Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [131]
“To test!” Corcoran shook his head. “There’s so much that you don’t understand, and I can’t tell you. Morven will not kill me. . . .”
“He can’t afford not to!” Joseph was raising his voice in spite of himself. “For God’s sake, you were there that night! You saw it, or something! Enough to work it out.”
Corcoran gulped. “What makes you think that, Joseph?”
Joseph’s patience was close to ripping apart. “Don’t treat me like a fool, Shanley! You lied to me about where you were when Blaine was killed. You said you were with Archie at the Cutlers’ Arms. You weren’t.” He saw Corcoran wince as if he had been hit. “I’m not checking up on you!” he said angrily. “Archie told me where he met you, at the Drouthy Duck! I just today realized what you’d said.”
He steadied his voice, dropping it to be gentler, hearing his own anguish in it and unable to moderate it. “You were protecting Morven because you needed his gifts to finish whatever it is you were making. Well, it’s finished now! And the first chance he gets he’ll kill you. Give him up!”
Corcoran stared at him, amazement and grief battling in his face. He looked old, almost beaten. There was only a last shred of will left to hang on to.
“Shanley, you can’t protect him anymore!” Joseph pleaded. God, how he hated this war! Year by year it was stripping him of everything he loved! “I know you may like him,” he urged, his voice panicky, too high. “Damn it, I liked him myself, but he killed Theo Blaine. He stabbed him in the neck with a gardening fork and left him to bleed to death in the mud under his own trees—for his wife to find!” He leaned farther forward. “And he’ll do the same to you, but I won’t let that happen!”
“We . . . we still need him, Joseph,” Corcoran said slowly. “It’s only sea trials. It may need work yet!” He sat forward, elbows on the desk, his face, almost bloodless, only a yard away from Joseph’s. “This is the greatest invention in naval warfare since the torpedo! Perhaps even greater. It could save England, Joseph!” His eyes burned with the fire, the passion of it. “The whole British Empire rests on our mastery of the sea!” His voice trembled. “If we master the sea, we master the world, and lay peace on it. I can’t turn him in yet!”
“And if he kills you first?” Joseph demanded. He heard what Corcoran said about England, about the empire, even about victory and peace, words that sounded like the vision of a forgotten heaven of the past, a glory remembered now like the gold of a dream. But he could not bear to let go of the love he still had, the memories of all certainty and goodness bound up in this man. “Morven is a spy! He killed Blaine, and he’ll kill you!”
Corcoran blinked as if his vision were blurred and his eyes so exhausted he had trouble seeing. Then, very slowly, he sank his head on his hands. “I know,” he said softly, his voice little more than a whisper.
“Tell Perth!” Joseph reached across and placed a hand on Corcoran’s wrist, a touch more than a grip.
“I can’t, not yet.” Corcoran lifted his head. “Leave it, Joseph. There’s more to it than you know.”
“I won’t let you be killed!” He thought of his father. The pain of his loss ached inside him like a bruise to the bone, as if he had been beaten and it hurt even to breathe. Why couldn’t he make Corcoran see his danger? His father would have known what to say. Even Matthew might have done better than this. He wished Matthew were here with his judgment, his sanity. But he wasn’t. There was no one else.
Corcoran stared at him, his face gaunt, almost like dead flesh. “Leave it, Joseph,” he said again. “I know what Morven is. I’ve known for months. But it’s not time yet!”
“Why not?” Joseph demanded.
“I can’t do without him until we’re sure the prototype