Farriers' Lane - Anne Perry [47]
He found he was talking about himself, and that was not what he had wanted to do, apart from the ill manners of it. It was she he cared about, not himself, but he had to fill the silence and he was so afraid of appearing to condescend. He wanted to talk about music, or walking in the rain, the smell of wet leaves, the evening light across the sky, but then she would find him too pressing—too forward when she was so vulnerable.
So he told her about Judge Stafford, and what Aubrey Winton had told him of the Blaine/Godman case.
It was silent outside, and raining in the dark; the hall clock had struck eight, when he suddenly realized how long he had been there, and that it was past time he left. He had outstayed a social call. Now it had become difficult to return to politeness and excuse himself. The outside world intruded again.
He rose to his feet.
“I have kept you too long, because for a while I forgot my manners and simply enjoyed myself. Please forgive me.”
She rose also, gracefully, but the shadows of reality returned to her face.
“There is nothing to forgive,” she replied. It was the obvious thing to say, yet he felt she really meant it. For all the stilted words there was an ease of understanding between them. It was on the edge of his tongue to ask if he might call again, then he changed his mind. If she refused, and she might feel she should, then he had closed the door to himself. Better simply to come.
“Thank you for receiving me,” he said with a smile. “Good night.”
“Good night, Micah.”
He hesitated only a moment, then picked up his hat and his stick and went out into the main hallway and back to the wet, lamplit street, the loneliness within him warmed and illuminated, and yet also sharper.
4
THERE WAS NOTHING Pitt could do on Sunday. There were no places of business open, and he was quite certain that none of the private persons he wished to speak to would be available and agreeable even to receiving him, let alone giving him the time and attention he would need in order to gain the information, or even the impressions, he desired.
So he had a thoroughly enjoyable day at home with Charlotte, Jemima and Daniel. It was the loveliest of autumn weather, utterly windless with hazy sunshine and a soft golden light, a sense of height in the sky that made it possible to forget all London around them and imagine that beyond the wall there were trees and harvest fields.
Pitt had little time to spend in his garden, but what there was was rare and precious, and he loved it fiercely. From the moment he laid down his knife and fork from breakfast, he went out and started to dig, dressed in old trousers and with his sleeves rolled up. He lifted the dark earth and turned it with intense satisfaction, breaking the clumps, parting the tangled roots of perennials now over, and dividing them into new plants for the spring. The Michaelmas daisies were blooming in blue-and-purple towers and the asters and chrysanthemums raised shaggy heads of cerise and lilac, gold, red, white and pink. The last roses were spare and precious. It was the final cutting of the grass, and the air was filled with the smell of it, and of earth mold, and sun on damp leaves.
Seven-year-old Jemima was dressed in last year’s pinafore and was half squatting on the ground beside him, her face smeared with mud, deep in happy concentration, her fingers busy with untangling roots and getting out the weeds. A couple of yards away, Daniel, two years younger, was kneeling down listening to Charlotte trying to explain to him which leaves were chickweed and which flowers.
Pitt turned and looked over Jemima’s head and caught Charlotte’s eye. She smiled at him, hair across her brows, a smear of earth on her cheek, and he felt more totally happy than he could ever recall. There were some moments so precious the ache to hold on to them was a physical thing. He had to force himself to have faith that others as good would come, and the letting go must be easy, or