“Someone went back, whatever for,” he pointed out.
“Not Rose!” she said with more conviction than she felt. “She wanted her alive!” She leaned forward across the table. “She’s still so afraid she can hardly keep control of herself, Thomas. She doesn’t know yet! She’s hunting for another medium so she can go on searching.”
The kettle shrilled more insistently on the hob, and he ignored it. “Or Maude Lamont told her something she doesn’t want to believe,” he said gently. “And she is terrified that it will be discovered.”
She looked at him, wishing he did not understand her so well, read in her the racing thoughts she would so much rather have concealed. And yet if she could dupe him that would not be any comfort, either. She had always believed that her own skill with people was her greatest asset. She could charm and beguile and so often make people do what she wished them to without their even being aware that what they embraced so eagerly was actually her idea.
And the use of it left her oddly dissatisfied. She had realized that more and more lately. She did not want to see further than Jack could, or be stronger or cleverer than he was. Ahead was a very lonely place. One had to take the burden sometimes, it was part of love, part of responsibility—but only sometimes, not always. And it was a pleasure only because it was right, fair, an act of giving, not because it afforded any comfort to oneself.
So while she resented Pitt’s pressure on her to tell him more than she wished to, she also felt a sense of comfort that she could not fob him off with half an answer. She needed him to be cleverer than she was, because she had not the power to help Rose, or even to be certain what help would be. She might only make it worse. She realized now that she was not absolutely sure that Rose was not touched with the edge of madness, and could in her panic have thought Maude Lamont knew her secret and would endanger her, and then Aubrey. She remembered how quickly Rose had turned on her when she was afraid. Friendship had vanished like water dropped on the hot surface of a griddle, evaporated before her sight.
“She swore she did not kill her,” she said aloud.
“And you want to believe her,” Pitt finished the unsaid thought. He stood up and went to the stove, moving the kettle off the heat. He turned back to face her. “I hope you are right. But somebody did. I don’t want it to be General Kingsley, either.”
“The anonymous person,” Emily concluded. “You still don’t know who he was . . . do you?”
“No.”
She looked at him. Something was closed and hurt in his eyes. He was not lying. She had never known him to do that. But there was a world of feeling and of fact that he was not willing to tell her.
“Thank you, Emily,” he said, coming back to the table. “Did she say if anyone else knew of this fear? Does Aubrey know?”
“No.” She was quite certain. “Aubrey doesn’t know, and if you are thinking Maude Lamont blackmailed her, I don’t think so.” She was aware of a sudden lurch of anxiety as she said it, and that it was only partially true. Could Pitt see that in her face?
He gave a slight shrug. “Perhaps Maude Lamont didn’t know yet,” he said dryly. “Someone may have affected a very lucky escape for Rose.”
“Aubrey doesn’t know, Thomas! He really doesn’t!”
“Probably not.”
He walked with her to the front door, collecting his jacket on the way, and outside he accepted a lift in her carriage as far as Oxford Street, where she turned west to go back home. He went south towards the War Office, to again search its records for whatever it was that had forced General Kingsley to attack the political party whose values he had always believed. Surely it had to have some connection with the death of his son or some action shortly before it.
He had been there over an hour, reading one report after another, when he realized that he still had no flavor of the man, no sense of anything other than a torrent of formal, fleshless words. It was like seeing the skeleton of a man and trying to imagine the look of his face, his voice, his laughter, the way he moved. There was nothing here. Whatever it had been was covered over. He could read this all day and learn nothing.
He copied out the names of most of the other officers and men who had been at Mfolozi to see if any of them were here in London, and perhaps willing to tell him more than this. Then he thanked the clerk and left.
He had already given the cabbie the address of the first man on the list when he changed his mind, and gave Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould’s address instead. Perhaps it was an impertinence to call on her uninvited, but he had never found her unwilling to help in any cause in which she believed. And after Whitechapel, where they had shared not only the battle itself but a depth of emotion, a fear and a loss, and a victory at terrible price, there was a bond between them unlike any other.
Therefore it was with confidence that he presented himself at the front door of her house and told the maid who answered it that he wished to speak with Lady Vespasia on a matter of some urgency. He would await her convenience, however long that might be.
He was left in the morning room, but it proved to be only for a matter of minutes, then he was shown into her sitting room, which faced onto the garden and always seemed to be full of peace and a soft light, whatever the season or the weather.
She was wearing a shade of clover pink, so subtle it was hardly pink at all, and the usual pearls around her neck. She smiled to greet him, and held out her hand very slightly, not for him to take, merely as a gesture that he should come in.
“Good morning, Thomas. How pleasant to see you.” Her eyes searched his face. “I have been half expecting you ever since Emily called. Or perhaps ‘half hoping’ would be more accurate. Voisey is standing for Parliament.” She could not even say his name without the emotion thickening her voice. She had to be remembering Mario Corena, and the sacrifice which had cost Voisey so dearly.
“Yes, I know,” he said softly. He wished he could have spared her being aware of it, but she had never evaded anything in her life, and to protect her now would surely be the ultimate insult. “That is why I am here in London rather than with Charlotte in the country.”
“I am glad she is away.” Her face was bleak. “But what is it you believe you can do, Thomas? I don’t know much about Victor Narraway. I have asked, but either the people I spoke to know little themselves or they are not prepared to tell me.” She looked at him steadily. “Be very careful that you do not trust him more than is wise. Don’t assume that he has the concern for you, or the loyalty, that Captain Cornwallis had. He is not a straightforward man—”
“Do you know that?” Pitt said, cutting across her unintentionally.
She smiled very slightly, a gesture that barely moved her lips. “My dear Thomas, Special Branch is designed and created to catch anarchists, bombers, all kinds of men, and I suppose a few women, who plan in secret to overthrow our government. Some of them intend to replace it with another of their own choosing, others simply wish to destroy without the slightest idea what will follow. Some, of course, have loyalties to other countries. Can you imagine John Cornwallis organizing a force to prevent them before they succeed?”
“No,” Pitt admitted with a sigh. “He is brave and profoundly honest. He would expect to see the whites of their eyes before he would shoot.”
“He would invite them to surrender,” she amended. “Special Branch requires a devious man, subtle, full of imagination, a man seen only in the shadows, and never by the public. Do not forget that.”
Pitt was cold, even in the sun. “I think General Kingsley was being blackmailed by Maude Lamont, at least on the surface it was by her.”
“For money?” She was surprised.
“Possibly, but I think more likely to attack Aubrey Serracold in the newspapers, sensing his inexperience and the probability that he would react badly, damaging himself further.”