Traitors Gate - Anne Perry [181]
“They count on your secrecy to protect them,” she said more softly. “They count on your not breaking your promises, even when you gave them without being aware what they would lead to, or that you might compromise yourself, and betray what you most believe in, your own honor, in their keeping.” Her expression hardened into contempt and the anger returned. “And of course they also count on fear….”
“Well, I’m not afraid!” he said furiously, turning back towards the steps up into the club. He was too angry to be frightened. They had taken him for a fool, and even worse than that, they had betrayed his belief in them. They had pretended to espouse all the things in which he most dearly believed, honor and openness, candor, high-minded courage, valor to defend the weak, the true spirit of leadership which was the Englishman’s heritage. They had shown him an Arthurian vision, made him believe something of himself, and then they had perverted it into a thing that was soiled, dangerous and ugly. It was an insupportable outrage, and he would not be party to it!
He strode up the steps, hardly aware of Charlotte behind him, swung the doors open and made his way across the foyer without a word to the doorman. He pushed his way through the drawing room doors and accosted the first steward he saw.
“Where is Mr. Hathaway? I know he is here today, so don’t prevaricate with me. Where is he?”
“S-sir, I—I think …”
“Don’t trifle with me, my good man,” Eustace said between his teeth. “Tell me where he is!”
The steward looked at Eustace’s gimlet eyes and rapidly purpling cheeks and decided discretion was definitely the better part of valor.
“In the blue room, sir.”
“Thank you,” Eustace acknowledged him, turning on his heel to march back into the foyer. Only then did he remember he was not sure which way the blue room was. “The blue room?” he demanded of a steward who appeared at the pantry door with a tray held up above his head in one hand.
“To your right, sir,” the steward answered with surprise.
“Good.” Eustace reached the door in half a dozen steps and threw it open. The blue room might once have lived up to its name, but now it was faded to a genteel gray, the heavy curtains blue only in the folds away from the sunlight which streamed in from four long, high windows looking onto the street. Through the decades the brilliance had bleached out of the carpet also, leaving it pink and gray and a green so soft as to be almost no color at all. Portraits of distinguished members from the past decorated the walls in discreet tones of sepia and umber, many of them from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In some the whiteness of a powdered wig was the only distinguishable feature.
Eustace had not been in here before. It was a room reserved for senior members, one of which he only aspired to be.
Hathaway was sitting in a large leather armchair reading the Times.
Eustace was too enraged even to consider the impropriety of what he was doing. Greater decencies had been blasphemed against. No one was going to be permitted to hide behind the conventions of a gentleman’s club. He stopped in front of Hathaway’s chair, put his hands on the Times and tore it away, dropping it to one side in a heap of crackling paper.
Every head in the room looked up at the noise. A whiskered general snorted with offense. A banker cleared his throat ostentatiously. A member of the House of Lords (who actually attended now and then) put down his glass in amazement. A bishop dropped his cigar.
Hathaway looked up at Eustace with considerable surprise.
“I am making a citizen’s arrest,” Eustace announced grimly.
“I say, old chap …” the banker began.
“Somebody robbed you, old boy?” the bishop asked mildly. “Pickpocket, what? Cutpurse?”
“Bit high-handed, taking a fellow’s newspaper,” the earl said, regarding Eustace with disfavor.
Hathaway was perfectly composed. He sat quite still in the chair, ignoring the wreck of his paper.
“What is it that has disturbed you so much, my dear fellow?” he said very