“She has good features and very beautiful hair,” Vespasia continued, ignoring his interruption. “And perhaps too handsome a figure entirely for her own good. She has drawn much admiration at times, even if her strength of character has alarmed some people.”
He was curious, both interested and now concerned. “Are you trying to say that certain men have been… attracted to her?” he asked.
She gave him a withering look. “I know of three or four who were unquestionably in love with her. What I do not know is if she herself was aware of it. She has my considered respect if she was and managed never to show it. It must have made difficult situations a great deal easier for the men in question.”
“Who were they?”
“How indelicate,” she reproved him. “Since I am quite certain that nothing improper took place, I do not think it is your concern.”
“It does not leave this room,” he promised. “Either in word or deed. But the knowledge may affect my decision. Who were they?”
“General Brandon Ballantyne and Victor Narraway,” she replied. “Among others.”
“Indeed!” He was truly surprised. “I know them both. Neither are men of easy passion. I begin to look at Mrs. Pitt in a new light. She must have more depth of character and more integrity of purpose than I had supposed.”
Vespasia smiled. “You saw her as meddling in Pitt’s cases out of boredom, mistaken idealism, the kind of arrogance that assumes abilities it does not possess and lacks the imagination to see what harm the well-meaning but ignorant can do?”
He blushed. “I had not thought of it quite so cruelly, but I suppose that is more or less what I had supposed. Pretty women sometimes are led to believe that charm can overcome any deficit in intelligence or experience.”
“I can hear Charlotte ’s laughter in my mind as you say that,” Vespasia responded. “She is very observant of small things, as women often are. She notices tone of voice, the way people stand, look at each other, the expressions on faces when they imagine themselves unobserved. But of course she would be far too wise to tell you what she had seen-at least she would now.”
“And earlier?”
“That was a different matter,” Vespasia admitted. “If one’s mistakes are dramatic enough, one does not repeat them.”
“You alarm me, and intrigue me,” he said. “I shall most certainly meet Mrs. Pitt. Tell me, do you think she will wish him to take this position, should it be offered him?”
Vespasia thought for several moments. “Oh yes, she will wish him to accept it. She was never a coward. But she will not be blind to its costs. She will know that the decisions he has to make will at times be dangerous and painful. He will make mistakes, because we all do, and he will grieve over them. He will lie awake wondering how he can spare people, knowing there is no way and yet still laboring to find one. He is a man born poor, who understands the poor, the ordinary, and the fearful. He will speak to the common man as an equal. He will at times be something of a prude and offend the aristocratic, as he has offended the king. He will not always know when to laugh and when to keep silent. But sooner or later he will earn their respect, because they will come to know that they can trust both his judgment and his kindness. That is a lot to say of any man, Sir Peter.”
“And Mrs. Pitt?” he asked.
“Oh, you may trust her to be shocking, charming, disastrously frank, and utterly loyal. You will like her, whether you wish to or not, because you will not be afraid of her. She is impractical only in the things that do not matter at all, except to people who have no sense of proportion.” Her face tightened fractionally. “A sense of proportion is going to matter in the times ahead, I think. We will need to know with great certainty what it is we value, what we are prepared to give our lives to preserve. Yes, Sir Peter, the prime minister should offer this position to Thomas Pitt. He is the essential Englishman, rooted in the soil of his ancestry, willing to live and die for the common decencies of life, the honor and tolerance, the kindness and the absurdities.
“You will be happy to sit at the kitchen table with him and drink tea with a slice of cake at the end of a long case, and know that you have done your best.”
He rose to his feet. “Thank you, Lady Vespasia. I shall recommend to the prime minister that we overrule His Majesty’s misgivings and do exactly that. I appreciate your candor. I believe that I now know more of Thomas and Charlotte Pitt than anyone else could have told me.”
She inclined her head and smiled, with a faraway, dreaming look of long and happy memory.
DOUGLAS PRESTON and LINCOLN CHILD
Douglas Preston was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1956. He graduated from Pomona College in Claremont, California, where he studied mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, anthropology, geology, astronomy, and English. He worked at New York ’s American Museum of Natural History for eight years as writer and editor of the in-house publication, eventually writing the nonfiction book Dinosaurs in the Attic for St. Martin ’s Press, where his editor was Lincoln Child. They formed a friendship that resulted in their coauthoring the bestselling FBI Agent Pendergast series and other novels.
Lincoln Child was born in Westport, Connecticut, in 1957. He graduated from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, majoring in English. He took a job with St. Martin ’s in 1979 and, after editing more than a hundred books and founding the company’s horror division, left in 1987 for a position with MetLife as a programmer and systems analyst. His first collaborative novel with Preston, Relic, was published in 1995.
Preston and Child have collaborated on thirteen novels, nine about Pendergast and four stand-alones: Mount Dragon (1996), Riptide (1998), Thunderhead (1999), and The Ice Limit (2000).
On his own, Child has written the thrillers Utopia (2002), Death Match (2004), Deep Storm (2007), and Terminal Freeze (2009).
Preston’s solo works are Dinosaurs in the Attic (1985), Jennie (1994), The Royal Road with José Antonio Esquibel and photographs by Christine Preston (1998), Cities of Gold (1999), The Codex (2004), Tyrannosaur Canyon (2005), Blasphemy (2008), and Monster of Florence with Mario Spezi (2008).
ALOYSIUS X. L. PENDERGAST
BY DOUGLAS PRESTON AND LINCOLN CHILD
Douglas Preston
My first job out of college was as an editor at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It was over a quarter mile from the front door of the museum to my office, way in the back, and it took seven and a half minutes to make that walk (I timed it). I had to pass through the great African Hall, with the elephants, a series of smaller halls, the Egyptian Alcove, the Hall of Man in Africa, the Hall of Birds of the World, the Precolumbian Gold Hall, and the Hall of Mexico and Central America. It is one of the largest museums in the world, and I found it an amazing place to work.
Part of my job was to write a column about the museum in Natural History magazine. I wrote about the Copper Man, about the Ahnighito meteorite, about Meshie the chimpanzee, about the dinosaur mummy, and the Star of India.
One day, I got a call from an editor at St. Martin ’s Press. He had been reading my columns in the magazine and wondered if I would do him the kindness of joining him for lunch at the Russian Tea Room to talk about a possible book.
I said I would certainly do him that kindness, and I rushed down to the Salvation Army to buy a jacket so I could get into the Russian Tea Room. When the appointed day came, I showed up expecting to meet an éminence grise from St. Martin ’s Press. Instead, waiting for me at a table in the back was a kid even younger than I was: Lincoln Child.