Bethlehem Road - Anne Perry [133]
“Don’t! ... I’m sorry. I should not have shown them to you.”
“No, my dear. It was very natural.” Vespasia put her hand over Charlotte’s. “We wish to share our pain. And better you should have come to me than to poor Thomas. He has seen more than enough lately, and his helplessness must hurt him.”
“Yes,” Charlotte agreed; she knew it did. But it was nearly six o’clock and time to put the next part of her plan into progress. “I mean to visit Sir Garnet Royce, perhaps to deliver the letters to him.” She saw Vespasia’s body grow rigid. “After all, they are his, in a sense.”
“Rubbish!” Vespasia snapped. “My dear Charlotte, you may be able to lie successfully to other people, although I doubt it, but please do not try it with me. You do not for a moment imagine they are Sir Garnet’s property. They were written by his wife to a Miss Forrester, and if they cannot be delivered to her, then they are the property of Her Majesty’s Postal Service. Nor would you give a fig if they were Sir Garnet’s! What do you mean to do?”
There was no more purpose in lying; it had failed. “I mean to oblige him to know the truth, and to know that I know it,” Charlotte replied. It was not all her plan, but it was part of it.
“Dangerous,” Vespasia answered.
“Not if I take your carriage, with your coachman to drive me. Sir Garnet may be as angry as he likes, but he is not going to harm me. He would not dare. And I shall take only two letters, and leave the rest with you.” She waited, watching Vespasia’s face. Charlotte saw the doubt in it, as Vespasia argued back and forth with herself. “He deserves to know!” she said urgently. “The law cannot face him with it, but I can. And for Naomi’s sake, and Elsie Draper’s, I am going to. I shall arrive in a proper carriage, with a footman, and the servants will let me in. He cannot harm me! Please, Vespasia. All I want is the use of your carriage for an hour or two.” She considered adding, “Otherwise I shall have to go by hansom,” but it sounded too much like pressure, and Vespasia would not care for that.
“Very well. But I shall send Forbes as well, to ride on the box. That is my condition.”
“Thank you, Aunt Vespasia. I shall leave at about seven, if that is acceptable to you. That way I shall be most likely to find him at home, since the House of Commons is not debating anything of importance today, so I have been told.”
“Then you had better have supper.” Vespasia’s silver eyebrows rose. “I presume you have left something for poor Thomas to eat?”
“Yes of course I have. And a note to tell him I am visiting you and will be home at about half past eight or nine o’clock.”
“Indeed,” Vespasia said dryly. “Then I suppose we had better request the kitchen to send us something. Would you care for some jugged hare?”
An hour later Charlotte was sitting huddled up inside Vespasia’s carriage while the horses drew it slowly through the fog-blinded streets from Belgravia, past the Palace of Westminster, across the bridge, and along the far side of the south bank towards Bethlehem Road. It was bitterly cold, and the dead air hung motionless, moisture freezing as it touched the icy stones. Half of her was dreading arrival, and yet she was so cold and the decision so firm in her mind that delay was of no value, there was nothing else to turn over or consider, nothing that would change her resolve. Garnet Royce was not going to be permitted to close his mind to Naomi, or Elsie Draper, and convince himself he had acted justly.
The carriage stopped, and she heard the footman’s steps as he descended and a moment later the carriage door opened. She took his hand and alighted. The fog was so thick she could barely see the streetlamps on either side of her, and the houses on the far side of the street, no more than a slight darkening of the gray, curling vapors, a mark on the imagination.
“Thank you. I am sorry to ask you to wait here, but I hope I shall not be long.”
“That’s all right, ma’am,” Forbes replied from the gloom just beyond. “Her ladyship said we were