Paragon Walk - Anne Perry [7]
“I can imagine no one, Mr. Pitt, who held such feelings for her as to precipitate last night’s tragedy, which I presume is what you are trying to say?”
Emily shut her eyes and bit her lip to stop herself from laughing.
Pitt was aware he had fallen into precisely the strain of language he despised, and both women knew it. Now he must avoid overcompensating.
“Thank you, Lady Cumming-Gould.” He stood up, “I’m sure if anything comes to your mind that you believe could help us, you will let us know. Thank you, Lady Ashworth.”
Vespasia nodded slightly and permitted herself a faint smile, but Emily came around the table from the back of the sofa and held out both her hands.
“Please give my love to Charlotte. I shall be calling upon her directly, but not until the worst of this is over. But perhaps that won’t be long?”
“I hope not.” He touched her hand gently, but he had no belief that it would be so brief, or so easy. Investigations were not pleasant, and things were seldom the same afterward. There was always hurt.
He visited several of the other houses along the Walk and found at home Algernon Burnon, Lord and Lady Dilbridge, who had held the party, Mrs. Selena Montague, a very handsome widow, and the Misses Horbury. By half past five he left its quiet dignity and made his way back to the scruffy, heelworn utility of the police station. By seven he was at his own front door. The facade of the house was narrow, tidy, but there was no carriageway, no trees, only a scrubbed and whitened step and the wooden gateway through to the back yard.
He opened the door with his key, and at once the same little bubble of pleasure that rose inside him every time burst in warmth, and he found himself smiling. Violence and ugliness slipped away.
“Charlotte?”
There was a clatter in the kitchen, and his smile broadened. He went down the passage and stopped in the doorway. She was on her knees on the scrubbed floor, and two saucepan lids were still rolling just out of her reach under the table. She was in a plain dress with a white apron over it, and her shining, mahogany hair was coming out of its knot in long, trailing strands. She looked up and pulled a face, grabbing at the lids and missing. He bent and picked them up for her, holding out his other hand. She took it, and he pulled her up and toward him. As she relaxed in his arms, he dropped the lids on the table. It was good to feel her, the warmth of her body, of her answering mouth on his.
“Who have you been chasing today?” she asked after a moment.
He pushed the hair off her face.
“Murder,” he said quietly. “And rape.”
“Oh,” her face stiffened a little, perhaps memory. “I’m sorry.”
It would have been easy to have left it at that, not to have told her that it was someone Emily knew, living in Emily’s street, but she would have to know sometime. Emily would be bound to tell her. Perhaps they would solve it quickly after all—a drunken footman.
But she had already noticed his hesitation.
“Who was it?” she asked. Her first guess for his concern was wrong. “Was she someone with children?”
He thought of little Jemima, asleep upstairs now.
She saw the easing of his face, the shadow of relief.
“Who, Thomas?” she repeated.
“A young woman, a girl—”
She knew that was not all. “You mean a child?”
“No—no, she was seventeen. I’m sorry, love, she lived in Paragon Walk, just a few doors from Emily. I saw Emily this afternoon. She sent her love.”
Memories of Cater Street came back, of the fear that had ultimately reached into everything, touching and tainting everyone. She spoke the first fear that came to her mind.
“You don’t think George was—had anything to do with it?”
His face fell.
“Good heavens no! Of course not!”
She went back to the stove. She skewered the potatoes savagely to see if they were cooked, and two of them fell apart. She would like to have sworn at them, but she would not in front of him. If he still cherished her as a lady, let him keep his illusions. Her cooking was enough of a hurdle to overcome at one time. She was still enough in love with him to hunger