Bedford Square - Anne Perry [132]
Half of her mind could understand the necessity for freedom to question and investigate the lives of all public figures. Without such liberty, secrecy begot oppression and ended in tyranny. But with freedom came responsibility, and the immense power of the written word could so easily be abused. There was a sense in which Lyndon Remus was doing exactly the same thing as Cadell had attempted. The fact that Cadell and his family were now the victims did not leave her with any sense of satisfaction or poetic justice, just an awareness of the vulnerability of reputation and the thought of how Theodosia Cadell must feel.
An errand boy delivered a note from General Balantyne, and she gave him the answer that she would be happy to meet him, again in the Royal Botanical Gardens, at three o’clock in the afternoon.
The day was less oppressively hot, and a considerable crowd was taking the air for one sort of pleasure or another. She marveled at how many people seemed to have no other call upon their time and were free from the necessity of any form of work. Before she had met Pitt such a thought would never have crossed her mind. Young ladies of her social class then had far too much time and too little to fill it that gave anything but the most momentary satisfaction. Then she seemed always to have been looking forward to tomorrow for something that might happen.
She saw Balantyne as soon as she was through the gates. He was standing alone, facing the parade of soldiers in uniform, couples arm in arm, girls with parasols accompanied by their mothers, parasols swinging dangerously as they glanced at the young men and pretended they weren’t. He appeared to be watching them, but the stillness of his head betrayed that his thoughts were elsewhere.
Charlotte walked over to him and was almost beside him before he noticed her.
“Mrs. Pitt!” He looked at her gravely, searching her eyes. “How are you?” He paid not the slightest regard to her appearance; he was concerned entirely with her feelings.
“I am quite well,” she answered, equally concerned for him. Looking at his face, she could see little of the relief she would have expected, considering that the threat of ruin that had dogged him for weeks was now lifted. “And you?”
He smiled very slightly. “I had expected to feel better,” he admitted. “Perhaps I am still bemused. I liked Cadell.” He offered her his arm. “Isn’t that ridiculous? But I cannot rid myself of the emotion in a single day, in spite of knowing now what he was really planning. I suppose I am not the judge of men’s characters that I thought I was.” He gave a very slight, rueful shrug.
“I’m sorry,” she said simply. “I don’t think Great-Aunt Vespasia has ever been so fearfully mistaken either. Mrs. Cadell is her goddaughter, you know.”
“I didn’t.” He walked in silence a few yards. “Poor woman. I can imagine the devastation she must be feeling now, the confusion and loss.”
Charlotte thought of Christina. Perhaps he was remembering her when he spoke. Time might have blunted the edge of his own pain, but nothing could remove it. Looking sideways at him now, she would not intrude, it would be inexcusable, but she imagined him thinking of Theodosia Cadell with a pity that could only spring from his own knowledge. His mouth was tugged tight at the corners, the muscles in his neck tense.
“We are all relieved of our fears,” he said after a little while, moving between the banks of roses heavy with perfume in the sun. “We need no longer dread the delivery of mail. We can encounter our friends in the street and meet their eyes without wondering what they are thinking, what double meaning may lie behind the simplest remark. I feel guilty for the people I doubted. I hope to heaven they will never know it. Oddly, in all my suspicions, I never thought of Cadell.”
She wanted to answer with something intelligent, but she could