Resurrection Row - Anne Perry [27]
She took his coat and hung it behind the door, then offered him Pitt’s chair. He sat down. She knew he had come for some reason, and he would tell her what it was when he had found the words. It was early for tea, but he was probably cold, and she could think of nothing else to offer.
“Thank you,” he accepted quickly. She did not notice his eyes going round the room, seeing how bare it was, how every article was old and loved, polished by owner after owner, and mended where use had worn it down.
He knew her too well to play with gentilities. He could remember her sneaking the newspaper from the butler’s pantry when her father would not allow her to read it. He had always treated her as a friend, a strong friend, rather than as a woman. It was one of the things that used to hurt.
“Did Thomas tell you about the grave robbing?” he asked suddenly and baldly.
She was filling the kettle at the sink. “Yes.” She kept her voice level.
“Did he tell you much?” he went on. “That it was a man called Lord Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond, and that they dug him up twice and left him where he was bound to be found quickly—the second time in his own pew in church, where it would be his family who saw him?”
“Yes, he told me.” She turned off the tap and set the kettle on the stove. She could not think what to offer him to eat at this time of day. He was bound to have lunched, and it was far too early for afternoon tea. She had nothing elegant. In the end she settled for biscuits she had made, sharp, with a little ginger in them.
He was looking at her, his eyes following her round the room, anxious. “They did a postmortem. Thomas insisted on it, even though I begged him not to—”
“Why?” She met his eyes and tried to keep all guile out of her face. She knew he had come for some kind of help, but she could not give it if she did not understand the truth, or at least as much of it as he knew himself.
“Why?” He repeated her question as if he found it strange.
“Yes.” She sat down opposite him at the scrubbed table. “Why do you mind if they do a postmortem?”
He realized he had not told her about his connection with the family and assumed that that was why she was confused. She could see the thoughts crossing his mind and was surprised how easily she read them. In Cater Street he had seemed mysterious, private, and out of reach.
She allowed the mistake.
“Oh,” he acknowledged his omission. “I forgot to explain—I know Lady Alicia Fitzroy-Hammond, the widow. I met her at a ball some little time ago; we became—” He hesitated, and she knew he was debating whether to tell her the truth or not; not from any sensitivity to old feelings, because he had never been aware of them, but from a habitual delicacy in discussing such things. One did not speak freely of a relationship with a recent widow, still less of another man’s wife. Personal emotion of any sort was hinted at, rather than named.
She smiled very slightly, allowing him to flounder.
He met her eyes, and memory was too strong for him. “—friends,” he finished. “In fact, I hope to marry her—when a decent time has passed.”
She was glad she had been prepared for it; somehow it would have been a shock if it had come without any warning. Was her resentment for Sarah’s memory, or for her own, a final shedding of girlhood dreams?
She forced her mind back to the disinterment. “Then why do you mind there being a postmortem?” she asked frankly. “Are you afraid it will uncover something wrong?”
His face colored, but he remained looking at