Ashworth Hall

9

HAVING MADE THE DECISION to go to London, Charlotte wasted no time whatever in completing the necessary arrangements. She told Pitt she was going to visit Vespasia.

“Now?” he said incredulously.

“Yes. There are things with which I think she may be able to help.” She could not tell him what. If he pressed her, she would have to invent something.

“What about Emily?” he argued. “She needs you here. She’s terrified for Jack. And with reason.” He stopped suddenly. “I think you should be here.”

“I’ll come straight back.” She would not be persuaded out of it. The scene with Eudora was sharp in her mind. If she were going to fight, she needed to talk with someone first, and Vespasia was the only person who might understand. She felt just as vulnerable as Eudora or Emily, although for entirely different reasons. “I won’t be long,” she promised, then kissed him quickly on the cheek and turned and left.

Emily was occupied, which was excellent. Charlotte left a message with Gwen. Then, after having spoken briefly to Gracie, she requested Emily’s second-best carriage to take her to the railway station for the next train. At the station she made enquiries as to the hour of the return trains in the evening and arranged to have the carriage meet her from the one which arrived in Ashworth at three minutes before ten.

* * *

“Well, my dear,” Vespasia said with interest, regarding her carefully. Charlotte was very smart in her deep hunting green traveling suit and cape with fur trim, borrowed from Emily. Although the chill wind had stung some color into her cheeks, Vespasia was quite capable of seeing the anxiety beneath the surface well-being.

“How are you, Aunt Vespasia?” Charlotte enquired, going forward into the withdrawing room with its warm, delicate colors and old-fashioned, almost Georgian lines. There was far more light in it, more simplicity, than the modern design fashionable ever since the Queen came to the throne fifty-three years before.

“I am as well as I was when you spoke to me on the telephone this morning,” Vespasia replied. “Sit down and warm yourself. Daisy can bring us tea, and you can tell me what concerns you so much you are prepared to leave Ashworth Hall and return to London for a day.” Her eyes narrowed a little and she regarded Charlotte with some gravity. “You do not look at all yourself. I can see that something exceedingly unpleasant has happened. You had better tell me about it.”

Charlotte realized she was still trembling very slightly at the memory of it, even though she had exercised her mind on other things for the entire duration of the journey on the train, but the effort had been immense. Now it was all as vivid as the moment after it happened. She even found her voice a little high.

“Someone exploded a bomb at Ashworth Hall this morning, in Jack’s study ….”

Vespasia went very pale.

“Oh, my dear, how dreadful!”

Charlotte should have been more thoughtful. She should never have told Vespasia like this. She clasped her quickly.

“It’s all right! Jack isn’t hurt! He wasn’t there at the time.”

“Thank you,” Vespasia said with some dignity. “You may let go of me, my dear. I am not going to faint. I presume if Jack were hurt, you would have told me so immediately and not in this roundabout fashion. Was anyone else injured? Who was it who did such a fearful thing, and why?”

“Someone was killed, an Irishman named Lorcan McGinley.” She took a deep breath, steadying herself with an effort of will. “And we don’t know who did it. It is all part of a long story.”

Vespasia indicated the large chair to one side of the fire, burning high up in the grate and sending warmth throughout the room.

Charlotte sat down gratefully. Now that she was there it was less easy to put her fears into words. As always, Vespasia sat upright, straight-backed, her silver hair curled and braided in a coronet, her silver-gray eyes under their hooded lids bright with intelligence and concern. Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould was an aristocrat from an ancient family with many lands, obligations, and knowledge of honor and privilege. She could freeze an impertinence at twenty feet and make the unfortunate trespasser wish he or she had never spoken. She could trade wit with philosophers, courtiers, and playwrights. She had smiled at dukes and princes and made them feel honored by it. In her eighties the bones of her face were still exquisite, her coloring delicate, her movements a good deal stiffer but not without the pride and assurance of the past. One could easily believe that half a century ago she had been the greatest beauty of the age. Now she was old enough and rich enough not to care in the slightest what society thought of her, and she was enjoying the exquisite freedom it gave her to be utterly herself.

It was Charlotte’s immense good fortune that Emily’s first husband had been Vespasia’s great-nephew. Vespasia had become fond of both Emily and Charlotte, and more remarkably, considering the chasm between their situations, of Pitt as well.

Vespasia was looking more closely at Charlotte. “Since it is apparently so serious,” she said gravely, “perhaps you had better begin at the beginning, wherever you believe that to be.”

That was easy. “It started with going to Ashworth Hall to protect Ainsley Greville,” Charlotte replied.

“I see.” Vespasia nodded. “For political reasons, I assume? Yes, of course. One of our more notable Catholic diplomats; discreetly Catholic, naturally. He is not a man to allow his religion to get in the way of his career. He married Eudora Doyle, a very beautiful woman from one of the outstanding Irish Catholic Nationalist families, but they have always lived here in England.” A ghost of irony crossed her features. “Is it to do with this absurd Parnell-O’Shea business?”

“I don’t know,” Charlotte replied. “I don’t think so. Although perhaps indirectly it is. I’m not sure ….”

Vespasia put her long, thin hand with its moonstone rings very gently on Charlotte’s lap.

“What is it, my dear? You seem very deeply troubled. It can only be some person for whom you care very much. From the tone in which you told me of his death, I assume it is not the unfortunate Mr. McGinley, and I cannot imagine that it is Mr. Greville. He is not a very pleasant man. He has great charm, considerable intelligence, and certainly diplomatic skill, but a basically self-serving nature.”

“He did have,” Charlotte agreed with the shadow of a smile.

“Don’t tell me he has had a sudden conversion to the light,” Vespasia said incredulously. “That I must see ….”

Charlotte laughed in spite of herself, but it ended abruptly.

“No. Thomas was there in order to protect him from threats of assassination, and I am afraid he did not succeed.” She took a deep breath. “He was murdered ….”

“Oh.” Vespasia sat very still. “I see. I am sorry. And I assume you do not yet know who is responsible?”

“No … not yet, though it will be one of the Irishmen who are staying there this weekend ….”

“But that is not what you have come to see me about.” Vespasia put her head a little to one side. “I am tolerably well-acquainted with Irish politics, but not with the identity of individual assassins.”

“No … of course not.” Charlotte wanted to smile at the idea, but the reality was too painful. She remembered that morning vividly, the physical shock of the explosion, and then the realization a moment later of what it was. She had not been close to such powerful violence before. There was something quite new and terrible about an actual room being blown apart.

“I think you had better leave the beginning and come to the middle.” Vespasia slid her hand over Charlotte’s. “It is obviously very serious. Ainsley Greville has been murdered, and now this Mr. McGinley, and so far you do not know who has killed them, except that it is someone still at Ashworth Hall. You have experienced crimes before, and Thomas has solved some exceedingly difficult murders. Why does this trouble you so much you have left Ashworth and come here?”

Charlotte looked down at her hands, and Vespasia’s older, thinner, blue-veined hand over them.

“Because Eudora Greville is so vulnerable,” she said quietly. “In the space of a few days she has lost everything, not only her husband—and therefore her safety, her position, and whatever he earned, if that matters—but what really hurts is that she has lost what she believed he was.” She looked at Vespasia. “She has been forced to learn that he was a philanderer, and uglier than that, a man who used people without any regard for their feelings, or even for what happened to them as a result.”

“That is very unpleasant,” Vespasia agreed. “But, my dear, do you suppose she really had no suspicion? Is she completely naive?” She shook her head a little. “I doubt it. What hurts is that the rest of the world will know it too, or at least that part of the world with which she is familiar. It will become impossible for her to deny it to herself any longer, which is something we all tend to do when the truth is too painful.”

“No, there is more than that.” Charlotte looked up and met Vespasia’s eyes. In hard, angry words full of pain she told her about Doll.

Vespasia’s face was bleak. She was an old woman and she had seen much that was hideous, but even so, this twisted deep in her, in her memory of holding her own children, in the miracle and the fragility and the infinite value of life.

“Then he was a man with much evil in him,” she said when Charlotte had finished. “That will be very difficult indeed for his wife to learn to live with.”

“And his son,” Charlotte added.

“Very difficult indeed,” Vespasia agreed. “I feel more deeply for the son. Why is it Eudora who bothers you more?”

“She doesn’t.” Charlotte smiled at her own vulnerability. “But she does Thomas. She’s the perfect maiden in distress for him to rescue.”

The seconds ticked past on the clock on the mantel, its black filigree hands jerking forward with each one. The maid brought the tea and poured it, hot and fragrant, then withdrew and left them alone.

“I see,” Vespasia said at last. “And you want to be a maiden in distress too?”

Charlotte was prompted to laugh and cry at the same time. She was closer to tears than she had realized.

“No!” She shook her head. “I don’t need rescuing. And I’m no good at pretending.”

“Would you like to be?” Vespasia passed Charlotte her tea.

“No, of course I wouldn’t!” Charlotte took the cup. “No … I’m sorry. I mean … I mean, I don’t want games, pretending. If it isn’t real, it’s no good.”

Vespasia smiled. “Then what are you asking?”

There was no purpose in putting it off any longer, refusing to put words to her fear did not make it any less real.

“Perhaps Thomas needs me to be more like Eudora? Maybe he needs someone to rescue?” She searched Vespasia’s face for denial, hoping to find it.

“I think he does,” Vespasia said gently. “You ask a great deal of him in your marriage, Charlotte. You ask him to strive very high. If he is to be all that you need of him, if he is to live up to what you could have had in your own social class, then he cannot ever be less than the very best he is able. There can be no easy choices for him, no allowing himself to relax, or commit to second best. Perhaps sometimes you forget that.” Her hand tightened over Charlotte’s. “You may at times remember only the sacrifices you have made, the gown you don’t have, the servants, the parties you don’t attend, the savings and economies you have to make. But you don’t have an impossible yardstick to measure yourself against.”

“Neither does Thomas,” Charlotte said, aghast at the thought. “I don’t ever ask for—”

“Of course you don’t,” Vespasia agreed. “But you are at Ashworth Hall, your sister’s house … or to be more correct, one of her houses. I imagine poor Jack does not always find that comfortable either.”

The coals settled in the fire and burned up more brightly.

“But I can’t help it,” Charlotte protested. “We are there because Thomas was called to go, not for me. It is his position that took us there.”

“Not because Emily is your sister?”

“Well … yes, of course that made him the obvious person … but even so …”

“I know you did not choose it.” Vespasia smiled very slightly and shook her head. “All I am saying is that if Thomas finds it agreeable that Eudora Doyle—I mean, Greville—should lean upon him and find comfort in his strength, it is not surprising, or discreditable, in either of them. And if it hurts you, or you are troubled by it, then you have the choice of pretending to be in distress yourself and masking your strength in weakness so that he will turn his attention to you instead.” She lowered her voice a little. “Is that what you wish?”

Charlotte was appalled. “No, it would be despicable! I should hate myself. I should never be able to meet his eyes.”

“Then that is one question answered,” Vespasia agreed.

“But what if … what if that is what he … wants?” Charlotte said desperately. “What if I lose part of him because I don’t … don’t need … that ….”

“Charlotte, my dear, nobody is everything to someone else, nor should they seek to be,” Vespasia said gently. “Moderate your demands at times, disguise some of your less-fortunate attributes, learn to keep your own counsel in certain matters, sometimes give more generous praise than is merited, but be true to the core of yourself. Silence does not hurt, at times, nor patience, but lies always do. Would you wish him to pretend for you?”

Charlotte closed her eyes. “I should hate it. It would be the end of everything real. How could I ever believe him again?”

“Then you have answered your own question, haven’t you?” Vespasia sat back a little. “Allow him to rescue others. That is part of his nature, perhaps the very best part. Don’t resent it. And don’t underestimate his strength to love you as you are.” The fire collapsed still further, and she ignored it. “Believe me, from time to time you will find in yourself enough weaknesses to satisfy him.” Her eyes flickered with amusement. “Do your best. Never be less than you are in the hope of earning someone else’s love. If he catches you in it he will hate you for what you have judged of him, and far worse than that, you will hate yourself. That is the most destructive of all things.”

Charlotte stared at her.

Vespasia reached for the bell to ask the maid to come to stoke the fire.

“Now we shall have luncheon,” she said, rising to her feet with the use of her silver-topped ebony cane, declining Charlotte’s arm. “I have poached salmon and a few vegetables, and then apple tart. I hope that will satisfy. And you can tell me about this wretched Irish business, and I shall tell you about the absurd divorce of Mrs. O’Shea. We can laugh about it together, and perhaps weep a little.”

“Is it sad?” Charlotte asked, walking beside her to the smaller, wood-floored breakfast room, where Vespasia more often ate when she was alone. It had a row of floral-curtained windows looking onto a paved comer of the garden. On two sides were glass-fronted cases of porcelain, crystal ornaments, vases and plates. A cherrywood gateleg table was set for two.

“Yes it is,” Vespasia answered when the butler had helped her to her seat and she had unfolded her linen napkin.

Charlotte was surprised. She had not thought Vespasia would grieve over such a thing. But then perhaps she did not know Vespasia as well as she had presumed. More than seventy years of her life had passed before Charlotte had even met her. It was an impertinence to imagine she could guess at most of it.

The butler served them a light consommé and withdrew.

Vespasia saw Charlotte’s face and laughed.

“Sad for Ireland, my dear,” she corrected. “The whole thing is so patently ridiculous!” She began her soup. “Parnell is a humorless devil at the best of times. He takes himself so terribly seriously. It is a Protestant failing. It is certainly not an Irish one. Love or hate them, you cannot accuse the Irish at large of a lack of wit. And yet Parnell has behaved like someone in a badly written farce. Even now he still does not believe that his audience will laugh at him and, of course, cease to take him seriously.”

Charlotte began her soup also. It was delicious.

“Will they?” she asked, thinking of Carson O’Day, his ambitions, and what his family would expect of him, his father, and the elder brother whose place he had to fill.

“My dear, would you?” Vespasia’s fine brows arched even higher. “Apparently when Captain and Mrs. O’Shea took a house in Brighton, within two or three days a Mr. Charles Stewart appeared, wearing a cloth cap over his eyes.” She kept her face straight with difficulty. “He called quite often, but almost always when Captain O’Shea was out. He always came up via the beach way and took Mrs. O’Shea out driving, never in daylight, always after dark.”

“In a cloth cap,” Charlotte said incredulously, forgetting her soup. “You said he had no sense of humor. Mrs. O’Shea cannot have had either!” Her voice rose in disbelief. “How could you possibly make love with a man who crept up to your door at night when your husband was out—disguised in a cloth cap, using a false name that would fool nobody? I should be hysterical with laughter.”

“That isn’t all,” Vespasia went on, her eyes light. “Five years ago—this affair has persisted for some very considerable time—he went to an auctioneer in Deptford who was acting as agent for a landlord in Kent.” She held up her hands as she spoke. “Parnell went calling himself Mr. Fox. He was told the house in question belonged to a Mr. Preston. Parnell then said he was Clement Preston. The agent replied that he had thought he said he was a Mr. Fox. Parnell then said he was staying with a Mr. Fox, but his own name was Preston, and he would take the house for twelve months, but refused to give any references”—her eyebrows rose—“on the grounds that a man who owned horses should not be required to do so.”

“Horses?” Charlotte nearly choked on her soup. “What have horses to do with it?” she demanded. “You can sell horses, or they can fall ill, or be injured, or even die.”

“Nothing whatever. The music halls are going to have a wonderful time with it,” Vespasia said with a smile. “Along with the cloth cap and the business of the fire escape. It is all so unbelievably grubby and incompetent.” Her face became serious again. “But it is sad for Ireland. Parnell may not have realized it yet, and his immediate supporters may give him a vote of confidence, out of loyalty and not to be seen to desert him, but the people at large will never follow him now.” She sighed and permitted the butler, who had returned, to remove the last of her soup and to serve the salmon and vegetables.

When he was gone she looked at Charlotte again, her eyes grave.

“Since Ainsley Greville is dead, I presume the political issues for which he worked are now sacrificed, which will have been the reason for his murder.”

“No, Jack has taken his place, at least temporarily,” Charlotte replied. “It was almost certainly to kill Jack that the dynamite was placed in the study this morning. Poor Emily is terrified, but Jack has no honorable choice but to continue in Greville’s place and do the best he can.”

“How very dreadful,” Vespasia said with considerable alarm. “You must all be most distressed. I wish there were some way in which I could help, but the Irish Problem is centuries old, and bedeviled by ignorance, myth and hatred on all sides. The tragedies it has caused are legion.”

“I know.” Charlotte looked down at her plate, thinking of the tale Gracie had told her. “We have Padraig Doyle and Carson O’Day with us.”

Vespasia shook her head and a flicker of anger crossed her face.

“That miserable business,” she said grimly. “That was one of the worst, typifying everything that is wrong with the whole sordid, treacherous affair.”

“But we betrayed them,” Charlotte pointed out. “Some soldier called Chinnery raped Neassa Doyle and then fled to England.” She did not try to keep the rage and disgust out of her voice. “And Drystan O’Day was his friend! No wonder the Irish don’t trust us. When I hear something like that, I’m ashamed to be English.”

Vespasia leaned back in her chair, her face weary, her salmon forgotten.

“Don’t be, Charlotte. We have certainly done some dreadful things in our history, things that sicken the heart and darken the soul, but this was not one of them.”

Charlotte waited. If Vespasia did not know the truth of the matter, perhaps she did not need to. She was an old lady. It would serve no purpose to harrow her with it.

“You have no need to be gentle with me,” Vespasia said with the ghost of a smile. “I have seen more to haunt one’s dreams than you have, my dear. Neassa Doyle was not raped. She was followed by her own brothers, and it was they who cut off her hair because they thought she was a whore, and with a Protestant man at that ….”

Charlotte was appalled. It was so horrible, so utterly unlike the story she had heard and accepted, instinctively she drew breath to deny it.

“It was they who killed her and left her for Drystan O’Day to find,” Vespasia went on. “In their eyes she had betrayed them, their family in front of its peers, and their faith before God. She deserved not only death but shame as well.”

“For falling in love?” Charlotte was confused, full of anger, darkness and quarreling emotions in this calmly elegant room with the sunlight slanting across the polished floor, the flowered curtains at the windows with their Georgian panes and the honeysuckle tangled beyond, and the white linen on the table, the silver and the trail of dark leaves in the cut glass vase.

“For being prepared to elope with a Protestant,” Vespasia answered. “She had let down her tribe, if you like. Love is no excuse when honor is at stake.”

“Whose honor?” Charlotte demanded. “Hasn’t she the right to choose for herself whom she will marry, and if she is prepared to pay the price of leaving her own people to do it? I know there is a cost, we all know that, but if you love someone enough, you pay it. Perhaps she didn’t believe their faith? Did they ever think of that?”

Vespasia smiled, but her eyes were tired, pale silver.

“Of course not, Charlotte. You know better than to ask. If you belong to a clan, you pay the price of that too. The freedom not to be answerable to your family, your tribe, is a very great loneliness.

“You were more fortunate than most women. I think sometimes you don’t fully appreciate that. You chose to marry outside your class, and your family’s choice for you, but they did not blame you for it or cut you off. Your social ostracism was a natural result of your marriage, not the act of your family. They remained close to you, never criticizing your choice or seeking to change your mind.” Her expression was sad and tired, her eyes far away. “Neassa had the courage to make her choice too, but her family did not understand. To them, to her brothers, it was a shame they would not live with.”

“But what about Alexander Chinnery?” Charlotte had forgotten him for a moment. “What did he do? How did you know it was not he who killed her, as they said?”

“Because by June eighth, Alexander Chinnery was already dead,” Vespasia said softly. “He was drowned in Liverpool Harbour trying to save a boy who had caught his leg in a rope and been pulled into the water.”

“Then why did both the Catholics and the Protestants believe it was he who killed Neassa Doyle?” Charlotte pressed. “And why did they think she was raped if she wasn’t?”

“Why do stories grow around anything?” Vespasia picked up her fork and began to eat again, slowly. “Because someone leaps to a conclusion … a conclusion that suits the emotions they feel and wish to arouse in the others. After a while everyone believes it, and then even if the truth is known, it is too late to tell it. Everyone has too much invested in the myth, and the truth would destroy what they have built and make liars of them.”

“They aren’t lying, they really believe it.” Charlotte picked up her wineglass, full of clean, cold water. “I suppose it was thirty years ago, and there’s no one about now who was involved, at least not in present-day politics. And they aren’t going to tell people they lied then.”

“Nobody would believe them if they did,” Vespasia argued. “The powers of the legends which tell us who we are, and justify what we want to do, is far too great to take notice of a few inconvenient facts and dates.”

“You are sure?” Charlotte urged, her fork held up in one hand. “Couldn’t Chinnery have died later? Maybe the same date, but the following year? To think her own brothers murdered her like that, cutting off her hair first, and then his people let Drystan think it was the Doyles, so he attacked them and was shot! Or did they know it was the Doyles?” She found her hand clenching on her fork, and her stomach knotted.

“Yes, they told Drystan it was,” Vespasia answered. “With the obvious result that he went mad with rage and grief and attacked them.” Her voice was hard. “That way the Catholics could blame the Protestants for seducing one of their women and for allying with an English traitor, which resulted in her rape and murder; and the Protestants could blame the Catholics for roughly the same thing; and they could all blame us. And there was no one left alive to say otherwise.”

“Did they know Chinnery was dead?”

“No, I doubt that.” Vespasia shook her head. “But they knew his denial would convince no one, and after that he would be withdrawn from Ireland, which was all that mattered.”

“But what about Chinnery’s family?” Charlotte asked. “Don’t they want his name cleared? That’s a monstrous crime he is accused of.”

“It is cleared, as far as they are concerned. He died a hero’s death in Liverpool Harbour.”

“But no one knows that!” Charlotte protested angrily.

“Yes, they do. It was in the Liverpool newspapers at the time, and his family lived in Liverpool.”

“In the newspapers?” Charlotte let her fork drop. “Then it can be proved.”

“To whom?” Vespasia asked dryly. “The people who tell stories about Drystan and Neassa? The poets and harpists who sing songs by hearths and by moonlight to keep the myths alive? My dear, Macbeth was actually the last High King of Scotland, when Scotland extended as far south as Yorkshire, and he ruled for seventeen peaceful and prosperous years.” Her silver eyes were full of irony. “And when he died his people buried him in the sacred isle of the kings. He was succeeded by Lady Macbeth’s son Lulach, as the rightful heir through his mother’s line. She was a remarkable woman who instituted many reforms for the care of the widowed and orphaned.” She shrugged, then speared her fork into the salmon on her plate. “But to accept that would spoil one of Shakespeare’s best plays, so no one wishes to know.”

“Well, I am going to find that newspaper and show people that that particular story is a monstrous fabrication,” Charlotte said with total conviction. “Macbeth is academic now, but this is still real!”

Vespasia looked at her steadily. “Are you sure that is wise? Or even that it will make any difference? People get very angry when their dreams are shown to be false. The emotion is what matters, the force which sustained the dream. We believe what we need to believe.”

“The illusion fed the hatred—” Charlotte started.

“No, my dear, the hatred fed the dream. Take that dream away and another will be created to take its place.” Vespasia sipped her water. “You cannot solve the Irish Problem, Charlotte. But I suppose perhaps you may make a difference to one or two people. Although I doubt very much that they will accept your word for what is in a newspaper, and how you may convince them I don’t know.”

Actually, neither did Charlotte. Her intention was rather more practical, but she did not wish to involve Vespasia in it, even by committing her to the knowledge. She merely smiled and continued with her meal.

When Charlotte left in the early afternoon, after having thanked Vespasia for her help and her counsel, and above all for her friendship, she took a hansom to the British Museum. She went to the reading room and asked the grim and very formal attendant if she might see the Liverpool newspapers of June of the year of 1860, and then the Irish newspapers for the same period. Fortunately, she had a very small pair of nail scissors in her reticule, something she frequently carried with her because they served in a number of emergencies, along with a file, a needle and thread, a thimble, and several gold safety pins.

“Yes, miss,” he said gravely. “If you will follow me, miss.” He led the way along narrow aisles between enormous banks of books and papers until he found her a reading desk, then promised to return with the requested newspapers.

At the table next to her was a young man with a fierce mustache and a deadly earnest expression. He seemed utterly absorbed in a political pamphlet; he barely seemed to breathe, so intent was he upon it.

On the other side of her was an elderly gentleman of military aspect who glared at her as if she had intruded in some gentleman’s club, and considering what she had it in mind to do, his suspicion was more than justified.

Her newspapers were brought, and she thanked the attendant with a charming smile—but she hoped not so charming that he would remember her.

It took her a quarter of an hour of diligent reading of print to discover both the articles she needed. It was a much more difficult thing to devise a way of cutting them out without being seen. For all she knew, to steal the pieces of newspaper might very well be a criminal offense. It would be most unfortunate to find herself under arrest and hauled off to Pitt’s police station charged with vandalism and common theft!

She turned and smiled at the military gentleman.

He looked uncomfortable and swiveled to face the other way.

The student of revolution did not appear to notice either of them.

Charlotte rattled the newspaper and sniffed loudly.

The military man was startled and looked at her with disapproval.

She smiled at him radiantly.

He was profoundly unhappy. He blushed red and fished for a handkerchief to blow his nose.

She pulled out a lace handkerchief and held it out towards him, smiling even more brightly.

He regarded her with utter horror, rose from his seat and fled.

Charlotte bent very low over the newspaper, shielding it from the side of the revolutionary, and cupped out first one piece she wanted, and then the other. She was shaking and her face was hot. She was stealing and she knew it, but there was no other way to prove the truth of what she was saying.

She closed the huge ledgers and left them on the table. She glanced around to see if she could find the attendant. He appeared to be chastising an elderly lady in a mauve-colored hat. Charlotte put her head down, the pieces of paper in her reticule along with the scissors, and walked rapidly and as nearly silently as possible out of the reading room, her hand over her mouth as if she were about to be ill.

A young man made a halfhearted attempt to apprehend her, then abandoned the idea. He might have been going to ask her to replace her reading material, or account for it, but he may simply have been going to offer her assistance. She would never know.

Outside the cold air of the street was marvelous, but she was still burningly aware of the papers in her reticule and the dour face of the senior attendant. She wanted to laugh aloud at the military man, and then to run as fast as she could and be lost among the crowd. She did have a quiet chuckle, and then walked as rapidly as she could, and not attract undue attention to herself, until she saw a hansom, which she hailed, and directed it to take her to the railway station.

It was dark and bitterly cold when Charlotte arrived back at Ashworth Hall and was met by a tired footman. All the rest of the household had retired early, shaken and frightened after the day’s events. The hall had been swept and dusted and mopped again, but the dust was still settling, and no amount of housework by maids with brooms or cloths could disguise the splintered wood of the study door, now rehung but still badly scarred, and definitely a trifle crooked.

“Thank you,” she said politely, annoyed with herself that she was too tired to remember his name. She had been told it.

“Can I bring you anything, ma’am?” he asked dutifully.

“No, thank you. Lock up and go to bed. I shall go upstairs.”

“Your maid is waiting for you, ma’am.”

“Oh … oh, yes. Of course.” She had forgotten that Gracie would be taking her lady’s maid duties so seriously. She had not the heart or the strength to tell her tonight that the story Finn Hennessey had told her was substantially untrue. She had to know, but the next day would be time enough. She stopped on the stairs and turned back.

“Is everything all right?” she asked, wishing again she could recall the footman’s name.

“Yes ma’am, nothing new has happened, not since this morning.”

“Thank you. Good night.”

“Good night, ma’am.”

Upstairs, Gracie was curled up in the big chair in the dressing room, sound asleep. Her scrubbed face was free of any lines, but her skin was pale, even in the light of the single lamp, and she looked like a worn-out child. She still had her cap on, but it had slid sideways and her hair was coming undone, straight and fine, shiny and impossible to curl. She had been with Charlotte and Pitt for seven years. She was as close as a member of the family, closer than most.

It was a shame to wake her up, but she would not thank anyone for assuming she was not up to her duty. And anyway, she would waken some time in the night, stiff from lying curled up, and then she would wonder what had happened. She might be terrified Charlotte had not come home.

“Gracie,” Charlotte said, touching her sleeping hand where it lay curled under her chin. It was as small as a child’s, scrubbed clean like her face. “Gracie!”

Gracie stirred and slipped back into sleep again.

“Gracie,” Charlotte said more firmly. “You can’t stay there, you’ll wake up suffer than Mr. Pitt.”

“Oh!” Gracie opened her eyes and relief flooded her face as she saw Charlotte. She straightened up and scrambled to her feet. “Oh, I’m real glad yer safe, ma’am! Yer didn’t ought ter go on them trains all by yerself. The master’s in bed, ma’am, but I’ll lay anything ’e in’t asleep yet neither.”

“Thank you for waiting up for me,” Charlotte replied, hiding her smile and taking off her cape as Gracie reached for it to hang it up.

“That’s me job,” Gracie said with satisfaction. “Yer like some ’ot water ter wash in?”

“No, cold will do very well.” Charlotte shook her head. She was not sending Gracie downstairs to heat water and carry jugs up at this time of night. “And trains are perfectly safe, you know,” she added. “You shouldn’t worry. How was everything here?”

“Terrible.” Gracie helped her unlace her boots, then undo her dress and slip it off. The boots could be cleaned in the morning, and the mud taken off the hem of her skirt, and of course her underclothes would be laundered. “Everyone’s scared o’ their own shadows,” she said, taking the heavy skirt. “Footman popped a cork and the parlor maid near screamed the place down. Wonder she didn’t shatter the gas mantles, them what’s left!”

“Oh dear.” Charlotte took the pins out of her hair and felt the wonderful relief as the weight of it fell and she ran her fingers through it.

Gracie unlaced her stays for her.

“I want to sleep until ten!” Charlotte said, knowing it was impossible.

“Yer like breakfast up ’ere?” Gracie asked helpfully.

“No … no, thank you. I shall have to get up in the morning and go down, even if only to watch and listen, or try to help Mrs. Radley.”

“We in’t doin’ a very good job o’ detectin’, are we?” Gracie said unhappily. “We in’t bin no ’elp ter the master at all.”

“Not so far,” Charlotte agreed with a sharp stab of unhappiness. “I’ve been more concerned about Emily and this wretched weekend.” She kept her voice low, not to disturb Pitt, in the next room, if by chance he were asleep. “I don’t know where to begin.” She frowned. “Usually we are more use if there are women involved, families, something ordinarily human. I don’t understand the issues of religion and nationalism.” She poured water from the jug into the bowl and splashed it over her face. It was cold and clean, but it took her breath away.

“I can understand ’ating wot’s done to yer family ’cos o’ religion and nationalism,” Gracie responded, handing the towel to her. “Some of them things is just tragedy like any other.”

“I know,” Charlotte said quickly, not wanting to get drawn into the Neassa and Drystan story tonight. “We’ll have to think about it tomorrow. You must be tired now, and I know I am. Good night, Gracie, and thank you for waiting up.”

“It in’t nuffink, ma’am,” Gracie replied, stifling a yawn, but she was pleased nonetheless.

Pitt was half asleep, too exhausted to stay awake but not able to rest properly until Charlotte was home.

“How was Vespasia?” he mumbled, hunching the blankets over himself and, without realizing it, pulling them away from her half of the bed.

“Very well,” she answered, climbing in and tugging back her portion.

He grunted and allowed them out of his grasp, shivering as she let in the cold air, then moved closer to him with her cold hands and feet.

“I learned a lot,” she went on, knowing he wanted only to sink back into sleep. But there might be no time the next morning, before she told Gracie. “About the old tragic romance of Neassa Doyle and Drystan O’Day.”

He took a deep breath. “Does it matter?”

“It might. Alexander Chinnery didn’t rape or kill her. He was already dead in Liverpool two days before.”

He said nothing.

“Are you asleep?” she demanded.

“I would like to be,” he replied. “It’s just one more piece of tragic farce in this whole situation.”

“And the Parnell-O’Shea divorce is finished, and Parnell seems to have behaved like a complete fool,” she went on. “And Vespasia says he’ll lose the leadership, if not straightaway, then soon. I suppose that affects the people here?”

He grunted.

“Did you learn anything?” she went on, unconsciously warming herself close to him, and making him chill. “It was very brave of Lorcan McGinley to try to defuse the bomb. Did you discover how he knew it was there?”

“No.” He opened his eyes at last and turned over onto his back. “We did everything we could to trace his movements all morning, who he spoke to, where he went. None of it is any use so far.”

“I’m sorry. I haven’t been much help, have I?”

“It would help a lot if you would be quiet and go to sleep,” he said with a smile, putting his arm around her. “Please!”

Obediently she snuggled even closer and put her head on the pillow, not speaking again.

In the morning it could no longer wait. As soon as Charlotte was dressed and the more physical and distracting part of preparing for the day was accomplished, she sat down in front of the glass and Gracie began to dress her hair. It could not be put off any further.

“I saw Lady Vespasia when I was in London yesterday …” she began.

“ ’Ow was she?” Gracie asked without stopping what she was doing. It was part of a lady’s maid’s job to be able to conduct a pleasant conversation while at the same time doing something useful. Anyway, she had an immense admiration for Lady Vespasia, and was more in awe of her than of anyone else she could think of, even the commissioner of police … perhaps not the Queen. But then she had never met the Queen, and she might not even like her. She had heard she was rather critical and hardly ever laughed.

“She was very well, thank you,” Charlotte replied. “I told her what was happening here, of course.”

“I expect she was upset,” Gracie said, pursing her lips. “It bein’ so nasty for the master, an’ all, an’ for Mr. Radley.”

“Yes, of course she was. She knows quite a lot about Irish politics, and all the things that have happened.”

“I wish she ’ad an answer for it,” Gracie said with feeling. “Some of them things is enough to make the angels weep.” Her face tightened as she spoke, and an overwhelming sadness engulfed her. “When I think o’ that poor girl wot got raped an’ killed ’cos she were beautiful and loved someone on the other side, an’ wot we English done to ’er, I’m fair ashamed.”

“You don’t need to be,” Charlotte said clearly. “We—”

“Oh, I know it weren’t us,” Gracie interrupted, her voice urgent and a little hoarse. “But it were still English, so that’s kind of us.”

“No, that’s what I mean.” Charlotte swiveled on the seat till she was facing Gracie. “Listen to me! We’ve done plenty of things that are wrong in Ireland. There’s no arguing that. But the murder of Neassa Doyle was nothing to do with us. Look!” And she stood up and went to her reticule, from which she pulled the two pieces of newspaper she had stolen in London. “You can read this, most especially you can read the dates. Alexander Chinnery died in Liverpool two days before Neassa Doyle was killed by her own brothers. And thank God, she wasn’t raped at all.”

Gracie looked at the pieces of paper, sounding out the words. She stared at them so long Charlotte was on the verge of offering to read them for her, if perhaps she found the print difficult or some of the words too long.

Then Gracie looked up, her eyes wide and troubled.

“That’s wicked, that is,” she said slowly. “Think of all them people wot believed that lie. All them songs an’ stories, an’ all them people ’atin’ Chinnery, an’ ’e never done it at all. Wot about all them other stories? ’Ow many o’ them is lies?”

“I’ve no idea,” Charlotte answered. “Probably some, not all. The thing is that hatred can become a habit until you do it for its own sake, long after you’ve forgotten the reason. You begin to look for reasons to justify the way you feel, and then you create them. Don’t let them make you feel guilty for something that has nothing to do with you, Gracie. And don’t accept that all the songs and stories are true.”

“Do you think that if they knew the truth, Mr. Doyle and Mr. O’Day would feel better about each other?” Gracie asked with a very faint lift of hope in her voice.

“No,” Charlotte answered without hesitation. “Their families were in the wrong. Nobody ever feels better for knowing that.”

“Even if it’s the truth?”

“Especially if it’s the truth.”

Nevertheless, when she had time, after breakfast, Gracie went up to Charlotte’s room and took the two pieces of newspaper, then went to look for Finn Hennessey. Surely he would want to know the truth? Charlotte might be right about some people hating from habit, but Finn was not like that. He hurt for the real suffering of his people, not the imaginary.

She found him in the boot room, but she waited until Mr. O’Day’s valet had gone and he was alone before she went in. He still looked pale after his concussion, and he was very grave. He had no job anymore, no reason to polish boots or brush coats or see to any of the other tasks of a gentleman’s gentleman, but he did it automatically. It was better than standing around idle. He had a pair of boots now. Perhaps they were somebody else’s and he was merely helping.

“ ’Ow yer feelin’?” she asked, standing in the doorway and looking at him anxiously. “I bet yer got a crackin’ ’eadache.”

He smiled thinly. “Sure I have, Gracie. Like a dozen little men with hammers were shut in there an’ trying to get out. But it’ll pass. That’s a lot more than can be said for some.”

“Yer got anythin’ for it?” she asked sympathetically. “I’ll get yer summink if yer like.”

“No, thank you,” he declined, relaxing rather more. “I took something already.”

“I’m terribly sorry about Mr. McGinley,” she said, looking at him as he leaned against the bench, the light shining on his dark head. There was a grace in him unlike that in anyone else, almost a kind of music. And he cared so much. There was nothing in him that was lukewarm, nothing indifferent or callous to the pain of others. It must be terrible to be part of a people who had suffered so much, being the victim of such deep wrongs. She admired him for his compassion, his anger and his courage. He was a bit like Pitt, really, fighting for justice in his own way. Perhaps she should care for her own people more, be concerned to fight for better things for them? Who were her own people? The poor in London? Those who had grown up cold and hungry and ignorant like herself, fighting for every scrap of food, for a place of shelter and a little warmth, fighting to stay alive without stealing or going into prostitution?

Here she was in Ashworth Hall, living like a lady and trying her best to forget about them. Would Finn despise her if he knew that? She did not want to go back to Clerkenwell or anything like the people she had left behind. How do you fight for change for them, except by changing yourself?

“Mrs. Pitt went up ter town yesterday, ter see ’er great-aunt,” she said aloud. Thinking of Vespasia always gave her a little lift of excitement, like a beam of sunshine.

Finn looked surprised. “Did she? All the way up to London, after what happened yesterday morning?” Perhaps he did not mean there to be, but there was criticism in his voice, as if he thought she had somehow abandoned her duty and she should have remained here with them at Ashworth.

Gracie was immediately defensive.

“Lady Vespasia’s very special indeed! She’s one o’ the greatest ladies in the ’ole country. Wot she don’t know in’t worth bothering wif.”

“Well, if she knows how to get us out of this mess, I wish Mrs. Pitt had brought her back here,” he said grimly.

“In’t nobody can get us out o’ this mess ’ceptin’ Mr. Pitt,” she answered with more conviction than she felt—and was ashamed of herself; of course Pitt would succeed … sooner or later. “ ’E’ll find out ’oo killed Mr. Greville and ’oo put the bomb there wot killed poor Mr. McGinley,” she added forcefully.

He smiled. “You’re loyal, Gracie. I wouldn’t have expected any less from you.”

She took a deep breath. “But ’e can’t sort out the way you all ’ate each other. But Lady Vespasia did some o’ it. She told Mrs. Pitt the truth about that story o’ Neassa Doyle and Drystan O’Day, an’ it in’t wot yer bin told all them years.”

He stood very still.

Outside someone walked along the passage and went on to the knife room. A footman swore under his breath as he lifted a heavy coal bucket.

“And what would an English lady in London know about a murder on an Irish hillside thirty years ago?” he asked carefully, his voice soft, his eyes steady.

She saw the defensiveness in him. But he was not weak enough to prefer a lie to the truth.

“Just wot anybody knows wot can read,” she replied, her eyes not wavering from his.

“And you believe it, Gracie? Written where? By whom?”

“In the newspaper,” she replied without wavering. “It’s writ in the newspaper. I read it meself.”

He almost laughed. “What newspaper? An English newspaper?” There was derision and contempt in his face and his voice. “Would you really expect them to print the truth? That one of their own, a soldier in their army, a lieutenant, raped and murdered an Irish girl and betrayed his own best friend. Of course they wouldn’t say that! I’m sorry the truth is hard, Gracie, but you have to face it!” He came towards her, his eyes gentle. He lowered his voice and it was sad rather than angry, but he did not waver. “Gracie, sometimes our own do things that we’re so ashamed of we can hardly bear to think of it, and it’s like a little bit of us dying to have to admit it’s true. But if it is … then running away or saying it isn’t doesn’t change anything, it just makes us part of whatever it was, because we haven’t the courage to face the truth, however terrible it is. You don’t want to be part of a lie, Gracie. That’s not you. However it hurts, be part of the truth. It’s a cleaner wound, and it heals.”

“Yeah,” she whispered. “But it in’t easy, Finn. It ’urts like yer tearin’ yerself apart, sometimes.”

“Be strong.” He smiled and held out his hand.

She did not take it. She hesitated even more. She had the two pieces of newspaper clenched in her pocket. She closed her eyes. It was easier to say it not looking at him, but she did not turn her face away.

“You said Neassa Doyle were raped and murdered on the night of the eighth o’ June.”

“Yes. It’s a date none of us will ever forget. Why?”

“By Alexander Chinnery, an Englishman wot were the best friend o’ Drystan O’Day, or pretended to be?”

“Yes. You know that!”

“Yeh. It says so in the newspaper wot Mrs. Pitt got up in London.”

“So what is it you’re saying? It’s true! We all know it’s true!”

“I got another piece.” Now she opened her eyes. She did not mean to, it just happened. “A Liverpool newspaper o’ sixth o’ June, two days before.”

He looked a trifle puzzled.

“Saying what?”

“Sayin’ as ’ow Lieutenant Alexander Chinnery jumped into the ’arbor o’ Liverpool ter try ter save a young lad wot was drownin’—”

“So he was brave when it suited him,” Finn said quickly. “I never said he was a coward. Only a betrayer and a murderer and a rapist.”

“An’ a bleedin’ miracle.” She nearly choked on the words. “ ’E were dead, Finn! ’E din’t save the boy, nor ’isself! They was both drowned. They got the bodies out, but it were too late. When Neassa Doyle were killed, Finn, Chinnery were two days dead. An’ there were dozens o’ people wot saw ’im. Dozens of ’em were tryin’ ter get ’em out an’ save ’em.”

“That’s not true!” His face was blank with shock. “It isn’t! It’s a lie to try to protect him.”

“From wot?” she demanded. “ ’E’adn’t done nothin’!”

“That’s what you say!” He stepped back, his cheeks flushed now, his eyes brilliant and angry. “The English would say that. They’re hardly going to admit it was one of their own.”

“One o’ their own done wot?” Her voice was rising higher, and she had to try hard not to shout. “That were two days before Neassa got killed. There weren’t nuffink to protect ’im from. You sayin’ they drowned ’im in Liverpool ’arbour ter save ’im from bein’ blamed fer summink wot ’adn’t ’appened yet?”

“No! Of course I’m not. But it can’t be the truth. It’s a lie somewhere. It’s a very clever one—”

“It in’t a lie, Finn! The only ones wot’s lyin’ is Neassa Doyle’s brothers, wot really killed ’er an’ shaved ’er ’ead fer bein’ an ’ore an’ goin’ after a Protestant. They blamed Chinnery ’cos they din’t ’ave the stomach ter stand up an’ be counted for wot they believed in.”

“No! No, they didn’t—”

“Then ’oo did? ’cos it weren’t Chinnery, lessn’n ’e come back from the grave an’ scared ’er ter death.”

“Don’t speak about it like that!” he shouted, raising his hand as if to strike her. “It isn’t funny, God damn you!” His voice was thick with emotion. Anger and confusion were all but choking him. “Haven’t you even a decent respect for the dead?”

“What dead? Only Irish dead?” she shouted back, refusing to retreat. “Course I ’ave! Enough ter want the truth fer ’em. But I got respect fer English dead too—if Chinnery didn’t do it then I won’t stand ’ere an’ ’ave anyone say as ’e did! It in’t honest.” She drew in her breath in a gasp. There were tears running down her cheeks, but she could not stop. “You told me ter face the truth, no matter ’ow much it ’urt. You said it were like a little bit of us dyin’ if we ’ad to admit our own ’as done sum-mink terrible.” She waved her arm in the air, pointing at him. “Well, you gotta do it! Them Doyles killed ’er an’ let Chinnery take the blame ’cos they ’adn’t the guts ter say as they done it to ’er theirselves ’cos she let ’em down by fallin’ in love wi’ O’Day. Well, they did, an’ you denyin’ it in’t going ter make it different.”

“It’s a lie,” he repeated, but there was no belief left in his voice, only anger and hurt and confusion. “It can’t be true.” She fished in her pocket and brought out the newspaper clippings. She pushed them at him without letting go of them. “Look fer yerself. Can yer read?”

“Of course I can read.” He stared at them without touching them. “We’ve known all about it for years! Everybody knows!”

“Everybody knowin’ don’t make it true,” she argued. “They only know it ’cos someone said so. They weren’t there, were they?”

“No, don’t be stupid!” he said with scalding disgust. “That’s an idiotic thing to say—”

“Then ’ow could they know?” Her reasoning was impeccable. “They know ’cos them Doyle brothers said so. Drystan O’Day must a’ thought it were them, or ’e wouldn’t a’ gorn an’ attacked them, would ’e?”

“He was a Protestant,” he said with vicious logic. “Of course he would.”

“No, ’e wouldn’t! Not if ’e thought it were Chinnery. ’E’d a’ gorn after Chinnery. Be honest! Wouldn’t you?”

“I’m not a Protestant!” His chin jerked up and his eyes blazed generations of loathing.

“Yer just the same!” she retorted with agonized conviction. “There in’t no difference, lyin’ and ’atin’ and killin’ each other—”

His reaction was instant.

“There’s all the difference in the world, you stupid girl!” he shouted thickly. “Don’t you listen to anything? You’re so … English! You can’t see Ireland at all.” He took a step forward, jabbing his finger at her. “You’re just typical, arrogant English, thinking all Ireland is the same, there for you to rob and plunder and then rum your back on and ignore when the people starve and die and the hate goes on from generation to generation and century to century! You make me sick! No wonder we hate you!”

Suddenly she saw the tragic stupidity of it, and the rage disappeared out of her, leaving her choked with grief.

“I in’t sayin’ we’re right,” she answered him with a quiet level voice, completely in control. “I’m sayin’ Alexander Chinnery din’t kill Neassa Doyle an’ you bin lyin’ ter yerselves all them years because the lie served you better than the truth, ’cos yer want ter blame somebody else, an’ best be it’s the English.” She shook her head. “Yer’d sooner live in a dream. An’ yer in’t never goin’ ter get peace wif each other long as yer’d sooner feed yer old ’atreds ’cos yer think yer some kind o’ romantic victims o’ somebody else.”

He made as if to fight back, but she drew in her breath and shouted over him. “I don’t know why yer want ter be somebody else’s victim! If it in’t yer own fault, yer can’t even fight it! Can yer? I don’t want all me troubles ter be someone else’s fault. Wot do that make me but an ’elpless little article pushed all over the place? I in’t ’elpless. I makes me own mistakes an’ I takes the truth an’ I puts ’em right or I lives wif ’em.” And she turned on her heel and ran out, gasping for breath, throat aching, hardly seeing where she was going for the tears, the cuttings still clutched in her hand.

She was running down the corridor towards the women’s stairs when she pitched full tilt into Tellman. He caught hold of her to prevent her from falling.

“What’s the matter?” he said immediately.

“Nuffink!” she shouted back, but her voice caught in a sob. Tellman was the last person she wanted to see just then. “In’t nuffink wrong! Let go o’ me!”

He kept hold of her, searching her face. “You’re upset. Something has happened. What is it? Did someone hurt you?” He sounded anxious.

She snatched at her wrists, trying to drag away from his hand, but he refused to let go. Surprisingly for the firmness of his grip, he was quite gentle.

“Gracie?”

“Nobody ’urt me,” she said desperately. She knew the tears were running down her cheeks. She could hardly see him through them. She was bursting with rage and grief and loneliness over Finn and the whole idiotic business. She did not want Tellman to know that she could ever be hurt, let alone see it in her. He was a useless creature, full of anger and resentment himself. “And it in’t nuffink ter do wif yer if they ’ad. It in’t p’lice business, if that’s wot yer thinkin’.”

“Course it isn’t police,” he said awkwardly. “Are you frightened, Gracie?”

“No, I in’t frightened.” She managed to snatch her hand away at last. She sniffed fiercely and gulped.

He produced a handkerchief, quite a nice, clean white one, and gave it to her.

She took it only out of necessity, poking the cuttings into her pocket first. She really did have to blow her nose and wipe away the tears.

“Thank you,” she said grudgingly. She would not let Tellman, of all people, catch her out in bad manners.

“Do you know something, Gracie?” he persisted, grasping her again. “If you do, you’ve got to tell me!”

She glared at him and blew her nose a second time. It was infuriating not to be able to control tears. She hated having him see her weakness.

“You have to!” His voice rose, as if he were frightened himself. “Don’t be so stupid!”

“In’t stupid!” she burst out, pulling away from him. “You watch ’oo yer callin’ names! ’Ow dare yer—

“How can I protect you if you don’t tell me wot the danger is?” he said angrily, and suddenly she knew it really was fear in his voice, even in his face and the locked muscles of his body as he braced himself to hold on to her against her will. “Do you think they won’t blow you up too, or push you down stairs, or just wring your neck, if they think you know enough to get them hanged?” He was shaking now too.

She stopped abruptly, staring at him.

He blushed very faintly.

“I don’t know nuffink, I swear,” she said honestly. “If I did, I’d tell Mr. Pitt. Don’t yer know that? Now ’oo’s stupid?” She blew her nose for a last time and looked at the handkerchief. “I’ll wash it an’ give it yer back.”

“You don’t need to …” he said magnanimously, then blushed more deeply.

She took a deep breath and let it out shakily.

“I gotter go an’ do me work. If’n yer remember, I got extra jobs ter do, seen’ as the master’s valet in’t much use.” And with that she stuffed the handkerchief into her pocket and marched off, leaving him standing in the corridor looking after her.