Southampton Row (16 page)

Vespasia nodded so fractionally it was barely visible. “Charles Voisey is standing for Parliament. He is head of the Inner Circle.” She did not bother to explain any further. She must have seen in Emily’s face that she understood the enormity of it.

“Oh God!” Emily said involuntarily. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, my dear, I am perfectly sure.”

“And . . . Thomas knows it!”

“Yes. That will be why Victor Narraway has canceled his leave and no doubt ordered him to do all he can to block Voisey’s path, although I doubt he will be able to. Only once has anyone ever beaten Voisey before.”

“Who was that?” Hope flowed up inside Emily, making her heart pound in her chest.

Vespasia smiled. “A friend of mine named Mario Corena, but it cost him his life. And he had a little assistance from Thomas and myself. Mario is beyond Voisey’s reach, but Voisey will not have forgiven Thomas, and perhaps not me, either. I think it would be wise, my dear, if you did not write to Charlotte while she is away.”

“Is the danger really so . . .” Emily found her mouth dry, her lips stiff.

“Not as long as he does not know where she is.”

“But she cannot stay in Dartmoor forever!”

“Of course not,” Vespasia agreed. “But by the time she returns the election will be over, and perhaps we will have found a way to tie Voisey’s hands.”

“He won’t win, will he? It’s a safe Liberal seat,” Emily protested. “Why is he fighting for that, and not for a Tory seat? It doesn’t make sense.”

“You are wrong,” Vespasia said very quietly. “It is simply sense that we have not yet understood. Everything Voisey does makes sense. I don’t know how he will defeat the Liberal candidate, but I believe he will.”

Emily was cold in spite of the sun pouring through the windows into the quiet room. “The Liberal candidate is a friend of mine. I came because of his wife. She was one of the last clients of Maude Lamont, the spirit medium who was murdered in Southampton Row. She was there that night. Thomas is investigating it, and I think I may know something.”

“Then you must tell him.” There was no hesitation in Vespasia’s voice, no doubt at all.

“But Rose is my friend, and I learned those things only because she trusted me. If I betray a friend, what have I left?”

This time Vespasia did not answer straightaway.

Emily waited.

“If you have to choose between friends,” Vespasia said at last, “and both Rose and Thomas are such, then you must choose neither, but follow your own conscience. You cannot place one set of obligations or loyalties before another with regard to people, their closeness to you, the depth of their hurt, their innocence or their vulnerability, or the degree of their trust in you. You must do what your own conscience dictates to be right. Serve your own truth.”

She had not said so, but Emily had no doubt in her mind that Vespasia meant that she should tell Thomas all she knew.

“Yes,” she said aloud. “Perhaps I knew that, it was just hard to acknowledge it, because then I have to do it.”

“Do you believe Rose may have killed this woman?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I do.”

They sat without speaking for several minutes, then finally discussed other things: Jack’s campaign, Mr. Gladstone and Lord Salisbury, the extraordinary phenomenon of Keir Hardie and the possibility that one day he might actually succeed in reaching Parliament. Then Emily thanked Vespasia again, kissed her lightly on the cheek, and bade her good-bye.

She reached home and went upstairs to change into a suitable gown for dinner, even though she was not going out. She was in her own sitting room when Jack came in. His face was tired and there was a pale film of dust around the bottoms of his trousers, as if he had walked outside on the pavements for some distance.

She stood up to greet him with unaccustomed haste, as if he brought news, although she did not expect anything but the trivia of the campaign, much of which she could gain from the daily papers, had she considered it of sufficient importance.

“How is it progressing?” she asked him, searching his eyes, which were wide and gray with the remarkable lashes she had always admired. She saw in them pleasure at the sight of her, a warmth she had long known and held so dear it still startled her. But too close beneath it for safety she saw anxiety, deeper than before. She said quickly, “What’s happened?”

He was reluctant to answer. The words did not come readily to him, and usually they did so easily; that in itself chilled her.

“Aubrey?” she whispered, thinking of Vespasia’s warning. “He might lose, mightn’t he? Are you going to care very much?”

He smiled, but it was deliberate, a gesture to reassure her. “I like him,” he said honestly, sitting down in the chair opposite her, relaxing with his legs out. “And I think with a little more practicality he’d be a fine member. Anyway, we need a few dreamers.” He gave a slight shrug. “It would balance out the journeymen who want office only for what it can profit them.”

She knew he was hiding the real hurt it would be if Aubrey failed. It was Jack who had encouraged him in the beginning, even opened up much of the pathway for his nomination, and supported him after it. He had made it seem casual, as he did so many things, still keeping that instinctive manner of a man who took things lightly, who dabbled more than he worked, to whom nothing mattered so much as comfort, popularity, good food and good wine, and graciousness around him. He had always appreciated beauty and to flirt was as natural to him as drawing breath. The finality of marriage to a woman who would never turn the other way, or refuse to see what was uncomfortable to her, was the hardest decision he had ever made, and at times he also knew it was the best.

Emily had been careful never to tell him that she was very adept at seeing only what was prudent. She had done it with her first husband, George Ashworth, and when she had thought he had betrayed her, not simply physically but with love of the heart, it had wounded her more deeply than all her sophistication had led her to expect. She had no intention of allowing Jack to think he could do the same. She knew the strength in him and the hunger for a purpose as consuming as that which drove Pitt. It was the fear he would not match up to it which made him appear to treat it so lightly. She realized now with a startling pain that she would do anything in her power to protect him from failure.

“Rose was at the house of the spirit medium the night she was murdered,” she said guardedly. “Thomas went to question her. She’s terrified, Jack!”

His face darkened. This time he could not hide the tension tightening inside him. He straightened up in the chair, the ease gone. “Thomas! Why Thomas? He’s not in Bow Street anymore.”

It was not the response she had expected, but now that she heard it, it was the one she feared. The rest, the questions, the criticism for lack of thought, for selfishness, would come later.

“Emily?” His voice was harsher, afraid she knew something she was not telling him, and for once she did not.

“I don’t know!” she said, meeting his eyes squarely. “Charlotte won’t tell me. I have to suppose it’s political, otherwise Thomas wouldn’t be there.”

Jack put his hands up over his face, then ran his fingers through his hair, blinking slowly.

Emily waited, her throat tight. Rose was hiding something. Could it hurt Aubrey, and through Aubrey—Jack? She stared at him, afraid to prompt.

He looked paler, even more tired. It was as if the bloom of youth had gone from him and suddenly she saw how he might look in ten, even twenty, years’ time.

He stood up, turning away from her, and took a step or two towards the window. “Davenport advised me today to distance myself a little from Aubrey, for my own good,” he said very quietly.

She could hear the silence as if it were tangible. The evening light outside was golden on the trees. “And what did you say?” she asked. She would hate either answer. If he had refused then his name would continue to be linked with Aubrey Serracold, and of course Rose. If Aubrey remained as extreme as he seemed at the moment, if he said more and more what was idealistic but naive, then his opponent would capitalize on it and make him appear an extremist who would at best be useless, at worst a danger. And Jack would be tarred with the same brush, dragged down by association, ideas and principles he could never be charged with so he could refute them, but by which he would be judged just the same, and just as fatally.

And if Rose were in any way involved in the medium’s death, then that would damage them all also, never mind what the truth of it was. People would remember only that she was part of it.

Yet if Jack had agreed to Davenport’s suggestion and already stepped aside, to save himself, leaving Aubrey to fight alone, what would she think of that? There was a price at which safety cost too much; and loyalty was part of it. Maybe that was even true politically? If you abandoned your friends so easily, on whom could you count when you needed them yourself? And one day you would!

She looked at his broad shoulders, his perfectly tailored coat, the back of his head so familiar she knew every curl of his hair, the way it grew in the nape of his neck, and she realized how little she was certain of what he thought. What would he do to save his seat, if the temptation arose? For a blinding moment she envied Charlotte because she had seen Pitt face so many decisions that drove him to the end of his self-knowledge, his compassion and judgment. She knew already what lay beyond the tested, because it was the pattern of his nature. Jack was charming and funny, gentle with her, and as far as she knew, loyal. He certainly had an honesty she admired, and resolution in a cause. But beyond that—when faced with real loss, what then?

“What did you say to him?” she repeated.

“I told him I can’t abandon anyone without a reason,” he replied with an edge to his voice. “I think there may be one, but by the time I know it, it will be too late.” He looked back at her. “Why in God’s name did she go to a medium now? She isn’t a fool! She must know what interpretation people will put in it.” He groaned. “I can imagine the cartoons! And knowing Aubrey, he might well tell her privately that she’s irresponsible and he’s furious with her, but he’ll not do it in public, even by implication. No matter what it costs him he’ll be seen to defend her.” He turned back to her. “For that matter, why did she go to a medium at all? I can understand a public entertainment—hundreds of people go—but a private séance?”

“I don’t know! I asked her, and she lost her temper with me.” She dropped her voice. “Whatever it is, it’s not entertainment, Jack. It’s not lighthearted. I think she’s trying to find out something and it terrifies her.”

His eyes widened. “From a spirit medium? Has she taken leave of her senses?”

“Possibly.”

He stood still. “You mean that?”

“I don’t know what I mean,” she said impatiently. “We’ve only a few days to go before they begin voting. Every day’s newspaper matters. There’s no time to correct mistakes and win people over again.”

“I know.” He moved back towards her, putting an arm around her lightly, but she could feel an anger inside him, wound up and aching to burst out, but with no direction in which to strike.

After a few more minutes he excused himself and went upstairs to change, then returned within half an hour and dinner was served. They sat at opposite sides of the table rather than at the ends. The light glittered on the cutlery and glass, and beyond the long windows the fading sun still glinted gold on the windows of the houses opposite.

The footman removed the plates and brought the next course.

“Will you hate it if I lose?” Jack said suddenly.

She stopped with her fork in the air. She swallowed hard, as if there were an obstruction in her throat. “Do you think you might? Is that what Davenport says will happen if you won’t abandon Aubrey?”

“I don’t know,” he said frankly. “I’m not sure if I’m prepared to pay the price in friendship that power costs. I resent being placed where I have to choose. I resent the hypocrisy of it, the cutting and trimming until you’ve paid so much you hang on to your prize because you’ve given up everything else in order to get it. Where is the point at which you say ‘I won’t do it—I’ll let it all go rather than pay this one thing more?’ ” He looked at her as if he expected an answer.

“When you have to say something you don’t believe,” she offered.

He gave a sharp laugh, bitter-edged. “And am I going to be honest enough with myself to know when that is? Am I going to look at what I don’t want to see?”

She said nothing.

“What about silence?” he went on, his voice rising, his plate forgotten. “What about compromised abstention? Judicious blindness? Passing by on the other side? Or perhaps Pilate washing his hands would be the right image?”

“Aubrey Serracold is not Christ,” Emily pointed out.

“My own honor is the point,” he said sharply. “What do I have to become to win office? And then what to keep it? If it weren’t Aubrey, would it be someone else, or something?” He looked at her challengingly, as if he wanted an answer from her.

“And what if Rose did kill this woman?” she asked. “And if Thomas finds out?”

He said nothing. He looked so wretched for an instant she wished she had not spoken, but the question beat at her mind, echoing all the other things it brought with it. How much should she tell Thomas, and when? Should she make more effort to find out herself? Above all, how could she protect Jack? What was the greatest danger, loyalty to a damaged cause and the risk to his own seat? Or disloyalty and an office perhaps bought at the cost of part of himself? Did he owe it to anyone to go down with him?

Suddenly she was overwhelmingly angry that Charlotte was in some country cottage in Dartmoor with nothing to do but domestic chores, simple, physical things, no decisions to make, and where Emily could not ask her opinion and share all this with her.

But had Aubrey any idea of what was really going on? She saw his face sharp and clear in her mind with its quizzical innocence, the feeling she had that he was so open to pain.

It was not her job to protect him! It was Rose’s, and why was she not doing it instead of going on some wild pursuit of voices from the dead? What could she possibly need to know that mattered a damn now?