He opened his mouth to reply, dismissing her fears; suddenly the words died and a shadow touched his face. Then he banished it.
“One has to be careful, of course, but one doesn’t speak of state matters outside the Foreign Office itself.”
“And of course you know exactly whom to trust.” Charlotte made it more of a statement than a question. “I imagine treason begins little by little. First a small confidence elicited, perhaps by someone in love.” She glanced at Harriet and then back at Felix. “Personal loyalties can make such a mess of morality,” she said quietly, aware of what she herself was doing even at this moment, aware of friendship, the unwritten laws of hospitality-and of love that overrode them all. It was not that she thought she was right, or that love excused it, simply that it was elemental, as an animal protects its own.
There were spots of color in Felix’s pale cheeks. Sonia had stopped eating, and she clutched her fork in a white hand whose knuckles shone. Perhaps she was not as complacent as she seemed after all.
“I think you are-romanticizing, Miss Barnaby,” Felix said awkwardly.
Charlotte looked at him innocently. “Do you not believe in the strength of love to overcome judgment, Mr. Asherson, even for a moment?”
“I. .” He was caught. He smiled to cover his dilemma. “You press me to be ungallant, Miss Barnaby. Shall I say I know no woman, however charming, who would ask the questions I was not free to answer?”
For a moment Charlotte was beaten. But then if it were so easy, it would not have eluded her thus far.
“You don’t know the mysterious woman in cerise?” The words were out before she had time to judge them. She saw Jack’s eyes widen and Aunt Vespasia let her fork fall onto her place with a little click. Veronica held her breath, staring at Charlotte as if she had cast aside a mask to reveal a reptile’s form. Garrard’s face was bloodless, his skin yellow-gray.
It was Loretta who broke the silence, her voice grating in the stillness. “Really, Miss Barnaby, you have a taste for the melodramatic which is unfortunate at best. I think you would be well advised to reconsider your reading matter.” There was only the slightest quiver in her words, barely a tremble. Of course she did not know Charlotte had seen her face in the conservatory doorway. “You should not read novels of the trashier sort,” she continued. “They coarsen the taste.”
“I think she has been reading the newspapers,” Jack said hastily.
“Certainly not!” Charlotte lied with a touch of irony. “I heard it from a running patterer! It was quite unavoidable; he was crying it out all over the street. Apparently this marvelously beautiful woman led some poor diplomat into revealing secrets, and then betrayed him. She was a spy.”
“Rubbish!” Felix said loudly. He stared straight at Charlotte, avoiding even the slightest glance at Harriet or her father. He might have wavered had he looked at Garrard-his face was so ghastly he seemed to be suffering some physical pain. “Rubbish!” Felix said again. “My dear Miss Barnaby, running patterers make their living by entertaining the masses. They invent half of it, you know.”
For a moment the tension eased. Charlotte could feel it slipping away. She must not lose it: the murderer was here at this shining dinner table with its silver and crystal and white flowers.
“But not out of nothing!” she argued. “People do fall passionately in love-so deeply they would forfeit everything, betray all the old loyalties.” She looked round at their faces as if she were appealing to them. Veronica was numb, her dark eyes enormous, absorbed with some inner horror-or was it fear at last? Was she after all the real Cerise, and was that why Garrard had known Charlotte was an imposter? He had just left Veronica in the withdrawing room. He said he came only because he feared blackmail, but if that were so, why did he not marry her himself? Or had she tired of him and chosen his son instead? Perhaps Julian was her mistake, her weakness-she had loved in return. Or was Julian simply a way into a more powerful position? He was destined for higher things than his father, perhaps even a cabinet position.
Did Loretta know that, or had she guessed? Her face was ashen, but it was Garrard she stared at, not Veronica. Piers was confused; he did not understand the meaning of what had been said, but he knew the fear and the passion that was in the air. He looked like a soldier readying himself to face enemy fire.
Harriet looked wretched, embarrassed, and Sonia was pale with defeat.
Aunt Adeline spoke. “Miss Barnaby,” she said quietly. “I am sure such things do happen, from time to time. If we are capable of great feeling of any sort, there is always the chance it may lead to tragedy. But does it serve any good end that we should delve into it? Have we a right to know other people’s griefs?”
Charlotte felt the blood hot in her cheeks. She liked Adeline and she doubted she would ever be forgiven this total hypocrisy and deceit. “Not tragedy,” she agreed a little less steadily. “Not if it concerns no one else. But treason concerns us all. It is our country, our people, who are betrayed.”
Harriet put her hands up to her face, white with horror.
“There was no treason!” Felix shouted. “Good God, any man can fall in love unwisely!”
Harriet drew her breath in a gasp of anguish so sharp it was audible to all of them.
Felix swung round. “Harriet-that’s all! I swear, I never betrayed anything!”
Garrard looked as if he had been struck. Veronica gaped at Felix, her mouth open, her eyes like sockets in her head.
“Felix, you-and Cerise?” Loretta started to laugh, at first a gurgle in her throat, then it rose higher till it was out of control, on the brink of hysteria. “You-and Cerise! Do you hear that, Garrard? Do you?”
Garrard shot to his feet, upsetting wine and water over the cloth.
“No!” he cried desperately. “It’s not true! For God’s sake, stop. Stop!”
Felix looked at him, appalled. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, staring past his wife to Harriet. “I’m sorry, Harriet. God knows I tried!”
“What?” Julian demanded. “What the hell are you all talking about? Felix! Did you have an affair with this woman-this Cerise?”
Felix tried to laugh and it died in his throat. “No! No I didn’t-of_course I didn’t.” There was such bitter humor in his voice that he could only be speaking the truth. “No. I was trying to protect Garrard, for Harriet’s sake. Isn’t that obvious? Sonia-I’m sorry.”
No one bothered to ask why. The answer was only too obvious in Harriet’s face, and indeed in his own. That domestic tragedy was laid bare; there was no mystery left to uncover.
“Father?” Julian turned to Garrard. Now realization was coming to him, and a dawning of pain. “If you did have an affair with this woman, what does it matter? Unless. . you killed her.”
“No!” The cry came from Garrard like the howl of a mortally wounded animal. “I loved”-his voice dropped-“Cerise.” He glanced at Loretta with a hatred stripped of all its veneer of irony, weariness, disillusion. “God-damn-you!” The words were choked from him. There were no tears on his face, he was past weeping, but his pain pulsated through the brilliant lights and the glittering reflections.
There was thick silence. For a long, hot moment no one understood. Then at last Julian grasped the sword. “You betrayed the department,” he said very slowly. “You told Cerise about the Anglo-German partition of Africa. That’s what Felix was covering up for you! Because of Harriet!”
Garrard sat down very slowly, suddenly stiff. “No.” His voice had lost its fire of hate, everything had gone out of him. “Felix didn’t know I took the papers, only that I loved Cerise. But the secrets had nothing to do with Cerise.” He looked up again at Loretta, and all the passion of hate flooded back. “I took them for her!” he cried, his voice shaking. “She blackmailed me into it!”
“That’s ridiculous,” Piers said quietly. “For pity’s sake, man, don’t make it worse than it has to be. What on earth would Loretta want with secrets like that? Anyway, as I understand it, the negotiations are going very well. Aren’t they?”
“Yes.” Julian’s brow furrowed. “Yes they are. No one has used your wretched information!”
“Well then.” Piers sat back, his eyes touched with sadness. Perhaps his dreams of Loretta had died a long time ago. “Your charge doesn’t make sense.”
Charlotte remembered Loretta’s face in the conservatory doorway and knew that in her was the consuming passion of desire and rejection that governed this tragic, violent story. “Yes it does,” she said aloud. “The information wasn’t taken to be used in negotiations-”
“Ha!” Julian exploded derisively. He had seen hope and he clung to it.
“Something much more powerful.” Charlotte cut across him. “Once you have paid blackmail, you have to go on paying; you have put yourself in your blackmailer’s power. That was what she wanted-power. To exercise
