He forced his attention to where he was going, and why. If he did not learn who had diverted the money meant for Mulhare, anything else he learned about O’Neil was pointless. Someone in Lisson Grove had been involved. He blamed none of the Irish. They were fighting for their own cause, and at times he even sympathized with it. But the man in Special Branch who had done this had betrayed his own people, and that was different. He wanted to know who it was, and prove it. The damage he could cause would have no boundary. If he hated England enough to plan and execute a way of disgracing Narraway, then what else might he do? Was his real purpose to replace him? This whole business of Mulhare might be no more than a means to that end. But was it simply ambition, or was there another, darker purpose behind it as well?
Without realizing it he increased his pace, moving so softly he almost passed the alley he was looking for. He turned and fumbled in the dark. He had to feel his way along one of the walls. Third door. He knocked sharply, a quick rhythm.
He had brought Charlotte because he wanted to, but she had her own compelling reasons to be here. If he was right, that there was a traitor in Lisson Grove, then one of the first things that person would do would be to get rid of Pitt. If Pitt was fortunate, he would simply be dismissed. There were much worse possibilities.
The door opened. He was let into a small, extremely stuffy office piled high with ledgers, account books, and sheaves of loose papers. A striped cat had claimed itself a space in front of the hearth and did not stir when Narraway came in and took a seat on a chair opposite the cluttered desk.
O’Casey sat in the chair behind it, his bald head gleaming in the gaslight.
“Well?” Narraway asked, masking his eagerness as closely as he could.
O’Casey hesitated.
Narraway considered threatening him. He still had power, albeit illegal now. He drew in his breath. Then he looked at O’Casey’s face again and changed his mind. He had few enough friends; he could not afford to alienate any of them.
“So what is it you expect of me, then?” O’Casey asked, cocking his head a little to one side. “I’ll not help you, not more than I owe. For old times’ sake. And that’s little enough.”
“I know,” Narraway agreed. There were wounds and debts between them, some still unpaid. “I need to know what’s changed for Cormac O’Neil—”
“For God’s sake, leave the poor man alone! Have you not already taken all he has?” O’Casey exclaimed. “You’ll not be after the child, will you?”
“The child?” For a moment Narraway was at a loss. Then memory flooded back. Kate’s daughter by Sean. She had been only a child, six or seven years old when her parents died. “Did Cormac raise her?” he asked.
“A little girl?” O’Casey squinted at him contemptuously. “Of course he didn’t, you fool. And what would Cormac O’Neil do with a six-year-old girl, then? Some cousin of Kate’s took her, Maureen, I think her name was. She and her husband. Raised her as their own.”
Narraway felt a stab of pity for the child—Kate’s child. That should never have happened.
“But she knows who she is?” he said aloud.
“Of course. Cormac would have told her, if no one else.” O’Casey lifted one shoulder slightly. “Although, of course, it might not be the truth as you know it, poor child. There are things better left unsaid.”
Narraway felt chilled. He had not thought of Kate’s daughter.
Looking back, even weeks afterward, he had known that Kate had crossed sides because she believed it was a doomed rising, and more Irishmen would die in it than English, far more. But she knew Sean as well. He had been willing enough to use her beauty to shame Narraway, even lead him to his death, but in his wildest imagination he had never considered that she might give herself willingly to Narraway or, worse, care for him.
And when she did, it was beyond Sean’s mind or heart to forgive. He had said he killed her for Ireland, but Narraway knew it was for himself, just as in the end Sean knew it too.
And Cormac? He had loved Kate also. Did he feel an Irishman bested in deviousness by an Englishman, in a fight where no one was fair? Or a man betrayed by a woman he wanted and could never have: his brother’s wife, who had sided with the enemy—for her own reasons, political or personal?
What had he told Talulla?
Could it possibly be anything new in the last few months? And if it were, how could she have moved the money from Mulhare’s account back to Narraway’s, using some traitor in Lisson Grove? Not by herself. Then with whom?
“Who betrayed Mulhare?” he asked O’Casey.
“No idea,” O’Casey answered. “And if I did know, I wouldn’t tell you. A man who’ll sell his own people deserves to have his thirty pieces of silver slip out of his hands. Deserves to have it put in a bag o’ lead around his neck, before they throw him into Dublin Bay.”
Narraway rose to his feet. The cat by the fire stretched out and then curled up on the other side.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Don’t come back,” O’Casey replied. “I’ll not harm you, but I’ll not help you either.”
“I know,” Narraway replied.
CHARLOTTE DID NOT HAVE the opportunity to speak at any length with Narraway after returning from the theater that night. She had hoped to tell him all that she had seen and learned there the following morning, but when they met for breakfast, the presence of others eating at nearby tables kept her from revealing what had transpired. Narraway said he had business to attend to, that he had heard from Dolina Pearse that Charlotte would be most welcome to attend the opening of an art exhibition, if she cared to, and to take tea with Dolina and her friends afterward. He had accepted on her behalf.
“Thank you,” she said a little coolly.
He caught the intonation, and smiled. “Did you wish to decline?” he asked, eyebrows raised.
