Farriers' Lane - Anne Perry [149]
“And the appeal court judges,” Charlotte added, reaching for his mug and refilling it. “They denied the appeal and confirmed the wrong verdict. They are not going to retreat easily.” She passed him back the mug. “When will you tell Tamar Macaulay?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t even thought about that yet.” He passed his hand over his eyes, rubbing them and shaking his head. “Tomorrow, maybe. Maybe later. I would really rather have a better idea of who it was before I tell her. I’m not sure enough what she’ll do.”
“Anyway”—she smiled bleakly—“not tonight. In the morning it will look different, maybe clearer.”
He finished his tea. “I doubt it.” He stood up. “But for the moment I don’t care. Let us go to bed, before I get too tired to climb the stairs.”
“Could it be Joshua Fielding?” Charlotte said over the breakfast table, her face pale with anxiety, watching Pitt as he spread his toast with marmalade. “Thomas, if it is, what am I going to do about Mama?”
Reluctantly he forced his mind to that problem. He did not want to face it. He had enough to occupy his mental and emotional energy with Paterson’s death and the fact that Godman was innocent, but he heard the fear in her voice and he knew it was well founded.
“To begin with, don’t tell her that Godman is innocent,” he said slowly, thinking as he spoke. “If it is Fielding, she is much safer if he has no reason to think he is suspected.”
“But if it is?” she said urgently, panic rising inside her. “If he murdered Blaine, and Judge Stafford, and Paterson—Thomas, he’s—he’s absolutely ruthless. He’ll murder Mama, if he thinks he needs to, to be safe!”
“Which is exactly why you don’t tell her Godman is innocent!” he replied decisively. “Charlotte! Listen to me—there is no point whatever in telling her Fielding might be guilty. She is in love with him.”
“Oh, rubbish!” she said hotly, feeling a strange choking inside her, a sense of loneliness, almost of betrayal, as though she had been abandoned. It was absurd, and yet there was an ache in her throat at the thought of Caroline really in love, as she was in love with Pitt—emotionally, intimately. She took a deep breath and tried to compose herself. “That’s nonsense, Thomas. She is attracted to him, certainly. He is interesting, a kind of person we don’t even meet in the normal way of things. And she was concerned that justice should be done.”
His voice cut across her. “Charlotte! I haven’t time to argue with you. Your mother is in love with Joshua Fielding. I know you have been trying hard not to accept that, but you will have to. It is a fact, however you dislike it.”
“No, it isn’t!” She thrust it away from her. “Of course it isn’t. Thomas, Mama is well over fifty!” She could feel the choking in her throat again, and a revulsion against the pictures that were forming in her imagination. Thomas should understand that. “It is friendship, that is all!” Her voice was growing higher and louder. She knew it was unfair, but she resented Emily being away in the west country and avoiding all this. She should have been here to help. This was a crisis.
Pitt was staring at her, irritation in his eyes.
“Charlotte, there is no time for self-indulgence! People don’t stop falling in love because they are fifty—or sixty—or any other age!”
“Of course they do.”
“When are you going to stop loving me? When you are fifty?”
“That’s different,” she protested, her voice thick.
“No, it isn’t. Sometimes we grow a little more careful in what we do, because we have learned some of the dangers, but we go on feeling the same. Why shouldn’t your mother fall in love? When you are fifty Jemima will think you as old and fixed as the framework of the world, because that is what you are to her—the framework of all she knows and that gives her safety and identity. But you will be the same woman inside as you are now, and just as capable of passions of all sorts: indignation, anger, laughter, outrage, making a fool of