Betrayal at Lisson Grove (Treason at Lisson Grove)

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought bringing someone that nobody would see as assisting you might be the best way of getting around that. You never suggested it would be comfortable, or easy. And you cannot prevent me from coming to Ireland if I want to. You could simply have let me do it alone, which would be inefficient, and unlike you.”

“It would have been awkward,” he conceded. “But not impossible. I had to tell you something of the situation, for Pitt’s sake. For your own, I cannot tell you everything. I don’t know any reason why O’Neil should choose now. But then I don’t know any reason why anyone should. It is unarguable that someone with strong connections in Dublin has chosen to steal the money I sent for Mulhare, so to bring about the poor man’s death. Then they made certain it was evident first to Austwick, and then to Croxdale, and so brought about my dismissal.”

He poured more tea for himself. “Perhaps it was not O’Neil who initiated it; he may simply have been willingly used. I’ve made many enemies. Knowledge and power both make that inevitable.”

“Then think of other enemies,” she urged. “Whose circumstances have changed? Is there anyone you were about to expose?”

“My dear, do you think I haven’t thought of that?”

“And you still believe it is O’Neil?”

“Perhaps it is a guilty conscience.” He gave a smile so brief it reached his eyes and was gone again. “ ‘The guilty flee where no man pursueth,’ ” he quoted. “But there is knowledge in this that only people familiar with the case could have.”

“Oh.” She poured herself fresh tea. “Then we had better learn more about O’Neil. He was mentioned yesterday evening. I told them that my grandmother was Christina O’Neil.”

He swallowed. “And who was she really?”

“Christine Owen,” she replied.

He started to laugh. She said nothing, but finished her toast and then the rest of her tea.

CHARLOTTE SPENT THE MORNING and most of the afternoon quietly reading as much as she could of Irish history, realizing the vast gap in her knowledge and becoming a little ashamed of it. Because Ireland was geographically so close to England, and because the English had occupied it one way or another for so many centuries, in their minds its individuality had been swallowed up in the general tide of British history. The empire covered a quarter of the world. Englishmen tended to think of Ireland as part of their own small piece of it, linked by a common language—disregarding the existence of the Irish tongue.

So many of Ireland’s greatest sons had made their names on the world stage indistinguishably from the English. Everyone knew Oscar Wilde was Irish, even though his plays were absolutely English in their setting. They probably knew Jonathan Swift was Irish, but did they know it of Bram Stoker? Did they know it of the great duke of Wellington, victor of Waterloo, and later prime minister? The fact that these men had left Ireland in their youth did not in any way alter their heritage.

Her own family was not Anglo-Irish, but in pretending to have a grandmother who was, perhaps she should be a little more sensitive to people’s feelings and treat the whole subject less casually.

By evening she was again dressed in her one black gown, this time with different jewelry and different gloves, and her hair decorated with an ornament given to her years ago. She was off to the theater, and quite suddenly worried that she was overdressed. Perhaps other people would be far less formal. After all, they were a highly literate culture, educated in words and ideas but also very familiar with them. They might consider an evening at the theater not a social affair but rather an intellectual and emotional one.

She took the ornament out of her hair, and then had to restyle it accordingly. All of which meant she was late, and flustered, when Narraway knocked on the door to tell her that Fiachra McDaid was there to escort her for the evening again.

“Thank you,” she said, putting the comb down quickly and knocking several loose hairpins onto the floor. She ignored them.

He looked at her with anxiety. “Are you all right?”

“Yes! It is simply an indecision as to what to wear.” She dismissed it with a slight gesture.

He regarded her carefully. His eyes traveled from her shoes, which were visible beneath the hem of her gown, all the way to the crown of her head. She felt the heat burn up her face at the candid appreciation in his eyes.

“You made the right decision,” he pronounced. “Diamonds would have been inappropriate here. They take their drama very seriously.”

She drew in breath to say that she had no diamonds, and realized he was laughing at her. She wondered if he would have given a woman diamonds, if he loved her. She thought not. If he were capable of that sort of love, it would have been something more personal, more imaginative. A cottage by the sea, however small, perhaps; something of enduring meaning that would add joy to its owner’s life.