Treason at Lisson Grove - Anne Perry [46]
“You are invited to dinner this evening,” he said as soon as he was inside the room and the door closed. “It is at the home of John and Bridget Tyrone, whom I dare not meet yet. My friend Fiachra McDaid will escort you. I’ve known him a long time, and he will treat you with courtesy. Will you go … please?”
“Of course I will,” she said instantly. “Tell me something about Mr. McDaid, and about Mr. and Mrs. Tyrone. Any advantage I can have, so much the better. And what do they know of you? Will they be startled that you suddenly produce a half sister?” She smiled slightly. “Apart from someone looking for distant family in Ireland. And how well do you and I know each other? Do I know you work with Special Branch? We had better have grown up quite separately, because we know too little of each other. Even one mistake would arouse suspicion.”
He leaned against the doorjamb, hands in his pockets. He looked completely casual, nothing like the man she knew professionally. She had a momentary vision of how he must have been twenty years ago: intelligent, elusive, unattainable—but to some women that in itself was an irresistible temptation. Before her marriage, and occasionally since, she had known women for whom that was an excitement far greater than the thought of a suitable marriage, even than a title or money.
She stood still, waiting for his reply, conscious of her traveling costume and extremely untidy hair.
“My father married your mother after my mother died,” he began.
She was about to express sympathy, then realized she had no idea whether it was true, or if he was making it up for the story they must tell. Perhaps better she was not confused with the truth, whatever that was.
“By the time you were born,” he continued. “I was already at university—Cambridge—you should know that. That is why we know each other so little. My father is from Buckinghamshire, but he could perfectly well have moved to London, so you may have grown up wherever you did. Always better to stay with the truth where you can. I know that area. I would have visited.”
“What did he do—our father?” she asked. This all had an air of unreality about it, even ridiculousness, but she knew it mattered, perhaps vitally.
“He had land in Buckinghamshire,” he replied. “He served in the Indian army. You don’t need to have known him well. I didn’t.”
She heard the sharpness of regret in his voice. “He died some time ago. Keep the mother you have. You and I have become acquainted only recently. This trip is in part for that purpose.”
“Why Ireland?” she asked. “Someone is bound to ask me.”
“My mother was Irish,” he replied.
“Really?” She was surprised, but perhaps she should have known it.
“No.” This time he smiled fully, with both sweetness and humor. “But she’s dead too. She won’t mind.”
She felt a strange lurch of pity inside her, an intimate knowledge of loneliness.
“I see,” she said quietly. “And these relatives I am looking for—how is it that I remain here without finding them? In fact, why do I think to find them anyway?”
“Perhaps it is best if you don’t,” he answered. “You merely want to see Dublin. I have told you stories about it, and we have seized the excuse to visit. That will flatter them, and be easy enough to believe. It’s a beautiful city and has a character that is unique.”
She did not argue, but she felt that nothing very much would happen if she did not ask questions. Polite interest could be very easily brushed aside and met with polite and uninformative answers.
CHARLOTTE COLLECTED HER CAPE. They left Molesworth Street and in the pleasant spring evening walked in companionable silence the half mile to the house of Fiachra McDaid.
Narraway knocked on the carved mahogany door, and after a few moments it