Southampton Row - Anne Perry [69]
Even if that was not what Gladstone wanted at all, she had still feared that Jack could be tempted, misled. Why did she not trust him to see the snare before it closed? Was it his skill she doubted? Or his strength to see the prize in his grasp and turn away from it? Would he rationalize, justify? Wasn’t that what politics was all about—the art of the possible?
She had once been the ultimate pragmatist herself. Why was this any different? How had she changed from the brittle, ambitious young woman she used to be? Even as she asked, she knew that the answer had to do with the tragedies, the weakness and the victims of the spirit she had seen in some of the cases Thomas had worked on, and on which she and Charlotte had helped. She had seen ambition bent to evil, the blindness of a vision confuse the ends and the means. It was not as easy as it had once looked. Even those who meant only to do good could so easily be beguiled.
Jack kissed her gently and went to the door, wishing her good-night. He knew he could not say when he would be back. She nodded, agreeing not to wait up for him, knowing that she would. What point was there in trying to sleep while she did not know what Gladstone wanted . . . and how Jack had answered him?
She heard his footsteps cross the hall and the front door open and close.
The footman asked her if she wished to be served the rest of the meal. He had to repeat it before she declined.
“Apologize to Cook for me,” she said. “I cannot eat until I know what news there is.” She wanted to be civil but not explain herself. She had long ago learned a little courtesy could be returned tenfold.
She decided to wait in the withdrawing room. She had brought a copy of Nada the Lily, the very latest book by H. Rider Haggard. It was lying on the table where she had left it nearly a week ago. Perhaps if she read it, it would absorb her attention and the time would pass less painfully.
In snatches it did. For half an hour she would be caught in the passions and the pain of life in Zulu Africa, then her own fear resurfaced and she rose to her feet and paced up and down, her mind darting from one thing to another, nothing resolved. What was the funny, brave Rose Serracold so determined to know that she pursued the services of a spiritualist, even to destruction? She was obviously afraid. Was it for herself, or Aubrey, or someone else? Why could it not wait until after the election? Was she so sure Aubrey would win that she believed she could not find it after that? Or would it then be too late?
It was easier to think of that than to worry about Jack, and why Gladstone had sent for him.
She sat down and opened the book again, and read the same page twice, and still knew nothing of the sense of it.
She must have looked at the clock two dozen times before at last she heard the front door close and Jack’s familiar footsteps cross the hall. She picked up her book, so that he should see her lay it aside as he came into the room. She smiled up at him.
“Would you like Morton to fetch you something?” she asked, half stretching her hand towards the bell. “How was the meeting?”
He hesitated for a moment, then he smiled. “Thank you for waiting up.”
She blinked, feeling the color warm in her cheeks.
His smile widened; it was the same charm, the slight annoyance mixed with laughter, that she had loved in him in the beginning, even when she had thought him trivial, no more than entertaining.
“I’m not waiting up for you!” she retorted, trying not to let her lips answer the smile, and knowing it was in her eyes. “I’m waiting to hear what Mr. Gladstone had to say. I have a lively interest in politics.”
“Then I suppose I had better tell you,” he conceded with a sweep of generosity,