sitting huddled up inside Vespasia's carriage while the horses drew it slowly through the fog-blinded streets from Belgravia, past the Palace of Westminster, across the bridge, and along the far side of the south bank towards Bethlehem Road. It was bitterly cold, and the dead air hung motionless, moisture freezing as it touched the icy stones. Half of her was dreading arrival, and yet she was so cold and the decision so firm in her mind that delay was of no value, there was nothing else to turn over or consider, nothing that would change her resolve. Garnet Royce was not going to be permitted to close his mind to Naomi, or Elsie Draper, and convince himself he had acted justly.
The carriage stopped, and she heard the footman's steps as he descended and a moment later the carriage door opened. She took his hand and alighted. The fog was so thick she could barely see the streetiamps oh either side of her, and the houses on the far side of the street, no more than a slight darkening of the gray, curling vapors, a mark on the imagination.
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' 'Thank you. I am sorry to ask you to wait here, but I hope I shall not be long.'
'That's all right, ma'am,' Forbes replied from the gloom just beyond.' 'Her ladyship said we were to wait for you right outside the door, and we shall.'
Garnet Royce received her civilly enough, but his manner was distant and somewhat surprised. He had obviously forgotten her from her visit to Amethyst following Lockwood Hamilton's death, which was hardly surprising, and he now had no idea who she was. She did not waste time in niceties.
'I have come to see you, Sir Garnet, because I plan to write a book-about a certain religious movement, to which your wife Naomi Royce belonged, before she died.'
His face froze. 'My wife was a member of the Church of England, ma'am. You have been misinformed.'
'Not according to her letters,' she replied, equally coldly. 'She wrote several very personal, very tragic letters to a certain Lizzie Forrester, who was a member of the same movement. Miss Forrester emigrated to America, and the letters never reached her. They remained in this country, and have come into my hands.'
He remained stony-faced, his hand near the bell rope.
She must hurry before she was thrown out. She opened her reticule and pulled out the pages she had brought. She began to read, starting with Naomi's account of her husband's forbidding her to attend the church of her conviction and sending her to her room until she should comply with his wishes, and her vow that she would refuse to eat until he allowed her the freedom of her own conscience. When Charlotte came to the end she looked up at Royce. The contempt in his eyes was blistering, and his hands clenched in front of him in rage.
'I can only assume that you are threatening to make this a scandal if I do not pay you. Blackmail is an ugly and dangerous profession, and I would advise you to give me the
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letters and leave before you damn yourself by making threats.'
She saw the fear in him, and her own disgust hardened. She thought of Elsie Draper and a lifetime in Bedlam.
'I don't want anything from you, Sir Garnet,' she said, her voice so grating it hurt her throat. ' 'Except that you should know what you have done: you denied a woman the right to seek God in her own way and to follow her conscience in the manner of her belief. She would have obeyed you in all else! But you had to have everything, her mind and her soul. It would have been a scandal, wouldn't it? 'M.P.'s Wife Joins Extreme Religious Sect!' Your political party would have dropped you, all your Society friends! So you locked her in her room until she should obey you. Only you had not realized how passionately she believed, how strong she was-that she would die rather than renounce the truth she believed-and she did die!
' 'Oh how you must have panicked then. You sent for your brother to write a death certificate calling it scarlet fever'- she would not let him interrupt when he tried, raising her voice to drown him out-'and he agreed to do it, to avoid a scandal. 'M.P.'s Wife Commits Suicide in Locked Room! Did her husband drive her to it-or was she mad? Insanity in the family?'
'Only Elsie, loyal Elsie, wouldn't agree; she wanted to tell the truth-so you had her committed to Bedlam! Seventeen years in a madhouse, seventeen years of living death. No wonder when she got out she came hunting for you with a razor! God help her! If she wasn't mad when you put her in, she certainly was by the time she was allowed to leave!'
For many seconds of dreadful silence they stared at each other in mutual abhorrence. Then slowly his face
