The Cater Street Hangman - Anne Perry [91]
It seemed not to occur to him to lie. The colour came to his face painfully now, but he did not look away.
“Yes, I liked her. She was very—uncomplicated. Sarah can be desperately stuffy sometimes.”
“So can you,” she said brutally, and to her own surprise. A new, angry thought occurred to her, and as soon as it was in her head, it, too, was on her tongue. “How would you feel if Sarah went and made love to Maddock?”
His face dropped in amazement. “Don’t be ridiculous!”
“What’s ridiculous about it?” she asked coolly. “You lay with the maid, didn’t you? Lily wasn’t even a butler, just a maid!”
“Sarah wouldn’t dream of such a thing; she isn’t a trollop. It’s extraordinary and degrading of you to have said it, even in fun.”
“The last thing I intended was to be funny! Why are you insulted that I should speak of it hypothetically for Sarah, and yet you can admit it of yourself without any shame at all? You’re not ashamed, are you!”
The colour came back again to his face, and for the first time he looked away from her.
“I’m not very proud of it.”
“Because of Sarah, or because Lily’s dead?” Why was she suddenly seeing him with such clarity? It was painful, like morning light on the skin, showing all the flaws.
“You don’t understand,” he said exasperatedly. “When you’re married, you will.”
“Understand what?”
“That. . . .” He stood up. “That men—men sometimes go—”
He stopped, unable to finish it delicately.
She finished it for him.
“That you have one set of rules for yourselves, and another for us,” she said tartly. Her throat hurt, as if she wanted to cry. “You demand perfect loyalty from us, but feel free to give your own love wherever you like—”
“It’s not love!” he exploded. “For God’s sake, Charlotte—”
“What? It’s appetite? License?”
“You don’t understand!”
“Then explain it to me.”
“Don’t be naive. You are not a man. If you were married you would perhaps understand that men are different. You can’t apply women’s feelings, women’s rules to a man.”
“I can apply rules of loyalty and honour to anybody.”
He was angry now. “This has nothing to do with loyalty or honour! I love Sarah; at least, God help me, I did until she”—suddenly his face was white—“until she started to think I could be the hangman.” He was staring at her and she could see helplessness and pain in his eyes.
She stood up also, and without thinking she put her hand out to touch him, catching his hand. He clung to it.
“Charlotte, she does! She clearly said so!”
“She believed Emily,” she said quietly. “And perhaps she knew about Lily as well.”
“But for God’s sake! That’s hardly the same as murdering four helpless girls and leaving their bodies in the street!”
“If she knew about Lily, and believes something about me, then you have hurt her. Perhaps she merely wanted to hurt you back?”
“But that’s preposterous! She can’t be so hurt—that—” He stared at her.
She looked back gravely. “I would be. If I’d given you all my love, my heart and body, and been loyal to you and thought of no one else, I would be hurt beyond anything I could imagine if I knew you had slept with my maid, and if I thought you had courted my sister. I might hurt you as deeply as I could. If you could betray me that way, murder might not seem so very much worse.”
“Charlotte!” his voice cracked a little and went higher. “Charlotte, you can’t think that? Oh, please heaven! I mean, I didn’t—I never hurt anyone!” He grabbed at her hand again, holding it so tightly he crushed her fingers.
She did not pull away.
“Except Sarah, and perhaps Lily? Did she love you, too, or are maids allowed to have appetites, like men?”
“Charlotte, for God’s sake don’t be sarcastic! Help me!”
“I don’t know how to!” She gave him, for a moment, an answering pressure of her own hand. “I can’t make Sarah feel differently; I can’t take back whatever she said, or make you forget she said it.”
He stood still for a long time, close to her, looking at her eyes, her face.
“No,” he said at last. He closed his eyes. “And dear God,” he said very softly, “you can’t make