Resurrection Row - Anne Perry [60]
“I was driving to win, not to please Lord Fleetwood,” Dominic said a little tartly. His eyes flickered over to Charlotte, almost as if he were aware of her thoughts and of what she herself would have said.
“That is a luxury we cannot afford.” St. Jermyn was not pleased, but he ironed it out of his face the moment after Charlotte had seen it, and a second later there was no trace at all. She judged that Dominic had not even noticed. “If we want Fleetwood’s help, it would not be clever to beat him too often,” St. Jermyn finished.
Dominic drew breath to retort, but Charlotte spoke before he did. He was not quick to anger, in fact, most agreeable; he seldom took a hard position on any issue, but on the rare occasions that he did, she could not recall his ever having changed it. It would be easy for him to commit himself now and then be unable to move when he regretted it.
“I don’t believe Mr. Corde will do that,” she said, forcing herself to smile across at St. Jermyn. “But surely Lord Fleetwood will take more notice of a man who has beaten him at least once? To come second to him hardly marks one from the crowd, or earns his interest.”
Dominic flashed her one of his beautiful smiles, and for an instant she remembered how she used to feel about him; then the present returned, and she was staring at St. Jermyn.
“Quite,” Dominic agreed. “I would like him to see the workhouse in Seven Dials, as I did. It would not be a sight he would forget in a hurry.”
Alicia was looking puzzled, a slight frown on her face. “What is so dreadful about the workhouse?” she asked. “You said there was poverty, but no legislation is going to get rid of that. Workhouses at least provide people with food and shelter. There have always been rich and poor, and even if you were to alter it with some miracle, in a few years, or less, it would all be the same again—wouldn’t it? If you give a poor man money, it does not make him a rich man for long—”
“You are more perceptive than perhaps you intend,” Carlisle said with a lifting of his brows. “But if you feed the children and keep them clean from disease and despair, so they survive into adulthood without stealing to live, and give them some sort of education, then the next generation is not quite so poor.”
Alicia looked at him, absorbing the idea, realizing that he was very serious.
“God! If you’d seen it!” Dominic said sharply. “You wouldn’t be standing here discussing academic niceties; you would want to get out there and do something!” He looked across at Charlotte. “Wouldn’t they?”
A look of pain shot cross Alicia’s face, and she moved almost imperceptibly away from him. Charlotte saw it and knew exactly what she felt, the sudden sense of alienation, of being shut out of something important to him.
Charlotte looked at him hard, making her voice clear and light. “I should imagine they would. It has certainly affected you that way. You are totally changed. But I hardly think it is a suitable place to take Lady Fitzroy-Hammond, from what I have heard. My husband would not permit me to go there.”
But Dominic would not be told, nor read her hint.
“He doesn’t need to take you,” he said heatedly. “You already know about such places and the people in them, and you care. I can remember you telling me about it years ago; but I didn’t really understand what you meant then.”
“I don’t think you were listening to me!” she said quite honestly. “It has taken you a long time to believe. You must permit others a little time as well.”
“There isn’t time!”
“Indeed, there isn’t, Mrs. Pitt,” St. Jermyn said, raising his glass. “My bill comes up in a few days. If we are to get it through, we will have to have our support then. There isn’t any time to waste. Corde, I’d be most obliged if you’d tackle Fleetwood tomorrow, or the day after at the latest?