Bedford Square - Anne Perry [14]
She kissed him back with considerable enthusiasm, then told him off.
“Look what you have made me do!” She indicated the egg. “It’s all over the place!” She went to the sink, wrung out a cloth and came back and wiped it up. On the stove it was burnt and smelling slightly.
He stood still, Cornwallis’s face sharp in his mind’s eye. Cornwallis had none of Pitt’s safety protecting him; no one Cornwallis knew would believe in him regardless of what anyone said, not even someone with whom he could share the tension of waiting for the next letter to come or explain why it mattered so much.
“What is it?” Charlotte asked, watching him more closely now. Automatically, she pulled the dish with the egg away from the heat. “Is it the body in Bedford Square? Is it going to involve one of the houses there?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, sitting down on one of the hard-backed chairs by the kitchen table. “It’s possible. I was stopped by a newspaper writer this afternoon. He wanted to know if I was going to investigate General Balantyne.”
She stiffened. “Balantyne? He lives in Callander Square. Why would you investigate him?”
“He must have moved,” he replied, still unable to rid himself of his fear for Cornwallis. “I’m sorry … it was on his doorstep that the body was found. I don’t suppose it was more than mischance.”
It was only towards the end of dinner, when he was eating the baked egg custard, that he even thought of the snuffbox and realized that he had told her a good deal less than the truth. But there was no point in distressing her by adding that now. It would worry her for nothing. She could not help.
He was too absorbed in his own thoughts to notice her silence as anything but companionable. Where should he begin with Cornwallis’s letter? How could he protect him?
2
CHARLOTTE HAD BEEN distressed to learn that the tragedy of murder had again overtaken General Balantyne, even if only in that the dead man had been found on his doorstep. But it was a public place. Certainly anyone at all might have come to it without his knowledge or any acquaintance with him.
The following morning when Pitt had gone, she left Gracie to clean away the breakfast dishes while she saw nine-year-old Jemima and seven-year-old Daniel off to school, then returned to the kitchen with the daily newspaper, brought to the step as a kindness by Mr. Williamson along the street. The first thing that leapt to her eye was the latest report on the Tranby Croft affair. Speculation was running riot as to whether the Prince of Wales would actually be called to the witness stand—and of course, what he would say. Having the heir to the throne appearing in court like a common man had never even been imagined before, much less had it happened. The room would be jammed with people curious just to stare at him, to hear him speak and have to answer questions put to him by counsel. Admission to the court was by ticket only.
Sir William Gordon-Cumming was represented by Sir Edward Clarke; for the other side, Sir Charles Russell. Present, according to the newspaper, were Lord Edward Somerset, the Earl of Coventry and Mrs. Lycett-Green, among many others.
Baccarat was an illegal game. Gambling in any form was upon by many. Cards were viewed as a waste of precious time. Everyone knew that thousands of people played, of course, but there was a world of difference between knowing and seeing. It was said that the Queen was beside herself with anger. But then she was rather a straitlaced and forbidding woman even at the best of times. Ever since Prince Albert had died of typhoid fever, nearly thirty years before, she seemed to have lost all pleasure in life and was fairly well determined to see that everyone else did too. At least that was what Charlotte had heard said, and the Queen’s rare public appearances did nothing to disprove it.
The Prince of Wales was a spendthrift, self-indulgent, gluttonous; and wildly and regularly unfaithful to his wife, the long-suffering Princess Alexandra, most particularly with Lady Frances Brooke, who