Only once did he touch on Bolitho, when he had mentioned his nephew George Avery.
"I think he must be doing well as Sir Richard's flag lieutenant. He has a way with people, lame ducks most of all."
She turned and looked at him, her eyes in shadow as the carriage rolled past a line of bedraggled trees. "How long will it be before…?"
"Before Sir Richard comes home?" He seemed to consider it. "You must know the ways and the prevarications of Admiralty, my dear. It will be a difficult campaign, and now of course the Americans seem intent on interfering. It is very hard to say at this stage."
"I need him so…" She did not go on.
As the carriage swayed through rain-filled ruts and over fallen branches, Sillitoe could feel the pressure of her body against his own. What would she do, right at this moment when for some reason she needed his aid, if he took her in his arms and forced her into submission? Who would she turn to? Who would believe her? Perhaps only Bolitho, and he might not come home for years. And when he did, would she tell him? He wiped his forehead with his hand. He felt as if he had a fever.
The coachman called down, "Not far now, Sir Paul."
He glanced at her, one hand clinging to the strap as the wheel grated onto cobbles and small houses appeared on either side. A few shapeless figures huddled over against the rain, a carrier's cart or two, and to his surprise a smart carriage with grooms who looked very much like his own.
She said almost to herself, "I can scarcely remember it. It was so long ago."
Sillitoe dragged his mind from the carriage. A brothel perhaps, where respectable but none-too-rich clients could lose themselves. He thought of his own, safe house. Money could buy you anything and anyone.
He tried to keep his mind clear. Why was she here in this awful place?
She dragged at the window. "There it is! " She was agitated, distressed.
The carriage rolled to a halt and the driver called, "Can't get through there, Sir Paul! Too narrer! "
She climbed down and heard the savage-looking mastiff give a warning snarl. Sillitoe followed her, and read a decaying sign which said Quaker's Passage. Despite her own uncertainty she seemed to sense his confusion and turned towards him, heedless of the rain that ran from her hair and on to her cloak.
"It was not always like this! " It was as if she were speaking to the whole street. "There were children here." She gripped an iron railing. "We played here! "
Sillitoe licked his lips. "What number do we seek?"
Three." Only a word, but it was torn from her.
Sillitoe said, "Jakes, stay with the coach and driver." Then to the one with the dog, "You keep with us." He put one hand into his coat and felt the pistol. I must be mad to be here.
The door of the house was ajar and there was rubbish strewn about the path. Even before they reached it someone screamed, "It's them bailiffs again! The bloody bastards! "
Sillitoe stood with one hand on the door. "Hold your noise, woman! "
The man with the dog showed himself, his face eager and intent, ready to set his charge on to anyone who challenged him.
When Catherine spoke her voice was quite calm and steady.
"I've come to see Mr. Edmund Brooke." She hesitated as the woman peered at her more closely. She gestured with one hand like a claw. "Upstairs."
Catherine held a rickety rail and climbed slowly to the next floor. The place stank of decay and dirt, and a despair which was like something physical.
She rapped on a door but it swung open, the lock apparently missing. A woman who had been sitting on a chair, her face in her hands, looked up sharply with hostile eyes as she exclaimed, "What the hell d'you want?"
Catherine looked at her for several seconds. "It's me, Chrissie Kate. Remember me?"
Sillitoe was shocked as the other woman threw her arms around Catherine and embraced her. Once she must have been pretty, he thought, even beautiful. But the beauty had all gone, and she could have been almost any age. He wanted to pull out his handkerchief, then plunged his hand into his coat as he saw a man watching him from the bed.
Catherine moved to the bed and stared at the face, but the eyes did not move.
The other woman said thickly, "He died two days ago. I did what I could."
Sillitoe said in a fierce whisper, "Who was he? Was he trying to get money from you?" The stench was vile and he wanted to run from this place. But her complete composure defeated even that.
She looked at the dead, stub bled face, the eyes which were still fired with anger as she had seen them so often.
She seemed to hear Sillitoe's question and answered, "He was my father."
"I'll have things done." He did not know what to say. "My men will take care of the arrangements."
"I am sure of that." She was still looking at the bed when her foot scraped against some empty bottles beneath it.
She wanted to scream at him, curse him. It was too late now even for that. Then she turned and said quietly to Sillitoe, "Do you have any money?"
"Of course." He pulled out a purse and gave it to her, glad to be doing something.
She did not hesitate but took a handful of gold coins from the purse and pressed them into the other woman's hands.
The woman stared at her and then screamed, "One whore to another, eh?" Then she flung the gold at the wall.
Sillitoe guided her to the door and heard the woman's voice break into sobs behind them, and the sound of her scrabbling about the floor to recover the money. Outside he spoke rapidly to one of his men, who was nodding abruptly in agreement with his instructions.
Catherine stared up at the house, the rain running down her throat and soaking through her clothing.
Sillitoe took her elbow and guided her away along the narrow passage. It had been terrible. It must be far worse for her. But how could it be true? He looked at her piercingly in the grey light and saw her still staring back at the little houses.
In turn she was asking herself why she had come. Duty, curiosity? It was certainly not pity.
She paused with one foot on the carriage step and said, "Thank you for coming with me, Sir Paul."
He slumped down beside her. "I – I don't understand."
She watched the street moving away, as it had always done for so many years.
"He killed my child, " she said.
The carriage wheels scraped over the cobbles, and through the rain-soaked windows everything was blurred and unreal.
Sillitoe could feel her tension, but knew if he even laid a hand on her arm she would turn against him. To break the silence he murmured, "My men will deal with everything. You must not be involved."
It was as if he had not spoken. She said, "It was all so long ago. There are times when I can hardly believe it, and others when I see it like yesterday." She was holding the strap against the uneven motion, her eyes on the street but seeing nothing.
They passed a rough piece of open ground and as though in a dream she saw some children gathering up broken branches for kindling. It had often been like that for her. But there had been laughter too until her mother had fallen sick and died, in that same sordid room.
She heard Sillitoe ask, "What was his work, his profession?" Why should I talk about it? But she answered him. "He was an actor, a performer. He could do most things."
Sillitoe thought she sounded as if she were speaking of somebody else. It was hard to imagine that angry, lifeless face as anything but snarling in death.
"I met a young man." She did not see Sillitoe either. She was thinking of Zenoria and Adam. "I was fifteen." She gave what might have been a shrug, the most despairing thing he had seen her do. "It happened. I was with child."
"And you told your father, were compelled to, with your mother gone?"
She said, "Yes. I told him."
"Perhaps he was too upset to know what he was doing."
She leaned her head against the cushion and said, "He was drunk, and he knew exactly what he was doing." You do not owe this man explanation. Only one, and he is on the other side of the world. "He hit me and knocked me down those stairs you saw today. I lost my baby…"