Charlotte glanced at Emily, then stood up. “I think I should go and see if she is all right. She seemed in a state of some distress.”
“Yes, yes, that is a good idea,” Emily agreed, and Charlotte caught in her eye a glimpse of envy for her escape.
Charlotte left the dining room and, after a glance at the empty hallway, started up the stairs. The only place Kezia could be sure of privacy would be her bedroom. It was where Charlotte herself would have gone had she just made such a scene. She certainly would not want to risk anyone coming after her in some other public place such as the conservatory or the withdrawing room.
On the landing she saw one of the young tweenies, about the age Gracie had been when she had first come to them.
“Did Miss Moynihan come past here?” she asked the girl.
The girl nodded, eyes wide, hair poking out in wisps from under her lace cap.
“Thank you.” Charlotte already knew which was Kezia’s room, and as before, she went to it and opened the door without waiting for admittance.
Kezia was lying on the bed, curled over, her shoulders hunched, her skirts billowing around her.
Charlotte closed the door and went over and sat on the end of the bed.
Kezia did not move.
There was nothing Charlotte could say which would alter what Kezia had seen and the only possible meaning anyone could attach to it. All that could be changed was how Kezia would feel about it.
“You are very unhappy indeed, aren’t you …?” she began quietly, in a calm, unemotional voice.
For several minutes Kezia did not move, then slowly she turned around and sat up, propping herself against the pillows, and stared at Charlotte with profound contempt.
“I am not ‘unhappy’ ”—she pronounced the word distinctly—“as you so quaintly put it. I don’t know what your moral beliefs are, Mrs. Pitt. Perhaps fornicating with someone else’s wife is perfectly acceptable in your circle, although I should prefer not to think so.” She hunched her shoulders, as if she were cold, although the room was warm. “To me it is abhorrent. To anyone at all, it is a sin. In someone who knows the values my brother does, who was raised in a God-fearing household by one of the most honorable, righteous and courageous preachers of his day, it is unforgivable.” Her face was ugly with rage as she said it, her clear eyes, red-rimmed with weeping, blazed her fury.
Charlotte looked at her steadily, trying to think of something to say which would reach through the tide of emotion.
“I don’t have a brother,” she said, searching for ideas. “But if my sister were to do such a thing, I should be hurt and grieved more than anything. I would want to argue with her, ask her why she threw away so much in return for so very little. I don’t think I would refuse to speak to her. But then she is younger than I am. I feel defensive for her. Is Fergal older than you?”
Kezia looked at her as if the question was nonsensical.
“You don’t understand.” Her patience was wearing thin. “I am trying hard to be reasonably civil to you, but you come into my room uninvited and sit here preaching platitudes to me about what you would do in my place, and you haven’t the remotest idea what you are talking about. You are not in my place, or anything like it. You have no political ambition or flair. You don’t even know what it is for a woman. You are very comfortably married—with children, I expect. You are obviously very fond of your husband, and he of you. Please go away and leave me alone.”
Both the condescension and the assumptions galled Charlotte, but she controlled her tongue with an effort.
“I came because I could not go on happily eating my dinner when you are in such distress,” she answered. “I suppose what I would do is irrelevant. I just wanted you to see that by refusing to talk to your brother, you are hurting yourself most of all.” She frowned. “If you think about it, what is the result of your withdrawing from him going to be?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Kezia leaned back, her eyes narrowed.
“Do you think he is going to stop seeing Mrs. McGinley?” Charlotte asked. “Do you think he will realize how wrong it is, that it is morally against all he has believed throughout his life, and certainly politically unwise if he hopes to represent his people? For heaven’s sake, isn’t Mr. Parnell’s situation evidence enough of that?”
Kezia looked faintly surprised, as if she had not yet even thought of that. And yet she must have been aware of the divorce presently being heard in London where Captain William O’Shea was citing Charles Stewart Parnell, the leader of the Irish Nationalist party as corespondent. Perhaps she had refused to realize what O’Shea’s victory would mean.
“It doesn’t look like it to me,” Charlotte continued. “When people fall in love, madly, obsessively, they frequently do not stop to weigh the cost if they are found out. If all that he stands to lose has not held him back, will your displeasure?”
“No,” Kezia said with a harsh laugh, as if the idea were funny in a twisting, hurting fashion. “No, of course not! I’m not doing it because of anything I expect him to feel or to do. I’m just so … so furious with him I can’t help myself. It’s not even the denial of his beliefs, the throwing away of his career, or the betrayal of the people who believe in him. It’s the sheer damnable hypocrisy that I can never forgive!”
“Can’t you?” Charlotte asked with a slight lift of question. “When people you love fall far below what is even honorable, much less what one knows they could be, it hurts appallingly.” Swift memories returned of past pain of her own, discoveries she would much rather not have made, and then of the learning to accept afterwards, the slow forgetting of the worst of it, the gentleness that followed for her own sake, to keep the parts that were precious and good. “One is angry because one feels it didn’t have to be. But perhaps it did. Perhaps he has to work his way through his weakness in order to conquer it. Eventually he may be less quick to condemn others. He—”
Kezia let out a bark of disgust. “Oh, for heaven’s sake be quiet. You have no idea what you are saying!” She moved around and raised her knees, almost protectively. “You are talking pompous rubbish. I could forgive him easily enough if he were merely weak. God knows, we all are.”
Her face, with all its soft, generous lines, was twisted hard with pain and the memory of pain. “But when I fell in love with a Catholic man, loved him with all my heart and soul, just after Papa died, Fergal wouldn’t even listen to me. He forbade me from seeing him. He wouldn’t even let me tell him myself.” Her voice was so harsh with remembered pain the words were indistinct. “He told him! He told Cathal I would never be permitted to marry him. It would be blasphemy against my faith. He told me that, too!
“I was too young to marry without permission. He was my legal guardian, and I couldn’t have run away without forfeiting the Church’s blessing. I listened to Fergal and obeyed him. I let Cathal go.” Her eyes filled with tears that spilled down her cheeks, not in fury this time, but remembered sweetness and the reminding of its loss. “He’s dead now. I can’t ever find him again.”
Charlotte said nothing.
Kezia looked at her. “So you see, I can’t forgive Fergal for going and lying with a Catholic woman, and somebody else’s wife to add to it. When I put flowers on Cathal’s grave, how can I explain that to him?”
“I’m not sure I could forgive that either,” Charlotte confessed, not moving from where she sat. “I’m sorry I was so quick to presume.”
Kezia shrugged, and searched for a handkerchief.
Charlotte handed her one from the bedside cabinet.
Kezia blew her nose fiercely.
“But what I said is still true,” Charlotte added apologetically. “He is your only brother, isn’t he? Do you really want to cut the bonds that hold you to each other? Won’t that hurt you as much as it does him? He’s done a terrible thing. He’ll suffer for it, sooner or later, won’t he?”