Buckingham Palace Gardens - Anne Perry [120]
“Don’t you suppose he knew how alive she was?” she asked, hurting herself as she was saying it.
“He didn’t love her,” Simnel replied very quietly. “He didn’t deserve her.”
“You say that as if loving and deserving were the same thing,” she retaliated. They avoided looking at each other again. “In that case, Olga deserves you. Or hadn’t you thought of that?”
“You can’t help who you love,” he said between his teeth. “You can’t love to order. If you had ever really loved anyone, not simply chosen to marry them as the safest and most profitable alliance you could make, then you would know that.”
She could not accuse him of cruelty—she had been just as cruel herself. “The marriage where I loved was not offered to me,” she answered him. “Any more than it was to you, or perhaps to Minnie. You are totally naïve if you think we can choose to do or undo at will. Or that what you want will turn out the way you believed it would. Olga wanted you. It looks as if she still does, but do you suppose that will go on forever?”
“I loved Minnie,” he said again. “I don’t think you understand that. You never loved her. She knew you didn’t. You were jealous of the affection Cahoon had for her. He admired her in a way he never did you.”
Both of these things were true, but strangely it was the charge that she had not loved Minnie that cut deeper. She should at least have tried. She had been so lost in her own loneliness, too consumed in herself to imagine what Minnie felt. She looked at it now, honestly, and found it ugly. No wonder Cahoon had not loved her. She did not love herself very much either.
“I know,” she replied aloud. “But did you love Minnie? Or did you love the way she made you feel: passionate and alive yourself? And hate it! She made you behave like a fool. You loved her so much you didn’t care if everyone knew—and they did. You betrayed both your wife and your brother. Is that who you wanted to be, what you admired in yourself?” At last she turned to look at him.
His face was white. “You really did hate her, didn’t you?” he said very softly. “Why? Over Cahoon, or over Julius?”
She smiled. “At least you haven’t the arrogance to assume it was over you! Has it occurred to you that most married women will feel for each other when they are betrayed? Perhaps I hated her for what she did to Olga, as well as to Julius.”
His eyes were glittering. “Enough to kill her for it?”
“I thought you believed Julius did it—your own brother?” It was an accusation, all her fear and anger making her voice knife-edged.
“Well, it wasn’t me, and she was the one person Cahoon really loved,” he pointed out. “If it wasn’t Julius, then it must have been Hamilton. And why the hell would he? Face it, Elsa, whoever it is has killed at least three times: Minnie, that poor whore who only came here as part of her job, and the other wretched woman in Africa that we’ve all been trying to forget. Cahoon wasn’t even there, so it couldn’t have been him.”
“Then it must have been Hamilton,” she said simply. “Except that I don’t know it wasn’t you. Perhaps you were desperate to escape the hold she had over you. You might have been tired of endless lust and betrayal. You couldn’t help yourself. Every time she teased you, you responded like a trained dog. Maybe you despised yourself, and that was the only freedom you could achieve.”
“You are a passionless, pathetic woman, just as Cahoon says you are.” The words were forced out between his teeth, his voice shaking.
“Because I don’t go around in a red dress, taunting people?” she retaliated, but the charge stung. She knew Cahoon no longer wanted her. If he wanted anyone at all, it was Amelia Parr. She had seen that in his eyes, but it still hurt that he should say so to another man. It was a complete denial of her as having any value.
“Because you go around in a blue dress, ice cold, and afraid of your