Southampton Row - Anne Perry [10]
“A majority’s a majority,” Jack replied. “Twenty or thirty is still workable.”
Finch grunted. “No it isn’t! Not for long. We need fifty at least. Nice to have met you . . . Pitt? Pitt, did you say? Good Tory name. Not a Tory, are you?”
Pitt smiled. “Shouldn’t I be?”
Finch looked at him, his light blue eyes suddenly very direct. “No, sir, you shouldn’t. You should look towards the future and steady, wise reform. No self-interested conservatism that will alter nothing, remain fixed in the past as if it were stone. And no harebrained socialism that would alter everything, good and bad alike, as if it were all written in water and the past meant nothing. This is the greatest nation on earth, sir, but we still need much wisdom at the helm if we are to keep it so in these changing times.”
“In that at least I can agree with you,” Pitt replied, keeping his voice light.
Finch hesitated a moment, then bade him good-bye and left, walking briskly, his shoulders hunched as if he were fighting his way through a crowd, although in fact he passed only a waiter with a tray.
Pitt was following Jack out of the dining room when they all but bumped into the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, on his way in. He was dressed in a pinstriped suit, his long, rather sad face full-bearded, but almost bald to the crown of his head. Pitt was so fascinated that it was a moment before he looked fully at the man a step behind him, but obviously in his company. His features were strong, intelligent, his nose a trifle crooked, his skin pale. For an instant their eyes met and Pitt was frozen by the power of hatred he saw looking back at him, as if they were the only two in the room. All the noise of talk, laughter, clink of glass and crockery vanished. Time was suspended. There was nothing but the will to hurt, to destroy.
Then the present rolled back like a wave, human, busy, argumentative, self-absorbed. Salisbury and his companion went in; Pitt and Jack Radley went out. They were twenty yards down the corridor before Jack spoke.
“Who was that with Salisbury?” he asked. “You know him?”
“Sir Charles Voisey,” Pitt replied, startled to hear how his voice rasped. “Prospective Parliamentary candidate for Lambeth South.”
Jack stopped. “That’s Serracold’s constituency!”
“Yes,” Pitt replied steadily. “Yes . . . I know that.”
Jack let out his breath very slowly; understanding filled his face, and the beginning of fear.
CHAPTER
TWO
Pitt found the house uniquely lonely without Charlotte and the children. He missed the warmth, the sound of laughter, excite-ment, even the occasional quarreling. There was no clatter of Gracie’s heels on the floor, or her wry comments, only the two cats, Archie and Angus, curled up asleep in the patches of sun that came through the kitchen windows.
But when he remembered the hatred in Voisey’s eyes, relief washed over him with an intensity that caught his breath that they were out of London, far away where neither Voisey nor any of the Inner Circle would find them. A small cottage in a country hamlet on the edge of Dartmoor was as safe as anywhere possible. That knowledge left him free to do all he could to stop Voisey from winning the seat and beginning the climb to a power which would corrupt the conscience of the land.
Although as he sat at the kitchen table over breakfast of toast he had definitely scorched, homemade marmalade and a large pot of tea, he was daunted by a task so nebulous, so uncertain. There was no mystery to solve, no explanation to unravel, and too little specific to seek. His only weapon was knowledge. The seat Voisey was contesting had been Liberal for years. Whose vote did he hope to sway? He was standing for the Tories, the only alternative to the Liberals with any chance of forming a government, even though the majority opinion was that this time Mr. Gladstone would win, even if his