Ashworth Hall - Anne Perry [91]
He drew in breath to deny it, but she waved her hands. “No, don’t answer that. Above all, don’t tell me kind lies, Mr. Pitt. I have to come to the truth one day, but let me do it slowly … please. I can answer my own question. Of course, I failed him. I did not know him. I should have done. I loved him … not passionately, perhaps, but I loved him. I can’t suddenly stop that feeling, no matter what I learn about him. It is the habit, the pattern of thought and feeling, of more than half my lifetime. I shared so much with him … at least I did with him whether he did with me or not. In a few days everything I thought I knew has been thrown into chaos.” She smiled bleakly. “Please, Mr. Pitt, don’t tell me anything more yet. I don’t know how to change so quickly.”
She looked very vulnerable. She was a woman over forty, yet the softness of youth was still in her face, the curve of her cheek, the unbroken line of her chin and throat, the full lips. She was probably Pitt’s own age. She could have given birth to Piers before she was twenty.
He must remember why he was there: to uncover the truth. He could not afford to protect everyone who needed or deserved it. No matter what his own feelings, he had no right to choose whom to guard and whom not to, nor could he foresee what the results might be of such an act.
“Mrs. Greville, you already know that your husband had liaisons with certain women which were of a physical nature and had nothing to do with any kind of affection.” How could he phrase this to cause as little distress as possible? She was the kind of woman in front of whom even the more violent realities of the daily news should not be discussed, far less the coarseness of private appetite, even if it were of a stranger and not her husband. He felt guilty for forcing her to know something so repugnant. He was about to shatter her memories, her world, to even smaller pieces, so what was left was beyond salvaging.
“Yes, I know, Mr. Pitt. Please don’t tell me. I prefer not to imagine it.” She was quite open about it, not hiding behind any pride, as if she trusted him as the friend he had appeared to be before she knew who he was.
He hesitated. Did she have to know about Doll? He had to investigate it. The motive for murder was intense. The other philanderings were not enough to draw most men to murder, even on a sister’s account, but this was. Even more was it motive for Doll, or anyone who loved her. Could that be Wheeler? He thought not, but it was not impossible.
“Your husband was murdered, Mrs. Greville. I cannot refuse to look at anybody who had a powerful motive for that, no matter how much I would prefer to.”
Unconsciously, her body tensed. “Surely you know the motive? It was political.” She said it as if there could be no doubt. “Ainsley was the one man who might have drawn the two sides together to agree on some compromise. Some of the Irish extremists don’t want a compromise.” She shook her head, her voice gathering strength and conviction. “They would rather go on killing and dying than give up an inch of what they think is theirs. It goes back centuries. It has become part of who we are. We have told ourselves we are a wronged race so often and so long we can’t let go of it.”
She was speaking more and more rapidly.
“There are too many men, and women, whose whole identity is bound up in being people who fight for a great cause. To win would make them nobodies again. What does a war hero do in peacetime? How do you become great when there is nothing to die for? Who are you then, how do you believe in yourself anymore?”
Without intending to, perhaps without even thinking of herself, she had discussed her own confusion and grief as well, the loss of what she had believed her life and her values to be. In the space of hours it had dissolved and taken new and horrible shape. What had she built with her life? She would not be embarrassingly frank enough to say that to him, it would be indelicate, and she would