Betrayal at Lisson Grove - Anne Perry [66]
‘Of course,’ she said lightly, trying to master facts in her mind so she could answer sensibly, if the necessity arose.
He took her arm as people milled around her, returning to their seats, courteous, hospitable, full of dry wit and a passion for life. How easy, and dangerous, it would be for her to forget that she did not belong here – she particularly, because her husband was in Special Branch, and his friend Victor Narraway could be the man who had used Kate O’Neil to betray her own people, and destroy her family.
Narraway was uncertain what Charlotte would learn at the theatre. As he walked along Arran Quay, on the north bank of the Liffey, his head down into the warm, damp breeze off the water, he was afraid that she would discover a few things about him that he would very much rather she did not know, but he knew no way to help that. He knew, from Fiachra McDaid, that she would meet Cormac O’Neil, and perhaps judge some depth of his hatred, and the reasons for it.
He smiled bitterly as he pictured her pursuing it, testing, pushing until she found the facts behind the pain. Would she be disillusioned to hear his part in it all? Or was that his vanity, his own feelings – that she cared enough for him that disillusion was even possible, let alone would wound her?
He would never forget the days after Kate’s death. Worst was the morning they hanged Sean. The brutality and the grief of that had cast a chill over all the years since. Why had he exposed himself to the hurt of Charlotte learning anything about it? Perhaps because he was afraid she would, and he would rather deal the blow himself than endure the waiting for someone else to do it.
He should know better. His years in Special Branch should have taught him both patience and control. Usually he was so good at it that people thought him a cold man. Charlotte thought it, he knew. Was that the real reason why he risked her discovering so terribly that he was not?
He did not want her affection, or her grief for him, if it were based on a misconception of who he was.
He laughed at himself; it was just a faint sound, almost drowned by his quick footsteps along the stones of the quayside. Why, at this time in his life, did he care so much for the opinion of another man’s wife?
He forced his attention to where he was going, and why. If he did not learn who had diverted the money meant for Mulhare and placed it in his, Narraway’s, own account, knowing anything else about O’Neil was pointless. Someone in Lisson Grove had been involved. He blamed none of the Irish. They were fighting for their own cause, and at times he even sympathised with it. But the man in Special Branch who had done this had betrayed his own people, and that was different. He wanted to know who it was, and prove it. The damage this traitor could cause would have no boundary. If he hated England enough to plan and execute a way of disgracing Narraway, then what else might he do? Was his real purpose to replace him? This whole business of Mulhare might be no more than a means to that end. But was it simply ambition, or was there another, darker purpose behind it as well?
Without realising it he increased his pace, moving so swiftly he almost passed the alley he was looking for. He turned in and fumbled in the lightless construction of it and the uneven stones under his feet. He had to feel his way along one of the walls. Third door. He knocked sharply, a quick rhythm.
He had brought Charlotte to Ireland because he wanted to, but she had her own compelling reasons to be here. If he was right about the traitor in Lisson Grove then one of the first things that person would do would be to get rid of Pitt. If Pitt were fortunate, he would simply be dismissed.There were much worse possibilities. Some of them passed through Narraway’s mind as the door was opened. He was let into a small, extremely stuffy office piled high with ledgers, account books and sheaths of loose papers. A striped cat had