Belgrave Square - Anne Perry [5]
He began to speak more rapidly, his voice a little breathless. “I had been foolish, extremely foolish, and far worse than that, I was betraying my friend and my host. I was horrified by what I had done, quite thoughtlessly. I had been flattered because she liked me, what young man would not be? I had allowed her to think I meant far more by my attentions than a slight romance, a few rather silly dreams. She was in love, and expected something dramatic to come of it.” He still had his back to them. “I told her it was not only hopeless, but quite morally wrong. I imagined she had accepted it—I suppose because I knew it so surely myself.” He stopped again, and even in the motionless aspect of his body his distress in the subject was obvious.
Pitt and Drummond glanced at each other, but it would be pointless and intrusive to interrupt. To offer sympathy now would be to misunderstand.
“She couldn’t,” Byam went on, his voice dropped very low. “She had never been denied before. Every man for whom she had had any regard, and many for whom she had not, had been clay in her hands. To her it was the uttermost rejection. We can only guess at what was in her thoughts, but it seemed to have destroyed everything she believed of herself.” He hunched his shoulders a little higher, as if withdrawing into some warmer, safer place. “I cannot believe she loved me so much. I did nothing to invite it. It was foolish, a flirtation, no more than that. No grand declarations of love, no promises … only”—he sighed—“only a liking for her company, and an enchantment with her marvelous beauty—as any man might have felt.”
This time the silence stretched for so long they could hear the sounds of footsteps across the hall and a murmur of voices as the butler spoke to one of the maids. Finally Drummond broke it.
“What happened?”
“She threw herself off the parapet,” Byam replied so softly they both strained to hear him. “She died immediately.” He put his hands up to his face and stood with his head bent, his body rigid and unmoving, his features hidden not only from them, but from the light.
“I’m sorry,” Drummond said huskily. “Really very sorry.”
Slowly Byam raised his head, but still his face was invisible to them.
“Thank you.” His words caught in his throat. “It was appalling. I would have understood it if Anstiss had thrown me out and never forgiven me as long as he lived.” He pulled himself straighter and reasserted his control. “I had betrayed him in the worst possible way,” he went on. “Albeit through blindness and stupidity rather than any intent, but Laura was dead, and no innocence or remorse of mine could heal that.” He took a deep breath and let it out with an inaudible sigh. He continued in a tone far less emotional, as if the feeling had drained out of him. “But he made the greatest effort a man can and he forgave me. He let his grief for her be sweet and untainted by rage or hatred. He chose to view it as an accident, a simple tragedy. He gave it out that she had gone onto the balcony of her room at night, and in the dark had slipped and fallen. No one questioned it, whatever they might have guessed. Laura Anstiss was deemed to have died by mischance. She was buried in the family crypt.”
“And William Weems?” Drummond asked. There was no way to be tactful.
Byam turned at last and faced them, his expression bleak and the faintest shadow of a smile touching his lips.
“He came to me about two years ago and told me he was related to someone who had been a servant in the hall at the time, and knew that Lady Anstiss and I had been lovers, and that she had taken her own life when I ended the affaire.” He came over towards