or sorry …”
“No, it’s not a confession!” Dominic snapped. “I am pointing out that if Ramsay thought I killed her, then it follows that he could not have, and I didn’t. That only leaves you, and you had reason enough.”
Mallory was suddenly white. “I didn’t!” His body was stiff, shoulders raised high. “I did not kill her!” But there was an unmistakable edge of fear in his voice.
“You had every reason,” Dominic insisted. “It was your child! What would it do to your career, your ambitions—”
“The priesthood is not an ambition!” Mallory burst out, anger flushing up his cheeks. He was standing in front of the large desk, the sunlight making patterns on the oak floor. He looked very young. “It is a calling,” he said critically. “A service to God, a way of life. You may do it to earn yourself money, recognition, even fame, I don’t know. But I do it because I know it is the truth.”
“Don’t be childish,” Dominic said angrily, turning away. “We each do it for lots of reasons. It may be pure one day, and arrogant or cowardly or simply stupid another. That is not the point.” He stared back at Mallory. “Unity was carrying your child. She was, if not blackmailing you, certainly using pressure to make you do what she wanted, and enjoying the power. Did she threaten to tell your bishop?” He shook his head. “No, don’t bother to answer that. It wasn’t worth it. Whatever she said, you must have known she could.”
Mallory was sweating. “I didn’t kill her!” he said yet again. “She wasn’t going to ruin me. She just—just liked the power. She thought it was funny. She laughed, because she knew …” He closed his eyes, realizing what he had said and how much it condemned him. “I didn’t kill her!”
“Then why did you lie about seeing her that morning?” Dominic challenged him.
“I didn’t! I was in the conservatory … studying! I didn’t see her!” Mallory’s voice was high and indignant, but the fear was a sharp note behind it all the time, and Dominic could see and feel it in the air. He must be lying. If Ramsay had not killed her, it could only be Mallory. Dominic knew he was innocent at least of that. Guilty of having got her with child before, certainly guilty of every tragedy of Jenny’s, guilty of failing to help Ramsay, of letting him die of misery, loneliness and despair … but not of Unity’s death.
“If she wasn’t in the conservatory, how did she get the stain on her shoe?” he said coldly. He could understand the terror which made Mallory lie even now, when it was hopeless, but he also hated it. It robbed him of the last shred of dignity. It stretched out the pain of this more than it had to be. And he could not forgive him for having allowed Ramsay to be blamed for his guilt. Fear was one thing, even cowardice, but to stand by and watch someone else suffer for your sin was of a different order.
“I don’t know!” Mallory was shaking. “It doesn’t make any sense. I can’t explain it. I only know I didn’t leave the conservatory and she didn’t come in.”
“She must have,” Dominic said wearily. “She couldn’t have got that on her shoe anywhere else. She trod in it on the conservatory floor as she left.”
“Then why didn’t I?” There was a sudden surge of hope in Mallory’s voice, and he waved his arm as if the movement somehow released him. “Why was there no stain on my shoes?”
“Wasn’t there?” Dominic raised his eyebrows. “I don’t know that.”
“Well, go and look!” Mallory shouted at him, jerking his head towards the door. “Go and look at all my shoes! You won’t find any stain on any of them.”
“Why not? Did you clean it off? Or did you destroy the shoes?”
“Neither, damn you! I never left the conservatory.”
Dominic said nothing. Could that conceivably be true? How could it be possible? If it was not Mallory, then it must have been Ramsay after all. Had he been really, truly mad? So mad he had blanked from his mind what he had done, and believed himself innocent?
“Go and look!” Mallory repeated. “Ask Stander, he’ll tell you I haven’t thrown away any shoes.”
“Or cleaned it off?” Dominic could not easily let go. It meant Ramsay must have been guilty after all, and after the reprieve Pitt had given him, it was too difficult to go back and accept his guilt and the madness that had to go with it. There was something very frightening about madness, something unreachable, something there was no way of dealing with.
“I don’t know!” Mallory slashed the air, his voice high and loud. Any servants in the hall must be able to hear him. “I never tried! I never saw the stuff! But probably not—not if it was a stain. It would go into the leather. You can’t get chemical stains out of things. Ordinary stains are bad enough, according to Stander.”
There was nothing to do but go and look. There was certainly no point in remaining there in the library confronting Mallory.
“I will look.” He made it a challenge, then turned and went back into the hall and up the stairs. “Stander!” he called brusquely. “Stander!”
The valet was nowhere to be seen, which in the circumstances was hardly surprising.
Braithwaite appeared. “Can I help you, sir?” She looked tired and frightened. She had been with the family for years, since she was a young woman. Had anyone bothered to think about the servants’ emotions, their grief and sense of shock and confusion, their fears for the future?
“I need to look at Mr. Mallory’s shoes … with his permission. It is important.”
“All his shoes?” She was totally confused.
“Yes. Will you find Stander for me, please? Immediately.”
She agreed with some obvious misgiving, and Dominic had to wait nearly ten minutes before Stander came up the stairs looking deeply unhappy. Apparently he had checked with Mallory, because he made no demur but went straight to Mallory’s dressing room and opened both wardrobes to show the neat rows of shoes with their trees all in place.
“Do you know which ones he was wearing the day Miss Bellwood died?” Dominic asked.
“I’m not sure, sir. It would be either these”—he pointed to a pair of fairly well worn black leather boots—“or these.” He indicated another pair, rather newer.
“Thank you.” Dominic reached forward and picked up the first pair, taking them over to the window and holding them to the sunlight. They were immaculate. The soles were thin with use, but there were no stains on them, nor any marks of recent scraping such as might be needed to remove a chemical.
He put them down and picked up the other pair Stander had indicated. He examined them in the same way. They also were perfectly clean.
“Had he any more he might have worn that day?” he asked.
“No sir, I believe not.” Stander looked totally mystified.
“I’ll look at them all anyway.” Dominic made it a statement. He was not asking permission. Certainly he would not be diverted now from finding the truth or be misled by the wrong pair of shoes. He picked them up one by one and searched the entire collection, not that there were so many. Mallory was far from extravagant, seven pairs in all, including a very old pair of riding boots. None of them had any chemical stains.
“Did you find what you were looking for, sir?” Stander asked anxiously.
“No. But then I don’t think I wanted to.” He did not explain what he meant. He was not even sure if it were true. “Are these all? I mean, there isn’t a pair missing? In the last two weeks?”
Stander was confused and unhappy, his normally smooth face puckered with concern.
“No sir. These are all the shoes Mr. Mallory has owned since he has been home again, so far as I know. Apart from those he has on, of course.”
“Oh … yes. I forgot about those. Thank you.” Dominic closed the wardrobe door. There were two more things to do, check the shoes that Mallory was wearing at the moment, and speak to the gardener’s boy and find out exactly where the chemical was spilled, what it was and how long it would have remained wet enough to have marked anything that touched it.
“I dunno wot it’s called, sir,” the boy answered with a frown. “Yer’d ‘ave ter ask Mr. Bostwick about that. But it don’t stay wet more’n an hour, outside. I stood in it meself arter that, an’ it din’t mark nothin’.”
“Are you sure?” Dominic pressed him. They were standing on the stone paving just outside the conservatory. It was bright sunlight through an ever-widening rent in the clouds, but every leaf and blade of grass was tremulous with drops of rain.
“Yes sir, pos’tive sure,” the boy replied.
“Do you know what time you spilled it?”
“No … not really …”
“Even a guess? Before Miss Bellwood fell down the stairs, but how long before? You remember that?” Dominic stood on the wet stones, oblivious of the beauty around him, his mind filled only with times and stains.
“Oh, yes sir! ‘Course I do.” The boy looked shocked at the idea that anyone could think he might forget such a thing.
“Think back to what you were doing, and what you did after that, until you heard about the—the death,” Dominic urged.
The boy considered for several moments. “Well, I were cleaning out the pots for the ferns. That’s w’y I ’ad the stuff,” he said seriously. “Gotter be terrible careful o’ red mites an’ them little spiders. Eats leaves summink rotten, they do.” His face expressed his opinion of such things. “Never get rid o’ them. Then I watered the narcissuses and the ’yacinths. Smell lovely, they do. Them ones wi’ the little orange centers is me favorites— narcissuses, I mean. Mr. Mallory were studyin’, so I couldn’t sweep up ’is end. ’E don’ like ter be interrupted.” He did not comment as to what a nuisance this was, but his expression was eloquent. Theological studies were all very well in their place, but their place was not the conservatory, where people were busy attending to growing things.
“Did you sweep the rest?” Dominic persisted.
“Yes sir, I did.”
“Did Mr. Mallory leave at all?”
“I dunno, sir. I went out ter work in the garden fer a while, seein’ as I couldn’t finish inside. S’pose I must’a spilt the stuff about ’alf an hour afore Miss Bellwood fell, mebbe a few minutes more’n that.”
“Not an hour?”
“No sir,” he said vehemently. “Mr. Bostwick ’d’ave ’ad me fer dinner if I’d took an hour ter do that!”
“So it must have been still wet when Miss Bellwood fell down the stairs.”
“Yes sir, must ’ave.”
“Thank you.”
There was only one thing left to do, although he was sure in his mind that it would yield nothing, and so it proved. The shoes Mallory was wearing were as clean as all those in his wardrobes.
“Thank you,” Dominic said bleakly, without explaining himself any further, and went back to his own room feeling wretched.
Mallory was not guilty. He believed it. He was not sure whether he was glad or not. It meant Ramsay had been, and that hurt deeply. But at least Ramsay himself was beyond pain now, beyond earthly pain anyway. What lay farther than that was more than he dared imagine.
But Pitt believed Ramsay was innocent. Which meant he would have to believe Dominic guilty.
He paced back and forth from the window to the bookcase, and to the window, turned and back to the bookcase. The sunlight was bright across the floor and he barely noticed it.
Pitt would be hurt. He would hate having to arrest Dominic, for Charlotte’s sake. But he would do it! Part of him would even find satisfaction in it. It would vindicate his judgment of all those years ago in Cater Street.
Charlotte would be terribly grieved. She had been so happy for him that he had found a vocation. There had been no shadow in her pleasure. This would crush her. But she would not believe Pitt had made a mistake. Perhaps that was something she could not afford to believe. And if she did, it would not help Dominic. All it would do would be to tear her emotions.
But what cut him the most deeply was what Clarice would feel. She had loved her father, and she had believed in Dominic. Now she would think of him with loathing and the kind of contempt he could not bear to imagine. It took his breath away even to stand in this familiar room—with its red Turkish carpet, polished wooden clock on the mantel, and the sound of leaves beyond the window—and think of it. And it had not even happened yet! He had never realized before how much Clarice’s opinion of him mattered. There was no reason why it should. It should be Vita he thought of. Ramsay had been her husband. This was her home. She was the one who had turned to him in her anxiety, her grief. She was the one who trusted him, saw in him a good man, full of strength and courage, honor, faith. She even believed he could make a great leader in the church, a beacon to guide others.
Clarice had never professed to think him destined for any kind of greatness. It was Vita whose dreams he would break, whose disillusion would be crippling on top of her bereavement and the total loss of not only what her husband was but of what he had been. She would have to believe that Dominic had killed Unity. Pitt would surely tell her why. At least what he thought was why: about their past love affair—if love was the word?
Had Unity loved him? Or merely been in love, that consuming need for another person which might include gentleness, generosity, patience and the ability to give of the heart, but also might not. It could so easily be simply a mixture of enchantment and hunger, a loneliness temporarily kept at bay.
Had Unity loved him?
Had he loved her?
He thought back on it, trying to remember it honestly. It hurt for many reasons, but mostly because he was ashamed of it. No, he had not loved her. He had been fascinated, excited, challenged. When she had responded it had been uniquely exhilarating. She was different from all his past acquaintances, more intensely alive than any other woman he had known, and certainly cleverer. And she was passionate.
She had also been possessive and at times cruel. He could think more sharply now of her cruelty to other people than to him. He had felt no gentleness, and nothing like the kind of pity that would have satisfied his present need. With the harsh honesty of hindsight, everything he had felt for her had been innately selfish.
He stood at the window staring at the new, unfolding leaf buds.
Had he ever truly loved anyone?
He had cared for Sarah. There had been far more tenderness in that, more sense of sharing. But he had also become bored by her, because he was concerned primarily with his own appetite, his desire for excitement, change, flattery, the sense of power in new conquests.
How childish he had been.
He could retrieve something now by going to Pitt and telling him that Mallory was innocent. Pitt might well decide to check the stain on the conservatory floor for himself. But he might not. Mallory would tell him, as he had told Dominic. Would he be believed?
The shadow of the noose was already forming over Dominic, and it would take real and tangible shape soon enough. He was innocent. Ramsay believed himself innocent.
Mallory was innocent.
What could Pitt believe? The only other person in the house unaccounted for was Clarice. Vita and Tryphena had been together downstairs. It was physically impossible they could be guilty. The servants had all been within each other’s sight, or so occupied as to have been unable to leave their positions unobserved.
He simply could not bring himself to think Clarice guilty. Why would she? She had no possible reason.
Except to save Mallory, if she knew the truth about Unity’s child and her power to ruin Mallory because of it.
Or if she had read the love letters Pitt spoke of, which defied explanation, and she panicked. Had Unity even told her, and threatened to ruin Ramsay?
He could not believe it. Perhaps Clarice, like everyone he knew, could have gone into a moment’s rage or pain, a fear beyond her to master or in which to think clearly or see beyond the terrible, overwhelming moment?
But Clarice would never have allowed Ramsay to have been blamed. Whatever the cost would have been to herself, she would have come forward and told the truth.
Would she? He believed it. He had not realized he held her in such extraordinary esteem, but he did. Suddenly it filled his mind. There was pain in it, but also a kind of elation which was more than simply a recognition of truth.
Still he was startled some time later when there was a knock on his door and she stood in the entrance, white-faced. He found himself stammering slightly.
“Wh-what is it? Has something—”
“No,” she said quickly, attempting a smile. “Everyone is alive and well—at least I believe so. There have been no screams in the last half hour.”
“Please, Clarice!” He spoke impulsively. “Don’t …”
“I know.” She came in and closed the door behind her, but stood with both hands still on the knob, leaning against it. “It is a time to be deadly serious—I mean … grave.” She shut her eyes. “Oh, God!” she whispered. “I can’t get it right, can I?”
He was obliged to smile in spite of himself. “No,” he agreed gently. “It would seem not. Do you want to try again?”
“Thank you.” She opened her eyes wide. They were clear and very dark gray. “Are you all right? I know you had another visit from that policeman. He’s your brother-in-law, but …”
He meant to be discreet, not to burden her with the decisions he had to make, the uncertainties, the cost.
“You aren’t all right, are you?” she said softly. “Did Mallory do it?”
He could not lie. He had struggled for hours with what to do, what to say to Pitt, with the fear of what would happen, what his own conscience would do to him if he did nothing. Now the decision was taken from him.
“No, he didn’t,” he answered. “He couldn’t have.”
“Couldn’t he?” She was uncertain. She knew it was not necessarily good news. There was apprehension in her eyes, not relief.
He did not look away. “No. The chemical that was spilled across the conservatory path was wet at the time Unity was killed. It was on her shoes, but it wasn’t on his. I checked it all with the garden boy, and with Stander. I looked at all Mallory’s shoes. He’s still lying about her going in there to speak to him. I don’t know why. It is completely pointless. But he didn’t come out, so he couldn’t have been at the top of the stairs.”
“So it was Papa …” She looked stricken. It was a truth almost more than she knew how to bear.
He responded instinctively, reaching out and taking her hands in his.
“He believed it was me,” he said, dreading her response, the moment when she would pull away from him in revulsion, as she must. But he could not let the lie build itself between them. “Pitt found his journal and deciphered it. He really believed I had killed Unity …”
She looked puzzled. “Why? Because you knew her before?”
He felt a numbness creep through him, a prickling.
“You knew that?” His voice was hoarse.
“She told me.” A smile flickered over her face. “She thought I was in love with you, and she wanted to stop me from doing anything about it. She thought it would anger me or make me dislike you.” She gave a jerky little laugh. “She told me you had been lovers and that you had left her.” She waited for him to respond.
At that instant he would have given anything he possessed to be able to tell her it was untrue, the fabrication of a jealous woman. But one lie necessitated another, and he would destroy the only relationship he had which had a cleanness to it, an unselfishness not spoiled by appetite, illusion or deceit. When it was shattered, at least it would be by the past, not the present. He would not sacrifice the future for a few days, or hours, until Pitt broke it.
“I did leave her,” he admitted. “She aborted our child, and I was so horrified, and grieved, I ran away. I realized we did not love each other, only ourselves, our own hungers. That doesn’t justify any of it, or what I did afterwards. I didn’t set out to be dishonest, but I was. I had other loves, was innocent enough to believe a woman could share a man with another woman. And then when she was … vulnerable … to discover she couldn’t.” He still could not put the true words to it. “I should have known that. I could have, had I been honest. I was old enough and experienced enough not to have believed that lie. I allowed myself because I wanted to.”
She was staring at him unwaveringly.
He would like to have stopped, but he would only have to tell her later, begin all over again. Better to complete it now, no matter how hard it was. He let go of her hands. He would not allow himself to feel her pull away.
“I did not want the commitment of one love, of responsibility during the hard times as well as the easy ones,” he said, hearing his voice sounding flat and mundane for such terrible words. “It was your father who pulled me out of my despair after Jenny killed herself and I knew I was to blame for it. He taught me courage and forgiveness. He taught me there is no going back, only forward. If I wanted to make anything of my life, of myself, then I must work my way out of the slough I had dug myself into.” He swallowed. “And then when he needed me, I was not able to do anything. I stood by helplessly and watched him drown.”
“We all did,” she whispered, her voice thick with tears. “I did, too. I had no idea what was happening, or why. I believe, and I couldn’t help his unbelief. I loved him, and I couldn’t see what was happening with Unity. I still don’t understand. Did he love her, or simply need something she could give him?”
“I don’t know. I don’t understand either.” Without thinking he took her hands again, and his fingers tightened around hers. “But I must tell Pitt it wasn’t Mallory, and he already believes it wasn’t your father. That only leaves me, and I can’t prove to him I didn’t. I think he may arrest me.”
She drew in her breath sharply and seemed about to say something, then she did not.
What else was there to say? A score of things poured into his mind. He should apologize for all the hurt he had caused her, for all he had been which was shallow and in the end self-serving and pointless, for all the promises he had made, implicitly, and had failed to live up to, and for what was yet to come. He wanted to tell her how much she mattered to him, that he cared intensely what she thought of him, what she felt in return. But that would be unfair. It would only place another burden on her, when she already had so much.
“I’m sorry,” he said, lowering his eyes. “I wanted to be so much better than I have been. I suppose I started really trying much too late.”
“You didn’t kill Unity, did you?” It was barely a question, more of a statement, and her voice was not tremulous, seeking help, rather demanding confirmation.
“No.”
“Then I will do everything I can to see you are not blamed for it. I’ll fight everybody I have to!” she answered fiercely.
He looked at her.
Slowly the color filled her face. Her eyes had betrayed her, and she knew it. She avoided him for an instant, then gave up a hopeless task.
“I love you,” she admitted. “You don’t have to say anything, except for heaven’s sake, don’t be grateful. I couldn’t bear it!”
He started to laugh, because what she feared was so far from anything he felt. Gratitude certainly, overwhelming, joyous gratitude, even if it was too late and there could never be anything ahead of them but struggle and grief. It was the most precious thing to know, and whatever Pitt said or did, whatever he believed, he could not take that away.
“Why are you laughing?” she demanded hotly.
He held on to her hands although she was pulling away.
“Because that is about the only thing on earth that could make me happy just at the moment,” he answered. “It is the only good and clean and sweet thing in all this tragedy. I didn’t realize it until just before you came in. I seem to see everything really precious when it is too late, but I love you, too.”
“Do you?” she said with surprise.
“Yes. Yes, I do!”
“Really?” She frowned for a moment, searching his face, his eyes, his mouth. Then when she saw the truth of it, she reached up and very delicately kissed his lips.
He hesitated, then closed his arms around her and held her, kissed her, and then again, and again. He would go and speak to Pitt … but later. This hour might be all there was; he must make it last so he could remember it forever.