Betrayal at Lisson Grove - Anne Perry [28]
How can one believe and disbelieve something at the same moment? Charlotte was stunned so her brain did not absorb what Narraway had said, and yet looking at his face she could not doubt it. She felt an uprush of pity for him, and turned away so he would not see it in her eyes. Then she realised what he had said about Pitt and Austwick, and she understood why he had come specifically to tell her.
She knew he was watching her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly.
She understood what he was apologising for. He had made Pitt unpopular by singling him out, preferring him, confiding in him. Now, without Narraway, he would be vulnerable. He had never had any other profession but the police, and then Special Branch. He had been forced out of the police after his long struggle against the Inner Circle. He could not go back there. It was Narraway who had given him a job when he had so desperately needed it. If Special Branch dismissed him, where was there for him to go? There was nowhere where he could exercise his very particular skills, and certainly nowhere where he could earn a comparable salary.
They would lose this house in Keppel Street and all the comforts that went with it. Mrs Waterman would certainly no longer be a problem. Charlotte might well be scrubbing her own floors; indeed, it might even come to her scrubbing someone else’s as well. Pitt would hate that for her more than she would for herself. She could imagine it already, see the shame in his face for his own failure to provide for her, not the near luxury she had grown up in, nor even the amenities of a working-class domesticity.
She looked up at Narraway, wondering now about him. She had never considered before if he were dependent upon his salary or not. His speech and his manner, the almost careless elegance of his dress, said that he was born to a certain degree of position, but that did not necessarily mean wealth. Younger sons of even the most aristocratic families did not always inherit a great deal.
‘What will you do?’ she asked, then was aware how intrusive that sounded, and that it might be a painful question. Certainly it was one to which she had no right to expect an answer. She could feel the heat mounting up her cheeks. Would apologising make it better, or worse?
‘How like you,’ he replied. ‘Both to be concerned for me, and to assume that there is something to be done.’
Now she felt foolish. ‘Isn’t there?’
He hesitated. The silence between them was full of all sorts of memories and emotions. Yesterday he had been Pitt’s superior, a man with enormous power. Today he had no authority, possibly even no income beyond a few weeks.
Did he have friends, people he could call on, or might he be too proud to do that? She had known him, through Pitt, since Pitt had joined Special Branch, but she was sharply aware now how superficial that knowledge was. What of his past? What was his life beyond the Branch? Perhaps there was not much.
She knew that in the last case, Pitt had made an enemy of the Prince of Wales. Perhaps that enmity extended to Narraway as well. Remembering the circumstances, she could only believe that it must. There may be many other enemies. People do not forgive knowledge of the intimate and painful kind that Narraway possessed.
She looked at his face in the lamplight, and then lowered her eyes. She was not sure what she wanted to say, only that silence was of no use to Pitt, or to Narraway himself.
‘What are you going to do?’ she asked him again.
‘To help Pitt? There’s nothing I can do,’ he replied. ‘I don’t know the circumstances, and to interfere blindly might do far more harm.’
‘Not about Thomas, about yourself?’ She had not asked him what the charge was, or if he was wholly or partially guilty. Suddenly that omission seemed so enormous she drew in her breath to say something to amend it. Then she felt inexcusably clumsy, and ended saying nothing.