Bedford Square - Anne Perry [65]
She took a breath and hurried on again. “No one has asked him for money either, or anything else, but he has had a second letter, and it is very threatening. Such a charge would ruin him and Lady Augusta, whom I don’t care about, but Brandy too. He is trying to find anyone from the campaign who can help, but he hasn’t succeeded so far. What can we do, Thomas? This is dreadful!”
He remained silent for several moments.
“Thomas …”
“What?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about General Balantyne earlier. I wanted to see if I could find something and prove his innocence of the accusation.”
“You also didn’t want me to know because it would make me suspect him of killing Albert Cole, because the snuffbox was his,” he said levelly. “Did he give it to Cole?”
“No … he gave it to the blackmailer. He was asked for it, as a pledge, and it was collected by a boy on a bicycle.” She waited for what he would say next. How angry would he be about that? She really should have told him.
He regarded her steadily.
She felt the color hot in her face. But if she were in the same position over again, she would do the same thing. She had no doubt whatever that Balantyne was innocent. He needed defending. And Augusta would certainly not do it.
Pitt smiled with a curious little twist. He knew her rather too well for comfort at times.
“Your apology is accepted, even if it is not entirely believed,” he said gently. “I suggest for your leisure-time reading you try Don Quixote?’
She winced now, and lowered her eyes. “Are you ready for supper?”
“Yes.” He sat down at the table and waited for her to lay plates for them, put away the rest of the plates, finish preparing the meal and then serve it.
Vespasia did not know about Sigmund Tannifer, but what she did know was enough to cause her such grave concern that she used the telephone, an instrument which she found quite marvelous, to ask her friend Theloneus Quade if she might call upon him that evening.
He responded by offering to call upon her instead. She was tired enough to accept with gratitude. Had the offer come from anyone else she might have declined, even with asperity. She refused to concede any more to age than was forced upon her, and most certainly not in front of others. But Theloneus was different. She had come to realize that his love for her had transcended his initial fascination with the beauty she had possessed even into her sixties, and the core of which was still with her. Now it was a love for the person she was and the experiences they had shared over a lifetime through a tumultuous century. It had begun, for her at least, when the Emperor Napoleon had threatened the very existence of Britain. She remembered Waterloo. Queen Victoria had been a child then, and relatively unknown.
Now she, too, was an old woman, who wore black and was empress of a quarter of the world. Steamships sailed the seas, and the Thames Embankment was illuminated by electric lights.
Theloneus arrived a little before eight. He kissed her on the cheek, and for a moment she smelled the faint perfume of clean skin, laundered cotton, and felt the warmth of him.
Then he stood back. “What is it?” he asked with a frown. “You look extremely worried.”
They were in her sitting room. There was still bright sunlight outside. It would not be dark for nearly two hours, but there was a coolness already in the air, in spite of its golden brilliance.
He sat down, because he knew how it irritated her to have to stare upwards.
“I spent much of the day with Charlotte,” she began. “We called upon Dunraithe White. I am afraid you were correct in your fears for him. He confided in me the source of his anxiety. It is worse than you thought.”
He leaned forward, his thin, gentle face creased with worry.
“You feared premature senility, or even madness, didn’t you?” she asked.
He nodded. “At worst, yes, I did. What could he