Ashworth Hall - Anne Perry [39]
“I am not ‘unhappy’ ”—she pronounced the word distinctly—“as you so quaintly put it. I don’t know what your moral beliefs are, Mrs. Pitt. Perhaps fornicating with someone else’s wife is perfectly acceptable in your circle, although I should prefer not to think so.” She hunched her shoulders, as if she were cold, although the room was warm. “To me it is abhorrent. To anyone at all, it is a sin. In someone who knows the values my brother does, who was raised in a God-fearing household by one of the most honorable, righteous and courageous preachers of his day, it is unforgivable.” Her face was ugly with rage as she said it, her clear eyes, red-rimmed with weeping, blazed her fury.
Charlotte looked at her steadily, trying to think of something to say which would reach through the tide of emotion.
“I don’t have a brother,” she said, searching for ideas. “But if my sister were to do such a thing, I should be hurt and grieved more than anything. I would want to argue with her, ask her why she threw away so much in return for so very little. I don’t think I would refuse to speak to her. But then she is younger than I am. I feel defensive for her. Is Fergal older than you?”
Kezia looked at her as if the question was nonsensical.
“You don’t understand.” Her patience was wearing thin. “I am trying hard to be reasonably civil to you, but you come into my room uninvited and sit here preaching platitudes to me about what you would do in my place, and you haven’t the remotest idea what you are talking about. You are not in my place, or anything like it. You have no political ambition or flair. You don’t even know what it is for a woman. You are very comfortably married—with children, I expect. You are obviously very fond of your husband, and he of you. Please go away and leave me alone.”
Both the condescension and the assumptions galled Charlotte, but she controlled her tongue with an effort.
“I came because I could not go on happily eating my dinner when you are in such distress,” she answered. “I suppose what I would do is irrelevant. I just wanted you to see that by refusing to talk to your brother, you are hurting yourself most of all.” She frowned. “If you think about it, what is the result of your withdrawing from him going to be?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Kezia leaned back, her eyes narrowed.
“Do you think he is going to stop seeing Mrs. McGinley?” Charlotte asked. “Do you think he will realize how wrong it is, that it is morally against all he has believed throughout his life, and certainly politically unwise if he hopes to represent his people? For heaven’s sake, isn’t Mr. Parnell’s situation evidence enough of that?”
Kezia looked faintly surprised, as if she had not yet even thought of that. And yet she must have been aware of the divorce presently being heard in London where Captain William O’Shea was citing Charles Stewart Parnell, the leader of the Irish Nationalist party as corespondent. Perhaps she had refused to realize what O’Shea’s victory would mean.
“It doesn’t look like it to me,” Charlotte continued. “When people fall in love, madly, obsessively, they frequently do not stop to weigh the cost if they are found out. If all that he stands to lose has not held him back, will your displeasure?”
“No,” Kezia said with a harsh laugh, as if the idea were funny in a twisting, hurting fashion. “No, of course not! I’m not doing it because of anything I expect him to feel or to do. I’m just so … so furious with him I can’t help myself. It’s not even the denial of his beliefs, the throwing away of his career, or the betrayal of the people who believe in him. It’s the sheer damnable hypocrisy that I can never forgive!”
“Can’t you?” Charlotte asked with a slight lift of question. “When people you love fall far below what is even honorable, much less what one knows they could be, it hurts appallingly.” Swift memories returned of past pain of her own, discoveries she would