Betrayal at Lisson Grove (Treason at Lisson Grove)

“I don’t have anything better,” she apologized. “But you look uncomfortable standing there in front of the fire. Wouldn’t sitting down with a hot cup of tea be better?”

He turned slightly to look behind him at the hearth and the mantel. “You mean I am blocking the heat,” he said ruefully.

“No,” she replied with a smile. “Actually I meant that I am getting a crick in my neck staring up and sideways at you.”

For a moment the pain in his face softened. “Thank you, but I would prefer not to disturb Mrs.… whatever her name is. I can sit down without tea, unnatural as that may seem.”

“Waterman,” she supplied.

“Yes, of course.”

“I was going to make it myself, provided that she would allow me into the kitchen. She doesn’t approve. The ladies she is accustomed to working for do not even know where the kitchen is. Although how I could lose it in a house this size, I have no idea.”

“She has come down in the world,” Narraway observed. “It can happen to the best of us.”

She watched as he sat down, elegantly as always, crossing his legs and leaning back as if he were comfortable.

“I think it may concern an old case in Ireland,” he began, at first meeting her eyes, then looking down awkwardly. “At the moment it is to do with the death of a present-day informant there, because the money I paid did not reach him in time to flee those he had … betrayed.” He said the word crisply and clearly, as if deliberately exploring a wound: his own, not someone else’s. “I did it obliquely, so it could not be traced back to Special Branch. If it had been it would have cost him his life immediately.”

She hesitated, seeking the right words, but watching his face, she had no impression that he was being deliberately obscure. She waited. There was silence beyond the room, no sound of the children asleep upstairs, or of Mrs. Waterman, who was presumably still in the kitchen. She would not retire to her room with a visitor still in the house.

“My attempts to hide its source make it impossible to trace what actually happened to it,” Narraway continued. “To the superficial investigation, it looks as if I took it myself.”

He was watching her now, but not openly.

“You have enemies,” she said.

“Yes,” he agreed. “I have. No doubt many. I thought I had guarded against the possibility of them injuring me. It seems I overlooked something of importance.”

“Or someone is an enemy whom you did not suspect,” she amended.

“That is possible,” he agreed. “I think it is more likely that an old enemy has gained a power that I did not foresee.”

“You have someone in mind?” She leaned forward a little. The question was intrusive, but she had to know. Pitt was in France, relying on Narraway to back him up. He would have no idea Narraway no longer held any office.

“Yes.” The answer seemed to be difficult for him.

Again she waited.

He leaned forward and put a fresh log on the fire. “It’s an old case. It all happened more than twenty years ago.” He had to clear his throat before he went on. “They’re all dead now, except one.”

She had no idea what he was referring to, and yet the past seemed to be in the room with them.

“But one is alive?” she probed. “Do you know, or are you guessing?”

“I know Kate and Sean are dead,” he said so quietly she had to strain to hear him. “I imagine Cormac is still alive. He would be barely sixty.”

“Why would he wait this long?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

“But you believe he hates you enough to lie, to plan and connive to ruin you?” she insisted.

“Yes. I have no doubt of that. He has cause.”

She realized with surprise, and pity, that he was ashamed of his part in whatever had happened.

“So what will you do?” she asked again. “You have to fight. Nurse your wound for a few hours, then gather yourself together and think what you wish to do.”

Now he smiled, showing a natural humor she had not seen in him before. “Is that how you speak to your children when they fall over and skin their knees?” he asked. “Quick sympathy, a hug, and then briskly get back up again? I haven’t fallen off a horse, Charlotte. I have fallen from grace, and I know of nothing to get me back up again.”

The color was hot in her cheeks. “You mean you have no idea what to do?”

He stood up and straightened the shoulders of his jacket. “Yes, I know what to do. I shall go to Ireland and find Cormac O’Neil. If I can, I shall prove that he is behind this, and clear my name. I shall make Croxdale eat his words. At least I hope I will.”

She stood also. “Have you anyone to help you, whom you can trust?”

“No.” His loneliness was intense. Just the one, simple word. Then it vanished, as if self-pity disgusted him. “Not here,” he added. “But I may find someone in Ireland.”

She knew he was lying.

“I’ll come with you,” she said impulsively. “You can trust me because our interests are the same.”

His voice was tight with amazement, as if he did not dare believe her. “Are they?”