Buckingham Palace Gardens - Anne Perry [38]
The Prince stood frozen, his eyes wide, his hands half raised helplessly. “But we trusted these men!” he said with dismay. “They are outstanding, all of them! We need them for the railway!” He turned again to Dunkeld, as if he might offer some explanation that would make the situation different.
“I don’t know, sir,” Dunkeld said unhappily. “I could have sworn for all of them myself.”
“You did!” the Prince said with sudden petulance.
Dunkeld’s face tightened. “I did for their intelligence and their skills, sir. And for their reputations.”
The Prince’s expression tightened in irritation. “Yes. Yes. I’m sorry. Of course you did. I wish we could have had Watson Forbes. He would have been the perfect man. Do you think we could still persuade him? If…if the worst happens and we find”—he took an awkward, suddenly indrawn breath—“if we lose someone?”
Dunkeld bit his lower lip. “I doubt it, sir. But of course I will try. Forbes told me unequivocally that he has retired from his African interests.”
“If I asked him personally?” the Prince asked, staring at Dunkeld.
“Of course I am sure he would do anything within his power to please you, sir. We all would,” Dunkeld replied, but there was no warmth in his voice. He made the remark merely to placate, and Pitt could see that, even if the Prince could not. He looked temporarily mollified. “But I fear the reason he has forsaken all his African interests stems back to the death of his son,” Dunkeld went on as though an explanation was necessary.
The Prince was puzzled. “Death of his son? What happened? Surely that is not sufficient to make a man of his skill and resource abandon the work of his life?”
“It was his only son,” Dunkeld’s voice dropped even further, “and he died in dreadful circumstances nine years ago. Poor Forbes was very shaken by it. I heard tell that it was he who found the young man, or what was left of him.” There was a look of distaste on his face and his mouth turned down at the corners. “It was crocodiles, or something equally nightmarish. I wasn’t in Africa myself at the time. My son-in-law, Julius Sorokine, was there. And I believe Quase and Marquand were too. And Forbes’s daughter, Liliane. It was before she was married.” His mouth tightened. “You can hardly blame Forbes if he has settled his affairs there and does not wish to return, particularly with the very people he must associate with the bitterest tragedy in his life.” His voice quite gently insisted that the Prince observe the decencies of such a loss.
His Royal Highness appeared resigned. He would not abide being thwarted by people, but circumstances, he knew, he could not fight. The rituals of death had to be observed. He had survived his mother’s mourning for three decades and never even penetrated the shell of it.
He looked back at Pitt as if he had suddenly remembered his presence. “This is a very unhappy situation,” he said, as though Pitt might not have understood what they had said. “I would be obliged if you could be as tactful as possible, but we have to know who is responsible. It cannot be left.”
Pitt had no intention whatever either of abandoning it or of conceding defeat. The Prince’s manner was patronizing, and it pained Pitt like a blister, but there was nothing he could do to retaliate. He thought of the night’s indulgence and the appetites that had precipitated it. Both men here had been perfectly happy to buy the use of the woman’s body for the evening, under the same roof as their sleeping wives. The callousness of it revolted him. And now it was the fear of scandal and the inconvenience that moved them to concern. The Prince at least had possibly even been intimate with the woman, caressed her body, used her, and the next morning