Bedford Square - Anne Perry [68]
“He has already been hurt so much …” she said quietly. “But perhaps with having endured that, he can face public ignominy again with more courage than others. I pray that it will not be necessary.”
“And Cornwallis?” he asked.
“Taking credit for another man’s act of courage at sea,” she replied. “In each case the charge is the most painful that particular man could face. We are dealing with someone who knows his victims well and can hurt with a unique skill.”
“Indeed,” he said grimly. “We shall need as much skill if we are to beat him, and I think a great deal of luck as well.”
“A great deal,” she agreed. “Perhaps we should not go into battle on an empty stomach. Would you care for a little late supper? I believe Cook has asparagus, brown bread and butter, and I expect there is champagne.”
“Knowing you, my dear, I am quite sure there is,” he accepted.
Cornwallis paced along the pavement outside the Royal Academy of Art. He was suffering a kind of pain he had never experienced before. He was long familiar with loneliness, the physical discomfort of coldness, exhaustion, miserable food, stale sea biscuit and salt bacon, brackish water. He had been seasick, feverish, injured. He had certainly been frightened, ashamed, torn with pity he did not know how to bear.
Only since he had met Isadora Underhill, the wife of Bishop Underhill, had he understood what it was to think of a woman with a pleasure and a pain which were inextricably bound together, to long to be in her company, and to be so terrified of hurting or disappointing her that the thought of it made him sick.
Nothing in the world was as sweet as the thought that she also cared for him. In what way he had not dared to contemplate. It was sufficient that she thought well of him, that she believed him to be a man of honor and compassion, of courage and that inner integrity which no outside circumstance can tarnish or bend.
The last time they had met, she had mentioned that she would attend the exhibition of paintings by Tissot at the Royal Academy. If he did not go, she would believe he did not wish to see her. Their relationship was far too delicate for him to offer any explanation, as if she had expected him. And yet if he did go, and they were to meet, and they would, and fall into conversation, as they must, would she see the fear in him caused by the letter? She was so perceptive; in some ways she understood emotions in him no one else had even guessed at. If he could agonize as he was doing, and she were to walk and talk with him, and be unaware of it, then what was their affection worth?
And yet if she did see it, how could he explain it?
Even as he was saying this to himself, he was mounting the steps and going in. The room of the exhibition was posted. He walked past the grave, delicate beauty of a Fra Angelico Madonna, which normally would have stirred a unique joy in him. Today he barely noticed it. He would not go to the room with the Turners. Their passion would overwhelm him.
Without realizing it he was already at the exhibition of Tissot. There was Isadora. He could always see her at a glance, her dark head held at just such an angle. Her hat had a sweeping brim, very plain. She was alone, regarding the paintings as if she took great pleasure in them. They were not really her taste, he knew that, too stylized. She preferred landscape, vision and dream.
He walked across to her as if drawn by a power beyond him to resist.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Underhill,” he said quietly.
She smiled at him. “Good afternoon, Mr. Cornwallis. How are you?”
“Very well, thank you. And you, Mrs. Underhill?” He wanted to say how lovely she looked, but that would have been far too familiar. There was a perfect grace in her bearing, a beauty in her far deeper and more pleasing to the mind than simple perfection of line or coloring. It was in the expression of her eyes and her lips. He wished he could tell her that. “A fine exhibition,” he said instead.
“Indeed,” she answered without enthusiasm, a very