Vespasia reached across and touched her hand very gently, just fingertip to fingertip. ‘The same as you, my dear. That’s not the same thing as saying that it is wise. It is simply the only choice you can live with.’
There was a tap on the door, and the maid announced that supper was ready. They ate in the small breakfast room. Slender-legged Georgian mahogany furniture glowed dark amid golden yellow walls, as if they were dining in the sunset, although the curtains were closed and the only light came from the gas brackets on the walls.
Charlotte and Vespasia did not resume the more serious conversation until they had returned to the sitting room and were assured of being uninterrupted.
‘Do not forget for a moment that you are in Ireland,’ Vespasia warned. ‘Or imagine it is the same as England. It is not. They wear their past more closely wound around themselves than we do. Enjoy it while you are there, but don’t let your guard down for a second. They say you need a long spoon to sup with the devil. Well, you need a strong head to dine with the Irish. They’ll charm the wits out of you, if you let them.’
‘I won’t forget why I’m there,’ Charlotte promised.
‘Or that Victor knows Ireland very well, and the Irish also know him?’ Vespasia added. ‘Do not underestimate his intelligence, Charlotte, or his vulnerability. By the way, you have not mentioned how you intend to carry this off without causing a scandal that might damage Narraway’s good name further, but would certainly ruin yours. I assume your sense of fear and injustice did not blind you to that?’ There was no criticism in her voice, only concern.
Charlotte felt the blood hot in her face. ‘Of course I have. I can’t take a maid — I don’t have one, or the money to pay her fare if I did. I am going to say I am Mr Narraway’s sister — half-sister. That will make it decent enough.’
A tiny smile touched the corners of Vespasia’s lips. ‘Then you had better stop calling him “Mr Narraway” and learn to use his given name, or you will certainly raise eyebrows.’ She hesitated. ‘Or perhaps you already do.’
Charlotte looked into Vespasia’s steady silver-grey eyes, and chose not to elaborate.
Narraway came early the following morning in a hansom cab. When Charlotte answered the door he hesitated only momentarily. He did not ask her if she were certain of the decision. Perhaps he did not want to give her the chance to waver. He called the cab driver to put her case on the luggage rack.
‘Do you wish to go and say goodbye?’ he asked her. His face looked bleak, with shadows under his eyes as if he had not slept in many nights. ‘There is time.’
‘No thank you,’ she answered. ‘I have already done so. And I hate long goodbyes. I am quite ready to go.’
He nodded and walked behind her across the footpath. Then he handed her up onto the seat, going round to the other side to sit next to her. The cabby apparently knew the destination.
She had already decided not to tell him that she had visited Vespasia. He might prefer to think Vespasia did not know of his dismissal. She also chose not to let him know of Mrs Waterman’s suspicions. It could prove embarrassing, even as if she herself had considered the journey as something beyond business. The very thought of that made the heat rise up her face.
‘Perhaps you would tell me something about Dublin,’ she requested. ‘I have never been there, and I realise that beyond the fact that it is the capital of Ireland, I know very little.’
The idea seemed to amuse him. ‘We have a long train journey ahead of us, even on the fast train, and then a crossing of the Irish Sea. I hear that the weather will be pleasant. I hope so, because if it is rough, then it can be very violent indeed. There will be time for me to tell you all I know, from 7,500 BC until the present day.’
She was amazed at the age of the city, but she would not allow him to see that he had impressed her so easily. It might look as if she were being deliberately gentle with the grief she knew he must be feeling.
‘Really? Is that because our journey is enormously long after all, or because you know less than I had supposed?’
‘Actually there is something of a gap between 7,500 BC and the Celts arriving in 700 BC,’ he said with a smile. ‘And after that not a great deal until the arrival of St Patrick in AD 432.’
‘So we can leap eight thousand years without further comment,’ she concluded. ‘After that surely there must be something a little more detailed?’
‘The founding of St Patrick’s Cathedral in AD 119?’ he suggested. ‘Unless you want to know about the Vikings, in which case I would have to look it up myself. Anyway, they weren’t Irish, so they don’t count.’
‘Are you Irish, Mr Narraway?’ Charlotte asked suddenly. Perhaps it was an intrusive question, and when he was Pitt’s superior she would not have done it, but now the relationship was far more equal, and she might need to know. With his intensely dark looks he easily could be.
He winced slightly. ‘How formal you are. It makes you sound like your mother. No, I am not Irish, I am as English as you are, except for one great-grandmother. Why do you ask?’
‘Your precise knowledge of Irish history,’ she answered. That was not the real reason. She asked because she needed to know more about his loyalties, even his nature and, emotionally, the truth about what had happened in the O’Neil case twenty years ago.
‘It is my job to know,’ he said quietly. ‘As it was. Would you like to hear about the feud that made the King of Leinster ask Henry II of England to send over an army to assist him?’
‘Is it interesting?’
‘The army was led by Richard de Clare, known as Strongbow. He married the king’s daughter and became king himself in 1171, and the Anglo-Normans took control. In 1205 they began to build Dublin Castle. “Silken” Thomas led a revolt against Henry VIII in 1534, and lost. Do you begin to see a pattern?’
‘Of course I do. Do they burn the King of Leinster in effigy?’
He laughed, a brief, sharp sound. ‘I haven’t seen it done, but it sounds like a good idea. We are at the station. Let me get a porter. We will continue when we are seated on the train.’
The hansom pulled up as he spoke and he alighted easily. There was an air of command in him that attracted attention within seconds, and the luggage was unloaded into a wagon, the driver paid, and Charlotte walked across the pavement into the vast Paddington railway station for the Great Western rail to Holyhead.
It had great arches, as if it were some half-finished cathedral, and a roof so high it dwarfed the massed people all talking and clattering their way to the platform. There was a sense of excitement in the air, and a good deal of noise and steam and grit.
Narraway took her arm. For a moment his grasp felt strange and she was about to object, then she realised how foolish that would be. If they were parted in the crowd they might not find each other again until after the train had pulled out. He had the tickets, and he must know which platform they were seeking.
They passed groups of people, some greeting each other, some clearly stretching out a reluctant parting. Every so often the sound of belching steam and the clang of doors drowned out everything else. Then a whistle would blast shrilly, and one of the great engines would come to life, beginning the long pull away from the platform.
It was not until they had found their train and were comfortably seated that they resumed any kind of conversation. Charlotte found Narraway courteous, even considerate, but she could not help being aware of the inner tensions in him, the quick glances as if he memorised the faces of those around them, the concern, the way his hands were hardly ever completely still.
It would be a long journey to Holyhead, on the west coast. It was up to her to make it as agreeable as possible, and also to learn a good deal more about exactly what he wanted her to do.
Sitting on the rather uncomfortable seat, upright, with her hands folded in her lap, she must look very prim. It was not an image she liked, and yet now that they were embarked on this adventure together, each for his or her own reasons, she must be certain that she did not make any irretrievable mistakes, first of all in the nature of her feelings. She liked Victor Narraway. He was highly intelligent, individual, he could be very amusing at rare times, but she knew only one part of his life: the professional part, which Pitt also knew, and knew better than she ever would. Perhaps that was most of Narraway. Vespasia had hinted as much.
But Charlotte knew that there must be more, the private man. Somewhere beneath the pragmatism there had been dreams; she had seen the knowledge of their loss in his eyes.
‘Thank you for the lesson on ancient Irish history,’ she began, feeling clumsy. ‘But I need to know far more than I do about the specific matter that we are going to investigate, otherwise I will not recognise something important if I hear it. I cannot possibly remember everything to report it accurately to you.’
