Belgrave Square - Anne Perry [165]
“Did you pay Weems?” she asked without warning. His face was slack with surprise.
“No. As God is my judge, I never even knew the man.”
“But you let Horatio Osmar off. You threw the case out without calling Beulah Giles.”
“That had nothing to do with Fanny or my first marriage—or with Weems or his murder.”
“No.” She was about to add that it had everything to do with the secret society of the Inner Circle, when Pitt’s warning about their power rang sharply in her mind, and she bit the words back. “No,” she said again. “I did not think so, but I had to ask. What are you going to do about Fanny and Herbert Fitzheibert?”
“What are you going to do, Mrs. Pitt?”
“Nothing. I have already done all I can. It is your decision.”
“Fitzherbert may betray me, in Fanny’s interest—and his own.”
“He may. But if he does he will lose Fanny’s love forever, and he is quite intelligent enough to know that.”
“I must think.”
“Please do not leave it long. Once Fanny has refused him he may believe her and not ask again.”
“You press me hard, Mrs. Pitt.”
For the first time she smiled. “Yes. It is a very hard matter. I daresay Mrs. Carswell—by that I mean Regina—may find it very difficult to accept that your marriage to her is bigamous.” She saw him wince but carried on. “But I think she might find it no more painful than the thought that you have been currently having an affaire with a girl Fanny’s age. Surely when faced with two such awful alternatives, there is something to be said for the truth—and before the lie can bite too deep with its pain.”
“Do you believe that? How would you feel, Mrs. Pitt, to discover that your husband was not your husband at all, and that your beloved children were illegitimate?”
“I cannot think how dreadful I should feel, Mr. Carswell. Or how angry and how confused and betrayed. But I think I might find it easier to forgive than the thought that my husband had loved and been intimate with a girl not much older than my own daughter.”
He smiled very bleakly. “How very aspiring to the genteel, Mrs. Pitt. I might even say working class. A lady would accept such a thing as part of life, and as long as it was not forced upon her attention or made public to her embarrassment, she would scarcely observe it at all. Indeed, a lady of refined tastes might very well be glad her husband satisfied his less pleasing appetites elsewhere without troubling her, and causing her to bear a larger family than she wished, or her health could support.”
“Then I am quite definitely of a distinctly lower class, Mr. Carswell,” she said with crisp satisfaction. “If that is the guide by which to judge. And I would not be surprised if Mrs. Carswell is as well. But the decision is yours.” And with that she bent to eat some of her almost cold pork chop, and drink a little of the really very good wine.
“I will speak to Fitzherbert,” he said at last, just before they rose to leave. “And to James.”
“Thank you,” she accepted, matter-of-factly, as if he had passed the salt. But inside she felt a little swift, singing happiness, very small, very bright.
In the days after the garden party at which Fitz had made it only too apparent that he did not intend to marry Odelia, and had virtually defied Lord Anstiss, Jack Radley became very slowly and painfully aware of just what such an act had cost him.
Nothing was said. No overt comments were made and Jack did not hear Anstiss himself make any remark at all, and he saw him on several social occasions. The first thing he came across was at his club, where he overheard quite by chance two men he knew slightly, discussing Fitz and shaking their heads over the fact that he had been blackballed from another club of which one of them was a member.
“Good heavens, George. Herbert Fitzherbert? Really!” The man’s blond eyebrows