she assured him.
“You could have been lost …”
“Then I would have asked for directions,” she said. “Please … there is no need to be concerned. If I’d had to walk a little out of my way to get here it wouldn’t have hurt me.”
“You could have …,” he began, then stopped, perhaps realizing that his fear was disproportionate. He let go of her. “I’m sorry. I …”
She looked at him. It was a mistake. For an instant his emotion was too plain in his eyes. She did not want to know that he cared so much. Now it would be impossible for either of them to pretend he did not love her, and she could not pretend she did not know.
She turned away, feeling the color burning on her skin. All words would be belittling the truth.
He stood still.
“I went to see Cormac O’Neil,” she said after a moment or two.
“What?”
“I was perfectly safe. I wanted to hear from him exactly what happened, or at least what he believes.”
“And what did he say?” he asked quickly, his voice cracking with tension.
She did not want to look at him, to intrude into old grief that was still obviously so sharp, but evasion was cowardly. She met his eyes and repeated to him what Cormac had said, including the fact that Talulla was Kate’s daughter.
“That’s probably how he sees it,” Narraway answered when she had finished. “I daresay he couldn’t live with the truth. Kate was beautiful.” He smiled briefly. In that moment she could imagine the man he had been twenty years earlier: younger, more virile, perhaps less wise.
“Few men could resist her,” he went on. “I didn’t try. I knew they were using her to trap me. She was brave, passionate …” He smiled wryly. “Perhaps a little short on humor, but far more intelligent than they realized. It sometimes happens when women are beautiful. People don’t see any further than that, especially men. It’s uncomfortable. We see what we want to see.”
Charlotte frowned, suddenly thinking of Kate, a pawn to others, an object of both schemes and desires. “Why do you say intelligent?” she asked.
“We talked,” he replied. “About the cause, what they planned to do. I persuaded her it would rebound against them, and it would have. The deaths would have been violent and widespread. Attacks like that don’t crush people and make them surrender. They have exactly the opposite effect. They would have united England against the rebels, who could have lost all sympathy from everyone in Europe, even from some of their own. Kate told me what they were going to do, the details, so I could have it stopped.”
Charlotte tried to imagine it, the grief, the cost.
“Who killed her?” she asked. She felt the loss touch her, as if she had known Kate more deeply than simply as a name, an imagined face.
“Sean,” he replied. “I don’t know whether it was for betraying Ireland, as he saw it, or betraying him.”
“With you?”
Narraway colored, but he did not look away from her. “Yes.”
“Do you know that, beyond doubt?”
“Yes.” His throat was so tight his voice sounded half strangled. “I found her body. I think he meant me to.”
She could not afford pity now. “Why are you sure it was Sean who killed her?” She had to be certain so she could get rid of the doubt forever. If Narraway himself had killed her it might, by some twisted logic of politics and terror, be what he had to do to save even greater bloodshed. She looked at him now with a mixture of new understanding of the weight he carried, and sorrow for what it had cost him: whether that was now shame, or a lack of it—which would be worse.
“Why are you sure it was Sean?” she repeated.
He looked at her steadily. “What you really mean is, how can I prove I didn’t kill her myself.”
She felt a heat of shame in her own face. “Yes.”
He did not question her.
“She was cold when I found her,” he replied. “Sean tried to blame me. The police would have been happy to agree, but I was with the viceroy in the residence in Phoenix Park at the time. Half a dozen staff saw me there, apart from the viceroy himself, and the police on guard duty. They didn’t know who I was, but they would have recognized me in court, if it had been necessary. The briefest investigation showed them that I couldn’t have been anywhere near where Kate was killed. It also proved that Sean lied when he said he saw me, and that by his own admission he was there.” He hesitated. “If you need to, you can check it.” His smile was there for a moment, then gone. “Don’t you think they’d have loved to hang me for it, if they’d had the ghost of a chance?”
“Yes,” she agreed, feeling the weight ease from her. Grief was one thing, but without guilt it was a passing wound, something that would heal. “I’m … I’m sorry I needed to ask. Perhaps I should have known you wouldn’t have done it.”
“I would like you to think well of me, Charlotte,” he said quietly. “But I would rather you saw me as a real person, capable of good and ill, and of pity, and shame …”
“Victor … don’t …”
He turned away slowly, staring at the fire. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
She left quietly, going up to her room. She needed to be alone, and there was nothing either of them could say that would do anything but make it worse.
