Belgrave Square - Anne Perry [157]
He stared at her, not with the derision she had expected, but with suddenly candid eyes and a dawning brilliance in them.
“You think she loves me? You do. And far more to the point, Mrs. Pitt, you think her a woman of selflessness and such honor that she would prize my welfare and my reputation above her own, and her security as my wife.” Impulsively he put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her cheek. “Bless you, Mrs. Pitt, for a devious and unconventional woman. Now you will find out for me where I may call upon Fanny, because having gone this far you cannot now abandon me. And you will do your brother-in-law a favor, because he is an excellent fellow, and will make a fine member of Parliament, thoroughly acceptable to his lordship, having a wife above criticism, intelligent, tactful, charming and I suspect extremely clever. And her reputation is spotless.”
“I will find out,” she agreed with a rueful smile. “But I will ask Fanny if she wishes to receive you.”
“No—don’t do that. She will refuse. Allow me to press my own suit. I give you my word I will not harass her. And she has a brother to protect her—just tell me where I may call. For heaven’s sake, Mrs. Pitt, I am gentleman enough not to pay my attentions where they are unwanted.”
Charlotte bit her lip to suppress her amusement.
“Have they ever been unwanted, Mr. Fitzherbert?”
A little of the natural color returned to his face. He was being teased, and he could see it.
“Not often,” he admitted with a spark of the old humor. “But I think I’ll know it if I see it. Promise me.”
“I promise,” she conceded. “Now I must return to Emily and see what progresses. I shall send the address to her, and you may fetch it there.”
And with that he was content. He thanked her again and she excused herself and threaded her way back to where Emily was talking about climate to a retired colonel with a bristling mustache and stentorian opinions about India.
While Charlotte was attending the garden party, Pitt returned to the job he hated of further investigating Samuel Urban. It was something he could not avoid, whatever his personal liking for the man or his desire to believe him guilty of no more than misjudgment, and seeking a second and forbidden income in a manner which would have been perfectly legal had he not been in the police. It was far preferable in his mind to Latimer’s gambling and condoning of bare-knuckle fistfighting. But bitter experience had taught him that people otherwise law abiding and in many ways likable could, when frightened enough, caught without time to think, commit murder. And often men he despised for cruelty, indifference to others’ pain or humiliation, were nevertheless capable of coolness of thought which avoided the need for violence. Not that they abhorred it but because they understood the terrible consequences for themselves.
It was little use retracing his steps over Urban’s old cases until he knew of something else to look for. He had found no unexplainable irregularities the first time, and he knew where the extra money came from. Whether he had used his office to further the cause of the Inner Circle or not could wait for another time. Pitt thought not. He remembered how angry Urban had been over the Osmar case, and the influence he believed the Circle had brought to bear on that. And the very fact that he had betrayed them so far as to tell Pitt of their existence and his own membership was proof which way his loyalties lay.
In fact the more Pitt thought of him, the deeper was his liking for Urban personally, and his conviction that the Inner Circle had not succeeded in corrupting him to its uses. His disobedience had been the reason his name was on the list in the first place.
Then why was Carswell’s name there? He had succumbed. He had dismissed Osmar’s case. And what about Latimer? He needed to know more.
Where to find it?
He began with the music halls where Urban might have been seeking more remunerative employment, if he was telling the truth about the night Weems was killed. They were