“Certainly, ma’am, if you care to come this way.” He closed the door against the ice-whirling dusk, and led her to the withdrawing room. It was empty, but a fire was burning hard. Presumably the general was in the library, and perhaps Christina was with him. That was a contingency Charlotte had not considered. She would much rather not speak in Christina’s presence. Christina would be far too quick to understand, and she was possessive of her father. She would end the whole visit as quickly as was decent, it would descend to a painful battle of wits. Charlotte would have to try to bore her away with whatever details of soldiering she could bring to mind!
The footman left her. Several minutes later, he returned and conducted her to the library. Thank heaven Christina had already gone, perhaps finding even the thought of Charlotte and her letters too tedious to bother with.
General Balantyne was standing with his back to the fire. He was tense, his eyes on the doorway, waiting for her.
The footman disappeared discreetly, leaving them alone.
“Charlotte-” He was unsure whether to step toward her or not. Suddenly he was awkward, his feelings so close to the surface that they were embarrassing, even frightening.
She had prepared some scrambled comment about the letters. Now they were not necessary; she had no excuse to prevaricate. Her mouth was dry, her throat tight.
“The footman said something about the letters.” He was trying to help her. “Have you discovered something?”
She avoided his eyes and looked at the fire.
Then he realized that she was cold and wet, and that he was taking all the heat. He moved away quickly, his face softening. “Come, warm yourself.”
She smiled. At any other time, such an act would have mattered. All her life she had been accustomed to having a man automatically assume the place nearest the fire.
“Thank you.” She walked over and felt the heat tingle pleasantly on her skin. In a moment it would penetrate through her wet skirt and boots to her numbed feet.
There was no point in putting it off any longer. “I didn’t come about the letters.” She stayed facing the flames, watching them, avoiding his eyes. He was close behind her, and at all costs she did not want to look at him. “I came about the murders in the Devil’s Acre.”
There was a moment’s silence. For an instant her anxiety had made her forget Pitt. Balantyne had assumed, because Emily had introduced her as Miss Ellison, that her marriage had failed-and she had never disillusioned him. Now she thought of it with a flood of shame. She turned.
He was still looking at her, the bright, desperate softness in his face unmistakable and wide open to every wound. And yet not to tell him now would be inexcusable. Every time she came here, she made it worse. There was nothing she could do to soften the injury. Everything-attempts at gentleness, shame, pity-would either humiliate or embarrass him.
She began quickly, before she had time to draw back. “I have no excuse to offer, except that I care very much about finding who killed those men in the Devil’s Acre, and the whole system of prostitution and-”
“So do I!” he said fervently, then realized the agony in her face. “Charlotte? What is it?” He stood still, but she felt as if he had come closer, so intense was his concentration, his awareness of her.
“I have been lying to you.” She used the harshest, most abrasive word. It was cowardly to look away. She also needed to hurt herself. She met his eyes. “Emily introduced me as Miss Ellison because she wished you to think of me as a private person. And I allowed her to, since Max used to work in this house and we thought we might learn something here.” Still she left out their suspicions of Christina.
Slowly the dawn of a new pain came over him, then a scalding embarrassment. He had pushed Pitt, the whole episode of her marriage, out of his mind. He had wished something-or dreamed something? Now it all shattered around him.
“I am still married to Thomas Pitt,” she whispered. “And I am happy.”
His face burned hot. He turned away from her for a moment, wanting to hide.
She had used him. Now she felt a bitter shame, and pain, because she cared for him. It mattered intensely to her what he thought of her. If he despised her for it, she would feel the mark as long as she could imagine.
“I’m very ashamed,” she said quietly. Should she pretend she did not know he loved her? Would that save his pride by allowing him to withdraw it as if it had not existed? Or would it only further insult him by devaluing what was the greatest gift he had to offer?
She tried to read his face, but all she could see was the softness in his eyes, hot confusion, blurred. The light of the lamp on the wall reflected on the bones of his cheek. She wanted to touch him, to put her arms around him-but that was ridiculous! He would be offended, perhaps even repelled. He would not understand that although she loved Pitt, she also felt for him something individual and profound. He might even take it for pity, and that would be the most dreadful of all.
“I lied by omission,” she went on, to break the silence. “I said nothing untrue!” It sounded like an attempt at excuse.
“Please don’t explain.” He found words at last, his voice a little husky. He breathed deeply in and out. “I care about the murders also-and the Devil’s Acre. I imagined you had not come about the letters. What did you come for?”
“But I do care about the letters!” Now she was sounding like a child, and the tears were spilling over. She sniffed and reached for her handkerchief. She blew her nose and looked away from him. “There is some very disturbing information. I–I thought you would wish to know immediately.”
“I-?” Already he understood that there was something else that would hurt him, something further. An instinctive sense of it made him move a little away from her, allowing her to sit down without seeming to rebuff him. It was a delicacy of emotion he had not known before. “What have you discovered?” he asked quickly.
“Max was keeping two houses.” She hesitated to use the word “whore.” It was too ugly, too close just now.
He did not seem to grasp the meaning of it. “Indeed?” The confusion showed in his voice. They were being formal, as if the past moment’s intimacy had not happened. It was easier for both of them.
She rushed on before there was time to think of emotions. “One was ordinary, like any in the Devil’s Acre. The other was for very high-class customers.” She smiled bitterly, although her face was toward the fire. “Carriage trade. He even provided women of good birth, very good indeed, on occasion.”
He was silent. She tried to imagine what was in his mind: incredulity, horror-knowledge? Pain.
She breathed out slowly. “Adela Pomeroy was one of them.”
Still he said nothing.
“Pomeroy was a pederast. I expect-” She stopped. She was trying to excuse the woman. Why? To excuse Christina also, for him? He did not deserve patronage. Again, almost overwhelmingly, she wanted to hold him tightly in her arms, to touch softly the unreachable wound-as if anything she could do would ease it! It was idiotic. She would only intrude on his embarrassment and hurt, preposterously overrating the affection he had felt for her, which was perhaps already destroyed by her duplicity-and by this much closer threat.
“I’m sorry,” she said, still facing the fire.
“What about the others?” he asked. She could not read his voice.
“Dr. Pinchin performed abortions on prostitutes, not always successfully. He took his payment in kind. Mrs. Pinchin was very grim and very respectable.”
“And Bertie Astley?” he persisted. He was being very objective, covering his feeling for her … or Christina, or anyone, by seeking to understand the facts.
“He owned a row of houses in the Acre-tenements, sweatshops, a gin mill. Of course, Beau Astley might have killed him for the money. They bring in a lot.” She looked at him.