Brunswick Gardens

6

“DO YOU THINK it is Ramsay Parmenter?” Charlotte asked, pushing the marmalade across the breakfast table to Pitt. It was now the fourth day since Unity Bellwood’s death. Charlotte had, of course, told Pitt about her visit to Brunswick Gardens, and he had not reacted favorably. She had had some considerable explaining to do, and had not been very successful. She knew he was still unhappy about it—not that it was her meddling, which he was more than used to, but because she had gone so quickly to Dominic.
“I don’t know,” he replied to her question. “It seems most probable from the facts, and least likely from what I can learn of the man.”
“People do sometimes behave very out of character.” She took a piece of toast herself.
“No, they don’t,” he argued. “They only behave out of the character you know. If he was a man to do that, it will be there somewhere.”
“But if it wasn’t him, then it must have been Mallory,” she pointed out. “Why would he? The same reason?” She was trying to keep it out of her voice, but at the back of her mind was the cold fear that Dominic would be suspected. The change in him had been so complete, could Pitt believe it? Or would he always see Dominic as he had been in Cater Street, even by his own admission now, selfish, too easily flattered, giving in to appetite at the first whim?
“I doubt it,” he replied. “She irritated him with her views, but he was sufficiently certain in his mind it did not trouble him. But he could have been the father of her child, if that is what you mean.”
The coldness inside her grew. She tried to recall to her mind the image of Dominic as he had been during their carriage ride to the haberdasher. There was something he was keeping hidden and which troubled him, something to do with Unity.
“Then it probably was Mallory,” she said aloud, pouring him more tea without asking. “I spoke quite a lot with Dominic when I visited. I had the opportunity to be alone with him in the carriage. He really has changed utterly, Thomas. He has lost all the old selfishness. He believes in what he is doing now. It is a vocation for him. His whole face lights up when he speaks of it—”
“Does it?” Pitt said dryly, concentrating on his toast.
“You should talk to him yourself,” she urged. “You will see how different he is. It is as if he has suddenly grown up into all the best that was possible in him. I don’t know what happened, but he was in great despair, and Ramsay Parmenter found him and helped him, and through his pain he discovered a far greater goodness.”
He put his knife down. “Charlotte, you have spent the whole breakfast telling me how Dominic has changed. Somebody in that house killed Unity Bellwood, and I shall investigate it until either I discover who it was or there is nothing more to pursue. And that includes Dominic as much as anyone else.”
She heard the edge to his voice, but she kept on arguing. “But you don’t really think Dominic could have done it, do you?” she persisted. “We knew Dominic, Thomas. He is part of our family.” She ignored her tea, which was rapidly going cold. “He might have been foolish in the past, indeed we know he was, but that is a very different thing from murder. He couldn’t! He’s terribly afraid for Ramsay Parmenter. His whole mind is taken up with his debt of gratitude to him and how he can help now that Ramsay needs him so much.”
“None of which means he could not have known Unity far better than he is implying,” he answered. “And that she didn’t find him extremely attractive and pursue him, perhaps more than he wished, tempt him, and then blackmail him afterwards.” He drank the last of his tea and set down the cup. “Taking the cloth forbids a man indulging his natural desires, but it does not stop him feeling them. You are being just as idealistic about Dominic as you used to be in Cater Street. He is a real man, with real weaknesses, like all of us!” He rose from the table, leaving the last two mouthfuls of his toast uneaten. “I am going to see what I can learn about Mallory.”
“Thomas!” she called out, but he had gone. She had done the last thing she had meant to. Far from helping Dominic, she had only succeeded in angering Pitt. Of course she knew Dominic was as human and as fallible as anyone else. That was what she was afraid of.
She stood up and started to clear the table.
Gracie came in looking puzzled, her starched apron crisp and clean. She was still so small all her clothes needed taking up, but she had filled out a little and was barely recognizable from the waif she had been when they had taken her in seven years before. Then she had been thirteen and looking for a domestic place, any place at all. She was extremely proud of working for a policeman, and a senior one at that, who solved all kinds of important cases. She never allowed the butcher’s boy or the fishmonger to take liberties with her, and told them off soundly if they were impertinent. She was quite capable of giving orders to the woman who came in twice a week to do the heavy scrubbing and laundry.
“Mr. Pitt din’t finish ’is breakfast!” she said, looking at the toast.
“I don’t think he wanted it,” Charlotte replied. There was no point in making up a lie for Gracie. She would not say anything, but she was far too observant to be misled.
“Prob’ly worried about that reverend wot pushed the girl down them stairs,” Gracie said with a nod, picking up the teapot and putting it on the tray. “ ‘Nother nasty one, that. I daresay as she was no better than she should be, an’ teasin’ a reverend is a wicked fing ter do, seein’ as they get undressed or summink if they fall inter sin.” She set about clearing the rest of the dishes from the table.
“Undressed?” Charlotte said curiously. “Most people get undressed to—” She stopped. She had no idea how much Gracie knew of the facts of life.
“ ‘Course they do,” Gracie agreed cheerfully, putting the marmalade and the butter onto her tray. “I mean the bishop takes ’em to court an’ undresses ’em permanent, like. And then they in’t reverends anymore. They can’t preach nor nuffink.”
“Oh! You mean defrocked!” Charlotte bit her lips to stop herself from laughing. “Yes, that’s right. It’s very serious indeed.” Her heart sank again, thinking of Dominic. “Perhaps Miss Bellwood wasn’t a very nice person.”
“Some folks like ter do that kind o’ thing,” Gracie went on, picking up the tray to carry it through to the kitchen. “Yer gonner find out all about ’em, ma’am? I can look arter everyfink ’ere. We gotter ’elp the Master if ’e’s got a bad case. ’E depends on us.”
Charlotte opened the door for her.
“ ’E must be worried,” Gracie went on, turning sideways to get through. “ ’E’s gorn awful early, an’ ’e never leaves ’is toast, ’cos of ‘is likin’ fer marmalade.”
Charlotte did not mention that he had gone in anger because of her repeated praise of Dominic and old wounds she had clumsily reopened.
They went into the kitchen, and Gracie set down the tray. A ginger striped cat with a white chest stretched languidly in front of the fire and removed himself from a pile of clean laundry.
“Get orff me dusters, Archie!” Gracie said sharply. “I dunno ’oo’s kitchen this is … ’is or mine!” She shook her head. “Wot wif ’im an’ Angus chasin’ each other all over the ’ouse, it’s a wonder more don’t get broken. I found ’em both asleep in the linen cupboard last week. Often lie there, them two. Black and ginger fur all over everythin’, there was.”
The front doorbell rang and Gracie went to answer it. Charlotte followed her into the hall and saw Sergeant Tellman. She stopped abruptly, knowing Tellman’s complicated emotions regarding Gracie, and her very simple reaction to him.
“If yer lookin’ for Mr. Pitt, ’e already went,” Gracie said, regarding Tellman’s lantern-jawed face, its characteristic dourness softening as he saw her.
Tellman pulled his watch out of his waistcoat pocket.
“ ’E went early,” Gracie agreed with a nod. “ ’E din’t say w’y.”
Tellman was undecided what to do. Charlotte could see that he wanted to stay longer and talk to Gracie. He had intense feelings about anyone’s being a servant to another person. He despised Gracie’s acceptance of the role, and she thought he was foolish and impractical not to see the great advantages it held. She was warm and dry every night, had more than sufficient to eat, and never had bailiffs after her, or any of the other trials and indignities of the poor. It was an argument they could have pursued indefinitely, only she considered it too silly to bother with.
“Yer ’ad yer breakfast?” Gracie asked, looking him up and down. “Yer look ’ungry. Not that you never looks like nothin’ but a fourpenny rabbit anyway, an’ a face like a dog wot’s bin shut out.”
He decided to ignore the insult, although he did it with difficulty.
“Not yet,” he answered.
“Well, if yer wants a couple o’ pieces o’ toast, there’s an ’ot cup o’ tea in the kitchen,” she offered quite casually. “If yer like?”
“Thank you,” he accepted, coming in straightaway. “Then I’d better be going to find Mr. Pitt. I can’t stay long.”
“I in’t askin’ yer fer long.” She whisked around, flashing her skirts and marching back down the corridor towards the kitchen. “I got work ter do. Can’t ’ave the likes o’ you clutterin’ up me way ‘alf the mornin’.”
Charlotte returned to the parlor and pretended she had not seen them.
    She left the house herself a little after nine, and by ten o’clock was at her sister Emily’s town house in Mayfair. She knew, of course, that Emily was in Italy. She had received letters from Emily regularly detailing the glories of the Neapolitan spring; the most recent, yesterday evening, had been from Florence. The city was extremely beautiful and full of fascinating people, artists, poets, expatriate English of all sorts, not to mention the native Italians, whom Emily found courteous and more friendly than she had expected.
The very streets of Florence fascinated her. In the straw market, uncharacteristically for her, she was more drawn to the brave beauty of Donatello’s statue of the young St. George than to the goods she might have bought.
Charlotte envied her sister that adventure of the body and of the mind. But in Emily’s absence Charlotte had promised to call at the very least once or twice to visit with Grandmama, who was there virtually alone, at least as far as family was concerned. Caroline would call occasionally, but she was too busy to come often, and when Joshua was playing outside London, which he did now and then, she went with him.
Grandmama was not yet ready to receive visitors, and the maid asked Charlotte to wait, which was what she had expected. Whatever time she called had to be wrong, and ten in the morning should hardly be too late, therefore it would be too early.
She contented herself with reading the morning newspaper, which the footman brought to her ironed and on a salver. She accepted it with a smile and began to see what comments it had about the death of Unity Bellwood. At least so far it was not a scandal, merely a tragedy without satisfactory explanation. It would probably not have been mentioned at all had it not occurred in the home of the next Bishop of Beverly.
The door opened and the old lady stood in the entrance. She was dressed in black, as was her habit. She had made an occupation of being in mourning ever since her husband’s death some thirty-five years since. If it was good enough for the Queen, it was certainly a pattern worthy of her emulation.
“Reading the scandal are you, again?” she said critically. “If this were my house, I shouldn’t allow the footman to give you the newspapers. But then it isn’t. I don’t have a home anymore.” Her voice took on a note of acute self-pity. “I am a lodger, a dependent. Nobody takes any notice of what I want.”
“I am sure you can please yourself whether you read the newspapers or not, Grandmama,” Charlotte replied, folding the paper and setting it aside on the table. She rose to her feet and went towards the old lady. “How are you? You look well.”
“Don’t be impertinent,” the old lady said, bridling a little. “I am not well. I have hardly been sleeping at all.”
“Are you tired?” Charlotte enquired.
The old lady glared at her. “If I say yes, you will suggest I return to my bed; if I say no, you will tell me I did not need the sleep,” she pointed out. “Whatever I say, it will be wrong. You are most argumentative today. Why did you come, if all you want to do is contradict me? Have you quarreled with your husband?” She looked hopeful. “I daresay he is tired of your meddling in matters that are none of your concern and of which no decent woman would even have heard.” She stomped over to Charlotte, waving her stick in front of her, and sat down heavily in one of the chairs near the fire.
Charlotte returned to her chair and sat down also.
“No, I have not quarreled with Thomas,” she said smoothly. It was true, in the way Grandmama meant it, if not literally. And even if he had beaten her, she would not have told the old lady so. “I came to visit you.”
“Nothing better to do, I suppose!” the old lady remarked.
Charlotte was tempted to say that she had many better things and she had come as a matter of duty, but decided it would achieve nothing she wished for, and refrained.
“Not at the moment,” she answered.
“No crimes for you to interfere with?” The old lady raised her eyebrows.
“Dominic has become a minister,” Charlotte said, changing the subject.
“Vulgar, I think,” the old lady pronounced. “Most of them are corrupt anyway, always currying favor with the public, who don’t know any better. Government should be conducted by gentlemen, born to lead, not by people chosen at random by the masses who haven’t the faintest idea what it means half the time.” She stood her stick up in front of her and crossed her hands over the knot, rather in the manner the Queen was wont to adopt. “I am against electing,” she announced. “It only brings out the worst in everybody. And as for women having the vote, that is preposterous! No decent woman would want it, because she would be quite aware that she had no knowledge upon which to base her judgment. Which leaves the rest … and who wants the nation’s fate in the hands of harlots and ‘new women’? Not that they aren’t after the same thing anyway.”
“A minister in the church, Grandmama, not in the government,” Charlotte corrected.
“Oh. Well, that’s better, I suppose. Although how he expects to keep Emily on a minister’s pay I’ve no idea.” She smiled. “Have to stop wearing those fancy gowns then, won’t she? No silks and satins for her. And no unsuitable colors anymore, either.” She looked thoroughly satisfied at the prospect.
“Dominic, Grandmama, not Jack.”
“What?”
“Dominic, who was married to Sarah, not Emily’s Jack.”
“Then why didn’t you say so? Dominic? That Dominic you used to be so in love with?”
Charlotte controlled herself with an effort. “He is a curate now.”
The old lady knew she had scored a point. “Well, well!” She breathed out with a sigh. “Nobody as righteous as a reformed sinner, is there? No more flirting with him, then, eh?” She opened her black eyes very wide. “What brought that about? Lost his looks, has he? What happened? Did he catch the pox?” She nodded. “Those who live longest see most.” Then her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “How did you find out, then? Went looking for him, did you?”
“He knew the woman whose death is Thomas’s present case. I went to congratulate him on his vocation,” Charlotte replied.
“You went to meddle,” the old lady corrected her with satisfaction. “And because you wanted to look at Dominic Corde again. Always said he was no good. Told Sarah that when she wanted to marry him, poor child. Told you, but did you listen? Of course not! You never do. And look what happened to you. Married a policeman. Scrub your own floors, I shouldn’t wonder. And get to a lot of places a decent woman wouldn’t be seen near. I’d be sorry for your mother if she wasn’t even worse! My poor dear Edward’s death must have deranged her mind.” She nodded again, still keeping her hands on her stick. “Marrying an actor young enough to be her son. I’d be sorry for her if I weren’t so ashamed. I daren’t go out of the house for the embarrassment of it!”
Unfortunately, there was little to argue about that. Several of Caroline’s erstwhile friends had decided not to know her anymore. And she had ceased to care about it in the slightest. She still enjoyed the company of those whose friendship rode the wave of such eccentricity.
“It is most unfortunate for you.” Charlotte decided to try a new approach. “I really am very sorry. I don’t suppose any of your friends will speak to you now. It is a disgrace.”
The old lady stared at her with damning anger. “That is a terrible thing to say. My friends are of the old school. None of this modern selfish way. A friend is a friend for life.” She emphasized the last word. “If we did not remain loyal to each other, where would we be?”
She sniffed and leaned a trifle forward over her stick. “I have seen a great deal more of life than you have, and I can tell you this new idea of women trying to become like men is all going to end in tragedy. You should stay at home, my girl, and look after your family. Keep your house clean and well run, and your mind the same.” She nodded. “A man has a right to expect that. He provides for you, protects you and instructs you. That is as it should be. If he falls a little short now and then, you must be patient. That is your duty. Everything depends on a man’s advantages and strength, and a woman’s humility and virtue.” She sniffed again. “Your mother should have taught you that, if she were fulfilling her calling,” she added meaningfully.
“Yes, Grandmama.”
“Don’t be impertinent! I know you disagree with me. I can see it in your face. Always thought you knew better, but you don’t!”
Charlotte rose to her feet. “I can see that you are very well, Grandmama. If I speak to Dominic again I shall convey your congratulations to him. I am sure you are glad he has found the path of rectitude.”
The old lady grunted. “And where are you going?”
“To see Great-Aunt Vespasia. I am to take luncheon with her.”
“Are you? You didn’t offer to take luncheon with me.”
Charlotte looked at her long and carefully. Was there any point in telling her the truth? That her endless criticism made her company burdensome, that the only way to tolerate it without weeping was to laugh? That she had never once felt happier, lighter-hearted, braver or more hopeful because of it?
“One would have thought you would have preferred your own family to some lady who is only related to you by your sister’s marriage,” Grandmama went on. “That says something for your values, doesn’t it?”
“One would have hoped it, certainly,” Charlotte agreed. “But Great-Aunt Vespasia likes me, and I don’t think you do.”
The old lady looked startled, a faint flush of pink in her cheeks.
“I am your grandmother! I am family. That is quite different.”
“Absolutely,” Charlotte agreed with a smile. “Relationship is a birthright; liking someone has to be acquired. I hope you have a pleasant day. If you want to read the scandal in the newspapers, it’s on page eight. Good-bye.”
She left feeling guilty, and angry with herself for allowing the old lady to provoke her into retaliation. She took another hansom and sat for the whole journey seething with anger and wondering if Unity Bellwood had suffered with family like Grandmama. She knew the rage within herself and the passion to prove herself right that it engendered. To be continuously thwarted, told she was inadequate to the dream she treasured, that her role was forever limited, brought out the worst in her, a desire to justify herself at almost any cost. She entertained ideas of cruelty which would have horrified her in less-heated moments.
Pitt had told her about the attitudes of the church academic he had spoken to, how he had patronized Unity and belittled her ability, stating, as of a proven matter, that because she was a woman she was necessarily of inferior emotional stability and therefore unsuited to higher learning. The compulsion to prove them wrong in that, and in anything and everything else, must have been overwhelming.
She alighted outside Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould’s home, paid the driver, and walked up the steps just as the maid opened the door for her. Vespasia was the great-aunt of Emily’s first husband, but she had developed an affection for both Emily and Charlotte which had long outlasted George’s death and had grown with their every meeting. She was well over eighty now. In her youth she had been the greatest beauty of her generation. She was still exquisite and dressed with elegance and flair, but she no longer cared what society thought of her, and spoke her opinions with wit and forthrightness, which inspired admiration in many, anger in some, and downright terror in others.
She was waiting for Charlotte in her spacious withdrawing room with its tall windows letting in the sunlight and the great sense of calm its pale colors and uncluttered surfaces credited. She greeted her with pleasure and interest.
“Come in, my dear, and sit down. I think perhaps to ask you to make yourself comfortable would be foolish.” She regarded Charlotte with amusement. “You look in far too high a temper for that. What has occasioned it?” She indicated a carved and upholstered chair for Charlotte, and occupied a chaise longue herself. She was dressed in her favorite shades of ivory and deep cream with long pearls almost to her waist. The entire bodice of her gown was made of guipure lace over silk, with a silk fichu at the throat. The bustle was almost nonexistent, as was so far in fashion as to be all but in advance of it.
“I have been to visit Grandmama,” Charlotte replied. “She was appalling, and I behaved badly. I said things I should have kept to myself. I loathe her for bringing out the worst in me.”
Vespasia smiled. “A very familiar feeling,” she sympathized. “It is remarkable how often one’s family can occasion it.” A ghost of laughter crossed her silver eyes. “Particularly Eustace.”
Charlotte felt the tension ease away from her. Memories of Vespasia’s son-in-law Eustace March were mixed with tragedy, rage and mirth, and most recently high farce and an uneasy alliance which had ended in victory.
“Eustace does have certain redeeming qualities,” she said, honesty compelling her. “Grandmama is impossible. I suppose she did concentrate my mind on aspects of Thomas’s new case.” She stopped, wondering whether Vespasia wished to hear about it or not.
“Your luncheon rests upon it!” Vespasia warned with a glitter in her eyes. “I am very fond of you, my dear, but I refuse to sit and discuss the weather with anyone, even you. And we have no society acquaintances in common whom we may criticize with any degree of entertainment, and I do not care to speak of friends except to pass on news. Emily has written, so I have no need to enquire how she is. I know she is doing excellently.”
“Very well,” Charlotte agreed with a smile. “Do you think a man whose religious faith is his profession and his status, as well as his moral code, would be so deranged by doubts, the attacks or the mockery of atheists as to lose control of himself and kill … in temper?” Had she stated the case fairly?
“No,” Vespasia said with barely a hesitation. “If he appears to have done so, I should look for a motive more rooted in the real man, less of the brain and more of the passions. Men kill from fear of losing something they cannot bear to live without, be it love or status or money. Or they kill to gain the same thing.” Her expression was filled with interest, but no doubt whatsoever. “Sometimes it is to avenge a wrong they find intolerable or from jealousy of someone who has what they believe should be theirs. Sometimes it is hatred, usually based in those same feelings that somehow they have been robbed of love or honor … or money.”
She smiled very slightly, just curling the corner of her lips. “They will fight over an idea, but only kill if their status is threatened, their belief as to how they perceive themselves in the world, in a way their life … or what makes it valuable to them, their conception of its importance.”
“She threatened his faith,” Charlotte said with a little shiver. She did not want it to be true, but then there was not any answer that she did want—not one that was possible. “Isn’t that his status … as a clergyman?”
Vespasia laughed with a slight lift of one thin shoulder under its ivory lace and silk. There was anger and pity in her eyes as well as amusement. “My dear, if every clergyman in England who had doubts were to resign his living there would be precious few churches left open. Those that were would be mostly in villages where the minister is too busy spending his time with the frightened, the sick and the lonely to read anything but the Four Gospels, and no time at all for learned disputations. He does not think about who God is, because he already knows.”
Charlotte sat silently. She could not feel that Ramsay Parmenter had any such knowledge. Perhaps it was that absence, that hole at the core of what should have been, which had allowed his faith to collapse in upon itself so tragically.
“It troubles you.” Vespasia’s voice was gentle. “Why? Is your anxiety for Thomas?”
“Not really. He will do what he has to. It will be unpleasant, of course, but then these things always are.”
“Then for whom?”
She had never lied to Vespasia, even by implication or omission. To do so would destroy something which could never be replaced and which was of immeasurable value to her. She shifted her position very slightly on the chair.
“There are three men in the house, any of whom could have been at the bend of the stairs when Unity fell,” she said slowly. “The second is Mallory, the son of the house, who is about to become a Roman Catholic priest …” She ignored Vespasia’s suddenly risen eyebrows, silver, arched and elegant. “The third is the new curate there … who is my brother-in-law, Dominic. He was married to my elder sister, Sarah, who was murdered in Cater Street.”
“Go on, my dear …”
There was no escaping Vespasia’s gaze, nor the feeling of heat creeping up her own cheeks.
“I used to think myself in love with him before I met Thomas,” she began. “No, that is not quite true … I was in love, obsessively. I got over it, of course. I realized how … how shallow and fragile Dominic was, how easily he gave in to his appetites.” She was talking too quickly, but she did not seem to be able to help it. “He was very handsome indeed. He is even more so now. Something of the smoothness of youth is gone, a callowness. His face is … refined … by experience.”
She met Vespasia’s clear, silver-gray eyes. She made herself smile back. “I feel no more than friendship for him now— indeed, I have for a long time. But I am afraid for him. You see, Unity was with child, and I know Dominic’s frailty. He wants passionately to succeed in his vocation, I believe that, I can see it and hear it in him. But one cannot cast off the temptations and needs of the body merely at will.”
“I see.” Vespasia was very grave. “And what of the other two men, Mallory and the man of whom you spoke first? Could they not also be tempted?”
“Mallory … I suppose so.” Charlotte gave a dismissive little shrug. “But not the Reverend. He’s at least sixty!”
Vespasia laughed. It was not an elegant little murmur but a rich gurgle of hilarity.
Charlotte found herself blushing. “I mean … I didn’t mean …” she stammered.
Vespasia leaned forward and put her hand on Charlotte’s. “I know precisely what you mean, my dear. And I daresay from thirty-three, sixty seems like dotage, but when you get there it will look quite different. So will seventy—and even eighty, if you are fortunate.”
Charlotte’s cheeks were still hot. “I don’t think the Reverend Parmenter is fortunate. He is as dry as dead wood. He is all arguments in the mind.”
“Then if something awakens his passions at last, it will be all the more dangerous,” Vespasia answered, sitting back again. “Because he is unused to them and will have little experience in controlling them. That is when it is most likely to end in a disaster such as this.”
“I suppose it is …” Charlotte said slowly, with a mixture of pain and relief. The realization of such an answer exonerated everyone else, but it left one person with the extra burden to bear. Yet still, for all the rationality of it, she found herself unable to believe it. “I could sense no passion in him,” she repeated. “Except the doubt. Although I realize that most of what I know of that comes from Dominic, still I think that is Reverend Parmenter’s overriding emotion. He and Unity used to quarrel terribly. They had a fearful row just minutes before she fell. It was overheard by several people. You see, she challenged his belief in everything to which he had given his life. That is an awful thing to do to anybody. It is saying, in effect, that they are worth nothing, that all their ideas are silly and wrong. If you believed that, you could hate them very much.”
“If she really was the one to shake his faith, then yes, indeed, he could,” Vespasia agreed. “There is nothing quite so frightening as an idea or a freedom which negates your own sacrifice and obedience when it is too late for you to avail yourself of it. But from what you say, your Reverend was not in this position. Surely it is the initiators of the idea he should hate, not the followers?” She sighed. “Although you are quite right, of course. It was the unfortunate young woman who was standing at the top of the stairs, not Mr. Darwin, who was safely out of reach. I am very sorry. It sounds like a sad affair.”
She rose to her feet with a little stiffness, and Charlotte stood instantly also, offering her arm to assist, and together they went into the breakfast room. It was filled with sunlight, and the perfume of narcissi blooming in a green glazed pot. Smoked salmon was already served with wafer-thin slices of brown bread, and the butler was waiting to pull out Vespasia’s chair for her.
    Charlotte felt compelled to go again to Brunswick Gardens. Her brain told her there was little she could accomplish, but she could not simply wait to see what happened. If she went she might learn something more, and knowledge would enable her to act.
She was received somewhat coolly by Vita Parmenter.
“How kind of you to call again, Mrs. Pitt,” she said. “It is generous of you to give up so much of your time.” “And take up so much of ours” was implied.
“Family loyalties are very important in times of trouble,” Charlotte answered, and hated hearing herself mouthing such platitudes.
“I am sure you are a very loyal wife,” Vita said with a smile. “But we cannot tell you anything that we did not already tell your husband.”
This was dreadful. Charlotte felt herself blushing hot. Vita was a far sharper adversary than she had supposed, and as determined to protect her husband as Charlotte was to protect Dominic. Charlotte ought to have admired her for it, and reluctantly part of her did, in spite of her own discomfort. The two of them stood facing each other in the gracious, very modern withdrawing room, Vita small and elegant in soft patterned blue edged with black, Charlotte at least three inches taller in last year’s muted plum, which flattered her warm skin and mahogany-brown hair.
“I did not come to enquire into the details of your tragedy, Mrs. Parmenter,” she said very politely. “I came to ask after your well-being and to see if there was anything I could do to be helpful.”
“I cannot imagine any help you might give.” Vita kept the air of courtesy, but it was very thin. “What had you in mind?”
There was obviously nothing anyone could do, and they both knew it.
Charlotte looked straight back at her and smiled. “I have known Dominic for many years, and we have experienced tragedies and difficulties together in the past. I thought he might find comfort in speaking freely, as one can to friends of long standing, and to people who are not immediately involved and therefore will not be hurt in the same way.” She was pleased with that. It sounded very reasonable, and it was almost true.
“I see,” Vita said slowly, her face a little harder, a little colder. “Then no doubt we should call him and see if his duties will allow him the time.” She reached for the bell rope and pulled it sharply. She did not speak again until the maid appeared, then she simply asked her to inform Mr. Corde that his sister-in-law had called and wished to offer him her companionship, if it was convenient for him.
They discussed the weather until the door opened and Dominic came in. He looked pleased to see Charlotte, his face lighting immediately, but she noticed the shadows around his eyes and the strain in the fine lines beside his mouth.
“How kind of you to come,” he said sincerely.
“I was concerned for you,” she replied. “You could hardly help being distressed.”
“We all are.” Vita looked from Charlotte to Dominic. Her expression had altered since he came into the room. There was a softness to it now, a respect bordering on admiration in her eyes. “It has been quite the worst time in any of our lives.” She turned to Charlotte as if her previous coldness had not existed. Her face was so innocent Charlotte wondered if her own guilt had manufactured the rebuff.
“But we have also discovered strengths in one another we had not known,” Vita went on. “You said, Mrs. Pitt, that you had endured great difficulties yourself some time ago. I daresay you had the same experience? One finds that those one had thought to be friends, and people of unquestioned strength, are not of the … the quality one had hoped. And then that others have compassion, courage, and”—her eyes were soft and bright—“a sheer goodness that surpasses all one had imagined.” She did not speak any names, but her momentary glance at Dominic made him blush with pleasure.
Charlotte saw it. It was delicate, a flattering directed most precisely where he was vulnerable. He yearned not to be desired, found amusing or romantic or clever, but to be found good. It might be that Vita was simply fortunate in touching on the one hole in his armor, but Charlotte was perfectly sure it owed nothing whatever to chance. And yet even if she had wanted to warn Dominic of it, she could not. It would be both cruel and pointless. It would hurt him and turn him against Charlotte, for the pain. Catching Vita’s eye for a moment, she was perfectly certain that Vita knew that also.
“Yes, I did,” Charlotte agreed with a forced smile. “It is the one thing that lasts even after all the other mystery is solved, the new knowledge one has gained of people we thought we knew. It can never be exactly the same again.”
“I am sure it will not be,” Vita agreed. “There are new debts … and new loyalties. It is a turning point in all our lives, I think. That is what makes it so frightening …” She let the words hang in the air. “One tries hard to hope, and that also hurts, because it matters so very much.” She smiled and glanced at Dominic, then away again. Her voice dropped. “Thank heaven one does not have to do it all alone.”
“Of course not,” Dominic said firmly. “That is about the only good thing we can cling to, and that I promise.”
Something in Vita relaxed. She turned to Charlotte and smiled, as if she had made a profound decision.
“Perhaps you would care to stay to tea, Mrs. Pitt. You would be most welcome. Please do.”
Charlotte was surprised. It was a sudden change, and although she had every intention of accepting, it also filled her with an awareness of unease.
“Thank you,” she said quickly. “That is most generous of you, especially in the circumstances.”
Vita smiled, and the expression lit her face with conviction and warmth. It was easy to see that in other circumstances she would be a woman of extraordinary charm, having both intelligence and vitality, and almost certainly a ready wit.
“Now please, you must spend a little time with Dominic, which is what you came for, and I am sure he would appreciate it. Tea will be at four o’clock.”
“Thank you,” Dominic said earnestly, and there was a light and a gentleness in his face, then he turned to Charlotte. “Shall we walk in the garden?”
She followed him, taking his arm, very conscious of Vita watching them leave. Vita had changed her attitude completely. She was a different woman when Dominic was present. Was that trust, the knowledge that Charlotte was the wife of the policeman investigating Unity’s death and therefore inevitably linked with blaming Ramsay with murder? Vita could hardly help being suspicious of Charlotte, even disliking her regardless of every natural personal impulse. Charlotte would have hated anyone who posed a threat to Pitt. Knowing it was unjust would make no difference. It would touch her mind but not her instinct.
And Vita must know Dominic’s loyalty to Ramsay, his immense sense of gratitude and debt. She could count on him to do all that was humanly possible to help.
They went out through the side door into the garden, still leafless and dappled with light through the branches. The snowdrops were over and the narcissus spears were high and already bending their heads, ready to open. If Charlotte had had this land she would have planted primroses, celandine and a drift of wood anemones under those trees. The gardeners here had been a trifle unimaginative with periwinkle and ferns, their heads barely through the ground.
Dominic was talking about something and she was not listening. Her mind was filled with memory of the emotion in Vita’s face as she had looked at him. There was such admiration in it. Did she cling to him because Ramsay was weaker, a flawed vessel, and she knew it? Charlotte remembered how he had sat at the table and allowed Tryphena to make offensive remarks without defending himself or his beliefs. It was as if he had in some way already surrendered.
Vita did not seem like a woman who gave up. She might be beaten by circumstance, but she would not simply cease to try. It was not surprising she was drawn to Dominic, admiring his spiritual energy and conviction. It matched her own strength of will. Charlotte had seen her flatter those aspects of his nature, and how precious it had been to him. Surely Vita knew that, too?
She made an appropriate reply to Dominic, her mind less than half upon what he was saying. It was of the past, memories shared. It did not need her attention. They were under the trees, looking towards the azaleas. They would not bloom for another two months. They looked miserable, almost dead against the naked earth, but in late spring they would blaze with color, orange, gold and apricot flowers on bare branches. It took an effort of imagination to see it now. But then that was what gardening was about.
They walked together in companionable silence, the occasional remark made not for meaning but simply to establish some sense of being together. All the things that mattered must remain unsaid. They were only too aware of the suspicions and the overshadowing fear, the knowledge that something ugly and irreversible was waiting in the future to be discovered, and coming closer with every hour.
They were still talking when Tryphena came across the grass with a message that Dominic was needed, and he excused himself, leaving the two women together. It was an opportunity for Charlotte to learn a little more of Tryphena, a chance which might not occur again, and too good for her not to seize it.
“I am very sorry for your bereavement, Mrs. Whickham,” Charlotte said quietly. “The more I hear from my husband of Miss Bellwood’s achievements, the more I realize it may be a loss to women in general.”
Tryphena looked at her skeptically. She saw a woman in her early thirties who had adopted the most usual, most comfortable, and by far the easiest role for women. Her contempt for this was clear in her eyes.
“Are you interested in scholarship?” she asked only barely politely.
“Not particularly,” Charlotte answered with equal candor and with just as forthright a gaze. “But I am interested in justice. My brother-in-law is a member of Parliament, and I have hopes of influencing his views, but,”—she took a plunge—“I should prefer to have the power to do it more directly, and without being dependent upon a relationship, which is quite chancy and arbitrary.”
Now she had Tryphena’s interest. “You mean the vote?”
“Why not? Don’t you believe women have the intelligence and the judgment of human character to exercise it with at least as much wisdom as men?”
“More so!” Tryphena said instantly, stopping and turning where she stood so she faced Charlotte. “But it is only a tiny beginning. There are far greater freedoms we cannot legislate for. Freedom from the convention of ideas, from other people deciding what we shall want, what we shall think, even what will make us happy.” Her voice was rising and sharp with emotion. She stood in the sunlight stiff with anger, her black dress pulling across her shoulders. “It is the whole patriarchal order of society which oppresses us. If we are to be free to use our intellectual and creative abilities, and not merely our physical ones, then we must be freed from the rigid ties of the past and the moral and financial dependence we have suffered for centuries.”
Charlotte had seldom felt shackled or dependent, but she was honest enough to know that few women had marriages as satisfying as hers, or that granted them as much freedom. Because of the difference in their social background, she and Pitt were more equal partners than most. Because of Pitt’s toleration of her either helping or meddling with his cases, depending upon one’s point of view, she had a variety and interest in her life, and a fulfillment of far more sides of her nature than domesticity alone could have given. Even Emily, with her money and position, was frequently bored by the narrowness of her acquaintances and limitations, the sameness of one day to another.
“I think we shall change things only a small step at a time,” she said diplomatically and realistically. “But we can ill afford to lose people like Miss Bellwood, if she was all I hear.”
“She was far more!” Tryphena responded quickly. “She not only had a vision, she had the courage to live it through, no matter what the cost. And it could cost dearly.” The impatience and the contempt crept back into her face, and she started to walk across the grass, not with any direction but simply for the release of movement. “But that is the courage to face life, isn’t it? To grasp hold of it and cling to it even if at times it stabs you to the soul.”
“You mean her death?” Charlotte kept up with her.
Tryphena turned away, a shadow over her face. “No, I mean life itself, the living of it. She had the bravest heart of anyone I know, but those who love passionately can be hurt in ways lesser people cannot even imagine by those who are unworthy of them.” She jerked her body angrily, as if thinking of the people and the lives behind them, and dismissing their feelings as superficial.
Charlotte wanted intensely to say the right thing. She must not anger Tryphena, nor allow her curiosity to betray itself. Had Tryphena known Unity had been with child? She must say something intelligent, sympathetic, something to prompt a continuing confidence. She kept pace with Tryphena, step for step across the grass towards the gravel path by the herbaceous border, its flowers still little more than dark mounds in the damp earth, a few green shoots here and there.
“Well, if there were not pain in it, and no risk,” she mused, “then anyone would do it. It would hardly need someone special.”
Tryphena said nothing. Her face was sunk deep in thought, and perhaps memory.
“Tell me something about her,” Charlotte said at last as they reached the path and their boots crunched on the gravel. Subtlety was not going to work. “She must have been much admired. I expect she had many friends.”
“Dozens,” Tryphena agreed. “Before she came here she lived with a whole group of like-minded people who believed in freedom to live and love each other as they chose without the superstitions of society, and the hypocrisies, to limit them.”
Charlotte thought it sounded more like license, but she refrained from saying so—what was freedom to one person frequently appeared selfishness and irresponsibility to another. Some of the difference was merely the passage of time—and having children of one’s own for whom one could see all the dangers of the world; the desire to protect them was overwhelming.
“It takes a lot of courage,” she said aloud. “The risks are great.”
“Yes.” Tryphena stared at the ground as they walked, very slowly, along the path to the shallow steps. “She spoke about it sometimes. She told me of the sense of exhilaration they had, how intense passion could be when it is utterly true, no law binds you, no superstitious dread holds you or inhibits you, no rituals make you wait or try to hold you in an anchor after the fire and the honesty had gone out of it.” There was such bitterness in her voice, such a depth of emotion, that Charlotte could not help wondering at Tryphena’s own experience of marriage. She glanced at her and saw no softness in her eyes or mouth, no warmth in her memories at all. Had she wanted the marriage herself? Or was it something arranged by her family, and she had agreed to it, willingly or unwillingly?
“It is all so”—Tryphena furrowed her brow, looking for the word—“so … clean! There is no pretense.” Her eyes became fierce, her lips pressed together. “No ownership by one person of another, no slow eating away of independence, of self-esteem and the knowledge and beliefs of who you are. Nobody says ‘You must think this way, because I do.’ ‘You must believe that, because I do.’ ‘This is where I want to go, so you must come, too.’ A marriage of equals is the only sort that is worth anything! It is the only sort which has honor or decency or any inner cleanliness.” Her fists were clenched at her sides, and her arms seemed locked right up to her shoulders. “I will not be second-rate … second-class … worth only second-best!”
Charlotte wondered if Tryphena had any idea how much of her own hurt she betrayed in her words. Some of this might be Unity’s thoughts, but the passion was Tryphena’s. “I think if somebody loved you, they would want you to be the best you possibly could,” Charlotte said gently, walking up the steps beside her. “Isn’t that what love is, wanting someone to fulfill all the best in themselves? But then you would want the same for him, wouldn’t you? And be prepared to give something that might cost you quite a lot, to that end?”
“What?” Tryphena turned her head, looking surprised.
“If you love, you stay, even when it isn’t convenient, or fun, or easy,” Charlotte elaborated. “If you leave the moment you no longer feel like staying, isn’t that simply selfishness? You are talking about freedom to please yourself, freedom from hurt or boredom or duty. Life is about giving and being vulnerable, which is precisely why it needs both courage and self-discipline.”
Tryphena stared at her, stopping on the gravel close to the glasshouse. “I don’t think you understand at all, Mrs. Pitt. You may think you are a fighter for freedom, but you sound just like a traditional woman who is prepared to do exactly as her father and then her husband tell her to.” Her words were so angry they had to come from her own experience. “People like you are the ones who really hold us back. Unity truly loved, and she was terribly hurt. I could see it in her eyes, and sometimes catch it in her voice.” She looked at Charlotte accusingly. “You are speaking as if she were selfish, as if her kind of love were less than yours, just because you are married and she wasn’t. But that is blind and false and utterly wrong. You don’t win great victories by playing safe!”
The scorn in her face now was as plain as the sunlight across the grass. “I am sure you meant to be kind, and I daresay you thought you supported the women of the new age, but you really haven’t any understanding whatever.” She shook her head sharply, the wind catching the stray pieces of her fair hair. “You want to be safe … and you can’t be … not if you are fighting a great battle. Unity was one of the finest and the best … and she fell. Pardon me, but I don’t want to talk about her to you anymore.” And with that she turned and walked stiffly into the rose arbor, head high as if she were struggling against tears.
Charlotte remained where she was for several minutes, thinking over the conversation. Did Tryphena know of one real tragedy in Unity’s past, or was she being melodramatic? Had Unity loved someone intensely, and was the result of that love the child she had been carrying when she died? The child of one of the three men in this house?
Had she been hurt by this man? If so, she would not be the first to retaliate blindly out of pain and fear. Was she afraid? Most women would be terrified of the ruin unmarried motherhood would bring them, but Charlotte had no idea whether that was true of Unity or not. If Pitt had explored that, he had not told her. But then perhaps he could not imagine the emotions a woman might feel: the mixture of elation at knowing of the life within her, that it was part of the man she loved, in a sense an indissoluble bond between them; and yet also a reminder of him she would never lose, and with it a reminder of his betrayal of her … if he had betrayed her!
And then there was the fear of childbirth itself, of being left alone at one’s most vulnerable both emotionally and physically. Charlotte could remember how she had felt when carrying each of her children. She had been radiantly happy one day, and plunged into misery another. She remembered the excitement, the aching back, the tiredness, the clumsiness, the pride, the self-consciousness. And she had had parents who were steady and calm, and a husband who made her laugh and kept his patience most of the time, when it mattered—and the approval of society.
Unity would have been alone. That was altogether different.
Had she tried to blackmail him? It would be understandable.
Charlotte started to walk back to the house, wondering about Dominic and about the love by which Unity had apparently been so hurt in the past. Perhaps knowing that would prove who the father was—and that it was not Dominic.
Or that it was.
That was a cold, sickening thought. What did she think of Dominic that she feared to find that out? And, she was afraid, the feeling was sharp and far too familiar to deny. She could remember being in love with him herself, and behaving stupidly, feeling so vulnerable, hurting when he seemed to ignore her, floating on air if he smiled or spoke, being consumed with jealousy if he favored someone else, dreaming, imagining all kinds of things. She blushed hot to think of it now.
But that was what obsession was like, the kind of love which is all in one’s own mind, not the kind that is sure and sweet, as she had with Pitt. That had its pain and its darkness as well, its racing pulse and burning embarrassment, but it was rooted in reality, in sharing thoughts and ideas and, above all, feelings about the things that cut the deepest.
She came through the side door into the short passage to the hall. At this point the floor was carpeted, and her feet made no sound. She saw Dominic and Vita standing near the foot of the stairs, close together, almost touching. They stood just about where Unity must have lain when she fell. Vita was looking up at him, her eyes wide, her expression filled with softness as if she had just said something private and very tender. He moved his hand to touch her, then changed his mind and smiled, then he stepped back. She hesitated a moment, then, with a little shrug, went lightly up the stairs.
Charlotte’s mind raced. How could Dominic be so incredibly foolish, so dishonest? Vita was older than he, but she was also charming, beautiful, and acutely intelligent, a woman of passion and wit. He could not possibly be considering having an affair with her, could he? Not the wife of his mentor, his friend, the man in whose home he now lived?
Was it possible?
The past crowded in on her too closely with all its remembered pain and disillusion. It was imaginable … it was possible. Was it Dominic that Unity had fought with at the top of the stairs? Was it conceivable Vita would lie to protect him?
No. No, because others had heard Unity cry out to Ramsay. Tryphena had heard it, as had both the maid and the valet. She felt relief flood through her.
Dominic turned around. There was no embarrassment in his face, not even any awareness that he had been seen in a situation far better to have remained private.
“I’m sorry I left you,” he said with a slight smile. “It was an urgent matter. I am afraid the Reverend Parmenter is not able to care for things as he does normally.” His face was shadowed with concern. “Mrs. Parmenter says he is not at all well. He has the most severe headaches. I suppose that is not to be wondered at, poor man.” He looked at her ruefully. “It’s odd, but I can remember the Cater Street tragedies in retrospect with far more understanding than I think I had at the time.” He was close to her now and spoke very quietly. “I wish I could go back and improve the way I behaved then, show more sensitivity to other people’s fears and pain.” He sighed. “And that’s absurd, because I don’t even know how to help this now. The only thing I can say is that I am trying, whereas I thought only of myself then.”
She did not know what to say. She longed to believe him, but that look on Vita Parmenter’s face prevented her … she hesitated now to use the word love.
She turned away so he should not read her eyes, and started to walk towards the withdrawing room. It was five minutes before teatime.
    Tea was actually served nearly ten minutes late, and Vita was not present. It was left to Clarice to host the small gathering and to try to make some sort of conversation. Tryphena was there, but she made no effort to entertain Charlotte. Mallory came in, picked up a dainty sandwich and ate it in two mouthfuls, not bothering with a cup of tea. He stood restlessly by the window, as if feeling restricted in the room but obliged to stay. It was almost certainly not the house but the circumstances which imprisoned him, but those were beyond escape.
Clarice surprised Charlotte by talking both tactfully and interestingly on a number of subjects. She touched on the theater as if the recent death in the house were a normal happening, to be expected in the course of events of life, and there was no need or purpose in speaking in hushed voices or avoiding any mention of happiness or glamour. She referred to a recent visit of foreign royalty written of extensively in the London Illustrated News. She drew Charlotte into the conversation, and for nearly three quarters of an hour it would have been perfectly possible to mistake the occasion for a most agreeable afternoon call between people who were newly discovering each other and might become friends.
Several times Charlotte looked at Dominic and saw the same surprise in his eyes, and also a growing respect for Clarice which apparently he had not hitherto felt.
It was after five when the door flew open and Vita stood in the entrance, her hair disheveled, most of it actually out of its pins and falling over one shoulder. Her face was cut across the cheek and her left eye was swollen and fast showing fearful bruising.
Mallory was aghast.
Dominic rose to his feet immediately, face white.
“What happened? What is it?” he demanded, going over to her.
She shrank back, her eyes wide with horror. She was shaking and looked on the verge of hysteria. She swayed as if she might fall at any moment.
Charlotte got up quickly, skirting around the tea table to avoid knocking it over.
“Come and sit down,” she ordered, taking Vita by the shoulders and with an arm around her for support, guiding her to the nearest chair. “Pour some more tea and a little brandy,” she said to Dominic. “And you’d better find her maid and tell her.”
Dominic hesitated a moment, swinging around to look at Mallory.
“What happened?” Tryphena demanded. “Mama? You look as if somebody hit you. Did you fall?”
“Of course she fell!” Clarice snapped. “Don’t be absurd! Who would hit her? Anyway, we’re all here.”
Tryphena looked around, her eyes wide, and suddenly everyone was aware that the only member of the family not present was Ramsay. One by one they looked back to Vita.
She was trembling violently now, sitting huddled up, her face ashen except for the darkening bruises around her eye and the scarlet slash oozing blood on her cheek. Charlotte held the cup for her; she was shaking too badly to hold it herself.
“What happened?” Mallory asked, his voice rising sharply.
Dominic stood by the door, waiting to hear before he would leave.
Vita drew in her breath and tried to speak, but gulped back a sob.
Charlotte put her arms around her very gently, not to hurt what else must surely be damaged in such an injury. “Perhaps you had better send for your doctor?” She turned to Clarice as being the most likely to be in command of herself and the situation.
Clarice stared back at her without moving.
Tryphena swiveled from one to the other of them, her eyes accusing.
Mallory made as if to move, and then froze.
“Please!” Charlotte urged.
Vita raised her head. “No …” she said hoarsely. “No … don’t do that! I … it is only … a little cut …”
“It is more than that,” Charlotte said seriously. “That bruising may be pretty unpleasant, and one cannot tell how widespread it may be. I am sure a little arnica will help, but I think you should call your doctor all the same.”
“No.” Vita was resolute. She was struggling fiercely to regain control of herself. Tears spilled over her cheeks and she ignored them. Her face was probably too sore to touch. Her whole body still shuddered. “No … I do not want the doctor to be informed.”
“Mama, you must!” Clarice insisted, coming forward for the first time and standing only five or six feet away. “Why ever should you not? He won’t think you foolish, if that is what you are worrying about. People do fall … accidentally. It is easy enough.”
Vita closed her eyes, wincing as the pain struck her. “I did not fall,” she whispered. “The doctor may know that if he comes. I … couldn’t bear it … especially now. We must …” She took a deep breath and almost choked. “We must show … loyalty …”
“Loyalty!” Tryphena exploded. “To what? To whom? When you say loyalty, you mean lie! Cover up the truth …”
Vita started to weep quietly, retreating into herself in misery.
“Stop it!” Dominic was back from the doorway, glancing at Tryphena. “Words like that are not helping anyone.” He knelt down in front of Vita, staring at her earnestly. “Mrs. Parmenter, I think you had better tell us the truth. We can then decide what is best to do about it. But while it is all imagination or suspicion, we are likely to make mistakes. You did not fall … What did happen?”
Slowly Vita raised her head again. “I quarreled with Ramsay,” she said huskily. “It was terrible, Dominic. I don’t even know how it happened. One moment we were talking quite agreeably, then he went to look at his letters which the butler had left on his desk, and without any warning at all he flew into a rage. He seemed to lose all control of himself.” She kept her eyes on Dominic’s all the time she spoke, but she must have been acutely aware of Mallory standing at the edge of the group, his shoulders tight, his face drawn into faint lines of anger and confusion.
Clarice made as if to interrupt and then stopped.
Vita was gripping Charlotte’s hand so tightly it was painful, but Charlotte did not pull away.
“He accused me of opening his letters … which is ridiculous. I would never touch anything addressed to him. But one must have been torn in the delivery, and he just lost his temper and started to say it was I who had done it.” Her voice was low and urgent, sharp with fear. Now that she had started she could not stop herself. The words were tumbling out full of confusion. “He shouted at me, not loudly … shout is the wrong word. He was so furious it was more like a snarl.” Her teeth chattered so she was in danger of biting her tongue.
“Drink some tea,” Charlotte said quietly. “It will help a little. You are terribly shocked. It is only natural.”
“Thank you,” Vita accepted, putting her hands over Charlotte’s to steady the cup for herself. “You are very kind, Mrs. Pitt.”
“I will call the doctor,” Mallory insisted, starting towards the door.
“No!” Vita insisted. “I forbid it! Do you hear me, Mallory? I absolutely forbid it.” Her voice was so strained, her face so full of anguish, he stopped where he stood, reluctant to obey and yet not wishing to defy her.
Dominic started saying something, then caught Mallory’s glare of fury and stopped.
Vita closed her eyes. “Thank you,” she murmured. “I am sure I will be all right. I shall just go and lie down for a while. Braithwaite can look after me.” She made as if to rise to her feet, but her knees would not support her. “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I feel so … foolish. I just don’t know what to do. He accused me of undermining his authority, of belittling him, of questioning his judgment. I denied it. I never have … ever in my life! And he … he struck me.”
Clarice stared at her for a moment, then brushed past Tryphena and Dominic and went to the door. She threw it open and they heard her footsteps cross the hallway and go up the stairs, loud on the black, uncarpeted wood.
“This is appalling!” Mallory said in anguish. “He’s mad! He must be. He’s taken leave of his wits.”
Dominic looked acutely distressed, but after only a moment’s hesitation he mastered his own feelings and turned to Mallory.
“We must abide by her wishes. We should not say anything further about it.”
“You can’t do that!” Tryphena protested. “Are you going to wait until he kills her, too? Is that what you want? I thought you cared about her! In fact, I thought you cared a great deal.”
Vita looked at her desperately. “Tryphena! Please …”
Dominic bent and picked Vita up in his arms and walked over to the door.
Charlotte hastened to open it wider for him, and he went through without looking back. Charlotte faced the room.
“I think there is nothing I can do to help except leave you some privacy to make whatever decisions you believe best. I am so sorry this should have happened.”
Mallory recollected his duty as host in his parents’ absence, and hastened to the door after her.
“Thank you, Mrs. Pitt. I … I hardly know what to say to you. You came to call upon us out of kindness, and we have embarrassed you dreadfully …” He looked acutely uncomfortable, his face white except for blotches of pink in his cheeks. He stood awkwardly, not knowing how to rest his weight or what to do with his hands.
“I do not think of being embarrassed,” she said with something less than the truth. “I have had tragedy in my own family, and I know how it can change everything. Please do not think of it again.” She was at the front door. She tried to smile as he opened the door for her, and for a moment she met his eyes and was sharply aware of the fear in him, almost panic, and that it lay barely beneath the surface, threatening to break through if there were one more tear in the fabric of his life, however small.
She wished she could have comforted him, but she could not promise it would get better. It probably would not.
“Thank you, Mr. Parmenter,” she said quietly. “I hope next time we meet the worst will be over.” Then she turned and went down the steps and along the pavement to look for a hansom.
    Earlier that day Cornwallis had received an unexpected visitor in his office. The constable outside told him that Mrs. Underhill had asked to see him.
“Yes … yes, of course …” He rose to his feet and accidentally knocked over a pen with his cuff. He set it right. “Ask her to come in. Did … did she say what it was about?”
“No sir. Didn’t like to ask her, her bein’ a bishop’s wife an’ all. Shall I go an’ ask her now, sir?”
“No! No, please show her in.” Unconsciously he straightened his jacket and pulled at his tie, actually setting it crooked.
Isadora came in a moment after. She was dressed in a dark shade somewhere between blue and green. It reminded him of the color of ducks’ tails. It suited her pale skin and almost black hair, with its wing of white at the brow. He had not realized it before, but she was beautiful. There was an inner peace in her face which made it remarkable. It was a face he could look at without growing tired of it, or feeling as if he had learned every expression and could predict its next light or shadow.
He swallowed. “Good morning, Mrs. Underhill. How may I help you?”
A smile flickered across her face and vanished. She obviously felt some awkwardness about the matter, whatever it was, and disliked having to broach it with him.
“Please sit down,” he offered, indicating the large chair near his desk.
“Thank you.” She glanced around his office, noticing the ship’s sextant on the shelf and looking quickly at the titles of the books. “I’m sorry. I should not waste your time, Mr. Cornwallis.” She brought her attention back to him. “I think perhaps I was foolish to have come and disturbed you. It is a personal matter, not official. But I felt that we left a most unfortunate impression upon you the evening you came to dinner. The Bishop …” She gave his title rather than calling him “my husband,” as he would have expected. He noticed the hesitation. “The Bishop was deeply distressed about the whole incident,” she went on quickly. “And fearful that the wider repercussions could damage so many people, I think he may have seemed less concerned with Ramsay Parmenter’s own … welfare … than he really is.”
She was obviously finding it extremely difficult to talk, and studying her face, her shadowed eyes avoiding his, he felt that she was as deeply offended by the bishop’s behavior as he was himself. Only for her it was also a profound shame, because she could not dissociate herself from it without disloyalty. She had come here now to try to improve her husband’s image in Cornwallis’s eyes, and she must hate doing it and feel a terrible inner anger at the necessity. Did she wish to tell him her true emotion, but honor forbade her?
“I understand,” he said into the awkward silence. “He has many considerations beyond the purely personal. All men with great responsibility have.” He smiled, keeping his eyes very steadily on hers. “I have commanded a ship myself, and no matter what my feelings towards any individual member of the crew, what like or dislike, what pity or respect, the ship itself always had to come first or we should all perish. They are hard decisions to make, and not always thought fair by others.” He did not think those rules applied to Bishop Underhill. His “ship” was a moral one, fighting the elements of cowardice and dishonor, not of wood and canvas struggling against the ocean’s power. Cornwallis’s commission had included safeguarding the lives of his men. Underhill’s was to safeguard their souls.
But he could say none of this to her. She must know it as well as he … at least—looking at her, the awkwardness of her hands knotted together in her lap, the way her eyes avoided his—he believed she did, and he did not wish to remind her.
“We must all make whatever decisions we feel to be the best in difficult circumstances,” he went on. “It is easier to judge others than to be in that position oneself. Please do not feel I misunderstand.”
She looked up at him quickly. Was she aware that he was trying to be kind rather than honest? He was unused to women. He had only the vaguest idea how they thought, what they believed or felt. Perhaps she saw right through him and despised him for it? That possibility was startlingly unpleasant.
She smiled at him. “I think you are being very generous, Mr. Cornwallis, and I am grateful to you for that.” She glanced around the room. “Were you at sea for long?”
“A little over thirty years,” he replied, still looking at her.
“You must miss it.”
“Yes …” The answer came instantly and with a depth which he had not expected. He smiled self-consciously. “In some ways it was a great deal simpler. I am afraid I am not used to politics. Pitt tries to keep instructing me in the nature of intrigue and the possibilities of diplomacy—and more often the impossibilities.”
“I don’t suppose there has to be much diplomacy at sea,” she said thoughtfully, looking away again, the shadow returning to her face. “You are in command. You simply have the terrible burden of being right, because everyone depends upon it. Great power brings its equal responsibility.” Her voice was thoughtful, as if she were talking as much to herself as to him. “I used to imagine the church was like that … a magnificent proclaiming of the truth, like John the Baptist before Herod.” She laughed at herself. “About as undiplomatic as it would be possible to be … telling the king publicly that he is an adulterer and his marriage is illegal, and to repent and ask God’s forgiveness. He can hardly have been surprised to lose his head.”
His body relaxed. His hands lay easy on the desk. “How do you say such a thing diplomatically?” he asked with a grin. “Your Majesty, I think maybe your conjugal relations are a trifle irregular, and you may wish to reconsider them or counsel with the Almighty?”
She laughed, a sudden ripple of joy at absurdity.
“And he would say, ‘I am sorry, but I am quite satisfied with arrangements as they are, thank you. And if you repeat this suggestion in public, I shall be obliged to incarcerate you. And when I have the appropriate excuse, I shall bring your life to a premature end. It would be better if you were to acknowledge to everyone that it is all in order and meets with your approval.’ ” She stood up, suddenly serious again, her voice charged with emotion. “I should far rather go out with all guns blazing than be branded by the enemy and marred by his crime, for his purposes. I apologize for the mixed metaphors and for usurping your naval imagery.”
“I consider it a compliment,” he returned.
“Thank you.” She moved to the door. “At first I felt very foolish coming, but you have made me at ease. You are very gracious. Good day.”
“Good day, Mrs. Underhill.” He opened the door for her and watched her leave with regret. He nearly spoke, to detain her a moment longer, but realized how ridiculous that would be.
He closed the door and went back to his desk, but he sat for nearly a quarter of an hour without moving or taking up his papers again.