Betrayal at Lisson Grove - Anne Perry [55]
‘And did anyone know your cousin?’ he asked. ‘Dublin’s a small town, when it comes to it.’
‘I don’t think so,’ she answered easily. ‘But I may find trace of her later. O’Neil is not a rare name. And anyway, it doesn’t matter very much.’
‘Now there’s something I doubt our friend Victor would agree with,’ he said candidly. ‘I had the notion it mattered to him rather a lot. Was I wrong, then, do you suppose?’
For the first time in the evening she spoke the absolute truth. ‘I think maybe you know him a great deal better than I do, Mr McDaid. We have met only in one set of circumstances, and that does not give a very complete picture of a person, do you think?’
In the darkness inside the carriage she could not read his expression.
‘And yet I have the distinct idea that he is fond of you, Mrs Pitt,’ McDaid replied. ‘Am I wrong in that too, do you suppose?’
‘I don’t do much supposing, Mr McDaid . . . at least not aloud,’ she said. The certainty was increasing inside her that it was Narraway of whom Talulla had been speaking when she referred to Kate O’Neil’s betrayal – both of her country, and of her husband – because she had loved a man who had used her, and who then allowed her to be murdered for it. Then she remembered what Phelim O’Conor had said of Narraway, and she wondered how much she really knew him.
There must be more to the story; there always was. But would it make the tragedy and the ugliness of it any better? Narraway had said Cormac O’Neil had sought revenge. The only mystery was why he had waited twenty years for it.
Pitt had believed in Narraway; Charlotte knew that without doubt. But she also knew that Pitt thought well of most people, even if he accepted that they were complex, capable of cowardice, greed and violence. But had he ever understood any of the darkness within Narraway, the human beneath the fighter against his country’s enemies? They were so different. Narraway was subtle, where Pitt was instinctive. He understood people because he could imagine himself in their place. He understood weakness, fear; he had felt need and knew how powerful it could be.
But he also understood gratitude. Narraway had offered him dignity, purpose and a means to feed his family when he had desperately needed it. He would never forget that.
Was he also just a little naïve?
She remembered with a smile how disillusioned he had been when he had discovered the shabby behaviour of the Prince of Wales. She had felt his shame for a man he thought should have been better. He had believed more in the honour of his calling than the man did himself. She loved Pitt intensely for that, even in the moment she understood it.
Narraway would never have been misled; he would have expected roughly what he eventually found. He might have been disappointed, but he would not have been hurt.
Had he ever been hurt?
Could he have loved Kate O’Neil, and still used her? Not as Charlotte understood love.
But then perhaps Narraway always put duty first. Maybe he was feeling a deep and insuperable pain for the first time, because he was robbed of the one thing he valued: his work, in which his identity was so bound up.
Why on earth was she riding through the dark streets of a strange city, with a man she had never seen before tonight, taking absurd risks, telling lies, in order to help a man of whom she knew so little? Why did she ache with a loss for him?
Because she imagined how she would feel if he were like her – and he was not. She imagined he cared about her, because she had seen it in his face in unguarded moments. It was probably loneliness she saw, an instant of lingering for a love he would only find an encumbrance if he actually had it.
‘I hear Talulla Lawless gave you a little display of her temper,’ McDaid interrupted her thoughts. ‘I’m sorry for that. Her wounds are deep, and she sees no need to hide them. But it is hardly your fault. But then there are always casualties of war,