“Yes sir.” It was grudging. He hated it, but he saw no alternative. His hands clenched over the harness and his shoulders were tight.
“Were there others like Mrs. Easterwood?” Pitt asked again.
“A few.” He kept his eyes on Pitt’s. He took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “Mostly up Lunnon way. Never wi’ wives of a friend. He’d not take anything what’s theirs. Only take them as is willin’—” He stopped suddenly.
“And don’t count,” Pitt finished for him, remembering the tone of Malcolm Anders’s letter.
“There’s nobody what doesn’t count, Mr. Pitt.”
“Even whores?”
The coachman’s face reddened. “You got no place to go calling any woman a whore, Mr. Pitt, an’ I don’ care who you are, I won’t stand ’ere an’ listen to it.”
“Even girls like Kathleen O’Brien? Lie with anyone to better their chances and—” Pitt too stopped suddenly, seeing the rage and the hurt in the man’s eyes. He had gone too far. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. He meant it. He could picture the story. It would be one of a dozen variations on the old theme, a handsome maid, a master who was used to taking anything he wanted and did not think of servants as people like himself, with tenderness and dignity or honor to be hurt. The distinction would not even be intentional.
“She weren’t like that.” The coachman glared at him. “You’ve no place saying it!”
“I wanted to provoke you into honesty,” Pitt confessed. “What happened to Kathleen?”
The man was still angry. He reminded Pitt of the coachman where he grew up, taciturn, loyal, honest to the point of bluntness, but endlessly patient with animals or the young.
“She got dismissed for thievin’,” he said grudgingly. “But it were because she wouldn’t have no one touch ’er.”
Pitt found himself relaxing. He had not realized until that moment that he had been clenching his hands so hard the nails had scraped his palms, and his muscles ached.
“Did she go back to Ireland?”
“I dunno. We gave ’er what we could, me and Cook and Mr. Wheeler.”
“Good. But you are still loyal to Mr. Greville?”
“No sir,” he corrected. “I’m loyal to the mistress. I wouldn’t ’ave ’er know about them things. Some ladies know an’ can üve with it, others can’t. I reckon as she’s one as couldn’t. In’t nothing sour in her, or some would say realistic. You won’t go telling her, will you?”
“I won’t tell her anything I don’t have to,” Pitt answered, and he said it with regret, because he knew it did not mean a great deal. He wished he could have given the assurances the coachman sought.
They rode back through the gathering dusk, the light dying rapidly in the autumn evening, and Pitt was profoundly glad he was not trying to make his way along the hedgerows and through the woods alone. There was little wind, but even so the air was growing colder all the time, and the sharp prickle of frost stung his nose. Twigs snapped under his horse’s hooves and its breath was white against the gloom.
It was over an hour and a half before they saw the lights of Ashworth Hall and rode into the stable yard to dismount. In the past Pitt had always had to unsaddle his own horse, walk it cool, rub it down and feed and water it, sometimes Matthew’s horse as well. He felt remiss, uncaring, to hand it over to someone else and simply walk away. It was another reminder of how far he was from his origins. Piers, young and slender and full of pain, did it as casually as a man takes off his jacket in his own house.
Pitt followed him in through the side door, scraping his boots on the ornamental cast-iron grid set there for the purpose.
Inside the house was warm, even the hall seemed to embrace him after the sharpness of the night air. A footman was waiting attentively.
“May I fetch you anything, sir?” he asked Pitt first, to Pitt’s surprise. He had momentarily forgotten he was a personal guest, Piers only an addition, and a younger one. “A hot drink? A glass of whiskey? Mulled wine?”
“Thank you, a hot drink would be excellent. Is Mr. Radley out of his meeting yet?”
“No sir. I venture to say that they have been going rather better than expected.” He looked at Piers. “May I get a hot drink for you also, sir?”
“Yes, thank you.” Piers looked at Pitt. He had not asked him what he was going to say. He had already asked for his discretion once, and he had no idea what the coachman had told him. “I’ll go up and see Miss Baring.” He looked back at the footman. “Is she with my mother, do you know?”
“Yes, sir, in the blue boudoir.”
“Thank you.” With only another glance at Pitt, he went upstairs and disappeared around the turn of the staircase onto the landing.
“I’ll have my drink upstairs too,” Pitt instructed. “I think I’ll have a bath before dinner.”
“Yes sir. I will have some water brought up for you, sir.”
Pitt smiled. “Thank you. Yes, please, do that.”
It was Tellman who came with it. He did it with a very ill grace indeed. The only reason he did not splash water all over the floor was that he might have found himself mopping it up afterwards. He would be delighted, however, if Pitt were too stiff the next day to move without pain.
“I learned a great deal,” Pitt said conversationally, undoing his cravat and laying it on the side table. He began to unfasten his shirt, moving behind the screen which was set up to keep the draft from the door off the bath.
“About what?” Tellman asked grudgingly.
Pitt went on undressing and told him about Mrs. Easterwood and those others like her, about Kathleen O’Brien and what the coachman had said, and not said, about her dismissal.
Tellman stood leaning against the marble-topped table with jug, bath salts and soap dishes on it, his hands deep in his pockets, his face grim.
“Seems like he earned himself a few enemies,” he said thoughtfully. “But girls who are wrongly treated don’t come back and murder their masters.” He moved to keep himself on the other side of the screen from Pitt or the bath. “If they did it would probably do away with half the aristocracy of England.”
“It would put a fairly swift stop to the abuse,” Pitt said with a shiver as he stepped into the hot water. It was delicious, and he had not realized until that moment quite how cold and stiff he was, or how very tired. It had been far too long since he had done anything so physically strenuous. He eased himself into the steaming, fragrant foam. “I doubt it had any relevance,” he went on more seriously. “But we have to consider the possibility that Kathleen O’Brien may have had Nationalist, even Fenian, relatives, and been more than willing to offer information. Heaven knows, it seems she had cause.”
“Does it matter?” Tellman opened one of the jars of salts and sniffed it curiously, then wrinkled his nose at its effeminacy. “It was someone in this house now who killed him. It certainly wasn’t a disgruntled husband or Kathleen O’Brien. He would have known them. Anyway, we’ve been told the background of everyone here.”
Pitt had no choice but to speak to Eudora. When he was dressed again, not having seen Charlotte, who was busy assisting Emily entertain Kezia and Iona, he went to Eudora’s sitting room and knocked.
The door was opened by Justine. There was a flicker of hope in her eyes, and she searched Pitt’s face and was uncertain what she saw, except that it would hurt. Piers was not there. Presumably he was still in his bath, or dressing for dinner.
“Come in, Mr. Pitt.” She opened the door wide and stood back. She was dressed in deep purplish-blue and was so slender she should have looked fragile, yet her grace instead gave the impression of strength, like a dancer’s. It was so easy to understand why Piers was fascinated with her—she had such beauty, arrested suddenly and startlingly by the uniqueness of her nose. He could not even decide whether it was ugly or merely different.