Pitt was taken aback. She was as much ravaged by grief as her husband, and yet she seemed quite calm in her refusal to take the issue further. It was not defeat. Meeting her eyes he knew she was not emotionally frozen by shock. She spoke from determination, not emptiness.
“Don’t you want to know what happened?” he asked. “If only for your peace of mind … for the future, perhaps?”
Her lips tightened a moment, not a smile so much as a grimace. “I do know, Mr. Pitt. Perhaps I should have told my husband, but I did not. I knew it would …” she drew in a deep breath, “… it would hurt him, with no purpose. There is nothing we can do.”
Pitt was surprised and confused. He knew what Charlotte and Vespasia suspected had happened, where and when, and almost certainly by whom. But would Isaura respond this way if their suspicions were indeed correct?
“I can’t act without your permission, Senhora, but for the sake of the valued relationship between England and Portugal, I must discover what happened,” he said gently.
She blinked her dark eyes. “What happened? A young man who has a twisted soul raped my daughter, and then made light of it. He sought out opportunities to mock her in public with pretended courtesies, and when she retreated from him, he taunted her all the more, until in hysteria she backed away as far as she could, and beyond, crashing through a window to her death. I saw it, and was helpless to do anything to save her. That is what happened.” She stared at him, almost challengingly.
“Forsbrook?” He breathed the name rather than speaking it. He had known from Vespasia and Charlotte, who had witnessed Angeles’s final moments, and yet there was still a monstrousness about it.
“Yes,” Isaura said simply.
“Neville Forsbrook?” he repeated, to be certain. “You knew? When did it happen, and where?”
“Yes, Neville Forsbrook, the son of your famous banker who is responsible for so much investment for your countrymen,” she answered. “I knew because my daughter told me. It happened at a party she attended. Forsbrook was there, among many other young people. He found Angeles alone in one of the apartments looking at the art there. He raped her and left her terrified and bleeding. Here at home one of our maids found her weeping in her room and sent for me.”
“She said she had been raped, and who it was?” He hated pressing her. It seemed pointlessly cruel, and yet if he did not he would only have to come back later to ask.
“She was bleeding,” Isaura replied. “Her clothes were torn and she was bruised. I am a married woman, Mr. Pitt. I am perfectly aware of what happens between a man and a woman. If it is anything like love, or even a heat-of-the-moment weakness, a hunger, it does not leave bruises such as Angeles had.” She lifted her chin. “Do I know it was Neville Forsbrook? Yes, but I cannot prove it. Even if I could, what good would it do?”
She gave a tiny, hopeless shrug. “Angeles is dead. He would only say she was willing, a whore at heart. And his father would turn the goodwill of the people he knows against us. They would close ranks, and we would find ourselves outcast for making a fuss and exposing to the public what should have remained a private sin.”
Pitt did not argue. His mind raced to find a rebuttal, but there was none. Politically, socially, and diplomatically it would be a disaster. The most that would happen to Neville Forsbrook would be that he might marry less fortunately than otherwise. Even that was not certain. He might continue to make people believe that it was all the imagination of a hysterical young foreign girl who had stepped willingly into disgrace, like Eve, possibly even gotten pregnant, then blamed him for it. And there would be no way to prove him a liar.
Even the testimony of the maid who had found Angeles crying and bleeding would hardly be viewed as impartial. The girl’s humiliation would be painted in detail for everyone, and branded in their memories even more deeply than it was now. Isaura was right: they were helpless.
Forsbrook would never allow his son to be blamed, and he had the power to protect him. He would use it. Perhaps it was Pitt’s job to see that it did not come to such a thing.
What would he tell Castelbranco? That England was powerless to protect his daughter’s reputation, or bring to any kind of justice the young man who had raped her and driven her to her death? Not only that, but they felt it better not to try to seek any kind of justice, because it would be uncomfortable, raise fears and questions they preferred to avoid?
And if Castelbranco then thought them barbarous, would he be wrong?
“What about his mother?” Pitt said aloud, casting around for any other avenue at all. “Do you think …?”
She shook her head. “Eleanor Forsbrook died a few years ago, I’m told. There was a terrible carriage accident in Bryanston Mews, just off the square where they live. People speak very well of her. She was generous and beautiful. Perhaps if she were still alive this would not have happened.”
“Probably not,” he conceded. “But the loss of a mother does not excuse this. Most of us lose people we love at some time or other.” He thought of his own father, taken from him when he was a child, unjustly accused of theft and deported to Australia. It was a long time ago now. Nobody was deported anymore. His father had been one of the last. Pitt had no idea if he had even survived the voyage, or what had happened to him if he had. He might still be alive, but he would be old, close to eighty. Pitt wasn’t sure if he even wanted to know his father still lived. He had never returned, or made any contact. It was an old loss better left alone.
“Most of us have wounds of some sort,” he said quietly.
“Of course,” Isaura agreed. “But you see, there is nothing you can do. I am grateful for your kindness in coming to me in person rather than sending a letter.”
He did not want to accept her dismissal.
“I would still like to speak to your maid, Senhora,” he said grimly. “I will be discreet, I give you my word, but I want to know for myself all that I can. Special Branch has a long memory.”
Her eyes flickered for a moment. With hope?
“Of course,” she agreed. “I shall ask her to come.” She turned and left, going out of the door with her head high, her shoulders awkwardly stiff.
Pitt wondered how rash his promise was, and when Isaura Castelbranco would tell her husband the truth. Probably when she was sure he would not take his own revenge. She had faced more than enough grief already.
CHAPTER 8
Narraway went to Lisson Grove reluctantly. It had been his office, his domain, for so many years that going back as a visitor heightened his sense of being superfluous. He did not belong anymore. He looked much the same as he always had, not even noticeably any grayer, certainly not heavier or stiffer. His mind felt just as sharp-in fact, in some ways more so. It was emotionally that he felt different. Surely gentleness, an awareness of others, a greater humanity, was part of wisdom?
He had time in which to do anything he wanted, to travel anywhere, if he wished. It wasn’t possible that he had forgotten how to enjoy himself. He could go to the beautiful cities of Europe he had only visited in haste before. He could admire the architecture, steep himself in the history of the cultures, the music, the great art created through the centuries. He could stop and talk to people purely for the pleasure of it. He could ignore or forget anything that bored him. There were no boundaries, no responsibilities.
Was that what troubled him? He needed boundaries? What for-an excuse? Responsibilities, or he felt unimportant? Did that mean there was little to him except the job? He had started in the army at eighteen, straight from Eton, where he had excelled academically. The military had been his father’s idea, much against his own intention.
He had arrived in India almost coincidentally with the beginning of the Mutiny, and seen firsthand the horrors of war. It had been brutal and desperate-innocent men, women, and children slaughtered as well as soldiers. It was there that he had first become aware of the unnecessary human errors-“stupidity” would not be too strong a word in some cases-that caused such tragedy. It had sparked his appreciation for military intelligence and, even above that, the understanding of people and events, of political will, the perception of social movement that had eventually matched him with his true gifts, Special Branch. He had given the rest of his life to it.
Was it the loss of purpose that hurt now, or the loss of power? Who was he without those things? It was the
