than he was worth, and dismissed without a character.”
“Wouldn’t that be very foolish?” Charlotte questioned. “If I had a servant privy to family secrets, I would want him close by me, not looking for work elsewhere, and with a grudge… a justifiable one at that.”
Vespasia shook her head very slightly. “My dear, a man of Ferdinand Garrick’s stature does not stoop to explain himself, and prospective employers do not ask a servant they are considering what his reasons were for his actions. They would simply accept that he had threatened Garrick with loose talk of family matters. Indiscretion is the ultimate sin in a personal servant. It would have been less severe if he had taken the family silver rather than the family reputation. One can always buy more silver, or even if the worse comes to the worst, survive without it. No one survives without a reputation.”
Charlotte knew Vespasia was right. “I still need to know what happened to Martin,” she persisted. “If he was simply dismissed, why didn’t he tell Tilda? Especially if it was unfair.”
“I don’t know,” Vespasia admitted, nodding to an acquaintance who had seen her and doffed his hat. She looked quickly at Charlotte, so the man did not take her acknowledgment as an invitation to join them. “I think you are right to be concerned.”
“What is Ferdinand Garrick like, apart from being religiously unsufferable?” Charlotte wriggled her foot, hoping the blister had eased a little. It had not.
“For goodness’ sake, child, take your boot off!” Vespasia told her.
“Here?” Charlotte said in amazement.
Vespasia smiled. “You will make less of a spectacle of yourself removing a boot than you will by hobbling the length of the row back to my carriage. People will think you are intoxicated. I do not know Ferdinand Garrick well, nor do I wish to. He is a type of man I do not care for. He is devoid of humor, and I have come to believe that a sense of humor is almost the same thing as a sense of proportion.” She watched with pleasure as a loose-limbed puppy capered about, throwing up gravel with its feet. “It is the absurdity of disproportion which makes us laugh,” she continued. “There is something innately funny in punctured self-importance, in the positioning side by side of that which is incongruous. If everything in the world were suitable, appropriate, it would be unbearably tedious. Without laughter, something in life is lost.” She smiled, but there was sudden, deep sorrow in her eyes. “Sanity, perhaps,” she said quietly.
Then she lifted her chin. “But I shall find Ferdinand Garrick and see what I can discern. I have nothing more interesting to do, and certainly nothing more important. Perhaps that is the ultimate absurdity?” The puppy had disappeared across the grass, and she was regarding a man and woman who looked to be in their fifties, exquisitely dressed in the height of fashion, walking down the middle of the pathway, nodding graciously to either side of them as they saw people they knew. They acknowledged some and looked through others, now and again hesitating until they had glanced at each other and made up their minds.
“Filling your time with games,” Vespasia remarked. “And imagining they matter, because you can think of nothing that does. Or you can, but do not do it.”
“Aunt Vespasia,” Charlotte said tentatively.
Vespasia turned to look at her, enquiry in her eyes.
“I know you would not like to think that Mr. Ryerson killed Lovat,” Charlotte said. “Or even that he deliberately helped Miss Zakhari with the intention that she should get away with murdering him, but facing the worst, what do you really believe?” She saw Vespasia smile. “We cannot defend against the worst if we do not acknowledge what it is,” she pointed out, but gently, aware of Vespasia’s affections. “What kind of man is he, not just what the police will find, but what you know?”
Vespasia was silent for so long that Charlotte thought she was not going to answer. She stopped waiting for her to speak and bent over to finish unbuttoning her boot. She eased it off painfully. There was a hole in the heel of her stocking, which was what had caused the problem. The skin was raw, but it was not yet bleeding.
She felt a touch on her arm and looked up. Vespasia was holding out a large silk handkerchief and a tiny pair of nail scissors.
“If you cut the stocking off, and tie the silk around your foot,” she said, “it will enable you to get home with a minimum of additional damage.”
Charlotte thought of the appearance of the colored silk above her boot if her skirt swung wide.
“Smile,” Vespasia advised. “Better to be noted for eccentric footwear than a sour expression. Besides, who are you going to encounter here that you will ever see again, and whose opinion you would care about in the slightest?”
“No one,” Charlotte agreed, smiling far more broadly than the invitation had suggested. “Thank you.”
“You are very delicate in your questions, my dear.” Vespasia looked at the far trees, only the odd leaf here and there touched by the warm colors of autumn. “But you are quite right. Saville Ryerson is a man of deep emotions, impulsive, and… and physical.” She bit her lip very slightly. “He lost his wife in a miserable mischance of fortune in ’71, but it was more than that; there was a betrayal involved, although I do not know what, and I certainly do not know by whom.” She dropped her voice even lower. “He was furiously angry, even before her death. Not only did he grieve for her, and that he had not been able to save her, but he felt a guilt that he then could never take back the things he had said, even though he believed they were true.”
Charlotte finished rebuttoning her boot. “That must have been very hard. But Lovat could have had nothing to do with it, surely? It happened over twenty years ago.”
“Nothing whatsoever,” Vespasia agreed. “I tell you only so you may know more closely what kind of man he is. He remained alone from that time onward. He served his party and his constituents. They were hard taskmasters, capricious, demanding much and giving little-at times not even loyalty. But the best of them loved him, and he knew it. But it wearied him to the soul, and he did it alone.” She made a slight, deprecatory gesture with her pale, gloved hand. “I do not mean he abstained from satisfying his desires, of course, simply that he was discreet, and he had little if any involvement of the emotions.”
“Until Ayesha Zakhari…”
“Exactly. And a passionate man who neither gives nor receives anything for himself for over two decades, when he does fall in love, is going to do so with great violence, greater than he understands or can master. He becomes uniquely vulnerable.” She said it softly, as if she had seen the reality of it herself.
“Yes…” Charlotte said thoughtfully, trying to picture it in her mind, imagine the waiting, the loneliness over years, and then the power of feeling when finally it came.
“What I do not understand,” Vespasia countered, her voice suddenly sharp and very practical again, “is why the woman shot Lovat. Given that he was not a particularly pleasant man and that he may have been annoying her, why on earth did she not simply ignore him? If he really was a nuisance, why didn’t she send for the police?”
A far uglier thought came to Charlotte’s mind. “Perhaps he was blackmailing her, possibly over something that happened in Alexandria and which he threatened to tell Ryerson? Which would account for why she could not trust him with the truth.”
Vespasia looked down at the grass at her feet. “Yes,” she admitted reluctantly. “Yes, that would not be impossible to believe. I hope profoundly that it is not true. One would have thought she would have more sense than to do it on a night when she expected Ryerson to come. But perhaps circumstances did not allow her that choice.”
“That would also explain why she still does not confide in anyone,” Charlotte added, hating her thoughts, but certain it was better to say it all aloud now than let it run in her mind unanswered, but just as insistent. “Although I cannot imagine what it would be, other than some plan to compromise Ryerson… to do with his position in the government.”
“A spy?” Vespasia said. “Or I suppose an agent provocateur would be more correct. Poor Saville-set up to be betrayed again.” She drew in a very long, slow breath and let it out in a sigh. “How fragile we are.” She started to rise to her feet. “How infinitely easy to hurt.”
Charlotte stood up quickly and offered her arm.
“Thank you,” Vespasia said dryly. “I weep inside for the pain of a man I have liked, but I am perfectly capable of standing up on my own-and I have no blisters. Perhaps you would care for my arm… to assist you as far as my carriage? I should be happy to take you back to Keppel Street… if that is where you are going?”
Charlotte bit back her smile, at least half back. “That is very good of you,” she accepted, taking Vespasia’s arm but leaning no weight upon it. “Yes, I am going home. Perhaps you would care for a cup of tea when we get there?”
