Betrayal at Lisson Grove (Treason at Lisson Grove)

“Few men could resist her,” he went on. “I didn’t try. I knew they were using her to trap me. She was brave, passionate …” He smiled wryly. “Perhaps a little short on humor, but far more intelligent than they realized. It sometimes happens when women are beautiful. People don’t see any further than that, especially men. It’s uncomfortable. We see what we want to see.”

Charlotte frowned, suddenly thinking of Kate, a pawn to others, an object of both schemes and desires. “Why do you say intelligent?” she asked.

“We talked,” he replied. “About the cause, what they planned to do. I persuaded her it would rebound against them, and it would have. The deaths would have been violent and widespread. Attacks like that don’t crush people and make them surrender. They have exactly the opposite effect. They would have united England against the rebels, who could have lost all sympathy from everyone in Europe, even from some of their own. Kate told me what they were going to do, the details, so I could have it stopped.”

Charlotte tried to imagine it, the grief, the cost.

“Who killed her?” she asked. She felt the loss touch her, as if she had known Kate more deeply than simply as a name, an imagined face.

“Sean,” he replied. “I don’t know whether it was for betraying Ireland, as he saw it, or betraying him.”

“With you?”

Narraway colored, but he did not look away from her. “Yes.”

“Do you know that, beyond doubt?”

“Yes.” His throat was so tight his voice sounded half strangled. “I found her body. I think he meant me to.”

She could not afford pity now. “Why are you sure it was Sean who killed her?” She had to be certain so she could get rid of the doubt forever. If Narraway himself had killed her it might, by some twisted logic of politics and terror, be what he had to do to save even greater bloodshed. She looked at him now with a mixture of new understanding of the weight he carried, and sorrow for what it had cost him: whether that was now shame, or a lack of it—which would be worse.

“Why are you sure it was Sean?” she repeated.

He looked at her steadily. “What you really mean is, how can I prove I didn’t kill her myself.”

She felt a heat of shame in her own face. “Yes.”

He did not question her.

“She was cold when I found her,” he replied. “Sean tried to blame me. The police would have been happy to agree, but I was with the viceroy in the residence in Phoenix Park at the time. Half a dozen staff saw me there, apart from the viceroy himself, and the police on guard duty. They didn’t know who I was, but they would have recognized me in court, if it had been necessary. The briefest investigation showed them that I couldn’t have been anywhere near where Kate was killed. It also proved that Sean lied when he said he saw me, and that by his own admission he was there.” He hesitated. “If you need to, you can check it.” His smile was there for a moment, then gone. “Don’t you think they’d have loved to hang me for it, if they’d had the ghost of a chance?”

“Yes,” she agreed, feeling the weight ease from her. Grief was one thing, but without guilt it was a passing wound, something that would heal. “I’m … I’m sorry I needed to ask. Perhaps I should have known you wouldn’t have done it.”

“I would like you to think well of me, Charlotte,” he said quietly. “But I would rather you saw me as a real person, capable of good and ill, and of pity, and shame …”

“Victor … don’t …”

He turned away slowly, staring at the fire. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

She left quietly, going up to her room. She needed to be alone, and there was nothing either of them could say that would do anything but make it worse.

T

HEY WERE AT BREAKFAST the following morning: she with a slight headache after sleeping badly; he weary, but with the mark of professionalism so graciously back in place that yesterday could have been a dream.

They were eating toast and marmalade when the messenger arrived with a letter for Narraway. He thanked Mrs. Hogan, who had brought it to him, then tore it open.

Charlotte watched his face but she could not read anything more than surprise. When he looked up she waited for him to speak.

“It’s from Cormac,” he said gently. “He wants me to go and see him, at midday. He will tell me what happened, and give me proof.”

She was puzzled, remembering Cormac’s hate, the pain that seemed as sharp as it must have been the day it happened. She leaned forward. “Don’t go. You won’t, will you?”

He put the letter down. “I came for the truth, Charlotte. He may give it to me, even if it is not what he means to do. I have to go.”

“He still hates you,” she argued. “He can’t afford to face the truth, Victor. It would place him in the wrong. All he has left is his illusions of what really happened, that Kate was loyal to Ireland and the cause, and that it would all have worked, except for you. He can’t give that up.”