Betrayal at Lisson Grove - Anne Perry [67]
O’Casey sat in the chair behind it, his bald head gleaming in the gaslight.
‘Well?’ Narraway asked, masking his eagerness as closely as he could.
O’Casey hesitated.
Narraway considered threatening him. He still had power, albeit illegal now. He drew in his breath. Then he looked at O’Casey’s face again, and changed his mind. He had few enough friends, he could not afford to alienate any of them.
‘So what is it you expect of me, then?’ O’Casey asked, cocking his head a little to one side. ‘I’ll not help you, not more than I owe. Only for old times’ sake, but that’s little enough.’
‘I know,’ Narraway agreed. There were wounds and debts between them, some still unpaid. ‘I need to know what’s changed for Cormac O’Neil.’
‘For God’s sake, leave the poor man alone! Have you not already taken all he has?’ O’Casey exclaimed. ‘You’ll not be after the child, will you?’
‘The child?’ For a moment Narraway was at a loss. Then memory flooded back. Kate’s daughter by Sean. She had been only an infant, six or seven years old, when her parents died. ‘Did Cormac raise her?’ he asked.
‘A little girl?’ O’Casey squinted at him contemptuously. ‘Of course he didn’t, you fool. And what would Cormac O’Neil do with a six-year-old girl, then? Some cousin of Kate’s took her – Maureen, I think her name was. She and her husband. Raised her as their own.’
Narraway felt a stab of pity for the child – Kate’s child. That should never have happened.
‘But she knows who she is?’ he said aloud.
‘Of course. Cormac would have told her, if no one else.’ O’Casey lifted one shoulder slightly. ‘Although, of course, it might not be the truth as you know it, poor child. There are things better left unsaid.’
Narraway felt chilled. He had not thought of Kate’s daughter. They had been so close to the violence erupting and spreading beyond control, he had thought only of preventing that. He had not expected Kate to die; it was never planned. He knew Sean.To deceive him in rebellion was one thing, to deceive him over Kate was another.
Looking back, even weeks afterwards, he knew that she had crossed sides because she believed it was a doomed uprising, and more Irishmen would die in it than English, far more. But she knew Sean as well. He had been willing enough to use her beauty to shame Narraway, even lead him to his death, but in his wildest imagination he had never considered that she might even give herself willingly to Narraway, or worse, care for him.
And when she did, it was beyond Sean’s mind or heart to forgive. He had said he killed her for Ireland, but Narraway knew it was for himself, just as, in the end, Sean knew it too.
And Cormac? He too had loved Kate. Did he feel an Irishman bested in deviousness by an Englishman, in a fight where no one was fair? Or a man betrayed by a woman he wanted and could never have: his brother’s wife, who had sided with the enemy – for her own reasons, good or bad, political or personal?
What had he told Talulla?
Could it possibly be anything new in the last few months? And if it were, how could she have moved the money from Mulhare’s account back to Narraway’s, using some traitor in Lisson Grove? Not by herself. Then with whom?
‘Who betrayed Mulhare?’ he asked O’Casey.
‘No idea,’ O’Casey answered. ‘And if I did know, I wouldn’t tell you. A man who’ll sell his own people deserves to have his thirty pieces of silver slip out of his hands. Deserves to have it put in a bag o’ lead around his neck, before they throw him into Dublin Bay.’
Narraway had not much liked Mulhare, but he needed to keep his promises; to whom they were made was irrelevant. A broken word is as self-defeating as a broken sword.
He rose to his feet. The cat by the fire stretched out and then curled up on the other side.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘Don’t come back,’ O’Casey replied. ‘I’ll not harm you, but I’ll not help you either.’
‘I know,’ Narraway replied.
Charlotte did not have the opportunity to speak